From: EndersWAR1@aol.com Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 6:15 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Translation Care to translate that???? "Come on, Ceasar, if your going to be stupid, don't be half-assed stupid...Be stupid all the way!"-187 x) <---Dead Cyclops Enterprises "In the land of the two-eyed blind, the Dead Cyclops is king." EndersWAR1@aol.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Andy Wills [andywills@home.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 5:47 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Robofly A fascinating article featured in Pyramid's Daily Illuminator about scientists designing a miniature, solar powered, robotic fly. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/02/MN51881.DTL&type=printable -Andy *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Andy Wills [andywills@home.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 4:59 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Wingsail? > From: "Derek Becker" > Hey BP smart people! > > Is this what a wingsail looks like? I don't know, my player's don't know, > and we feel stupid using watercraft in the game when we don't even know what > it is. Which reminds me. For art, in Fluid Mechanics, I would like to see a picture of a combat jumpcraft and a hypersail-boat. I find it hard to visualize either one. This is one case in which art would serve a real point. -Andy *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 4:22 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - NuInklish "The big problem here is that you are postulating a LOT of change in a relatively short amount of time for no really principled reason. The linguistics is solid enough, if extremely speculative. A couple of hundred years really isn't enough time for this kind of change to occur in a language community like Posiden's." I have postulated (essentially) 2 changes: 1. "Devoicing": This leaves a situation much like our reconstruction of Hittite: loss of distinction in intervocalic stops (d/t, k/g, p/b) and a change in marking in other positions from voicing to aspiration. The first is already well underway in American English: dental marking is gone and velars are on the outs. As for the second, I agree it is a stretch. Aspiration is already an important marker in English speech; it is possible that voice-marking might be no longer important, if only somewhat likely. But, then again I'm playing God already, right? It is conceivable. 2. Vowel stuff: The loss of vowel length is the only change I am proposing. I was assuming some pidginisation because I have a hard time believing that colonists gave up their native languages when they emigrated to Serpentis. When they got cut off into little groups, some settlements stuck to their own languages, speaking 'at home' in their native language(s) and when making (dangerous) travels in English, a second language. It's not *that* much of a stretch, but I agree it is one. Naturally, this is speculative and I'd like input. I definitely think that vocab would be the real problem, but I have to believe there have been some sound changes. I think we need to know what speech communities existed among colonists (were there Welshmen pushing the use of Welsh in Dafydd? par example) and then think about what the status of English was over the years and on BP. "This sort of change IS happening in New Zealand and Australia but that is due to the contact of two linguistic communities. The kind of radical phonological changes you are postulating could really only occur in a pidginization process in the time you are talking about." Euh ... I disagree. I wasn't postulating grammatical changes, that was another person. "Presumably this would not happen as the colonists would have been required to have at least a functional grasp of a single language - almost definitely English. Much more modest changes in phonology are probably more likely- along with plenty of new words for new things and some new slang terms for old things." Yeah, but then they are cut off from each other and their children aren't going to be using English in the same way their parents did IMHO. And I'm looking for input ... Remember, big changes *can* happen in short periods of time. The transition from Old English to Middle English and the High German Consonant shifts are huge changes that took only a few hundred years to get really underway. But I want to discuss the situation. If you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Do you find all of this so unreasonable? What makes it reasonable for me was thinking about the life of the first Native children - I know how quickly fads and trends can change speech (d'ohh!) and was thinking about how the Native children would have forged identity with new speech for a new world, separating themselves from their parents' old-world sense with distinctive speech and word-choices. Go, puberty! - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Greg Childress [gregory.childress@yale.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 3:56 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - On languages ----- Original Message ----- From: Christopher Gribbon To: Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 1999 6:37 AM Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - On languages > The Basque people speak a *really* wierd language. "Uskere" or "Uskade" (one is the > language, the other is the people, and I've probably spelt it wrongly anyway) is what it's > called, and linguists are thoroughly confused as to where it came from. Some people theorise > that it was invented and enforced in order to give the Basques a national identity, others that > it is a remnant of the root european language that was spoken before all us > "non-wheat-agglutanin-allergic" types arrived on the scene. > In Basque there is no generic word for "tree" or "animal" or anything similar - only different > words for different types of plant and animal. And the structure is really wierd: instead of > saying "I am turning", they say "It is in the act of turning that you are finding me now" > > Bizarre or what? It's actually not all that strange. Rare... yes. Strange... not really. Basque is a split ergative language. Which basically means that instead of marking the "subject" of the sentence it marks the "object". This is weird because in those languages where such relations are marked they usually go in the other direction. This is sort of a tempest in a teapot though, because what is really important isn't which word/constituent is marked but that one of them is so as to preserve interpretability without requiring strict word order. Think of it like putting tape on your shoes to distinguish right from left. You can put tape on the right shoe to indicate that it is the right foot or tape on the left shoe to indicate that the OTHER is the right shoe... no real difference. Greg *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 3:49 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with new players Derek Becker wrote: "We play with the Shadowrun rules (with some modifications) and the Blue Planet setting. So far people are happy. And as for the gaming-when-you-should-be-doing-adult-things ... heck, I just tell people I'm "haning out with the guys" and "doing things they'd rather not know about". I've never been questioned further." I'll suggest that to them when they writhe nervously. Thanks. - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Greg Childress [gregory.childress@yale.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 3:45 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - NuInklish, Confusing Chrises ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian Betty To: Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 1999 10:27 AM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - NuInklish, Confusing Chrises > I was thinking that a couple hundred years is a nice period of time. > Coupled with isolation, you have a nice opportunity for language change > without drastic confusion. I was thinking of some grammatical > simplification, a spelling reform, and a furthering of a common Germanic > devoicing pattern. Germanic languages have historically 'devoiced' > This may seem radical, but it ain't. A similar process is happening in New > Zealand and Australia: can anyone explain from firsthand knowledge? > > I'd love thoughts. Anyone? > > - Monkeygod (8-0) The big problem here is that you are postulating a LOT of change in a relatively short amount of time for no really principled reason. The linguistics is solid enough, if extremely speculative. A couple of hundred years really isn't enough time for this kind of change to occur in a language community like Posiden's. This sort of change IS happening in New Zealand and Australia but that is due to the contact of two linguistic communities. The kind of radical phonological changes you are postulating could really only occur in a pidginization process in the time you are talking about. Presumably this would not happen as the colonists would have been required to have at least a functional grasp of a single language- almost definitely English. Much more modest changes in phonology are probably more likely- along with plenty of new words for new things and some new slang terms for old things. Greg *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: John M. Kahane [jkahane@comnet.ca] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:39 AM To: Blue Planet Mailing List Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - JohnK's Blue Planet Web Pages On-Line Hullo, folks, It is with great pleasure that I would like to announce that my BLUE PLANET webpages are now on-line. The pages can be found at http://www.comnet.ca/~jkahane/bp/blue-planet.html I should note here that none of the links on the Montoya Files page are active as yet, nor are the reviews and the Overview of Blue Planet pages up yet. These will be worked on over the next little while. Oh, and while folks are at it, please participate in the JohnK's Blue Planet Fan Poll, which you can find off the main page of the site. Enjoy the material up there for now, and let me know what you think of the site. And if anyone has material they'd like to submit for the site, I'm accepting all kinds of stuff, and will be very pleased to post stuff from folks here. Enjoy! :) ... Better to ask twice than lose your way once. (Danish proverb) JohnK jkahane@comnet.ca http://www.comnet.ca/~jkahane *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Greg Benage [gbenage@ix.netcom.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 4:23 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Wingsail? -----Original Message----- From: Heivilin, Jim To: blue planet list (E-mail) Date: Friday, November 19, 1999 12:02 PM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Wingsail? >-----Original Message----- >Reply-To: "Beckent@Erols. Com" >From: "Derek Becker" >To: >Subject: Wingsail? >Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:43:59 -0500 > > >Hey BP smart people! > >Is this what a wingsail looks like? Yeah, that looks like a hypersail to me. There is also at least one picture of the Calypso II at the Cousteau Society site. Greg Benage Biohazard Games *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 1:56 PM To: blue planet list (E-mail) Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Wingsail? -----Original Message----- Reply-To: "Beckent@Erols. Com" From: "Derek Becker" To: Subject: Wingsail? Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:43:59 -0500 Hey BP smart people! Is this what a wingsail looks like? I don't know, my player's don't know, and we feel stupid using watercraft in the game when we don't even know what it is. http://www.boatshow.com/Zefyr43.html Becker beckent@erols.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Malcolm Craig [malcolmcraig@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 1:09 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Arrrh, !Pirates Chris wrote >You absolutely *must* read "The Pyrates" by George McDonald Fraser (Author >of the >"Flashman" books) - it's completely fantastic, and totally hilarious, >Belike! >Belay me wi' a marlin-spike else! Joseph Conrad is also very good. I remember reading Nostromo and Heart of Darkness as a young lad. Brilliant atmosphere and marvellous storytelling. The Nigger of the Narcissus and Typhoon are also great. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Malcolm Craig [malcolmcraig@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 1:07 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - The Archaeology/Paleontology Adventure Seed Kai wrote >Darn, Malcolm's caught up! Now I REALLY have to start writing again just to >keep him out-of-date! Out-of-date!! The cheek of the man. Were you not in Malaysia, I would make you walk the plank! AHAAAR! (Well, Chris has been talking about pirates recently). Sincerely though, more stuff would be great. Storm Widow was well smart. Hang on, this list is turning into the Tun Kai Poh Mutual Appreciation Society. I can see it now "High Commissioner Kai's Blue Planet Help Desk": Tonight; "Water Darts? I don't fear no feelthy Water Darts." how to deal with those pesky parasites. Sorry, getting a bit carried away with myself there. Think I'll go and lie down for a while. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Malcolm Craig [malcolmcraig@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 1:01 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - The Archaeology/Paleontology Adventure Seed Andy Wills wrote > >I'd like to see your stuff. I have very little written, currently. The >PCs in my campaign arrived on Westcape a little over 10 minutes ago. All >I have now is a slightly crazed old bounty-hunter type guy, who the PCs >are hiding from while they decide whether he's one of the people >pursuing them for escaping Bose Strand, and the adventure we've been >working on. I'll try and get some stuff up this weekend: Only two problems 1) Coherency, I understand my stuff, but will anyone else? 2) I've got a karate grading tomorrow, which is going to take up the whole day. But! I shall return spiritually invigorated (and beaten senseless) and ready to post something decent. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Kevin L. Nault [jskln1@uas.alaska.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 12:41 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. Christopher Sakal wrote: > > Well, if you want to be playing BP and they want to > be playing Shadowrun, why not make them a "black ops" > team for some corp or other that's used against other > corps or native griups, then you can start to get them > into a less-Shadowrun type of climate. Or ecoterrorists/mercs against the Incorporates. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Christopher Sakal [c_sakal@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 12:19 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. > Right, there's the plan. I just want to jump-start > it sooner rather than > later, so I'm not gonna wait on WoH. > > Thanks for the input - I'm still listening if anyone > has a fun notion. I'd > love to get 'em infiltrating underwater - like some > kinda resistance > fighters slipped under cover of false ID to BP to > find they are horribly > out of their element. Splat! Well, if you want to be playing BP and they want to be playing Shadowrun, why not make them a "black ops" team for some corp or other that's used against other corps or native griups, then you can start to get them into a less-Shadowrun type of climate. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [jskln1@uas.alaska.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 11:21 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Americans ***Warning*** The Surgeon General of the United States has designated this post as off-topic and slow to read. Those with obsessive disorders or any love of efficiency are encouraged to delete it. ***Warning*** "Heivilin, Jim" wrote: > > > There's a saying we have in Malaysia: > > A person who speaks 3 languages is 'trilingual'. > > A person who speaks 2 languages is 'bilingual'. > > A person who only speaks 1 language is 'American'. > > > Americans think anyone can understand English, > provided you speak it s-l-o-w-l-y (and l-o-u-d-l-y). A-N-D D-O-N'T F-O-R-G-E-T L-O-U-D! *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 11:14 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. "I would bet, and the powers that be at Biohazard can probably confirm this, that World of Hurt will be a lot more cyber punk than BP is now - though if your players are really into the genre, all of the important factors are there (there are cybernetics and powerful megacorps) it's just a matter of changing the spin on the game and you're cyberpunk, then you can wean then off of it." Right, there's the plan. I just want to jump-start it sooner rather than later, so I'm not gonna wait on WoH. Thanks for the input - I'm still listening if anyone has a fun notion. I'd love to get 'em infiltrating underwater - like some kinda resistance fighters slipped under cover of false ID to BP to find they are horribly out of their element. Splat! - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 11:15 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Translation [Following in a New Zealand-esque accent with continental values] "That's a wubby, she's mamlike, don't go near mudsucks near dawn or dusk without barkers 'cause those're the places they drift. Catch me? *sigh* Like sleeping, right? They're wet, not phibs or drymams like you Darwins. Now wubbies eat those rotties and - no, don't touch them. Yes, rotties have pretty flowers, but... Right, now don't panic. Just get your barker and - no, don't use ye gutter, 's steel and she's upcharged. Damnit! Use ye barker! Good. Now dive the boat. Damnit! Don't ye damn Dirters speak plain monkeygrunt?" "I am *so* saving this. Need a translator program for this, like the Jargonator." I'd love to make a common page for fun jargon - my site is still evolving, maybe this'd be a fun project to host. I just coined these off the top of my lopa. Check out my site later in the day and perhaps I'll have something up. - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Jason Hockley [jh39@ukc.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:48 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift On Fri, 19 Nov 1999 10:29:05 -0600 "Heivilin, Jim" wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Tun Kai Poh [mailto:t_poh@hotmail.com] > > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift > > > > > There's a saying we have in Malaysia: > > A person who speaks 3 languages is 'trilingual'. > > A person who speaks 2 languages is 'bilingual'. > > A person who only speaks 1 language is 'American'. > > > Americans think anyone can understand English, > provided you speak it s-l-o-w-l-y (and l-o-u-d-l-y). > > Jim And the traditional Englishman abroad doesn't even bother with "slowly" most of the time. Jason "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert A. Heinlein *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:29 AM To: 'blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com' Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift > -----Original Message----- > From: Tun Kai Poh [mailto:t_poh@hotmail.com] > Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift > > There's a saying we have in Malaysia: > A person who speaks 3 languages is 'trilingual'. > A person who speaks 2 languages is 'bilingual'. > A person who only speaks 1 language is 'American'. > Americans think anyone can understand English, provided you speak it s-l-o-w-l-y (and l-o-u-d-l-y). Jim *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Heivilin, Jim [banzai@missouri.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:27 AM To: blue planet list (E-mail) Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. -----Original Message----- Reply-To: "Beckent@Erols. Com" From: "Derek Becker" To: Subject: RE: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 11:15:19 -0500 > (My knowledgeable amici asked, 'Why not Shadowrun?' > 'Cause I don't want to be playing Shadowrun for the next 5 years!) Buddy, your prayers are answered. http://users.erols.com/beckent/bp/plot.html That also has a link to the character generation and vehicles pages. We play with the Shadowrun rules (with some modifications) and the Blue Planet setting. So far people are happy. And as for the gaming-when-you-should-be-doing-adult-things ... heck, I just tell people I'm "haning out with the guys" and "doing things they'd rather not know about". I've never been questioned further. Becker beckent@erols.com PS: Jim, sorry to keep sending this stuff to you through my work e-mail (thus making you re-post it) but I can't subscribe to your list with my work id and for various reasons I can't always get e-mail at home. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Christopher Sakal [c_sakal@yahoo.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:20 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. > My tentative players are not gamers but are *born* > to be gamers - they are > New York nerds and hence were peer-pressured out of > it. Secretly they > desire to game, but they are iffy on it (self-image > issues, we all went > through this phase, right? 'I'm 25 and storytelling? > Shouldn't I be, like, > doing something adult?'). They want cyberpunk, I > want BP. I think they'll > be all over gaming once I interest 'em, so I want to > start with BP so they > get attached to it. (My knowledgeable amici asked, > 'Why not Shadowrun?' > 'Cause I don't want to be playing Shadowrun for the > next 5 years!) I would bet, and the powers that be at Biohazard can probably confirm this, that World of Hurt will be a lot more cyber punk than BP is now - though if your players are really into the genre, all of the important factors are there (there are cybernetics and powerful megacorps) it's just a matter of changing the spin on the game and you're cyberpunk, then you can wean then off of it. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [jskln1@uas.alaska.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:18 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift Brian Betty wrote: > > Clearly more integrating. Our speech communities become larger, > essentially. Jargon isn't that important in that sense - Although it IS for > BP Natives, whose daily vocab list is likely to be highly unfamiliar to > Earthers. [Following in a New Zealand-esque accent with continental values] > "That's a wubby, she's mamlike, don't go near mudsucks near dawn or dusk > without barkers 'cause those're the places they drift. Catch me? *sigh* > Like sleeping, right? They're wet, not phibs or drymams like you Darwins. > Now wubbies eat those rotties and - no, don't touch them. Yes, rotties have > pretty flowers, but... Right, now don't panic. Just get your barker and - > no, don't use ye gutter, 's steel and she's upcharged. Damnit! Use ye > barker! Good. Now dive the boat. Damnit! Don't ye damn Dirters speak plain > monkeygrunt?" I am *so* saving this. Need a translator program for this, like the Jargonator. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [jskln1@uas.alaska.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 10:17 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. Brian Betty wrote: > > I'm looking to run a cyberpunk intro to BP for some newbie gamers. It's not > my favoured script (I'm an exploration man), so I'm somewhat at a loss as > to scripts. I'm hip to anything. Deluge me! For something that could continue, try the restaurant scenario (UC #1 or 2). That's not inherently one-shot like Natural Law (a hard act to follow). To introduce my current group, I invented my own based around fast fungus. They twitch a bit when they talk about moss or hear "The Girl from Ipenima" (don't ask). ACCESS DENIED: The fast fungus was specifically engineered by the abos to dispose of a base that had troubling biochemical samples. The samples were, of course, unrecoverable, and the mission a bust. Due to clever wrangling in the beginning, the characters were paid anyway. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 8:53 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Native Language Drift Cong Taiwan-laide Pengyou wrote: "It's very interesting seeing how my students come to understand the differences between tenses in English. They usually get a fairly good understanding with time, but I occasionally have to dissuade them from viewing past tense in English as equivalent to the -le completion marker in Mandarin. And with lots of other things. "Have" and "there is" in English totally throw them for a loop. This is one of the rare times that I use Chinese in class: I tell them "Have is NOT /you/," and they usually get it pretty quickly." The opposite is true for English speakers learning Mandarin: 'le' is NOT 'have x-ed'! It's tricky because often where -le is used, have is used for the English form ... and then you start to lose it when someone uses -le to indicate a new situation ... heh heh. I put dashes inbetween discrete words in my Pinyinised Mandarin where otherwise they would confuse the reader (nothing is added directly to a word that isn't an unstressed marker like DE or NE) Zenmene?!? (Because 'Zenme ne' makes ne look like a word with its own stress, which it ain't.) Wode pengyou. Wo bu renshi. [renshi has its own stress, and bu is an independant negative marker and is confusing when grafted onto renshi.] - but - cong Zhongwen-laide (Because cong has its own stress and -laide has halfstress but Zhongwenlaide is not easily parsable into its component parts by a reader ... ) "I guess what I see happening with verb tenses is that English (NuInklish) might lose specific conjugation (go, went, gone) for time. As you earlier noted about Hawai'ian Creole, it might just become a standard tag for each verb that depends on the time phrase." Yeah, that's reasonable. I was just iffy on the notion of 'losing' tenses - all real languages have some kind of tense. "About African-American English: It's so hard to explain what's going on to my students when they can't understand, for example, stereotypical gang members' speech in an American movie. I have neither the understanding nor the time to teach them Ebonics, and I also can't spend a lot of time explaining to them that it's not wrong, it's just different. So unfortunately I usually just have to let it go with telling them "There's a popular way, and a way that is formally considered 'correct'."" I'd've just stuck with 'it's a dialect of English that's spoken in many African-American communities' myself, perhaps adding that common xenophobia means that many people simply think Ebonics speakers are stupid or ignorant. It's like trying to say one dialect of Mandarin is 'right' and the other 'wrong.' I can see how they might empathise if you gave the example of Taiwanese/Southern Mandarin in the eyes of the Beijing government ... on the other hand, that might tend to make your students get a pretty hostile view of Americans! "This leads me to another question: does language drift depend more on the original constitution of the group of speakers, or on how far they are from others?" Unclear. Both. Language is cultural. Sometimes isolated peoples are really conservative with their speech and maintain forms that die out in other places, and other times they change their speech with absolutely amazing rapidity. It's a social phenomenon and subject to fads. But smaller speech communities USUALLY are less stable than large ones because of the law of averages. With modern telecommunications, this may no longer be true. "And a more BP-related question: does anyone have statistics for how many people speaking which languages emigrated to Poseidon? And then where they tended to settle? We could possibly get a map of linguistic variances going if we could find this information. A nifty thing to include on a web page or in a BP supplement..." Yeah, that would be invaluable. Especially because I want to know which communities speak which languages! I can't believe everyone speaks "common." "This leads into the question of whether modern telecommunications are truly integrating or whether they tend to drive people into smaller groups (based on interests or professional spheres, perhaps)." Clearly more integrating. Our speech communities become larger, essentially. Jargon isn't that important in that sense - Although it IS for BP Natives, whose daily vocab list is likely to be highly unfamiliar to Earthers. [Following in a New Zealand-esque accent with continental values] "That's a wubby, she's mamlike, don't go near mudsucks near dawn or dusk without barkers 'cause those're the places they drift. Catch me? *sigh* Like sleeping, right? They're wet, not phibs or drymams like you Darwins. Now wubbies eat those rotties and - no, don't touch them. Yes, rotties have pretty flowers, but... Right, now don't panic. Just get your barker and - no, don't use ye gutter, 's steel and she's upcharged. Damnit! Use ye barker! Good. Now dive the boat. Damnit! Don't ye damn Dirters speak plain monkeygrunt?" - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Brian Betty [bbetty@glad.org] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 9:00 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. I'm looking to run a cyberpunk intro to BP for some newbie gamers. It's not my favoured script (I'm an exploration man), so I'm somewhat at a loss as to scripts. I'm hip to anything. Deluge me! My tentative players are not gamers but are *born* to be gamers - they are New York nerds and hence were peer-pressured out of it. Secretly they desire to game, but they are iffy on it (self-image issues, we all went through this phase, right? 'I'm 25 and storytelling? Shouldn't I be, like, doing something adult?'). They want cyberpunk, I want BP. I think they'll be all over gaming once I interest 'em, so I want to start with BP so they get attached to it. (My knowledgeable amici asked, 'Why not Shadowrun?' 'Cause I don't want to be playing Shadowrun for the next 5 years!) - Monkeygod (8-0) Until we start to make a move to make a few things right you'll never see me wear a suit of white oh i'd love to wear a rainbow every day and tell the world that everything's okay but i'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back 'till things are brighter, i'm the man in black. -Johnny Cash, 1956 *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Auberon [jskln1@uas.alaska.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 7:44 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Blue Planet Chat Tun Kai Poh wrote: > > I can't make the chat, not surprisingly. 6-8pm Sunday Central Time is, like, > Monday morning over here... > > On the bright side, due to the time difference, we get the new James Bond > movie before the Americans do. :) And, like, two weeks before I'll see it in Juneau - the local theatre is the only show in town, and they express the perogatives that come with that. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Christopher Gribbon [c.gribbon@dundee.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 7:15 AM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Arrrh, !Pirates >> "Brian: Perhaps we can eventually compose some NuInklish sea chanteys or >> pop songs to give this a bit more BP relevance." >> >> Arrrrh. I'm a pirate now. >> > >I'm not sure if that was a pirate "Arrrrh." ("Arr, me mateys, avast ye >scalawags, and other stereotypical pirate things ta say!") or an >"arrrg." Hmm, more linguistic innovation? You absolutely *must* read "The Pyrates" by George McDonald Fraser (Author of the "Flashman" books) - it's completely fantastic, and totally hilarious, Belike! Belay me wi' a marlin-spike else! Christopher Gribbon Vision Research Laboratories Medical Sciences Institute University of Dundee Dundee DD1 5EH UK (01382) 344 229 ____________________________________________________________________ "A scientist is meant to be disinterested, pure; his ambition merely to descry the cement of the universe. He isn't meant to use it to start laying his own patio!" - WILL SELF, The Quantity Theory of Insanity *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: greg [gregory.childress@yale.edu] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 7:43 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - NuInklish ----- Original Message ----- From: Brian Betty To: Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 5:21 PM Subject: [BLUE PLANET] - NuInklish > "The big problem here is that you are postulating a LOT of change in a > relatively short amount of time for no really principled reason. The > linguistics is solid enough, if extremely speculative. A couple of hundred > years really isn't enough time for this kind of change to occur in a > language community like Posiden's." > > I have postulated (essentially) 2 changes: > 1. "Devoicing": This leaves a situation much like our reconstruction of > Hittite: loss of distinction in intervocalic stops (d/t, k/g, p/b) and a > change in marking in other positions from voicing to aspiration. > > The first is already well underway in American English: dental marking is > gone and velars are on the outs. > > As for the second, I agree it is a stretch. Aspiration is already an > important marker in English speech; it is possible that voice-marking might > be no longer important, if only somewhat likely. But, then again I'm > playing God already, right? It is conceivable. > > 2. Vowel stuff: The loss of vowel length is the only change I am proposing. > I was assuming some pidginisation because I have a hard time believing that > colonists gave up their native languages when they emigrated to Serpentis. > When they got cut off into little groups, some settlements stuck to their > own languages, speaking 'at home' in their native language(s) and when > making (dangerous) travels in English, a second language. It's not *that* > much of a stretch, but I agree it is one. > > Naturally, this is speculative and I'd like input. I definitely think that > vocab would be the real problem, but I have to believe there have been some > sound changes. I think we need to know what speech communities existed > among colonists (were there Welshmen pushing the use of Welsh in Dafydd? > par example) and then think about what the status of English was over the > years and on BP. > > "This sort of change IS happening in New Zealand and Australia but that is > due to the contact of two linguistic communities. The kind of radical > phonological changes you are postulating could really only occur in a > pidginization process in the time you are talking about." > > Euh ... I disagree. I wasn't postulating grammatical changes, that was > another person. Confusion on my part about who said what... sorry about that. > But I want to discuss the situation. If you have suggestions, I'd love to > hear them. Do you find all of this so unreasonable? What makes it > reasonable for me was thinking about the life of the first Native children > - I know how quickly fads and trends can change speech (d'ohh!) and was > thinking about how the Native children would have forged identity with new > speech for a new world, separating themselves from their parents' old-world > sense with distinctive speech and word-choices. Go, puberty! Please don't misunderstand. I didn't mean to suggest that anything said was particularly "unreasonable" just that the proposed changes seemed a bit sweeping. In the absence of some large and dominant other language I think that the differences wrought by child-speech would be more of the intonational and morpho-lexical type-yielding a "dialect" about as different from the base English as, say, Arkansas English is from New York English. Greg *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message. From: Tun Kai Poh [t_poh@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 8:51 PM To: blue_planet@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: Re: [BLUE PLANET] - Help with BP cyberpunk. >I'm looking to run a cyberpunk intro to BP for some newbie gamers. It's not >my favoured script (I'm an exploration man), so I'm somewhat at a loss as >to scripts. I'm hip to anything. Deluge me! Howsabout hunting down the Identity Assassin in New Fremantle, from Arcipelago? It's the best combination of BP elements: it's got dolphins and lots of hi-tech platforms in the water, but it also has a malicious hacker and plenty of cyber-intrigue. When I used the Identity Assassin plot, I had the 'fins hire the PCs as outside security consultants, to work together with the cetacean sysadmins. I played up the cultural differences for all it was worth, with the 'fins misinterpreting half of everything the human hacker suggested... :) In my game things kind of got sidetracked, and by the end of the scenario two of the PCs were inside a Greater White, but I still think it's a good BP cyberpunk scenario idea. Kai Poh Malaysian Lagomorph ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe blue_planet' as the body of the message.