Sunday, August 02, 2009

Linguistic games


This evening I played in the artificial language spoken throughout most of the region of my fictional world where my stories take place. A wizard is charged with creating an illusion and so he enters a trance, does weird hand gestures, and chants a very repetitious incantation, boring those who witness the ritual but quite effective nonetheless.

Those in the besieged city will see three times as many attackers as there really are.

Ijà na arís vifaic, l ijà na arís vifaic, l ijà na arís vifaic, mi mar ijà ur vifaic, mi!
You will see me again, and you will see me again, and you will see me again, yes, you must see me thus again, yes!
Hey, you can't make a good incantation work in translation.

It's good old PSYOPS. Who says I can't have modern warfare in the 8th century? I have psychological operations, terrorism, biological warfare, covert actions, trade embargoes, massacres, and assassinations (both successful and failed).

And now to bed.

Sweet dreams, my avid avocets!

--the BB

8 comments:

June Butler said...

An artificial language, too? What a mind!

"Ijà na arís vifaic, l ijà na arís vifaic, l ijà na arís vifaic, mi mar ijà ur vifaic, mi!" back to you, Paul.

Hey! I just had a thought. You could use word verification to help you coin words in your artificial language.

Paul said...

Well, I certainly hope to see you again, Mimi, but you don't need spells to convince me. I worry when you voodoo women start chanting, even if it's Anglican chant.

I use names from my novels as passwords on the computer at work. They're not English, they're not in the dictionary, they're gibberish to anyone else, and I can remember them. It's the numbers I have to include that make it harder.

I borrow roots for words from all over: Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Russian, Swedish, Old English, Welsh, Armenian, and hypothetical Indo-European stems. And some I make up arbitrarily. The grammatical structure is all my own.

June Butler said...

As I said before, Pablito, what a mind!

Here's one for you: "eyardigh".

Paul said...

"Eyardigh" adj. meaning "pefectly seasoned" as in "n gumbo eyardigh" (the gumbo is perfectly seasoned).

Göran Koch-Swahne said...

Seems to me you are the one who needs the undisturbed sleep ;=)

Paul said...

I love working out my demons in writing. Fantasy fiction allows such flexibility! And, may I say, I usually sleep very well and all night through. Once I tear myself away from the computer, that is.

it's margaret said...

I am looking forward to finishing the construction and sitting still --and reading, sometime in the next three days!

Paul said...

Margaret, more power to you on dealing with construction. Been there, done that, don't want no more T-shirts. When you are ready to relax I promise to carry you far away.

Working tonight on the counter incantation, which has me rummaging through my over-3-decades-old grammar notes.