WHAT WE LEARN BY INVENTING LANGUAGES IS BEYOND OUR IDENTITY
This is one of the most fun things I’ve ever gotten to share because of its sheer potential for inspiring WONDER. How often do you get to tap into that sense of awe that is de réguler for a young child? This little documentary filled me with quite awe, then glee.
When we do a deep dive on why stories are so impactful, we bottom-out on the subject of language. This is because language is the most common counter-factual tool we use. Language is a analogous tool: a system of representing things that are not present or inherently invisible (like ideas or emotions), and explain a cause and effect relationship between nouns (the most fundamental components of a story). Natural languages are like time-capsules for cultures. The evolution of words is a story of that culture over very long time periods.
This documentary on manufactured languages grants us a new way of thinking about how our frame of reference is a mental construct that has markedly rigid boundaries at the edges of our linguistic ability.
The Turks say someone who knows two languages is two people
Click any image for an example of the conlang
Conlanguists have given themselves permission to take this boundary as their work, their art, and mine into the subtext beneath language for meaning. They attempt to bring that novel experience to the surface by proposing wholly-new words and even relationships between words.
The result is a transportive experience that is not unlike traveling to a strange land where they speak another way, where they THINK differently. Diving in and learning to understand such constructions does not presume a common frame of reference. We are all so thoroughly chained by our language that a glimpse outside our bubble is a breath of fresh air you never knew you needed.
Weaving tales of meaning with lingual ancestry
Given how much of our brains are dedicated to sifting for meaning from culturally significant inputs, it is a clever storytelling method to include words that the audience likely has never heard before. If there is other context available that suggest at the meaning of an unknown word, it becomes an irresistible puzzle for the audience, it will focus their attention.
See the full documentary: Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues
Image Credit:
Dailydot.com
lamag.com
MyConfinedSpace.com