DeConstructing the Language of Sebbou

My latest novel is out now. THE MASTERS' RIDDLE is a science fiction epic in which an alien being is captured by members of a mysterious race. The bulk of the novel is this alien's attempts to return home...to his home planet of Sebbol. Although the novel is in English, of course, there are moments when the alien speaks - which I do partly for flavoring the scene, partly for expressing emotion, partly for fun. I like alien languages.

I first encountered alien languages in my science fiction trilogy, THE DREAM LAND, set partially on the planet of Ghoupallesz. There I had the principal language most residents used, plus three languages used by peripheral societies. With a background in linguistics, I relished the opportunity to create full-functioning languages (and even included some quirks so they were not so perfect...like real languages). (Read more about inventing languages here.) I used them where relevant whenever we have:

1) the names of things with no equivalent word in English;

2) the phrases spoken by the native speakers;

3) the phrases spoken in reply by Earth characters who know the native language;

4) the words/phrases which are added here and there to help lend authenticity to the scene.

I recognize that having extensive passages in other-than-English is tedious for a reader. Thus, I try to limit myself to following a few rules when writing with alien languages (or Earth languages other than English, for example the Hindi spoken by Indians in my India novel about tiger hunting).

Rule 1. When the character hears spoken words which happen to be in the other language, I write out some of it. This is literally what the character hears, even if he doesn't understand it.  I can then explain what it means, as appropriate to the scene. For example, an announcement over a loudspeaker.

Rule 2. When a character literally speaks in a language other than English - because the character does not know English or chooses to speak in another language - I either provide a simple unobtrusive translation or otherwise tell the reader what was said. I do not want to give up the authenticity of the scene by avoiding the foreign language. For example, whenever it is vital that the character speak his own native language (which I give at least a clue as to what it means).

In THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, there are intelligent beings from several worlds. I give each its own language although for the most part I tell the story in English. How can they communicate with each other? An advanced species would have elevated means of communication. First, there is vocalization...which is not going to be understood no matter how well heard. Next is the attempt to communicate visually with facial expressions, hand gestures, and making marks on a surface or circumscribing designs in the air. I have them doing the 'Vulcan mind-meld' in some instances, where one being touches the other and through that neural network connection they can communicate. And a few other clever methods.

But what do they communicate? Not a system of language which one of them would not know. They can only communicate raw ideas - simple ideas, basic information without nuance. No metaphors, idioms, or slang. Even when two beings knowing different languages communicate through telepathy (no physical contact; mind to mind) the effect can only be this fundamental level of ideation: e.g., 'Go, sit, there.' rather than 'Would you please step over to that rock and have a seat there?'

When I worked on Ghoupallean, the main language used on Ghoupallesz, I devised the complete grammar and lexicon, made a thick dictionary of the language, learned to speak some of it - to the dismay of people around me in public venues. For THE MASTERS' RIDDLE I held back. Sure there are a few phrases our hero speaks in Sebbou, the native language of Sebbol, described variously as chirps, squeaks, and squeals. Not a commanding language at all. It is difficult for this alien to lead the ragtag gang of other species but he possesses a unique feature which gives him an advantage: his inner Ru. 

The inner Ru is a homunculus-like entity inside the mind, a miniature man, which both advises and translates. I imagined this little being much as I pondered the drawings of Plato's allegory: a cave with someone writing on the walls. Much of the writing was actually drawing, a visual language, thinking in images rather than abstract marks that made up a formal script to represent the phonetics.

Therefore, Sebbou takes the form in the novel mostly as category 1 above: things which do not directly translate into English, primarily the names of flora, fauna, and geologic features of planet Sebbol. There are a few direct phrases which help show the way of thinking of the Aull who live on Sebbol, the way myth informs their society.

In one scene of instruction, the mentor speaks a Sebbou phrase taken from our hero's mind:

“The Process is what you do with your mind to tear space apart and project body through tangent opening. Do with power of mind, which can be greatest force in the universe. Bio-chemical, electro-chemical energies created in the brain of an advanced creature, applied to engineering problems, can move mountains—sometimes planets. Or, as you say on your world, to ‘raise the stars’.”

Toog’s face flashed bronze. “^sT’_n Ra’_q.”

“You remember expression from childhood? Took from your mind, from memories of childhood training, so can understand. Is true. This power, when focused on right spot and increased to right magnitude can rip curtain between two sides of universe. At such a moment, while rending this curtain, step through to other world.”

The phrase is a common expression and means something significant to our Aull friend and it makes him press on with his lessons. The initial /s/ is a polite hiss which initiates all speech in Aull society. The /T/ with apostrophe represents /t/ with a trailing vowel huff. The falling /n/ is a gutteral utterance. The /R/ is a strong consonant followed by a longer vowel represented by /a/ and the same apostrophic huff. The final /q/ is an emphatic grunt which acts as a conclusion in Sebbou. Therefore, 'Tin rai q'  means “raise the stars”. 

Let's try it:  s (high-pitched hiss) T (with a huff) n (deep in throat) R (almost trilled) a (normal vowel, add huff) kh (unvoiced growl)

Not bad. It's easier if you have the oral apparatus of the Aull throat and mouth. They are, after all, descendent from amphibians. If you can't do it, don't worry. You got the idea. (A glossary is included at the end of the book, if you're curious about Sebbou.)

I wanted to get on with the story rather than indulge in linguistic play, so these kind of direct expressions of Sebbou are kept to the minimum. I tell what they all say, as they communicate mostly through mind-meld or telepathy. The languages are not the main point of the story but are something real that needs to be accounted for in the story. We cannot pretend beings from different planets can all speak the same language. That would not be realistic. I am not a member of Starfleet and I do not possess a handy communicator device (although the Masters in one scene do employ a similar machine). 

But supposing these various characters happened to be in this setting with this problem? How would they communicate with each other in order to solve their problem? That's the point we have to operate with throughout the book. It's all about what's real.

NEXT: Summer vacation reading list.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2021 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

The Deep Dark Secret Truth

Lots of people ask me why I write and how I write. Well, I can never seem to understand exactly what is going on behind the scenes but I'm glad the muses are hard at work on my behalf. I think it all began with the first sparks of a story in my childhood which became, in 2012, my second published novel The Dream Land. As the story continued through a trilogy, this first volume was re-titled Long Distance Voyager, or The Dream Land Trilogy Book I: Long Distance Voyager ...if you want to be accurate. Just this week I happened to pull a copy of it off my shelf and began reading it for the giggles. Nostalgia, I suppose. I am rather enjoying reading it, amazed at my youthful self and the strange stuff I thought up back then. 

The Dream Land Trilogy began as a simple YA story, safe and innocent for adolescents. It was a tale of a boy who was visited one day by "aliens" - the aliens in the story resembled mice, or perhaps, the hamster he once had as a pet. In actuality, the boy was me and I was not actually visited by alien mice. 

Well, that's one of the secrets. What that boy did do was to take some pipe cleaners and yarn and make some play creatures that looked like mice: clawed feet, fuzzy bodies, tiny ears sticking up out of their fur, and a yarn tail. Evolution then caused them to gain clawed hands and lose the tails. The boy's mother told him that his story was like one she had read long ago: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. The boy had never read it - and refuses to read it or see the film version even today as an adult, chiefly for political purposes - because he feared people would say he was just copying the idea.

As the boy grew, he kept the story secret, lest anyone steal his idea or accuse him of stealing someone else's idea. And as he grew into a high school student, the alien mice further evolved into more human-like beings, though still small in stature, something akin to child-sized adults. They described their world to him and explained all of their customs, and this allowed the boy to create maps of their world and flags of their nations. He was even able to design football helmet logos for their football teams - which was a shocking development inasmuch as they did not play the sport on their world.

And speaking of their world, the boy-turned-teenager somehow heard the name incorrectly from the alien mice visitors, something like "Gupal". He used the word to indicate the visitors themselves ("I played with the Gupals all afternoon.") and their planet ("My friends all came from the planet Gupal.") and so on. In high school, however, as the teenager was becoming more widely read (but never The Hobbit!) he began to decypher the language of his Gupal friends. His more sophisticated understanding of linguistics allowed him to be more correct, more precise in his construction of the language. Thus, "Gupal" became the significantly cooler word "Ghoupalle" and the planet whence his companions originated became "Ghoupallesz" and their language was "Ghoupallean."

Then, one dark and stormy night, a story began. It was years later and he was a working adult, far from his stories. While home for Christmas vacation from his job teaching English in Japan - after high school, after college, after a few years working at a dead end job (during which he continued to develop the world of Ghoupallesz and its features, including beginning a bright colorful new map series and creating dictionaries of Ghoupallean and other languages of the world) - he had a dream. 

He had long wanted to tell the story of his Ghoupalle friends and their adventures, of course. Yet as the boy turned into an adult, his interests also changed. Now the adventures of Ghoupallesz consisted of political intrigue, wars, magic, and sex. There was no longer a YA planet to write about. Prior to that dream - of course, that is the origin of the series title - he had been looking for a starting point to get into the story, a story he already was expecting to be a series of books, each about a separate adventure his alter ego would partake of.

In that dream, he saw a Zetin maiden riding the kind of horse-like creature (the "Jepe") that they have on Ghoupallesz, high in the mountains (well, that's where Zetin people live, as opposed to the Ghoupalle people living down along the coast) and she caught him watching her. The image stuck. Back in Japan, he set out writing the story, beginning with that scene on the mountain. That was something new, he realized, something that was not part of the adventures of the earlier mice-like Gupals. Instead, he was inventing new adventures...which eventually allowed him to introduce the "original" story, not of alien mice visiting a boy on Earth but of a well-intended teenager and his girlfriend finding a portal, an invisible doorway, through which they stumble quite surreptitiously and thus discover a new world.

Thus began The Dreamland, as it was originally titled, was completed in 1993 and sent out to a few agents. Shockingly, they all rejected it. A couple of them did add handwritten notes of encouragement. One even said it was "well-crafted" while another said the protagonist was not sympathetic. Because the protagonist was based on the teenager-turned-adult himself, that hurt. He understood the reason: the protagonist is a quiet, anti-social fellow but I did not reveal why he was that way. 

So he set about recrafting the story to make the hero more likeable - and more distinct from the author. Since the hero suffers many tragedies in the course of his adventures, the tragic qualities of the hero needed to be introduced closer to the beginning. But how does one get to know a character who is aloof, private, solitary? Lightbulb! Have his co-workers talk about him, speculate about his life, and even tease him!

As the rewriting continued, another heartbreaking discovery was made: "The Dreamland" was already being used as the title of a book about Area 51, the infamous location of alien crash victims. So he reluctantly changed the title to The Dream Land - which meant changing that phrase everywhere it appeared in the novel. Instead of the characters saying Ghoupallesz is the Dreamland, they had to say, in order to be politically correct, Ghoupallesz is the Dream Land. It was a big hassle. But he finished a major edit of the novel and was so excited that he rushed right into the next novel: The Dream Land II. 

The second book picked up right where the first ended: Did our hero safely escape back to Ghoupallesz through the interdimensional portal, or did he actually catch a bullet from the pursuing police and fall into a coma? Fifty or so single-spaced pages in and he ground to a halt. A plot conundrum stopped him cold. He was becoming busy with other matters of an adult life, anyway, and eventually the second book - and the first book - were left to languish on a dusty shelf somewhere in his computer. 

The boy-turned-adult went away to graduate school and became a professor who was tasked with teaching college students how to write essays and research papers. He still enjoyed creative writing - he had picked up an MFA degree by producing a slew of short stories with contemporary settings and a thesis consisting of a novel about a doomed campus romance (A Beautiful Chill). He dreamed of getting back to The Dream Land.

So he encouraged his students to write whatever they were interested in, something about their lives. One student happened showed him a story that superficially reminded the boy-turned-professor of his Dream Land story. Not too much, however, just enough to cause the professor to be curious and search for it on his computer. He read through what he had written of The Dream Land II, then continued writing right where he had left off ten years before. The plot conundrum that had stopped him now was cleared. He marched on to the end of the novel - all the while conducting research and writing his Ph.D. dissertation.

He managed to get the first book published. As he prepared the second book for publication, he immediately started writing the third book. The idea arrived fully formed in his head one bright afternoon. Like all good sci-fi Book III would not only wrap up the loose ends of Book II (Did he die again or survive?) but also deal with the universal question: What to do about an approaching comet that is likely to hit our planet? He also had grown as a writer, confident enough to let his female protagonist, who had major but short-lived appearances in the first two books, take the stage solo to answer this great question.

That brings us, humbly, up to the present era. Being busier than ever before with life and all its coquettish foibles, he turned to trying once again to deal with a publishing world that had changed so dramatically he no longer recognized it, nor knew what to do to get the first two books published. Good friends and their advice helped and the encouragement provided has sustained him. Book III practically wrote itself. The interdimensional portal still exists, however, and as the hero of The Dream Land ages, he has taken on a protege who can lead readers through the third novel of the series and perhaps into a fourth book. The universe is endless, after all - at least, according to the rules of the Dream Land. Imagination is the key...and the map...and the compass!

Note: I have not actually traveled through an interdimensional doorway of any kind, although some people I know suspect I have, I am quite familiar with theories involving the phenomena. I attempt to education the public about interdimensional doorways via this Facebook page. Thanks for your support.


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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Everything you wanted to know about Time compressed for the time you have to read it!

It seems as though I am supposed to post a blog entry today in order to keep the world in balance. However, the balance of the world is not my responsibility. At least not today; I have it on alternate Thursdays. I will, therefore, post something about time, since that is something everyone seems interested in. Specifically, time travel.

Ever awakened from a trance that seemed three and a half days long but by the clock was only 90 seconds? Had a "senior moment" and not been a senior? Felt the day was only 22 hours long and you had much more to do? Or the day seemed like it was 32 hours long? You may have experienced a temporal vortex--an eddy in the stream of time. Time happens, of course.

Now suppose you could predict when those would happen and could prepare for them, even exploit the extra moments of time? Suppose you could do more, like...take an hour from Earth time and indulge your perverse indulgences for 135 days in an alternate timestream. That would be great, huh? But how does that work?

There are two major ways of thinking about time and time travel:

1) time is linear, or

2) time is cyclical.

Stories use either a man-made machine to travel or our hero/heroine finds a natural phenomena, like a wormhole, to travel through. Personally, I find it bordering on implausible to create a machine to bend time so I've chosen to use the natural phenomena method. In the linear structure, time goes on and on like a speeding rocket and you can't jump around so much as try to outrace it to go to the future or slow down and hop aboard if visiting the past. In the cyclical model you can jump from loop to loop going to the future or the past. I tend to believe the linear model, especially for use in my novels, although the cyclical model may work best if you are using a machine.

I have read countless time travel stories. (I could count them, actually, if I could remember all of them, but that is another issue.) H. G. Wells may be considered the father of time travel stories, yet even the Epic of Gilgamesh has some time-bending aspects. One of the best stories I've ever read was in an anthology of sci-fi stories and involved a guy going back to the time of the dinosaurs and encountering a hunting party of aliens; he falls in love with the princess, of course and chooses to stay there. (Can't recall the title or author at this moment--it was in an anthology edited by Robert Silverberg in the 70s; I'll get back to you with it.) Another of my favorites is Michael Moorcock's Behold the Man, a novella in which a Biblical scholar goes back to check on Jesus and through serendipity becomes the person crucified on the Cross. That's an example of cyclical time: the guy from the future goes back to the past and becomes the reason the guy from the future goes back to the past--got it? Wanting to get out of our present structure where we are slaves to time is a major theme in fiction--and the work place.

Or, there is still another view of time, which may prove more accurate:

THE DREAM LAND Book II "Dreams of Future's Past" is about Time. (Book I was about Space; Book III will be about the end of Time and Space.) And, as I learned from Roger Zelazny (especially in the Amber Chronicles), characters often like to sit around discussing profound ideas. I borrowed that concept in this excerpt about time travel:

“What’s all this talk about time travel?” Jason exclaimed, bits of zurrek falling from his greasy lips. “There’s no such thing. I can’t lose weight that way, and you sure can’t change history by going back and doing something different. If you could, everybody’d be doing it.”

Jason swallowed, washed it down with a swig of gor.

“Time is linear—it goes in a straight line—and even if you do a loop-de-loop and go back to the past, it’s still the same straight line, like a tape or ribbon that you have merely twisted around your finger. It’s straight but you’ve bent it. That’s all. You can’t cross over from one part of the ribbon to the next part of the ribbon. It doesn’t work.”

Jason paused to take another mouthful of the zurrek, so succulent when it was grilled the way they did it in Aivana. When he was satisfied, he picked up the conversation as though he had not just put away another plate of the big four-legged bird.

“Everyone’s fate is just that: Fate. I don’t mean that our destiny is pre-arranged...mmm, like a page in some cosmic calendar. I mean, it just happens that way. Nothing can change it. If you change your routine at random so you’re out shopping when an airplane crashes into your house, when you otherwise would be napping on the living room sofa, then that’s what happens. It wasn’t planned by any God of Fate, and it wasn’t anything that you specifically did that made it happen or not happen. It just is. The changes you make are your fate. Changing your fate is part of your fate. It’s just some mind game. It’s the stuff of movies.”

Being the Mexas, he could indulge his host’s wild ravings, but this was different. Jason was on to something. Besides, Jason was more than his host; indeed, being Tammy’s husband now, the palace belonged as much to him as it did to her. More importantly, he wanted his childhood friend’s advice. And assurance. So he put on his salesman’s face and began selling him an idea.

“So all of these events that just happen.... Are they so predetermined that part of the predetermination is we don’t think about them being events that are predetermined?”

He waited for his colleague to reply, but Jason was still contemplating the words, or the next dessert.

“Look at what happens to people in the world. Things like earthquakes, and that airplane crashing into my house—do they just happen, as you say, or are they actually accidents? That’s what the word means: it’s something that happens without anyone expecting it. We say ‘it’s just an accident,’ right? Well, suppose that someone somewhere in some distant time zone has done something by design or by accident which causes that airplane to dive into my house. There’s no reason—no logical reason why that airplane should crash, or that it should crash into my house instead of an empty field. And there’s no particular reason that I should decide that particular morning to alter my routine and go out shopping instead of taking my nap. It’s an accident, like you say. It’s not planned, it’s an accident. That is why we call them ‘accidents.’“

Jason was nodding, either understanding or simply to acknowledge he was listening, since his mouth was full of the next course, something creamy, peach-colored.

“You see,” the Mexas continued, finished with his meal, “accidents are caused by something unexpected, unplanned. They just happen, as you say. But they must have some cause and the only such thing that can be a cause is some action by another thing or person. Every action has an opposite, equal reaction, they say. You’ve studied that a little, haven’t you?”

Jason wiped the dupoi from his lips, nodding his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” the Mexas continued. “You understand, right? What about in time? If it were possible, then one mere extra blink of my eye sometime in the past may catch someone’s attention, and taking their attention away for one extra millisecond may cause them to not hear what their friend was saying, such as, ‘Watch out for that airplane about to crash on us!’ You see, anything could be an instigator of some reaction that assumes itself in another time as what we call an accident.”

Jason cleared his pallet with a ghot wafer and motioned for the servants to remove the dishes he had emptied. He belched loudly, not an Aivana custom but one of his own. A nearby maiden brought a cloth to wipe his crumb-spotted face, like a mother and her dirty little boy. Once cleaned, he returned to their discussion:

“You’re saying that every time someone has an accident it’s actually someone’s responsibility in some past time?”

“No, there’s no responsibility,” the Mexas replied. “I’m saying there are no accidents. Things just happen, as you say. Those are your words. By design or accident these things happen. But something still causes them to happen. Now, suppose that if someone who knew something bad was going to happen had the power—and by ‘power’ I mean they had the knowledge and ability as well as the will or desire to assert themselves against whatever inconvenience might be involved to perform the act, not ‘power’ like with magic—if someone had the power to do something that would result in that future bad thing not happening and went ahead and did it...? That person would be a hero. I mean, if he prevented the bad event, right? He’d be a hero.”

Jason thought for a moment, let out gas, grinned.

“So you want to be a hero? Is that it?” Jason asked. “I thought you did that already. Why do you want to be a hero again?”

“Not me. I’ve had enough of that. Too many close calls at hero-dom. Accidents are what I’m talking about. And the power to change them. It’s not some theoretical debate. It’s real.”

“You are talking some theoretical debate—because it can’t be done.”

A maiden brought a new bottle of something, and Jason grabbed it to scan the dark blue liquid inside.

“It’s wishful thinking, like prayers or flipping a coin into a fountain,” said Jason. “The power of will cannot change the straight line of fate—and I use the word ‘fate’ loosely for your benefit; be aware—” he popped the cap on the bottle, spilling some of its contents over the fine saffron robe that stretched over his belly—“be aware that I’m not attaching it to any mystic or religious ritual or dogma. By ‘fate’ I mean ‘whatever happens to us now, whatever will happen to us in the future, or whatever has already happened to us in the past’...regardless of how or why it happens.”

“Happenstance, eh?”

He poured the drink into the silver chalice of the Mexas, then filled his own vessel: the old white ceramic mug made in Taiwan, inscribed with ‘World’s Greatest Grease Monkey’ that he had rescued from the garage where he once worked.

“All right,” he grunted. “Does that satisfy you for now?”

They raised their drinks and clinked them, but only Jason sampled it.

The Mexas sighed, set his drink down on the table. “Here all theory ends and reality begins.”

Jason finished the mug, reached for the bottle. “What are you talking about?”

“It can be done.”

Jason took up his full mug in both hands. “Only in your dreams.”


Note: Mexas is the Ghoupallean word for 'king' though it comprises a different way of thinking about royal duties than merely being born to them. One is usually appointed Mexas because of administrative prowess.

P.S. Still another schematic of the nature of time and how we specks of universal dust dare think of it, pesky as we are:

If you need to catch up with THE DREAM LAND Book I "Long Distance Voyager" you can get it here. Book III "Diaspora" is almost finished and should be available by the end of 2013.

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 (C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.