Richard's Animorphs Forum
Animorphs Section => Animorphs Forum Classic => Topic started by: Shark Akhrrana on April 21, 2009, 01:12:40 PM
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Back when i first read the books.
i was confused over why the Animorphs couldn't pronounce his first name.
i mean its EASY
if you can say Maximilian you can say Aximili because well M aximili an
back in those days i was sure i was going to name my son Maximilian so it was my favorite name
and that is how i found out about Aximili's name.
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I said his name wrong until I watched the TV show
for some reason I kept thinking it was "Ax-mealy" b/c I'm dyslexic or something idk
the fact that I needed the TV show to correct me made me sort of mad
b/c there was a lot I wanted to correct on the TV show
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yeah that is true i never watched teh show cause i had no cable TV
and if it makes you feel better i tend to mispronounce things a lot
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I think it's more because his name has four syllabyla, than a difficulty pronouncing it. Besides, he didn't just say his name was Aximilli when they first met. He stated his entire name, which adds more to it.
I actually pronounced Tobias TOH-bee-as, before I heard the name on TV. Not the Animorphs show, but somewhere else. There they pronounced to Tuh-BYE-as.
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yeah same here
think its because in Spanish Tobias is pronounced TOH-bee-as
so i just assumed it was the same
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I never got why they couldn't pronounce it either. No offence, but maybe its an American thing? Like i know lots of americans who find saying "Sara" (As in Sarr-ra not Seh-ra) difficult.
Or hey, maybe "Ax, watch out!" is just better than "Aximili, watch out!"
( I always got a little thrill whenever someone used his full first name ::) :P )
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Well, I think it was just because it was a long name and yeah, it would have taken a long time to say. Also, it would just be obnoxious to have to say the full name every time they wanted to talk to him.
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maybe "The Animorphs and Aximili" didn't fit on the back cover
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Haha that must be it!
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Maybe it was just their way of making him feel cool. Like "Dude, this is my buddy Ax, he's the Ax man!" sounds better than "Hey, this is my friend Aximili . . . he's the uh . . . Aximili man." :P
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maybe "The Animorphs and Aximili" didn't fit on the back cover
HAHHAH yeah that HAS to be it that was brilliant .
you are good.
+ 1
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And I thought I was the only one who was confused over that!
There were also other names that I was confused about.
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Back when i first read the books.
i was confused over why the Animorphs couldn't pronounce his first name.
i mean its EASY
if you can say Maximilian you can say Aximili because well M aximili an
back in those days i was sure i was going to name my son Maximilian so it was my favorite name
and that is how i found out about Aximili's name.
i always pronounced it 'acksimily'
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That's how I pronounced it as well.
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That's how I pronounced it as well.
is it right, though?
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I actually pronounced Tobias TOH-bee-as, before I heard the name on TV. Not the Animorphs show, but somewhere else. There they pronounced to Tuh-BYE-as.
I know, I'm still have a problem whit that, as Tobias is a very common name over here and everyone here pronounce it TOH-bee-as. And about Aximili. I have never had any problem with that, except as I think it sounds more like a girls name. His second name is much harder for me to say, as swedish language has no similar sound I think.
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I've always had a major issue with the Andalite language. Why does it have arbitrary phonetic symbols like shorm or nothlit? Arbitrary phonetic symbols--spoken words--are a feature of spoken language.
Written language is kinda bizarre, but is most often a representation of pronunciation. (The second most common system borrows the written form of words from a source language. It's fairly rare, but is found in English, Japanese (especially Japanese), and a variety of Korean writing.)
True sign language uses arbitrary manual symbols; though some words may be partially derived from written languages. Written sign language is not based on pronunciation, but on hand and facial expression.
Example: Jack and Jill in Sign-Written ASL
[spoiler](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/Jack_and_Jill.gif)[/spoiler]
The final group of human languages are pure-tone languages: whistled, sung, and drummed. These almost always are derived from tonal spoken languages. Simply stripping consonants and vowels would leave most languages incomprehensible, so single words are replaced with longer set-phrases that can be identified simply by their pitch.
That's the most common form of natural pure-tone language development. There are a few constructed pitch languages, most notably Srs from the Brackenwood animated shorts.
Grammar is for the most part universal. Some details are limited to specific types of languages: only manual languages have spatial grammar, and only spoken languages have vowel gradation ("seek"/"sought", for example). For the most part, however, grammatical features can cross from type to type: Somali (spoken), Japanese (spoken, but unrelated), and ASL (signed, again unrelated) all use topic-comment structure, while English (despite ASL-like vocabulary) and Esperanto (in the same family as English) do not.
Why is this important? Because the ancient Andalite language is manual (Ellimist). Telepathy developed later--presumably after Andalites developed manual grammar with its manual-specific quirks
(By the way, the Hork-Bajir language is almost certainly tonal--note the talking-drums!)
Then, Applegate pulls a Babel-Fish. (She's not a linguist and has more interesting things to talk about than the difficulties of inter-species language. There are very, very few sci-fi/fantasy authors who dare to open that can of worms.) She declares Andalite telepathy universal and we get on with the story.
Except for those weird, impossible Andalite "words". Now, it makes sense that Andalites would establish different basic words than a human language. Heck, various human languages have different root words: Japanese has a short, simple word meaning "to go to/towards one's home" and another pair of words meaning "to exit/come out" and "to cause to come out, to remove" (which is different from "to escape" / "to set free", another pair). These aren't simple concepts in English.
Likewise, no human language has the basic concept shorm, nor would Andalites have the pressing need for "mouth" (a basic word in every human language I can think of).
One way to deal with such concepts is to imagine them as "images." Christopher Paolini describes the native dragon language as being based on images (which strikes me as perfectly-sensible for a natively-telepathic species, if very alien). But, that doesn't really describe how human minds process morphemes--the basic units of meaning. Simply put, an "image" requires a lot of thought, while the human mind can handle hundreds, even over a thousand morphemes per minute when reading.
The human mind can (with practice) read morphemes from text faster than many machine guns fire bullets. "Images" are simply too complex to facilitate that kind of processing.
So, what can we reasonably expect the human mind to do with new, untranslatable morphemes delivered directly through telepathy? Might it create new words in the familiar phonetic pattern of its primary language?
That seems to be as good an explanation as any for a mouthless species somehow creating a word like "nothlit" making use of a rare human sound. ("th." It's present in Icelandic, English, Swahili, Greek, Welsh, Arabic, and a smattering of endangered native languages. Not a common sound compared to "ee" or "t" or "s".)
Okay, that can of worms opened, let's turn to names.
Most human names have "meaning" in the sense that they are constructed from morphemes. It's really only European names that have lost contact with the underlying meaning, thanks to the extreme linguistic exchange facilitated by Christendom. (Basically, there's a multilingual pool of "Christian names" which, separated from their linguistic heritage, have lost their meaning). For example "Joshua" derives from Hebrew "Yehoshua" meaning "God rescues". "Nicholas" is Greek, "Victory of the People". The Prime Minister of Japan is "Asoh Taroh," written with characters that roughly translate Hemp(a)-Green(soh) Full(ta)-Son(roh). ("full" as in "full moon"--by the way, the same as "tai" in "Taiyoh" or "taiko;" "green" meaning "raw" or "inexperienced" or "unprocessed")
Note that just as spoken words are arbitrary symbols, 'meaningful' names are mostly-arbitrary symbols themselves. Don't read too much into them. The Asoh family are certainly not hippies...
It would be kinda cool to see the meaning behind the Andalite names. They can't be mere phonetic symbols, they have to be symbolic combinations of morphemes if that's how Andalite thought-speak works. So what does Aximili mean? Well, there's nothing in cannon to tell us.
So sorry.
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I actually pronounced Tobias TOH-bee-as, before I heard the name on TV. Not the Animorphs show, but somewhere else. There they pronounced to Tuh-BYE-as.
I know, I'm still have a problem whit that, as Tobias is a very common name over here and everyone here pronounce it TOH-bee-as. And about Aximili. I have never had any problem with that, except as I think it sounds more like a girls name. His second name is much harder for me to say, as swedish language has no similar sound I think.
yeah, it's a hebrew name (http://www.thinkbabynames.com/meaning/1/Tobias), i've always pronounced it 'toe-bye-as'
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I've always had a major issue with the Andalite language. Why does it have arbitrary phonetic symbols like shorm or nothlit? Arbitrary phonetic symbols--spoken words--are a feature of spoken language.
Written language is kinda bizarre, but is most often a representation of pronunciation. (The second most common system borrows the written form of words from a source language. It's fairly rare, but is found in English, Japanese (especially Japanese), and a variety of Korean writing.)
True sign language uses arbitrary manual symbols; though some words may be partially derived from written languages. Written sign language is not based on pronunciation, but on hand and facial expression.
Example: Jack and Jill in Sign-Written ASL
[spoiler](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/Jack_and_Jill.gif)[/spoiler]
The final group of human languages are pure-tone languages: whistled, sung, and drummed. These almost always are derived from tonal spoken languages. Simply stripping consonants and vowels would leave most languages incomprehensible, so single words are replaced with longer set-phrases that can be identified simply by their pitch.
That's the most common form of natural pure-tone language development. There are a few constructed pitch languages, most notably Srs from the Brackenwood animated shorts.
Grammar is for the most part universal. Some details are limited to specific types of languages: only manual languages have spatial grammar, and only spoken languages have vowel gradation ("seek"/"sought", for example). For the most part, however, grammatical features can cross from type to type: Somali (spoken), Japanese (spoken, but unrelated), and ASL (signed, again unrelated) all use topic-comment structure, while English (despite ASL-like vocabulary) and Esperanto (in the same family as English) do not.
Why is this important? Because the ancient Andalite language is manual (Ellimist). Telepathy developed later--presumably after Andalites developed manual grammar with its manual-specific quirks
(By the way, the Hork-Bajir language is almost certainly tonal--note the talking-drums!)
Then, Applegate pulls a Babel-Fish. (She's not a linguist and has more interesting things to talk about than the difficulties of inter-species language. There are very, very few sci-fi/fantasy authors who dare to open that can of worms.) She declares Andalite telepathy universal and we get on with the story.
Except for those weird, impossible Andalite "words". Now, it makes sense that Andalites would establish different basic words than a human language. Heck, various human languages have different root words: Japanese has a short, simple word meaning "to go to/towards one's home" and another pair of words meaning "to exit/come out" and "to cause to come out, to remove" (which is different from "to escape" / "to set free", another pair). These aren't simple concepts in English.
Likewise, no human language has the basic concept shorm, nor would Andalites have the pressing need for "mouth" (a basic word in every human language I can think of).
One way to deal with such concepts is to imagine them as "images." Christopher Paolini describes the native dragon language as being based on images (which strikes me as perfectly-sensible for a natively-telepathic species, if very alien). But, that doesn't really describe how human minds process morphemes--the basic units of meaning. Simply put, an "image" requires a lot of thought, while the human mind can handle hundreds, even over a thousand morphemes per minute when reading.
The human mind can (with practice) read morphemes from text faster than many machine guns fire bullets. "Images" are simply too complex to facilitate that kind of processing.
So, what can we reasonably expect the human mind to do with new, untranslatable morphemes delivered directly through telepathy? Might it create new words in the familiar phonetic pattern of its primary language?
That seems to be as good an explanation as any for a mouthless species somehow creating a word like "nothlit" making use of a rare human sound. ("th." It's present in Icelandic, English, Swahili, Greek, Welsh, Arabic, and a smattering of endangered native languages. Not a common sound compared to "ee" or "t" or "s".)
Okay, that can of worms opened, let's turn to names.
Most human names have "meaning" in the sense that they are constructed from morphemes. It's really only European names that have lost contact with the underlying meaning, thanks to the extreme linguistic exchange facilitated by Christendom. (Basically, there's a multilingual pool of "Christian names" which, separated from their linguistic heritage, have lost their meaning). For example "Joshua" derives from Hebrew "Yehoshua" meaning "God rescues". "Nicholas" is Greek, "Victory of the People". The Prime Minister of Japan is "Asoh Taroh," written with characters that roughly translate Hemp(a)-Green(soh) Full(ta)-Son(roh). ("full" as in "full moon"--by the way, the same as "tai" in "Taiyoh" or "taiko;" "green" meaning "raw" or "inexperienced" or "unprocessed")
Note that just as spoken words are arbitrary symbols, 'meaningful' names are mostly-arbitrary symbols themselves. Don't read too much into them. The Asoh family are certainly not hippies...
It would be kinda cool to see the meaning behind the Andalite names. They can't be mere phonetic symbols, they have to be symbolic combinations of morphemes if that's how Andalite thought-speak works. So what does Aximili mean? Well, there's nothing in cannon to tell us.
So sorry.
I didn't really understand that at all. Different people will have different words to describe the same thing. Which is where the words nothlit and shorm come from. Can you give that in layman's terms?
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*two cents*
I always pronounced it ax-IM-uh-lee, hork-buh-JEER, TAX-uhn, el-FAN-gur, AL-lor-ran, tuh-BI-as.
*shrug*
There y'go.
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The Andalites would need a written language. Ax has said on more than one occasion implied they had one, and it should be obvious for any advanced civilization. If it can be written down in text, a phonetic sound can be applied to each symbol, regardless of the original intent. For instance, the true pronunciation of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics is unknown, yet we know what the symbols mean. If we really wanted, we could apply a sound to specific groupings of symbols, hence creating a phonetic language.
In real life, it is known that KA made up Andalite words based on local things. Nothlit comes from the Hilton Hotels.
Either way, assuming it was not simply a plot device, Andalite 'words' should simply be like that; as you said, text can be more effective than pictures. Also, how would you say things such as a specific emotion with a picture. For instance, love. A heart. Does it mean love, or is it actually referring to a heart? Simply sending base emotions or motives to people are not specific enough for the needs of an advanced civilization. I feel, while it might not be phonetic, that the Andalites still simply had some sort of set language.
Being universally understandable is simply a plot device; the only way that could be possible is if it were conveyed through imagines, emotions, or motives. All of which are not direct enough for the needs of civilization; while in some cases sending a motive of the urge to eat or the need to sleep might be more effective, a motive or emotion simply cannot express such things as describing chemicals or building any sort of device. Images are good for showing memories or teaching, but it would be difficult to have them used to describe new concepts, which is vital for improvement and advancement.
As far as names... I would think that names would serve a purpose beyond identification. Indicating heritage or family line, as well as a given name that held meaning would be reasonable to expect, although not guaranteed; the Yeerk's names are simply the Pool they were born, as well a number for identification.
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Sorry, I'll run that again.
Let's take the example of "love". I can write a symbol meaning "love" in 13 strokes:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?153026
This is possible because Japanese is one of the very, very few languages where (some) symbols stand mostly for meaning and not for pronunciation. When used in Chinese-derived words, this character is pronounced "ai." When in Japanese words, it's "ito" and is often followed by "shi" (written using a syllable-character, a "kana"). And then there are the weird expressions where the meaning and pronunciation get fuzzy.
ai -- love
aisu -- to love (verb)
kyuuai -- courtship
setsuai -- deep (literally, cutting) love
kawaii -- cute (terrible translation, but whatever)
itooshimu -- to be attached to, to cherish
itoshii -- dear, precious
itoshiko -- dear child
mederu -- to admire
medetashi -- wonderful!
Now, we can say that both in Japanese (with its many, I count four in those examples, pronunciations) and Chinese (with one, "yai4" in Mandarin) that character represents a basic concept, a "morpheme". Chinese is strict about having 1 character, 1 pronunciation morphemes, while Japanese is significantly more loose: "ai" is love in Chinese -> Japanese words. "itos-" is a Japanese morpheme meaning "dear" or "beloved" and "mede" means "admire," three different but similar-meaning spoken morphemes gathered under one character.
Note, that even in Japanese with it's two sets of basic root words (native and Chinese) and messy correspondence between spoken morphemes and characters, pronunciation of this character is not completely random. It's always ito or ai or wai or me, and never da (even though there are dozens of characters that can be pronounced "da") or setsu or shou (another popular sound)--except possibly in names where all bets are off.
That's because humans are really tied to sound. More specifically, we're tied to pronunciation, certain complex patterns of movement in the vocal organs.
Actually, that's what makes signed languages work. They're complex patterns of arbitrarily-meaningful movement. Movement of hands and face, not vocal organs.
Andalites lack vocal organs. So, we should expect their language to be different. It's not weird that they have different morphemes than we do--different human languages have different morphemes.
Like Japanese: there's the morpheme "kaer-" meaning "to go home," English has to build that concept from "go" and "home". Japanese will then use that morpheme to make compound words that cannot be perfectly translated: "kaeritsuku basho": "basho" means "place," but "kaeritsuku" combines "kaer-" with "tsuk-" meaning "to take root, to stick, to be glued."
"kaeritsuku basho" is your front door. But only when you're coming home. Now describe that phrase in no more than eight English morphemes. Should be easy, the Japanese only use four morpheme-characters to write it--two of which gloss as the nearly-synonymous "place" and "location".
I'll bet you can't do it and make it sound natural.
Anyway, that's why it makes sense for Andalites to have untranslatable concepts. What is weird is that those concepts have phonetic expression. Why should the concept of "tail-blade" be associated with "voiceless retroflex frictive, back semi-open vowel with tongue curl, nasal bilabial stop" or "shorm" as it's written? That can happen in spoken languages, but Andalite is obviously not one of those.
It does make sense that shorm=tail-blade becomes shorm=trusted-friend. That's metomyny. It happens in spoken languages. It happens in sign languages. There's no real reason why it shouldn't happen in alien telepathic languages, too.
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*two cents*
I always pronounced it ax-IM-uh-lee, hork-buh-JEER, TAX-uhn, el-FAN-gur, AL-lor-ran, tuh-BI-as.
*shrug*
There y'go.
i used to say hork-buh-JOR. dunno why.
all the rest are the same, except for el-FANG-or.
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I always pronounced the names in the French way of pronunciation, until few months ago, when I watched the TV show in English.
About Aximili's name, I think the real problem at the beginning, when he presents himself, is that he must say "Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthil" quite quickly, and it's very long. Marco mustn't know where finish his "first name" and begin the "second name", and then made it the shorter he could. Maybe he just remembered the "Ax-" thing lol. See, reading it and hearing it are different things.
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Now, we can say that both in Japanese (with its many, I count four in those examples, pronunciations) and Chinese (with one, "yai4" in Mandarin) that character represents a basic concept, a "morpheme". Chinese is strict about having 1 character, 1 pronunciation morphemes, while Japanese is significantly more loose: "ai" is love in Chinese -> Japanese words. "itos-" is a Japanese morpheme meaning "dear" or "beloved" and "mede" means "admire," three different but similar-meaning spoken morphemes gathered under one character.
could be I just misunderstood that, but "love" is not just "ai" in chinese. "xihuan" can also mean love, though to a slightly less extent.
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*dark chuckle* If we want to get into the subtle nuances of types-of-love, then we could hash out agape, filia, storge, and eros. Greeks and Romans a few millennia ago would've had no trouble at all treating them as completely disassociated concepts, never having used any single word such as 'love' to cover them collectively.
Honestly, as much as I love the English language, I think it is positively stupid to qualify that all under that one category. There is so much room for ERROR in your meanings!!!
I agape to all of you, filia and storge to some of you, and eros to a very few people. There should be vast differences placed to define them, from adore to admire to desire to cherish.
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Agh, that's not what we were talking about! :explode:
Think, heiroglyphs are very phonetic (technically, they function as an "abjad," a writing system that preserves consonants only--no vowels nor pitch) in addition to logographic. Your basic point still stands: it is possible to have a purely logographic writing system--it's just that no natural written language works that way.
But, I would expect written Andalite to do so.
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I thought of a hypothetical way to answer your original question weathel. It's not that great, and also has several flaws, but it was the best I could think of.
If the Andalite language is universally understandable because it is simply a transfer of pure thought, it could work instead by sending impulses that invoke more specific thought in the receiver of the message, sort of how pheromones invoke instinctive reactions, only based on independent thought and far more specific and complex. So instead of sending a signal that would give a symbol for something, which the receiver then interprets based on previous knowledge, it would send an impulse, so to speak, that would trigger a thought in the receiver.
So when the impulse for shorm, for example, is sent, the receiver would understand what they are referring to once they understand the reference to tail blade. Either way, since most humans are used to language in the phonetic sense, when they 'hear' that impulse, their minds create a phonetic sound, because the concept wouldn't exist in any of the things they've learned/been taught. So, the word is devised from memories or the subconscious, either way, probably specific to the native language of the person receiving the thought. So, if this is true, it would be likely that if the impulse to trigger the thought for what we hear as shorm could be heard as a phonetically different word for someone with a different natural language. Regardless of how a human phonetically interprets it, the same impulse sent would be the cause of it, and it would carry the exact same meaning.
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I don't think your theory works very well, because if Andalites could just send impulses that denote shorm, in this case, I'm taking it to mean "best friend," then why would they need the metaphorical meaning at all?
I'm vaguely remembering some Saussure/Lacan from college, something about signifiers and signified, let me see if I can summarize:
The signifier is the language we use to describe something. For instance, let's take "chair." When I say "chair," you know I'm talking about something that people sit in, or wheel around, or whatever. But "chair" itself is just a phonetic signifier we associate with the object. It's just a one syllable set of five letters. Inherently, it's meaningless. We apply meaning to it, we take it to be a verbal representation of the idea of "chair."
The signified is the actual thing, that is, the thing with wheels made of wood or whatever. Without the signifier, it still exists.
The Andalite word "shorm" refers to "tail blade." This has an additional signified, however--it also applies to the concept of a pair of people so utterly devoted and trusting of each other that they would be able to accept the other's tail blade at their throat fearlessly. Why would this secondary level of language be needed by a race that communicates telepathically? If Andalites really communicated the way you suggest, they wouldn't need a metaphorical representation of the concept of "totally devoted best friend."
I think we can chalk this problem more up to the fact that Applegate really didn't parse out her telepathy all the way. Which is fine. I always kind of preferred it a little mysterious. I just never really understood the difference between Andalite thought-speech and however the Ellimist communicated with them.
If you want to read more about signifiers/signified (http://www.answers.com/topic/signifier-signified), start with Saussure. He outlines the theory. Then Lacan does some really incomprehensible stuff with psychoanalysis and Freud and tbh I don't understand it at all.
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I don't think your theory works very well, because if Andalites could just send impulses that denote shorm, in this case, I'm taking it to mean "best friend," then why would they need the metaphorical meaning at all?
Thank you. You rescued my point. Metonymy only makes sense if there are signifiers.
Think's other point, about how phonemes are an artifact of a phonemically-oriented human mind attempting to understand telepathy is the only explanation that makes sense to me.
Maybe it's similar to glossolalia.
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Well they had to have a language since at first they only spoke in sign language until The Elimist showed up.
think about when you think in your mind do you just thik ideas or do you actually hear yourself talking. they have internal voices that make sounds
for example when Elfangor found out that Alloran was a controller he commented on the fact that he SOUNDED just like him. Having his own personal accent.
When the Animorphs talk to each other they can tell who is talking just like when you hear an actual voice. So yes it might be telepathic but they still have some kind of mental sound system
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Interesting, so that's three theories, now.
One, Andalite thought-speak transfers pure thought. (Think)
Two, Andalite thought-speak transfers non-vocal symbols. (Weathel)
Three, Andalite thought-speak transfers vocal, or at least auditory, symbols. (Shark)
Before I dig in to the linguistics, though, a response for Morf
could be I just misunderstood that, but "love" is not just "ai" in chinese. "xihuan" can also mean love, though to a slightly less extent.
Wiktionary says this to say about "ai4" and "xi3 huan1" (pinyin modified and hanzi removed to avoid ?s):
When used for people, "ai4" usually refers to romantic love. When used like this, older Mandarin speakers often describe the use of this term as overly "rou4 ma2" (adj. something that gives you the creeps, disgusting). For this reason, the word "xi3 huan1" (to like) might be used instead. Using the word xihuan literally means like, but when used in a romantic context (especially boyfriend/girlfriend), it actually means love. However, younger Mandarin speakers seem to have been influenced somewhat by Western culture, and are now using the verb ai much more often than was socially acceptable in the past.
Japanese does the same thing. The verb form, "aisu" is fairly rare. Saying like to mean love is common; except it's a different word from "xihuan": "suki" (written with the same character as "hao4" in Chinese).
By the way, that's all from Wiktionary; I don't really know Chinese and Japanese well enough to write that myself!
I don't really buy the pure-thought idea. Like Jen said, that would rule out needing metaphor in their language. Thus no shorm/shorm metonymy.
I don't really buy that thought-speak is limited only to transmitting some kind of mind-words. Elfangor actually does use thought-speak to show an image of a Yeerk in #1. And, while I'm too lazy to find an example now, once the Animorphs start using thought-speak they can use it to transmit marginally-linguistic but very vocal expressions like laughter.
And, I don't really buy that thought-speak communicates a vocal internal-monologue. First, that would rule out the easy-enough-to-understand aspect of thought-speak (so very, very helpful for first contact!). But, secondly, without any history of communication-by-sound, Andalites really shouldn't have audible internal monologues.
That's not to say that they don't have internal monologues. It's really hard to pin down exactly what an internal monologue is, but here's an interesting result from memory tests. The task is to remember words printed on cards in English.
Native English speakers will have more trouble with near homophones like "TREE" and "THREE" than non-homophones like "CAR" and "MOOSE". If they have to speak, like saying "Jack and Jill went up the hill" while they memorize, they don't memorize as well.
Native ASL signers will have more trouble with near homophones like "VOTE" and "TEA" than other pairs.
http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/tea.htm
http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/v/vote.htm
If they have to do something with their hands while memorizing, they don't memorize as well.
In short, it's possible to have an non-vocal internal monologue. Sign language, in this case, takes the place of spoken language in organizing human thoughts.
http://www.dichotomistic.com/mind_readings_deaf%20speech.html
So, none of those three theories entirely works.
Ah, well, time for more speculation.
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So, none of those three theories entirely works.
Ah, well, time for more speculation.
Agreed, I said my thought had several flaws before I said it, I just couldn't think of anything better.
Still, by this point, what's left to say beyond that either that it's a mechanism so foreign we cannot comprehend it without experiencing it or that it's simply a plot device.
Still, I like this. Anyone have any other theoretical ideas?
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Before I dig in to the linguistics, though, a response for Morf
could be I just misunderstood that, but "love" is not just "ai" in chinese. "xihuan" can also mean love, though to a slightly less extent.
Wiktionary says this to say about "ai4" and "xi3 huan1" (pinyin modified and hanzi removed to avoid ?s):
When used for people, "ai4" usually refers to romantic love. When used like this, older Mandarin speakers often describe the use of this term as overly "rou4 ma2" (adj. something that gives you the creeps, disgusting). For this reason, the word "xi3 huan1" (to like) might be used instead. Using the word xihuan literally means like, but when used in a romantic context (especially boyfriend/girlfriend), it actually means love. However, younger Mandarin speakers seem to have been influenced somewhat by Western culture, and are now using the verb ai much more often than was socially acceptable in the past.
Japanese does the same thing. The verb form, "aisu" is fairly rare. Saying like to mean love is common; except it's a different word from "xihuan": "suki" (written with the same character as "hao4" in Chinese).
By the way, that's all from Wiktionary; I don't really know Chinese and Japanese well enough to write that myself!
so... does that contradict or agree with what I said...
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Agrees. I think.
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No offence, but maybe its an American thing? Like i know lots of americans who find saying "Sara" (As in Sarr-ra not Seh-ra) difficult.
Kindly be quiet. An accent isn't a vocal impediment.
That's like me ripping on Brits for being all "'Ello guvna! Chip chip cheerio! Oim a li'l chimney-sweep Oi am!" Maybe it's the lack of teeth?
See? Rude and inappropriate. Ssh.
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An accent isn't a vocal impediment.
Well, yes and no. No matter how much we descriptivists cry "LEAVE ACCENTS ALONE, please" with running mascara and profanity (which, being descriptivists we refuse to call "foul language" ;)), the facts are:
- Some accents have more homophones than others, which means more opportunities for confusion.
- Unfamiliar accents really are more difficult to understand.
- People are prejudiced about accent.
Thus, Americans don't distinguish "Mary" from "merry," and many merge "all" and "awl." Brits seem to have trouble with "Barack Obama." And the two camps can fight over how to say "Sara" 'til the cows come home. Such is linguistic life.
Oh, and a "lack of teeth" would interfere with F , V , TH and DH . Not vowel shading or silent H s, or actually, most features of a thick ****ney.
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You're a homophone.
Shrug.
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Kindly be quiet. An accent isn't a vocal impediment.
That's like me ripping on Brits for being all "'Ello guvna! Chip chip cheerio! Oim a li'l chimney-sweep Oi am!" Maybe it's the lack of teeth?
See? Rude and inappropriate. Ssh.
Kindly stop being an abusive moron. British people don't talk like that and you have no right to insult other members this way. Consider this a warning.
Now unless any of you have anything to say about the actual topic, please refrain from posting.
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Kindly be quiet. An accent isn't a vocal impediment.
That's like me ripping on Brits for being all "'Ello guvna! Chip chip cheerio! Oim a li'l chimney-sweep Oi am!" Maybe it's the lack of teeth?
See? Rude and inappropriate. Ssh.
-1 Aurora
i can take a joke but that was a insult.
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Ok, getting back on topic here.
On Ax's name: Let's face it. People like to shorten names to make them quicker and easier to say. When you're in a hurry, you're not going to want to blurt out Ax's name in its entirety.
I'm sure most people have had someone shorten their name. Take my name for example. I've had people shorten Rachel to things like Ray and Rach. Not because Rachel is hard to say, but because people need/want that shortcut.
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Yeah people like to shorten names for the sake of convenience, or to make them easier to say in an urgent situation. Or sometimes just because the abbreviated name sounds cooler.
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i can take a joke but that was a insult.
...In response to an insult.
But alas.
Movin' on, with the winds of change, and the butterflies eating cotton candy and singing unicorn songs, etc.
It makes sense to abbreviate "Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill", but I guess "Aximili" isn't so hard. "Ax" and "Ax-man" and "The Axleroobydoobymeist er" and "Aximischnitzenhause n Blitzkriegen" were probably just mere affectionate pet-names.
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The last two have the disadvantage of not actually appearing in cannon. ;)
There's something profoundly human about pet names. True they can sometimes be obnoxious. (Call me *censored for giving away my AFK name* and you will die.)
Since showing up here I've been Wildy, Weathel, Weasel, Wild, Gryph (when I changed my name a while back), and a whole host of others. It's natural, I guess, and that's ultimately the reason why Ax is Ax.
I still don't get why he's Aximili in the first place, but whatever.
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yer like me always calling Faerie- Fey
and calling Broken/Cody - Broke
its just easyer to say/type. i mean why do you people call me Brad? My real name is Bradley-Nigel Boardman... Brad is easyer to say. iv even been called Bradders on a few occasions and at work most of the other Cadet Nurses call me Baz. ;D
so really Aximill being called Ax is quite normal ::)
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Need I mention Es/Est/Estel/Este/Esty as opposed to Estelore?
*chuckle*
And then there is the confusion between me and the two Estrids, and Escafil Device, and a few others.
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It's human nature to be impatient, we don't want to have to say your entire name, a simple single syllobic sound that gets your attention. That's what humans try to attain. They have long drawn out names so that they can be told apart from others, but really, if someone was named "ugh" That'd be humanity's dream person.
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i suppose plus there are nicknames and petnames
Aximili's father calls him Kala right so who knows.
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if someone was named "ugh" That'd be humanity's dream person.
LOL I know what I want to call my kid if I ever have one... (j/k)
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To Summarise:
His name is abbreviated because it is easy and people like nicknames.
Weathel discusses the major problem of Andalite communication: lacking any concept of verbal communication until they discoverd Z space flight, they wouldn't communicate with thoughts in sentences (like i am thinking in words right now) but they would send pictures and lacking sounds totally wouldn't have things like shrom which sh-r-oo-m as they don't have a voiced language. Since names have meanings for example 'Claire means light' Ursula means bear like and Samira means friend, muhammad means praise... arabic names tend to have pretty obvious meanings because arabs tend to have arabic names whilst Claire and Ursula are separated from their original meanings because we don't speak old french or latin. Likewise in the Ellimist chronicles the children are called things like Star, Tree and Grass... But later andalites are called aximili and elfangor (names that presumably mean things like 'tree' 'rock' etc) but because Andalites have no spoken language there should be no language drift into names being divorced of their original meanings.
Andalite script is presumably pure hieroglyph/chinese minus the abjad aspect of hieroglyphs and the vocalised elements of chinese that is to say symbols represent objects rather than symbols represent sounds.
Cool thought: the Andalite names and words like Elfangor or nothlit or shrom are Ketran (Ellimist's) words for 'whatever elfangor means' or 'trapped' or 'tail blade' that andalites somehow remember through genetic memory, hence Andalite linguistics are Ketran linguistics.
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i always pronounced it ax-i-mill-E , h-or-k-ba-jer ,tax-on , and-a-light(andalite), e-lee-mist (elimist) ch-ee and i pronounced elfangor how ever they did on the show
i pronounced tobias as tobis at first t'ill my friend read animorphs and corrected me.
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lol, I pronounced Tobias To bos. I don't know why, I just did.
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That's like me ripping on Brits for being all "'Ello guvna! Chip chip cheerio! Oim a li'l chimney-sweep Oi am!" Maybe it's the lack of teeth?
That was fun to read out loud! Thanks!
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The last two have the disadvantage of not actually appearing in cannon. ;)
You mean canon.
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i suppose plus there are nicknames and petnames
Aximili's father calls him Kala right so who knows.
I thought Noorlin used Kala as a suffix of endearment, as in "Aximili-kala".
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I used to pronounce Tobias as "Toe-bus", but now I know that the rest of the English-speaking world pronounces this very common boy's name as "Toe-bye-us".
According to http://web.archive.org/web/20071214221436/http://www.scholastic.com/kaapplegate/speaks2.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214221436/http://www.scholastic.com/kaapplegate/speaks2.htm), the official pronunciations of certain Animorphs words are: Hork-buh-JEER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hork-Bajir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hork-Bajir)), Visser/kisser (short "i"), Toe-BYE-us, ELF-un-gore Sir-RIN-ee-ul Sham-TOOL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul)), Ket Hal-PEK, and AN-duh-lite. Other words should be easy to figure out.
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Not able to read through the whole thread at this time; but I wanted to put my two cents in anyway.
Just because Andalites don't have mouths, doesn't mean that they can't associate sounds with words. "Shorm", as a best example, could be thought of as an onomatopoeia for the sound of a tailblade whipping through the air. I'm not entirely sure yet about the other Andalite words, but I'll keep pondering...
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Lol you're two years too late to berate him for it :P
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I said his name wrong until I watched the TV show
for some reason I kept thinking it was "Ax-mealy" b/c I'm dyslexic or something idk
the fact that I needed the TV show to correct me made me sort of mad
b/c there was a lot I wanted to correct on the TV show
same here. It's like the one thing that the tv show got right.
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I probably said this somewhere else, but I alternate between "Acks-ZIM-il-lee" and "Acks-im-ILL-ee". K.A.A. never addressed Ax's name's pronunciation.
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I happened upon this by chance, I really like this thread.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that was bothered by the logic of Andalite naming and telepathy in the book.
One name I can think of off the top of my head. Coaldwin, that doctor guy that was all *ZOMG THEY HAVE NO TAIL*. The name looks aesthetically pleasing. I may even consider naming my kid that if that didn't make me feel ridiculously insane.
The problem is, there is no logical reason for an Andalite name to contain a "C." Hard C sounds can be described with the letter "K." Soft C sounds can be described with the letter "S."
My logic could be off, I'm not sure. I'm going to go back through this thread later and re-read it because I'm just happy I'm not the only one that thinks about this stuff, lol.
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As for Ax's name, when I was young reading the books (they were a BIG thing in my group of friends) we always pronounced it Axe-ih-mill-EYE.
A single one of our friends pronounced it "Ax-ih-MILL-ee." The rest of us were like "ew, why would you pronounce it that way? It sounds ugly obviously it was meant to be the other way."
Then the TV show came out. (Even though technically it was Ax-IH-mill-ee, he was still the closest.)
.... :huh:
Well color me surprised and wrong. Kudos to the kid that stood his ground when we all called him silly, lol.
For the longest time hearing Ax say his full name on the show still really bothered me, it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Though, had I thought it through...according to the logic at the top of my post, Ax-ih-mill-ee, is the only way it could be pronounced, because we could only reason that all the i's in his name have to sound exactly the same. Andalite script would have to differentiate between sounds, and that would translate into English as different phonetic symbols, because we have the correct phonetic symbols to differentiate different sounds in his name.
Wait...but then his name would be "Ax-ih-mill-ih"...
I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead. (Technically I'm behind but maybe they won't notice...)
(I have to point out something...I think this makes me a little nostalgic for my own generation. In our youth, we debated phonetics and linguistics.
Now, they debate between Team Creepy Stalker Dude and Team Just Wont Give Up Already.
:-\
I really am getting old. I never though I'd be one of those "These dern' kids" types)
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It's a shame he didn't choose a female as his human morph because then the Animorphs could call him by the last three syllables of his name instead of the first syllable. Then we'd have 3 males and 3 females in the team whenever they were all human. Jake, Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie and Emily.
On an unrelated note I always found it slightly strange that they never shortened Tobias's name. 3 syllables isn't long or anything, and 'Toby' was eventually taken by the one Hork-Bajir prodigy, but I couldn't help but notice they've always called him that. Even Rachel. Speaking of which, I used to think her name was pronounced as Raquel for the longest time until I gave the TV series a watch. No offense to anyone named Raquel, but personally Ray-chel sounds so much softer on the ears :3
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It's a shame he didn't choose a female as his human morph because then the Animorphs could call him by the last three syllables of his name instead of the first syllable. Then we'd have 3 males and 3 females in the team whenever they were all human. Jake, Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie and Emily.
Now that you mention it, it does sound sorta like Emily. But Ax didn't exactly choose I guess. I think the morph just ended up male. But if he's female in human morph, then there's like gender switch and I guess it can get sorta confusing
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It's a shame he didn't choose a female as his human morph because then the Animorphs could call him by the last three syllables of his name instead of the first syllable. Then we'd have 3 males and 3 females in the team whenever they were all human. Jake, Marco, Tobias, Rachel, Cassie and Emily.
Now that you mention it, it does sound sorta like Emily. But Ax didn't exactly choose I guess. I think the morph just ended up male. But if he's female in human morph, then there's like gender switch and I guess it can get sorta confusing
I always thought his resemblance to the name "Emily" was a joke that could have been used in the series. I mean, after all, it's not like he knows the difference between male and female human names, and maybe he likes his name longer since Andalites naturally have names that are three thousand syllables long.
Although I do think he chose to be male, let me pull out book 4:
""I chose to be-be-be-be-be male." He stopped suddenly, his eyes wide."
I give kudos to KA and the other writers being consistent with Ax's character playing with mouth sounds. I think I'd be ridiculously annoyed trying to keep that in for the whole series.
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Yeah, he did say she chooses to be male, but that was sorta after he morphs. So maybe he was already male, then he also chooses to be male.
I guess it is possible that he had a choice and when he said he chooses to be male, he also morphs into the male version of the morph :huh:
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When I started to read the books I read them in German so I always pronounced it typically German: Ux-e-me-lee (I hope you know how I mean it), when I start reading them in English I realized that I always pronounced it wrong.
And Tobias: I also pronounced it like it's pronounced in germany: To-bee-us.
I also wondered why no one ever shortend his name, because I know about five Tobias' and none of them is ever called Tobias, there are always called 'To-be'
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Well, maybe no one ever called Tobias Toby because he was called that by bullies. Also, maybe it's because K. A. Applegate had the idea to introduce a character named Toby, so she didn't shorten Tobias to avoid confusion
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Ax is a nickname. You could have a friend named Bob, but call his shredder, because he's awesome on a guitar. Ax is a short easy to say thing and he pretty much has an ax on his tail
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if you can say Maximilian you can say Aximili because well M aximili an
...Dude, you just totally blew my mind. No sarcasm. Can't believe they named him Phil instead of that when they brought him to school.
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Hey, that might be where Aximilli is from. Like Aldrea and Estrid are both english names.
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if you can say Maximilian you can say Aximili because well M aximili an
...Dude, you just totally blew my mind. No sarcasm. Can't believe they named him Phil instead of that when they brought him to school.
They actually called him "Max" in the TV series.