Conlang Article on the New York Times

I know this article has been up for a few days already, but it's notable enough that I wanted to link to it here. The article is entitled Questions Answered: Invented Languages, and is a lengthy series of questions and answers on the subject of Constructed Languages. The questions were asked by readers of the New York Times, while the answers were eruditely given by Arika Okrent (author of In the Land of Invented Languages, one of the few to have studied the modern conlanging movement without prejudice) and Paul Frommer (the linguist that was hired by James Cameron to develop Na'vi, the language of the blue aliens in Avatar).

The article is remarkable for quite a few reasons:

• It's not everyday that a mainstream publication devotes some time and space for conlanging (OK, it's a New York Times blog, but still).
• It's very long and articulate (and not for the faint of heart. I advise everyone to read it in two or more sittings. For those not familiar with this particular hobby and art form, some of the answers will need a while to digest).
• It goes further than the usual targets of Esperanto and Klingon (thanks to Arika Okrent who really knows her stuff).
• It's surprisingly positive! Although a few questions betray a somewhat negative bias against the Secret Vice, they are very few, and Arika handles them neatly.

One thing that jumped to my attention is that the general questions about invented languages were all answered by Arika, while Paul Frommer only handled the questions concerning Na'vi itself. I wonder why that is. I can think of a few explanations:

• The questions themselves were divided in two groups: generic versus Na'vi, and Paul received only the Na'vi themed questions.
• Paul felt he was not familiar enough with the conlanging world to answer meaningfully. Fair enough, he's quite the newcomer here.
• Paul doesn't have any actual interest in conlanging itself, and only does those interviews because he is contractually obliged to do so (he was contracted, i.e. paid, to create Na'vi, after all, and there's no evidence that he has done any conlanging before this). Once again, fair enough. Not everyone needs to be bitten by the conlang bug!

Note that I'm not judging here. Whatever reason Paul fοcussed only on the Na'vi questions is fine by me. It was just an obvious pattern that I can't help wondering about.

Of course, this blog post would be a bit pointless if I didn't add my two (Euro)cents to the article. So here are my own answers to a few of the questions asked in the article:

What is the process for “making up” a language? Do you just go on inspiration, or is there some preconceived structure to your work? In what order do you proceed? Where do you start?

There seem to be two main types of conlangers out there. The first type works on language creation in a very systematic way. They have a kind of shopping list of what needs to be designed in a language, and follow it to the letter. That list contains usually phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary, and usually in that order. The other type works on their conlangs in a much more organic way. They design features as they need them and seem to let the language grow, rather than go by consciously designing it. They also tend to have an iterative approach, revising older parts of the language as they invent new features. Both approaches have their merits and pitfalls, and in truth most conlangers will fall somewhere between those two extremes.

Personally, I'm rather systematic in my conlanging efforts, although once I've left a conlang lie for a while I may pick it up again and start revising it, in a sort of iterative process not unlike software design.

Do you create an alphabet first? When languages are invented, how do the creators choose the set of vowels and consonants the language will have? Do you utilize the International Phonetic Alphabet?

I normally define the phonology of a language using the IPA (which is a godsend for anyone creating a spoken language!). Creating a writing system (not necessarily an alphabet) is often one of the first things I do after defining the phonology and morphophonemics of the language, but depending on the type of writing system it can take a long time before I'm finished designing it (in which case I will normally work on it in parallel with designing the language itself). I also often create a transliteration of the language, because sometimes the writing system is just impractical for my tools at hand (no computer fonts available), and because writing everything with the IPA gets old very fast.

Why not revive and disseminate an endangered language rather than make up a new one? There are innumerable beautiful languages around the world that will disappear in a generation, and precious few folks recording them and learning them. The notion of a “better” language seems to ignore that language use follows population growth, transportation, and political and economic power. Why would one choose to invent a new language (aside from the whole “wildest academic dreams” thing) rather than revive a “dead” language or a dying one, like Cornish or Manx?

I'm not a field linguist. Actually, I'm not a linguist at all! I have no professional linguistic training, and all I know of linguistics I've learned in my own time. I have also no interest in becoming a professional linguist: my current job is more than enough, thank you very much (and it probably pays better than whatever I could make as a linguist!). Conlanging is just a hobby for me, and doesn't take time away from my saving endangered languages, because even if I had any interest in it I wouldn't have the ability to do it! Besides, I'm a Frenchman. How would my learning Cornish or Manx in any way help save those languages? I would probably never be able to reach a level of command of the language that would allow me to communicate with it natively anyway (and with whom? Do you really think the only reason the Cornish community isn't speaking its language is because I haven't learned it yet?). Wouldn't it make more sense to investigate the reasons why those languages are endangered in the first place, and help the communities speaking them by solving those issues? That's a socio-political problem, not a linguistic one. In any case, that's not the kind of problem you would even want a French hobbyist to tackle! Anyway, Arika summed it up best when she wrote: There is no general pool of “effort” from which all endeavors are drawn. Even if you somehow managed to make me stop conlanging, what makes you think I would use that extra time to study an endangered language? (notwithstanding the fact that doing so would probably be as useless for that language as my conlanging anyway) I would probably spend it sleeping!

OK, enough rambling from my part, just go and read that article. It contains many more questions masterly answered by Arika and Paul, and you'd make yourself a disservice if you missed it. Even if you're not interested in conlanging yourself, it might help you understand why other are, and why it's not a complete waste of time, or at least no more than any other artistic endeavour!

Sonic Unleashed: why the hate?

Image via Wikipedia

Rarely have I seen a game so undeserving of the beating it's been getting, from reviewers and players alike (including from people whose opinion I usually share). So although I know it doesn't mean much, I decided to give my own feedback on Sonic Unleashed, if only to tip the scales ever so slightly back in balance.

Disclaimer: I am not a Sonic fan. I've never owned a Sega console (I've always been a Nintendo guy, even at the time of the Nintendo-Sega wars), although I did play the original Sonic the Hedgehog casually at my cousin's, who did own a Mega Drive (that's how the Sega Genesis was called in Europe), as well as the 8-bit version of the same game on my sister's Game Gear. They were both OK as games go, but that's about all I felt about them. They were OK platformers with a speed gimmick, and that was about it. As a result, I completely missed Sonic's transition to 3D (although I have enough anecdotal evidence to agree with the common opinion that the 3D Sonic games have mostly been terrible), and the very first Sonic game I ever bought was Sonic and the Secret Rings, which I actually enjoyed despite some flaws that spoiled the replayability of the game for me (let's just say that some of the missions were just not fun, and made earning medals a chore I simply decided to skip). So when Sonic Unleashed was announced, I was prudent yet interested, and eventually previews and game footage convinced me it was worth the risk. I actually bought the game for the Wii upon release, and this is the version I will refer to in this post.

So, what do I think about the game, now that I have had a chance to play it? (I actually played most of it, although I haven't seen the ending yet) In short, I like it. I like it very much. I'm having a blast playing it, far more than when I was playing Sonic and the Secret Rings. The game has lots of great parts:

• The day stages are just fantastic, far better than what Sonic and the Secret Rings provided. The 2D sections in those stages are particularly fun.
• The fighting in the night stages feels very good. I don't care what reviewers and players are saying about what a Sonic game should or shouldn't be about. There is just something exhilarating in using the Wii-remote and Nunchuck to punch your opponents silly and deliver bigger and bigger combos. The other motion-based actions also feel good and immersive.
• The difficulty curve is nearly perfect. My main gripe with Secret Rings is that some of the missions were just impossibly difficult, frustrating, and sometimes felt even unfair. It was also far too difficult to get the medals necessary to unlock secrets and new stages. Sonic Unleashed is far better in that respect. Getting all the secrets and unlocking all the stages is far from an easy task, but it is not brutal in its difficulty curve, and there's no point where you feel that the game is playing dirty by providing you with cheap tricks and impossible challenges. I'm still far from getting perfect scores in the stages I've played, but at no time did I ever blame the game itself for this. In each and every case, the only one I could blame was myself and my lack of skill.
• The music is gorgeous. The rock songs of Secret Rings just didn't feel appropriate, and going back to an instrumental style was just the right thing to do. The music really fits the various environments and complements the action nicely.
• The graphics are lovely. The art style is very good, and the frame rate is smooth and solid, which is very important in the day stages. The camera works very well in the day stages as well.

Of course, the game is hardly perfect, and I have a few gripes with it:

• The balance between day and night stages feels skewed. Although the number of stages is approximately equal, and their sizes are similar, the focus of the day stages on speed, and of the night stages on fighting and exploration means that one spends most of their time in the night stages. It makes the experience feel unbalanced, even though the night stages are fun as well. The great amount of replayability of the day stages (which all have multiple tracks and secret shortcuts) does somewhat make up for it, but Sega could have made the balance in player experience better by providing a few more day stages.
• The menu-based hub worlds are a pointless waste of time that breaks the flow of the game (more than the so-called slow night stages). Even though reviews of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game criticise the hub worlds they have as well, I still feel that 3D hub worlds would have benefited the Wii version. Those at least have some added value, unlike the menu-based thing that we got stuck with.
• The camera in the night stages sometimes creates awkward moments. I remember a case where I had to quickly walk through a very thin bridge, but was hindered by the camera choosing to look at the scene from a weird angle, and constantly moving, making it very difficult for me to direct Sonic well. I've also had a few times during fighting sequences where the camera position made it very difficult for me to align with the opponents and get my punches to hit them.
• Related to the previous point, the fighting in the night stages could have benefited from a form of Z-targeting. Maybe not full-fledged Z-targeting, but at least have Sonic follow its opponent during combos, even if that opponent is knocked on the side rather than in front of him, or have something like Ōkami's combat system, where Amaterasu will hit the nearest opponent if he is within range, even if alignment between them is not perfect. Sonic's Werehog form is supposed to have stretchy arms. Why should they only be able to stretch in front of him? As the combat system of Sonic Unleashed stands, Sonic will more often than not flail his arms in the air with nothing to catch his blows, simply because your weren't perfectly aligned with your opponent, or simply because Sonic completely passed through a group of enemies during a combo and left them all behind.

So Sonic Unleashed is hardly a perfect game, and it doesn't hold up to a chef-d'oeuvre like Super Mario Galaxy (but then, in my opinion the original 16-bit Sonic games don't hold a candle to the various 2D Super Mario games either). But does it mean that it's a bad game that deserves the treatment it's received so far? Of course not! Sonic Unleashed is a very good game, it's fun, has lots of replayability value, and looks extremely good. Its defaults are minor, and if people would stop with their prejudice that Sonic is only supposed to be about speed (those people would do well to replay the original games. All those platforming sequences and underwater sequences, were they about speed?), they would see that the night stages are actually enjoyable platforming/brawling sequences, and in no way spoil the game experience.

So relax, don't take it all so seriously. You have here a good game with various kinds of fun gameplay, a good-looking environment, great music, and good replayability. Enjoy it, rather than nitpicking about what it should or shouldn't be about. As for me, I will just keep playing the game, enjoying myself in the process, while keeping an eye at the horizon, where Sonic looms, a sword in his hand. What? Could Sonic Unleashed have made me a Sonic fan where the original games failed?

Cluelessness

A few days ago, Giles Bowkett published a great post. I encourage everyone to read it. He usually gets things pretty right, but in this case he's hit bull's eye.

His article talks specifically about Silicon Valley software engineers and their absurd reaction to the Hollywood Writer's Guild's strike, but in my experience it's a more common and widespread phenomenon than this: engineers in general are often clueless about whatever happens that is not in their area of expertise. And the worst part is that they are often unaware of their cluelessness, and believe that everything works just as in their own knowledge area. And don't try to correct them: they know what they are doing, and anybody who disagrees just doesn't know what they are talking about. Academics often suffer from the same kind of tunnel vision.

I've observed this behaviour for years as an insider. Heck, I've been guilty of it myself! I believe it stems from at least four causes:

• Engineers deal with exact sciences: engineering is based on physical and chemical principles. Likewise, software engineering is based on maths. In both cases, we are talking about exact sciences, which describe their subject (in the case of physics, the real world) using laws of universal value. The laws of physics don't have exception. They may be valid for only a subset of phenomena, but that only means that there is a better, more general law out there, even if it's unknown at the moment or irrelevant for the work at hand. This is not wrong, as long as one remembers that the laws are only tools to describe phenomena, not universal truths with which reality has to comply. The step is unfortunately easy to make, unconsciously, and creates people with a dogmatic attitude: if it doesn't fit with my view of the world, it's nonsense (or worse: if it doesn't fit my view of the world, it doesn't exist).
• Engineers are terribly insular: it is natural for human beings to feel most comfortable among their own. That's the reason for the existence of clubs, associations, political parties, etc. We like to be surrounded by people who have the same opinions, experience, interests... as ours. Engineers, however, tend to take this to extremes. It's not abnormal for an engineer's social circle to consist entirely of fellow engineers. When those friends are not engineers, there's a big chance that they will be academics, which in social terms is not that different. Worse even, I've seen entire families consisting only of engineers, often working in the same area (it seems particularly true in the Oil & Gas business, but that might just be my experience). Why this is is a complex question (that I might tackle in another article), but the net result is that the social world of an engineer usually consists of people who think the same way they do. That doesn't help awareness.
• Engineers feel they are not recognised: we have to be fair here: our world (or at least the developed, Western world) is mostly an engineered world. Many people never go to a theatre or a museum, but they couldn't live without their mobile phone, their computer, Internet, a TV set, a good car, holidays by plane, cheap food and housing... all things provided to them thanks to the work of countless engineers in many different areas. Scientists may get angry at me here, but while they are the ones who discover the principles behind the instruments of our modern life, it's the engineers who actually create the everyday applications of those principles. And it's something the layman is usually unaware of, as academics (or engineers working in universities, which for me is just another sort of academics) get the spotlight far more often. In any case, engineers feel (whether consciously or not) that they are a main driving force of our modern society, but are not recognised as such by the layman. That puts them in a defensive mode, and a tendency to glorify their way as the best way (nobody understands how important I am. Well, I'll show them!). It's not a very good way to approach and understand others.
• Engineers are not very social: this might actually be the root cause of the previous two reasons I presented. This is a difficult topic to discuss, and causing lots of flamewars in various engineering communities (especially in software engineering). That's because the issue is tainted by the stereotyped images of the geek and the nerd, which are not things people like to be compared to. But one does not need to wear bow-ties and too short trousers to be a bit nerdy, or to have bad hygiene habits to be a bit geeky. The issue here is communication skills and nothing else. Communication skills are not a talent you're born with (well, not only). They are mostly something you learn as you grow, and not only as a child. Puberty and the beginning of adulthood are extremely important as well, the moment when people start getting specialised education for what they will become later, and often live along with people with the same education (in campuses and similar student housings). And while the communication skills engineers learn at that time are great to discuss with their peers, they are not that good when it comes to social chit-chat, or discussions with laymen (like it or not, social chit-chat requires snappy replies and quick apropos, and the ability to talk about nothing in particular. Engineers are more at home with long preparations and analysis, and a conversation must have a well defined subject both parties agree on). To talk in engineering terms, there is an impedance issue, between the way engineers and non-engineers handle communication.

Disclaimer: I do realise that I've been painting engineers with a very wide brush. Reality is far more complicated, and there's lots of engineers with lively social lives and broad social circles consisting of non-engineers. But my own experience tells me that there's at least a plurality of engineers who fit the portrait I've been sketching, at least in part, and those engineers do have difficulties understanding the world outside of engineering, and tend to approach everything with the same method, even when it doesn't apply. They are clueless.

In any case, what I'm trying to get at is that there are as many bigots and close-minded people among engineers as among any other (professional or other) group, unlike what many engineers seem to think.

What about me then? How can I be so self-righteous about my fellow engineers? Am I so much better than them? Well... no. I can also be quite dogmatic (who said we can see that right here?), and I also lack social skills. But what I am not is insular. On the contrary, I can't say that I fit very well among engineers. I don't know whether it is because I come from a family where I'm basically the first one to ever have reached a university-degree level (my sister is the second one, but she studies Law, not Engineering), or because I am sometimes too geeky even for engineers (not many engineers in my area of work are actually interested in software itself, much less in its social implications and things like Free Software. And I haven't even mentioned my interest in linguistics yet...).

But my main advantage is that I am aware (sometimes painfully) of my limitations. I know when I am clueless. How is that possible? Quite simply really: I have someone waiting for me at home who couldn't care less about engineering, while still being the most intelligent person I've ever met. My partner keeps me firmly grounded in the world, and doesn't hesitate to point out when I become too dogmatic. And I am forced to work on my social skills on a regular basis as well. I don't always enjoy it, but in any case it ensures that I can never become a one-tracked engineering mind. My partner also encourages me to entertain more social interests, like sports and arts, to the point that I am currently directing a theatre play.

In a way, it's the age-long advice: get out, get some fresh air, do something different. If you do the same thing all the time, and only meet people who do the same thing, you'll only let your world shrink down to the size of a pebble. There's a bigger world out there, and it's not just utter nonsense. So don't ignore outside advice offhand, because you don't know what you're missing. Here's a clue: the world isn't what you think it's like; go and find that out by yourself.