From: blakes7-d-request@lysator.liu.se Subject: blakes7-d Digest V98 #297 X-Loop: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se X-Mailing-List: archive/volume98/297 Precedence: list MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="----------------------------" To: blakes7-d@lysator.liu.se Reply-To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se ------------------------------ Content-Type: text/plain blakes7-d Digest Volume 98 : Issue 297 Today's Topics: [B7L] Languages [B7L] More catching up. Re: [B7L] Languages Re: [B7L] Languages [B7L] : Re How much time passes [B7L] languages [B7L] Personal for Pat Re: [B7L] languages Re: [B7L] languages [B7L] Merlin [B7L] GEOS ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 19:28:10 +0100 (BST) From: Judith Proctor To: Lysator List Subject: [B7L] Languages Message-ID: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII I was in a pub the other night when an old frined of mine called a comment in Irish to another friend of his across the room. It reminded me of an occasion a few weeks before when I was in a small shop selling ethnic clothes and I got fascinated by what the man behind the counter was doing. He was typing away on a QWERTY keyboard, but the symbols coming up on screen were like nothing I'd ever seen before. Turned out that it was Thai and that he was using software that allowed him to access a much later set of symbols and accents by using various odd key combinations. We got talking about languages. He'd never realised that Welsh existed as a language, let alone that it was still spoken on a day to day basis. What I'm saying is that although Britain appears from the outside - and indeed often from the inside - to have but a single language, there are other languages still there spoken by a partly bilingual population. What languages might have persisted until the time of the Federation and why? For instance, one of the main reasons that Welsh survives to this day as a living language was because the Bible was translated into Welsh in 1588 by Bishop William Morgan. It was apparantly a particularly beautiful translation and in the eighteenth century the Welsh religious revivals were held in the Welsh language and that in turn generated a demand for religious books printed in Welsh. Might underground religious movements in Federation times have kept old languages? Hebrew for example? A 'dead' language actually has some uses. They allow communication in a form that isn't easy to follow. Yes, computers can translate (though with variable accuracy at the present time), but your trooper on the ground isn't going to understand. A language is a focus of identity for many people. I can imagine the Federation trying to stamp out small localised languages simply because they encourage independence. They promote different ways of thought. Some ideas can actually be better expressed in one language than in another. Many groups seeking independence from larger countries are language based. eg. Basque Language is tied into your sense of history. I see myself as English - that is the language I speak. My children have ancestors from Poland, Scotland and Wales, but they see themselves as English (we don't even know if their Polish ancestor was Jewish because the only living relative who would know - and who was born in England - doesn't talk about her father). The history we learn is English history. If I spoke Urdu or Punjabi, then I'm sure I would be far more aware of of history and culture from India and Pakistan even if I hadn't been born there. My view of the time of the British in India might be totally different. The Federation would doubtless be aware of that desire people have to know their own background. They would see destroying languages as a part of the process of rewriting history to whatever suited them. I can imagine persecuted groups hanging onto their langauges as they fled. Frontier planets might be settled by such groups only to be taken over by the Federation at a later date. The language could well survive though. Bilingual societies are perfectly possible - one language spoken at home and another used for school or work. I've just been reading 'How Green Was my Valley' (an excellent book by Richard Llewellyn, which I recommend) and it's evident that Welsh was the language of the home even though English was also known. The attempts of the school to prevent children speaking Welsh there were greatly resented. (The book is set in the reign of Queen Victoria and I can't work out if the schools were state run or were private, so I can't compare with the American habit - no longer practiced as far as I know - of trying to obliterate Indian native languages through sending children to English speaking schools) I can easily imagine the Federation adopting similar tactics to try and obliterate 'primitive' (in their eyes) languages while allowing a few 'civilised' languages such as French to survive. ('It's civilised if I learnt it at school and primitive if I didn't' kind of attitude.) I can actually imagine them teaching Latin to a select few while trying to destroy all knowledge of Catalan, Pidgin, Gaelic, etc. Judith -- http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7 Redemption 99 - The Blakes 7/Babylon 5 convention 26-28 February 1999, Ashford International Hotel, Kent http://www.smof.com/redemption/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 14:05:39 PST From: "Joanne MacQueen" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] More catching up. Message-ID: <19981129220540.5462.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain >> Oh. It is getting close to Christmas, Carol. Surely you're too busy for >> mayhem to be high on your list of things to do? >But mayhem is such a good way to relieve the stresses of the holiday >season...I've no doubt that Avon arrived on Gauda Prime the day >after he attempted Friday-after-Thanksgiving-shopping in the US. No >jury in the country would convict him for going postal at that point. ;-) You're probably right, and I've been trying to think of an Australian equivalent. But the worst of the after-Christmas sales rush is over by Australia Day, so I give up. >There is that... One does need to do a "Harvest of Kairos" mental >conditioning session to keep in a proper frame of mind. "This spider >is menacing even if it has a wobble in its walk and its maximum >attainable speed is five miles a year." Afraid I'll have to substitute the virus in the Doctor Who story that introduces K9 (slight mental blank - I can't remember the title, but I can remember that the virus causes fish scales around the eyes and a vocabulary limited to "It is most suitable for the purpose"). If a "Thunderbirds"-like giant prawn hasn't put me in training, then nothing will help me. Actually, I listened to the rest of The Sevenfold Crown on Friday. At bedtime. Right after listening to several songs from South Park that my brother had taped off the radio. I think I need to listen to the B7 tape again. It made sense, but I think that the sound of Cartman screaming "Come sail away" did something to what there was of my thought processes on Friday night. Regards Joanne Dolly: is a girl like ewe. --Glossary, Good News Week Vol. 2 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 16:29:06 PST From: "Edith Spencer" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Languages Message-ID: <19981130002906.20116.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Hello to all, Amongst many other fascinating things, Judith noted: "in the reign of Queen Victoria and I can't work out if the schools were state run or were private, so I can't compare with the American habit - no longer practiced as far as I know - of trying to obliterate Indian native languages through sending children to English speaking schools)-" Um, yes and no. Native Americans who were sent to goverment- sponsored schools did experience the awful assimilation process- including the elimination of their home tongue. However, this was entirely suscessful; the bible was translated into several Native American languages, thus insuring its continuation(as Judith noted with Welsh.) During the Great Depression, WPA workers in the USA set about recorded on wax the remaining speakers of soon to be obselete tongues- this would help historian and anthropologists reconstruct the language. And during WWII, much of the code sent to the War Dept. in the USA was not encoded by mathematical means but actually translated into Native American languages, primarily the languages of the the North American Midwest. Some of the Native American dialects still remain well spoken- almost as like a renaisannce of sort. Another point Judith makes: "I can easily imagine the Federation adopting similar tactics to try and obliterate 'primitive' (in their eyes) languages while allowing a few 'civilised' languages such as French to survive. ('It's civilised if I learnt it at school and primitive if I didn't' kind of attitude.) I can actually imagine them teaching Latin to a select few while trying to destroy all knowledge of Catalan, Pidgin, Gaelic, etc." Yeah. Conformity through the language of commerce- know it or be damned. Interestingly, when I went to college, I remember being being throughly quizzed about my pronunciation and naunce of speech in Spanish and English ( I speak both.) because my parent were from the Carribean, there were ways of speaking that annouce your class structure and your history. i also remember how when I went to Europe and studied variarances in French how the speakers of one area felt about another- something that took me by suprise. But to get back to Judith's point, I can definitely see a memeber(s) of certain groups wanting to adhee to their own language or using an 'obselete' one to communicate messages without anyone knowing for a while. After all, how many of us would know Iroquois if we heard it? Brilliant post, Judith. Edith the almost Oxford Don :) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 16:28:25 PST From: "Edith Spencer" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] Languages Message-ID: <19981130002958.4021.qmail@hotmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Hello to all, Amongst many other fascinating things, Judith noted: "in the reign of Queen Victoria and I can't work out if the schools were state run or were private, so I can't compare with the American habit - no longer practiced as far as I know - of trying to obliterate Indian native languages through sending children to English speaking schools)-" Um, yes and no. Native Americans who were sent to goverment- sponsored schools did experience the awful assimilation process- including the elimination of their home tongue. However, this was entirely suscessful; the bible was translated into several Native American languages, thus insuring its continuation(as Judith noted with Welsh.) During the Great Depression, WPA workers in the USA set about recorded on wax the remaining speakers of soon to be obselete tongues- this would help historian and anthropologists reconstruct the language. And during WWII, much of the code sent to the War Dept. in the USA was not encoded by mathematical means but actually translated into Native American languages, primarily the languages of the the North American Midwest. Some of the Native American dialects still remain well spoken- almost as like a renaisannce of sort. Another point Judith makes: "I can easily imagine the Federation adopting similar tactics to try and obliterate 'primitive' (in their eyes) languages while allowing a few 'civilised' languages such as French to survive. ('It's civilised if I learnt it at school and primitive if I didn't' kind of attitude.) I can actually imagine them teaching Latin to a select few while trying to destroy all knowledge of Catalan, Pidgin, Gaelic, etc." Yeah. Conformity through the language of commerce- know it or be damned. Interestingly, when I went to college, I remember being being throughly quizzed about my pronunciation and naunce of speech in Spanish and English ( I speak both.) because my parent were from the Carribean, there were ways of speaking that annouce your class structure and your history. i also remember how when I went to Europe and studied variarances in French how the speakers of one area felt about another- something that took me by suprise. But to get back to Judith's point, I can definitely see a memeber(s) of certain groups wanting to adhee to their own language or using an 'obselete' one to communicate messages without anyone knowing for a while. After all, how many of us would know Iroquois if we heard it? Brilliant post, Judith. Edith the almost Oxford Don :) ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 02:17:32 -0000 From: "Neil Faulkner" To: "lysator" Subject: [B7L] : Re How much time passes Message-ID: <031701be1c0b$798aa560$b219ac3e@default> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-7" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The 13 years cited by Penny Dreadful may come from my B7 Log Book which Horizon ran in their newsletter (NLs 29-32). In compiling/inventing all that, I assumed that faster-than-light travel would involve a measure of time distortion similar to that created by very high sublight speeds, so those 13 years would be experienced as considerably less by the crew. Perhaps 8-9 years, which works out as about 2 years per season and is hence not unreasonable. Hardly authoritative, though, I admit. I think there was a measure of time dilation involved in FTL travel because the voyage from Earth to Cygnus Alpha took eight months 'ship time' (ie+ADs- as opposed to 'real' time, whatever that might be if it even exists at all). And I think the London did go faster than light, The real world Alpha Cygni is 1600 light years from Earth+ADs- even at a sufficiently high sublight speed to get there in 8 months ship time, 1600 years would pass on Earth before the London arrived. This would make ven Glynd rather elderly by the time he cropped up again in 'Voice'... FWIW, I don't think Cygnus Alpha was our Alpha Cygni, since the latter is highly unlikely to have any planets at all, let alone habitable ones. The whole concept of what constitutes a constellation would have to change in a spacefaring civilisation, to discrete clusters of stars rather than patterns in the sky. (Cf Egrorian's use of the word in 'Orbit'). Neil +ACI-I chose not to choose Life. I chose Blakes 7 instead...+ACI- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 02:54:00 -0000 From: "Neil Faulkner" To: "lysator" Subject: [B7L] languages Message-ID: <031e01be1c0c$afbc6fa0$b219ac3e@default> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-7" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On the subject of Native American languages, it might be of interest to know that native-speaking Navahos received special communications training by the US Marines in the Pacific theatre of WW2. They could send and receive in what to the Japanese was effectively an unbreakable code. Even if the Federation might want to obliterate all other languages, a pragmatic Space Command might bend the rules if they could see the point. I can certainly envisage a multi-lingual B7 universe, but then I do keep slipping bits of Esperanto into my stories. I've also used some German and exhausted my repertoire of Japanese. Most Robert Holmes episodes had a phrase or two of French dropped in somewhere. Neil ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 23:03:19 EST From: AChevron@aol.com To: Space-city@world.std.com Cc: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Personal for Pat Message-ID: <41cbab8e.36621907@aol.com> Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sorry to use the lists, but to Pat S.: I've got the zine, but you forgot to tell me how much I owe you! Please respond via private e-mail. thanks, and sorry for the bother. D. Rose ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 09:36:45 -0000 From: "Alison Page" To: "Lysator" Subject: Re: [B7L] languages Message-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Default Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit This is an interesting subject that Judith introduced. You can make a plausible case that in the future the use of AI translators would make the distinctions between languages less significant (the 'Star Trek' solution). However something about the feel of the Federation in the B7 Universe makes me agree that language, and even accent, would be used as a means of social stratification. In a snobbish and elitist system there seem to be two contrasting forces pulling in opposite directions. On the one hand there is the move to make everyone the same - to teach the 'natives' to speak English, or to teach the local kids to speak with a BBC accent. On the other hand there is the deep rooted feeling that the outsiders will never be good enough - the insiders are the only ones who speak the language properly. Alison ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 11:17:26 GMT From: mjsmith@tcd.ie (Murray) To: Blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: Re: [B7L] languages Message-Id: <199811301117.LAA06785@dux1.tcd.ie> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Dear Neil, I was interested in you slipping bits of Esperanto and other languages into your stories; but I always feel that when we do this, we have to be careful, as the results can be strange, if not funny. For example, in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', a woman in the series was called Vash. The pronounciation of that name is the same as that of the French word 'vache' for cow. So when she was silly, she literally was a silly cow! Yours, Murray ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 08:20:10 EST From: "Letitia A. Casebourn" To: blakes7@lysator.liu.se Subject: [B7L] Merlin Message-Id: Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT I taped Merlin about a week ago, and would be happy to mail the tape to anybody who is interested. It will be in American standards (NTSC), so just about anybody "across the pond" would need to convert it before it could be viewed. Just drop me a line. tisha@purdue.edu (shortest e-mail address) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 30 Nov 1998 15:14:44 -0600 From: "Reuben" To: Cc: "Blakes 7 Mail (E-mail)" Subject: [B7L] GEOS Message-ID: <02f601be1ca6$7710ef60$660114ac@misnt.tursso.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit http://www.swd.net.au/geos/ Not sure if anyone has mentioned this. It's a very cool vote-for-your-favorite-episode type page. It covers Blake's 7, Dr. Who, Babylon 5, Star Trek, etc... Really neat stuff. Reuben http://www.reuben.net/blake/ -------------------------------- End of blakes7-d Digest V98 Issue #297 **************************************