The Cathedral, a parable

[King John]

Turn your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the western side of the plaza of the happy little city of Pigneta, where the city’s unfinished Cathedral stands. The building, although its construction was discontinued a few years back, was clearly destined to be beautiful, actually is beautiful in its way, and has become dear to the hearts of many of the townspeople. Sure, they agree, it would be more convenient if it had a roof instead of those canvas awnings, but everyone has gotten used to the awnings and nobody is much bothered by them any more. And yes, all that scaffolding isn’t particularly attractive, and there’s a lot of empty air in the holes where stained glass windows were originally planned, and the north transept is entirely missing. And yes, there are great heaps of construction rubbish — stones and beams and debris — lying around, and they do tend to get in the way. And yes, maybe the Port-o-johns in what was to have been the apse aren’t in the very best taste. But this is Pigneta, and in Pigneta, Tradition rules; and Tradition — the tradition of the last eight or nine years anyway — says that Nothing About The Cathedral May Be Changed.

Recently though, certain radicals among the citizens have begun to suggest that the Cathedral should actually be finished. It is far too beautiful, they say, to allow it to stand here in this disgraceful condition. True, the architect’s original plans — if he had any — have gone missing along with him, but we have plenty of indications in the work already done as to the direction in which it should continue. (And besides, there’s reason to think that the original design may have included some genuine mistakes; witness the way portions of the south wall seem to be cracking, or the fact that some of the clerestory windows are a little taller than others.) These Developers want to study the Cathedral, and then finish it in the original style — even though, they realize, some things about the current building will have to be changed.

The Traditionalists are all against these plans. This is the Cathedral we have, they say, and it’s wonderful. (Which nobody disputes. It’s only because it is wonderful that the Developers want to repair and finish it.) It may not be “finished” in the sense that the Cathedrals of other nearby cities are finished (say the Traditionalists), but it has its own endearing characteristics. We don’t want a mere copy of some other Cathedral. We want to keep our own dear cracking walls and canvas roof; we actually like the garish mustard-coloured paint all over the east face (even though it’s well-known that the architect himself didn’t approve of it, and intended to remove it); we definitely don’t want to lose the Port-o-johns. Sure, other Cathedrals have finished floors, and lack our rubbish heaps, and have glass in their windows; but Pigneta’s isn’t some other Cathedral. This is ours, and it’s unique.

Any change the Developers propose is greeted with jeers from the Traditionalists. “This is Pigneta. Sure, Spanish and Italian Cathedrals don’t have piles of bricks in the aisles, but Pigneta’s Cathedral does. You want to change Pigneta to be more like Spain or Italy.” To which the Developers answer that, no, what they want it to let Pigneta’s Cathedral be more perfectly itself, by removing extraneous trash, repairing places where the existing stonework and masonry can’t bear the weight resting on it, and by finishing the entire building to be the wonderful place it’s clear — even in its current messed-up condition — it was meant to be, and can become.

= = = = = = = = = =

OK. Analogy isn’t argument. But this really does reflect, I believe, the situation among Talossan language enthusiasts. Talossan is a constructed language — but only partly constructed, not entirely finished.

Yes, my analogy overstates just how unfinished Talossan is. Until the late 1990s, there were regular, frequent revisions in Talossan — huge changes, big reforms. The complete sum of all the changes we "developers" would like to see in the language — changes of orthography, vocabulary, idiom, syntax — are hardly equal in their impact to one of the great reforming Arestadâs of former years. Nobody now wants to do anything as radical as abolishing the entire structure of personal possessive pronouns (as was done on 4 September 1993), or removing the feminine form of all past participles (24 January 1996), or changing forms in the conjugations of regular verbs (18 August 1992, 16 June and 2 December 1993, 21 February 1994, 1998), or entirely abolishing a class of articles (1998), or replacing common words (like three and ten) (1998).

We certainly don’t want to tear down the walls and start over, or put up a bowling alley or an office tower in place of the Cathedral. What we want is a far more modest thing, or set of things — in general, not to undo what Ben did, but to supplement his genius at language-construction with some more formal skills in linguistics, particularly in the syntax of Indo-European and Romance languages. Specifically:

1. To scrap Ben’s (failed) attempt to mark stresses, and to replace that failure with a system of stressmarking that actually works, and will make it possible for the first time to tell, from the written form of a Talossan word, how it should be pronounced. (Ben knew that his stress-rules and stress-marking didn’t work, but he never figured out what to do to fix it.) Also, to get rid of some of the worst (mustard-coloured) spelling conventions, like gñh and s-ch.

2. To add words to the Treisoûr when needed, to deprecate some really bad (and unneeded) words, to add idiomatic phrases, and to do at least some “regularizing” of derivations from Rumán so that the Talossan vocabulary better reflects the underlying (mytho-historical) phonology of the language.

3. To think more clearly about the relationship between Talossan phonemics and pronunciation, so that awkward (and possibly false) ideas about Talossan phonology can be corrected.

4. To fix a few mistakes Ben made in the grammar, usually caused simply by his not thinking (or his thinking unclearly) about particular syntactic situations; and to extend the grammar into a few areas where it was never fully developed.

In general, we want to continue to develop Talossan — which the OrgLaw tasks the CÚG with doing — into a language that, even though it’s a constructed (artificial) lanaguage, has even more of the look and feel of a natural language — without losing any of the things that have made it such a wonderful language to learn and use. Not to make Talossan like Spanish or Occitan or Rumanian, but to make Talossan more and more like Talossan!


— John R (in his 1000th posting on Wittenberg)

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

john said:

OK. Analogy isn’t argument. But this really does reflect, I believe, the situation among Talossan language enthusiasts. Talossan is a constructed language — but only partly constructed, not entirely finished.

Well done! A counter-analogy: An author writes a collection of tales. He originally intends to write a certain number of tales as part of the overall project, but by the end of his involvement in the project only a fraction of them are actually written. He's inconsistent about whether he wants to write in prose or in verse, and even the tales that are in verse use a hodge-podge of metres and rhyming schemes. What's more, the tales that are written have some inconsistencies, even a continuity error or two, and the author's spelling is horribly irregular. There are gaps in the overall story, as it's supposed to take place over several days, but the author pays little attention to the transition between days.

So, should we complete the unfinished Canterbury Tales? We could write the other 90-something tales that we know were part of the original vision. And while we're at it, we could fill in missing details about overnight stays, etc., regularise and simplify spelling, and "reform" the inconsistencies in Chaucer's verse. Would that make the work more perfectly itself, or would it transform it into something else? Yes, my analogy too overstates how unfinished Talossan is, but in other respects I think it hits pretty close to home.

Nobody now wants to do anything as radical as abolishing the entire structure of personal possessive pronouns (as was done on 4 September 1993), or removing the feminine form of all past participles (24 January 1996), or changing forms in the conjugations of regular verbs (18 August 1992, 16 June and 2 December 1993, 21 February 1994, 1998), or entirely abolishing a class of articles (1998), or replacing common words (like three and ten) (1998).

There are different ways to measure how radical various changes are. The last edition of Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ presented a complete and essentially useable language. The reforms since then really affect a comparative handful of words. The reforms currently on the table would change a majority of the words in the language.

Here is the perspective that I am trying to take: Where there are actual mistakes or errors -- things that really don't work -- we should consider adopting reforms. When the issues are really aesthetic, reform is changing Talossan into something different, not making it more like itself, and that we should not do. At this point, I think the stress system probably falls into the first category. It's something that needs to be fixed for serious functional reasons. Many of the proposals for changing consonantal digraphs and trigraphs fall into the second category.

I'm out of time now, but I'll have more later.

[Nic Casálmac'h]

Here is the perspective that I am trying to take: Where there are actual mistakes or errors -- things that really don't work -- we should consider adopting reforms. When the issues are really aesthetic, reform is changing Talossan into something different, not making it more like itself, and that we should not do. At this point, I think the stress system probably falls into the first category. It's something that needs to be fixed for serious functional reasons. Many of the proposals for changing consonantal digraphs and trigraphs fall into the second category.

That is exactly what I think too.

[Xhorxh Asmour]

Well done, folks. The discussions are getting more and more interesting!

[King John]

In some ways, I like S:reu Siervicül's counter-analogy, but it misses the point in others.

First, the Organic Law requires that the Talossan language be "protected, defended and developed" by the CÚG. If Chaucer had established an organization, and charged it with protecting and defending his book, then I'd say yes, he probably intended them simply to issue reprints and fix obvious typos, that kind of thing. But if he said he wanted them to develop the book, their task would go beyond mere "fixing" to extending, completing, adding. Developing.

Secondly, there's no reason to think that any of us could write additions or make fixes to the Caunterbury Tales that would in any way "live up to" the quality of that great work. (So even if the author wanted us to add to it, we might do well not even to try.) But what is true of Chaucer and the Tales is emphatically not true of Ben Madison and the Talossan language. Ben was very good at certain aspects of language construction — especially when he had time to go back and change things, and then change them again, and tinker with them year after year. But there are plenty of things about language — even about the Talossan language — that Ben didn't understand very well; and someone doesn't have to be an arrogant fool to think that certain aspects of his work can be very greatly improved.

Yes, the 1997 Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ presents a usable language. But in 1998 and subsequent years, the CÚG abolished partitive articles, re-authorized the previously abolished imperatives in -a, replaced the old Talossan words for three and four and ten, decided to allow object pronouns to follow infinitives as well as imperatives, and so on. The CÚG eight years ago clearly did not see its rôle as simply to fix obvious mistakes and avoid making any other (æsthetic) changes. Why should the CÚG today have to content itself with such a minor rôle?

The Talossan language is a work in progress. Ben has quit the field, and Sir Tomás Gariçéir is far less involved than he used to be. It's up to us, the Talossan people and the Organically established CÚG, to continue their work, to "protect, defend and develop" our language. Anything less would be shirking our responsibility.

Sir Tomás noted in 2005 that "the language [...] must continue to evolve if it is to survive and flourish". He was right.

— John R

[Nic Casálmac'h]

If it is mustard-colored (and obvious mustard color is a bad choice for this particular cathedral), then why was it painted everywhere and why does it seem to fit so well with the whole design? (gñh)

You do both have good points. I understand both sides, even if I lean toward the change less side.

However, to use your analogy, let's get rid of the piles of rubbish and fix the cracked walls and the roof, but not all the paint and the little features that give it its charm. That's what I think anyway.

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

john said:

First, the Organic Law requires that the Talossan language be "protected, defended and developed" by the CÚG. If Chaucer had established an organization, and charged it with protecting and defending his book, then I'd say yes, he probably intended them simply to issue reprints and fix obvious typos, that kind of thing. But if he said he wanted them to develop the book, their task would go beyond mere "fixing" to extending, completing, adding. Developing.

There are a lot of ways the CÚG could "develop" the language. As I've said before, stability is important to a language. The CÚG will always have a role in "developing" the langauge, but we now have a functional language with a stable period of several years and a small but established body of literature. I believe the CÚG's efforts in the area of "developing" the language should focus on expanding the vocabulary (lots of room for growth there) and polishing up the rough spots as problems are detected. Not giving the language a facelift every several years.

Also, you make a good point about the proper approach to take toward The Canterbury Tales had Chaucer left behind directions to "develop" the book. Can't we apply that same point to your own analogy? What if the original architect who designed our unfinished cathedral had left behind an essay explaining his vision for the building? If he had said "my cathedral will stand out from other cathedrals because of its beautiful mustard-coloured paint and the multiple sizes of clerestory windows," would it make sense to claim that changing these very features would make the cathedral "more perfectly itself"?

We have such an essay in the case of Talossan. "¿Qët isch el Glheþ Talossán?", by R. Ben Madison. What does that essay say about Talossan orthography? This: "The official orthography of Talossan is likewise eclectic, but a Talossan text is easily recognized by these frequent letters or graphemes: c’h, tg, th, ð, þ, ë, ä, gñh, glh, tx, sch, s’ch, tsch, tz, xh, ß." Look how many of these "frequent letters or graphemes," the things that make Talossan "easily recognized," would be abandoned under the reforms that have been proposed. Madison continues: "The language also bristles with diacritical marks ('accents'), more than in any other European language. There are seven such accents in all, the acute, grave, umlaut, tilde, circumflex, cedilla, and the Swedish ring as in å." This statement will likely not be true for much longer. The tilde and ring will disappear, as will the slashed o, the circumflex will be used much less, and the grave accent will be in a very precarious situation. A majority of words with vowel accents will lose some or all of them. For better or worse, this is changing the flavour of Talossan. It's taking away from the language many of the things that have always been viewed as most distinctively Talossan.

Ben's essay does envision a "true" Talossan language that we are all trying to rediscover. He uses the analogy of a sculptor "discovering" the image hidden in a block of stone. But how do we get there? He warns against trying to purge the language of its older elements that are "totally unexplained, and yet . . . give the language much of its unique charm. . . . I would never want to purge these inexplicable and weird elements from the language on the grounds of linguistic or historic ‘purity.’" The development of the language, he argues, should focus on its prospective expansion: "When adding new words to Talossan, we should be scrupulously careful about where they come from, so that they reinforce the image of a Restored Talossan language." In the process of "developing" the language, that historic mission of the CÚG as recognized by the OrgLaw, we should not abandon the existing elements of Talossan that make it so distinctive.

Ben was very good at certain aspects of language construction — especially when he had time to go back and change things, and then change them again, and tinker with them year after year. But there are plenty of things about language — even about the Talossan language — that Ben didn't understand very well; and someone doesn't have to be an arrogant fool to think that certain aspects of his work can be very greatly improved.

That's true, as far as it goes. But we have to resist the temptation to let "we can do it better" be our guiding principle. Like I always remind myself, I joined Talossa. Talossa didn't join me. The nation and the language came first, and were doing quite well before I came along. I want to help flesh out and continue what has been started by Talossa's founders. I don't want to substitute my own judgment for theirs.

Even if some of the quirky things about Talossan really are mistakes, unfinished (and I know at least some of them are), we should still hesitate to "fix" them. Talossan may have warts, but I love it warts and all. Here's another cathedral analogy. The original plans of Notre Dame de Paris suggest that its western towers were originally meant to have spires atop them. Looking at it one way, adding those spires now, after all those years, would make Notre Dame de Paris the place "it was meant to be, and can become." Looking at it another way, it would make Notre Dame de Paris a place that it never was, and give the most famous Gothic western front in the world an entirely different feel.

Yes, the 1997 Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ presents a usable language. But in 1998 and subsequent years, the CÚG abolished partitive articles, re-authorized the previously abolished imperatives in -a, replaced the old Talossan words for three and four and ten, decided to allow object pronouns to follow infinitives as well as imperatives, and so on. The CÚG eight years ago clearly did not see its rôle as simply to fix obvious mistakes and avoid making any other (æsthetic) changes. Why should the CÚG today have to content itself with such a minor rôle?

Like I suggested before, I think the reforms undertaken by the CÚG after 1997 were really not all that significant. Over the course of six years, they instituted changes totalling about two and a half pages of corrections. And many of those were corrections of typos and other apparently inadvertent errors. In my opinion, the total impact of the changes we're talking about now go well beyond those six years' worth of reforms, all in one fell swoop.

The partitive article was abolished. That's theoretically a fairly significant change, but fairly minor in practical effect, and the number of affected words is tiny. The difference between the old partitive article and the new plural and uncountable indefinite articles is barely noticeable in most cases. The -a imperatives were re-established, and only as options. The -a imperative was only gone for about four years prior to its re-establishment, and the -etz imperative was still alive and well after its re-establishment (and predominates to this day). Restoring a little-used option didn't make a single example in SG incorrect. Same with allowing object pronouns to follow infinitives -- that's permissible, but preceding the infinitive was and is more common. Most of the other changes are also optional, and have minimal impact on one's ability to read pre-existing Talossan. The biggest changes, I think, are the new cardinal numbers you mentioned, but that's still only three words. It's hard to compare that to changing several thousand.

[King John]

siervicul said:

In my opinion, the total impact of the changes we're talking about now go well beyond those six years' worth of reforms [1997-2002], all in one fell swoop.

But please note that nobody has proposed changing one single point of syntax, or the pronunciation of one single word. (Except maybe some of the words with the vowel î, and nobody knew how to pronounce those, anyway!) ALL the changes proposed have been changes in spelling only.

Orthography follows language; people speak and think, and then write it down.

When the 19th-century Breton linguist Le Gonedec invented a new writing system for Breton, he didn't change the Breton language — in fact, quite the opposite, he preserved it. When his orthography was revised in 1911, the language didn't change. Other Breton spelling systems introduced in 1955 and 1972 didn't change the language either. Why? Because a writing system is only marks on paper (or a screen); language is syntax and vocabulary — words thought, spoken, and arranged in phrases and sentences.

When Sequoyah invented the Cherokee syllabary, the language didn't change at all. Yes, it could now be written, which hadn't been true before. But it was the same language, before and after. Nobody had to change his pronunciation or word choice or syntax.

When my Junior High friends and I wrote notes to each other using Tolkien's Elvish script, we were writing English with all its grammar and vocabulary intact — not some other language, certainly not Elvish. We were just using a different writing system.

In an old language with an old orthography, like English or French, the orthography represents not only the language as spoken today, but also preserves historical information about how it used to be spoken — and that's a good thing. But Talossan's only "historical information" concerns the odd things that Ben Madison did and thought at various stages of his psycho-linguistic development; not exactly stuff that needs to be preserved and adverted to and dealt with every day, by every reader and writer of Talossan, for the entire future history of our language.

— John R

[Xhorxh Asmour]

siervicul said:

... giving the language a facelift every several years.

The CÙG's intenton is not to monkey around with our sacred Glhetg, but to make it more reasonable, stable and easier to learn so we can have a higher number of speakers and produce more literature in the future.

"... The nation and the language came first, and were doing quite well before I came along."

I wouldn't consider a language to be 'doing well' with only two proficient speakers (Ben Madison and Sir Tomás Gariçéir)

[Sir C. M. Siervicül]

john said:

But please note that nobody has proposed changing one single point of syntax, or the pronunciation of one single word. (Except maybe some of the words with the vowel î, and nobody knew how to pronounce those, anyway!) ALL the changes proposed have been changes in spelling only.

Except for å and çh - the proposed changes would eliminate those sounds from the language, thereby changing the pronunciation of all the words with those sounds. I think eliminating a whole vowel phoneme from the language is by itself a more drastic change than anything done since the '96 edition of Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ. (I think dropping å may be a good idea, but it is a phonological change, not just an orthographic one.) Also, in practice, the pronunciation of the various forms of e will shift around some (especially when it comes to ë, as that pronunciation will no longer be prescribed).

In an old language with an old orthography, like English or French, the orthography represents not only the language as spoken today, but also preserves historical information about how it used to be spoken — and that's a good thing. But Talossan's only "historical information" concerns the odd things that Ben Madison did and thought at various stages of his psycho-linguistic development; not exactly stuff that needs to be preserved and adverted to and dealt with every day, by every reader and writer of Talossan, for the entire future history of our language.

I guess that helps focus on the difference between our perspectives. I think Talossan does carry historical information that is important for us as Talossans. The stuff that you talk about, in my view, is a big part of the history of our language and our nation. It keeps us connected to our roots. Our actual, real-world, historic roots, as distinguished from our mythical vision of the Talossan language. We should not try to forget where we came from.

I agree with Ben in this - that the development of the Talossan language must be guided by a coherent vision but must balance that against an awareness of and respect for the actual history of the language. As he wrote in his essay: "This means, from my point of view at least, that we not only have a better appreciation of what I want Talossan to be, but also, a better appreciation of what Talossan actually is. Making use of real words that have formed part of the corpus of our language since 1980 is necessary and must be balanced with our (my) revivalistic fervour."

Revivalistic fervour is commendable, but that should not lead us to totally reject the true origins of Talossan as a language created by a teenage boy for his bedroom kingdom. We should embrace and take pride in both aspects of the language -- its "restored language" vision and its quirky and idiosyncratic past. Focusing solely on our big vision for the language "on the grounds of linguistic or historic ‘purity'" (as Ben put it) would be like renaming Vuode ("bed") Province because we don't like being reminded of the fact that we once had a piece of furniture for a province, or (God forbid!) renaming Talossa ("in the house") itself! We've grown beyond that house, but we remember where we came from.