The Trouble with Hork-Bajir

[voodooqueen126]

Language (on Earth) is the unique facility of humans. It is our ability to communicate about objects or occurrences that are not present. This is what distinguishes human languages from the call systems that nonhuman primates use in the wild. Call systems are sounds (calls) that nonhuman primates communicate with, however these calls are limited in number and are only produced when particular environmental are encountered.
Billions of dollars have been teaching captive chimpanzees and gorillas how to learn sign language. These captive, nonhuman primates do not have the capacity to generate spontaneous thoughts: for instances sign language chimpanzees will only ask for a banana if the caretaker is present holding a banana, they also lack the capacity to communicate about the past or future much less abstract thought.
This brings me to the Hork-Bajir: the conversation that Dak has with his friend in the HBC chronicles where he draws something and then tries to communicate the idea of the drawing representing his friend the other Hork-Bajir totally fails to understand the concept of art. In book 13 Ax states that that the Hork-Bajir language is limited I think he even said “less than 800 words” . This is fewer words than Koko the gorilla (who learnt 1000 and understands 2000 human words) was to taught to sign and not enough for a functioning society. I should also like to point that the Hork-Bajir had a concept of spirituality like Father Deep or Mother Sky but couldn’t understand the concept of art it borders on KASU since both art and spirituality are concepts that are not present. Also when Aldrea taught Dak maths and other abstract ideas, how would he have been able to articulate (i.e. make up a word) for those concepts? Remember that Andalites don’t have a spoken language, as they communicate in thought-speak. Now when humans want to develop a word for a new or exotic concept in whichever language they speak. They either use loanwords or calques:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loanwords
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque

Here several examples:
Traditional Thai culture lacked the concept of democracy, the Thai word for democracy is a direct loanword from English (my lecturer didn’t say what it was). Whilst the English word for democracy is a loanword from Greek as is the word anthropology, theology, geometry, philosophy, hypothesis amongst many others. As 29% of English words come from Latin, a few examples are as school (schola), language (lingua), liberty (libera), and the word Sociology is a combination of the Latin (socio) and the Greek ology (study).
 
If an English word has ‘Al’ at the beginning it is probably a loanword from Arabic, al is the definite article (i.e. the) in Arabic a few examples are: Chemistry/alchemy(al-kimiya, itself a loanword from Greek), algebra (meaning restoring hidden parts), alkali (to fry to roast as alkali derives from the ashes of plants), cotton (qutun), zero (sifr), lime and lemon (leemah and laymon) in a twist of irony the word alcohol is also an Arabic loanword. Notably many Arabic loanwords into English refer to maths/chemistry or things from the Middle East such as the number 0, cotton or limes.
Hebrew has a lot of words for religious concepts but few words for things like ‘crankshaft’ and being a liturgical language, very few swear words.
Swahili is a Bantu language, but 35% of its vocabulary is Arabic. Apparently words like cow or fire are Bantu words (basically simple nouns) but abstract nouns or concepts have an Arabic origin, for example Imoga is the word for unity which is apparently a corruption of the Arabic word al (the) and the bantu word for 1 (the Arabic word for 1 is wahid) so imoga is “the oneness” this is a funny case that is halfway between being a calque and a loanword.
A quick examples is the French word ‘gratteciel’ which is a calque of sky scraper.

Although informal and Modern Standard Arabic, often uses loanwords like Kombutyr for example, very formal Arabic under the direction of the Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo creates new words by altering old words: a computer calculates or computes so the correct word for computer is Hizaam (according to my old Arabic teacher) based on the Arabic word to calculate.
Apparently Japanese does this as well.
I think using calques or altering an existing word to create words for abstract concepts is much easier if the language is already complex. In the Arabic example they altered the word for calculate/compute and turned it into ‘a thing that calculates/computes’ though Semitic languages are especially good at this as they usually have tri-consonantal roots , which basically means if you want to  create a new word you alter an old word by adding other letters the words, for example the words university, mosque both derive from the word for ‘gathering of people’(according to my old Arabic teacher). This Wikipedia article explains Semitic roots better.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_root
Arguably the Arabic word for computer (a machine that computes/calculates) was only possible because Arabic had quite a lot of maths concepts already.
For these reasons it would be difficult to create a new in any primitive language, for example Aboriginal languages lack words for numbers and any  colours that aren’t dark or light, whilst many Papua New Guinean languages only have dark, light and red. The former is especially impressive considering Australian dirt is often red.
It would be even more difficult to translate concept words into Hork-Bajir:
Unless Aldrea had morphed something with a mouth (like Dak) and taught him the Galard words for ‘maths’ ‘geometry’ ‘writing’ etc, which she didn’t since he hadn’t seen her morph until she acquired the Chadoo. Aldrea (lacking a spoken language herself) would’ve had to have developed a whole new vocabulary for Dak in order to teach him any abstract concepts. This would have been very difficult as Hork-Bajir would’ve lacked words for numbers. After all, if Aboriginals don’t have number words such as 1 & 2, then Hork-Bajir certainly doesn’t. On Earth, to teach a Papuan or Aboriginal concepts (like maths), all you have to do is use English loanwords. Now Aldrea having no mouth, wouldn’t have been able to make sounds in order to give Dak the Andalite or Galard loanwords, we can only assume that the two of them developed the Hork-Bajir words for maths, writing and other concepts by using calques or altering pre-existing Hork-Bajir words. Perhaps the word for writing would be the Hork-Bajir word for scratches or marks, the word for addition might be the sound banging two stones together etc, the mind boggles at how difficult this all would’ve been. Conversely this would have been very interesting: a perfect study in how to invent a language from scratch and how language evolves…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language
There is a theory that words are based on the sounds they make but I don’t know what this theory is called but a basic example is the word “mau” which is cat in ancient Egyptian and Chinese 2 completely unrelated languages. The word mother starts with M or has M in it because it is the most basic sound for a baby to make.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa

[MoppingBear]

your problems arise only from a certain understanding of how thoughtspeak works.  it is very possible that it is direct conscious thought, so it is fairly likely that she was thinking the word in galard and transmitting it for him to say.  it is also possible that it was an ASU (ax screws up) due to not paying attention in school.

[voodooqueen126]

yeah but because most of Andalite history has been without Zero Space/contact with aliens or Galard. They wouldn't think in Galard, the most logical way for thoughtspeak to work in a mute species would be to transmit pictures or images. Of course the Andalites got their thoughtspeak from the Ellimist.

[ThinkAgain]

I believe that the 800 words line was a hyperbole as to the simplicity of the Hork-Bajir's language. It's simply not possible to form a civilization without a complex form of communication. Also, as was mentioned earlier, they had seemingly religious concepts, and religion is mostly based on thoughts of origin/creation, and what will happen in the future. As was mentioned with the apes, with a vocabulary of a couple thousand words, it does not do much if it is only based on instantaneous desires or needs. By having a concept of past, present and future, the Hork-Bajir prove that they are capable of more complex thoughts than "I am hungry, so I will ask for food." Having such thoughts facilitates the development of more advanced language.

Or, we could go the easy route, and say that when the Arn created the Hork-Bajir, they also gave them a simple language developed for that purpose. They specifically did not give them the capacity to advance the language, and just use the bare minimum of vocabulary given to them to live their lives simply.

[voodooqueen126]

I challenge  someone to invent a language of less than 800 words (which is basically what the Arn did when they created the Hork Bajir) and write the any of Dak's early chapters using 800 different words. I mean if a gorrilla has 1000-2000 words then the Hork-Bajir must've had more.

[wolfev]

aren't we constraining the complexity of their language with a human perception of language? Also, I assume there is body language involved

[Yarin]

There would have to be a body language to compansate something the andalite language chips don't pick up on

[Kharina]

yeah but because most of Andalite history has been without Zero Space/contact with aliens or Galard. They wouldn't think in Galard, the most logical way for thoughtspeak to work in a mute species would be to transmit pictures or images. Of course the Andalites got their thoughtspeak from the Ellimist.

I think in English (as well as pictures, thoughts and feelings), but if I want to I can concentrate on say, a French word.  If I had telepathy I imagine I'd be able to transmit that to someone else.  I imagine that although Andalites usually think in pictures/feelings, they can focus on a word of a language they've learned .e.g. Galard and transmit it to another. 

Points to whoever first mentioned the Galard thing, though- I hadn't thought of that, but it was probably how it happened. 

After all, Elfangor, despite also being an Andalite, was able to transmit words like 'Yeerk' 'Hork-Bajir', 'Kandrona', 'Taxxon' and 'Visser' to the Animorphs without needing to use any kind of loanword.  It wasn't like the Anis went along calling Yeerks slugs, Taxxons worms, Kandrona sun or whatever.  (Admittedly they did call the Yeerks slugs and the Taxxons worms, but not all the time!!)

[wolfev]

yet he didn't understand twinkie

[Jadedkoi]

It's said in the HBC that thought-speak operates on a higher capacity/frequency/ability than language and thus needs no translation.

[voodooqueen126]

my theory about andalite linguistics (that i thought up late last night) is that the morpheme/oral parts of their language (words like shrom, nothlit, kafit, aximili, aldrea, semitur, etc)  are actually Ketran words that they got from the ellimist through genetic memory. There is no other explanation other than possibly 'shrom is galard for tail blade' 'aximili is galard for whatever aximili means' and the andalites started calling their children and tail blades after galard words rather than traditional names like 'tree' 'stone' etc.

[Kharina]

I think maybe the Andalites, although they can communicate telepathically, needed words in order to have writing.  We know they do have writing as we've seen it on ships etc., and I imagine it would be there anyway, as it's pretty important to any civilisation.  Plus, as Andalites live quite far apart, it's likely they needed writing to communicate over long distances.

I know now they have high-tech solutions that allow them to communicate over long distances via thoughtspeech, but that won't have always been the case.  So words like shorm, Aximili etc. are probably not Galard, but actual Andalite words, that were made up for the purpose of writing them down, and then later became used in thought-speech instead of feelings/pictures.  After all, when trying to communicate an abstract concept, like philosophy or maths or something, it was probably easier to use the word as shorthand than to try and think a picture for it every time it was used.

[voodooqueen126]

Well Andalite writing is probably like Chinese, Mayan, Hieroglyphs or Cuneiform, in that symbols would represent objects rather than sounds.
On Earth pictograms slowly evolved into Phoenician and Hebrew alphabets, for example the letter Alef (A) is thought to be derived from the west semitic word for Ox and was represented by a pictogram of an ox's head. slowly instead of people inventing pictograms to represent objects they assigned sounds to pictograms  and then made the pictograms more abstract. Having a symbol represent a sound it is much easier to become literate and create abstract concepts that cannot easily be represented in pictograms. It should also be noted that  people born mute or deaf find chinese easier to learn because having never spoken or heard anything it is much more logical. So a species that is basically mute (the Andalites) would lean naturally towards pictograms/characters. Now as Kharina said this would make it difficult to represent abstract concepts like maths, geometry or democracy and would be another factor making Andalite technological advancement slower (along with being too strong and insufficiently warlike) and unlike humans they would have no reason to start assigning sounds to characters because they have no mouths! Appprently chinese isn't purely pictogram based, there are some characters that represent sounds, for instance when my flatmate wrote my name in chinese she didn't write the character for bear, but instead translated the sounds into their chinese equivalent ( i think it was a long time ago). However having said that, Chinese characters that represent abstract concepts for abstract concepts combine  characters... Friendship is an abstract pictogram of hand holding (sort of) protect contains a pictogram of a baby. I guess the Andalites must operate on similar principles but it would still be very difficult, perhaps the andalite character for best friend is a pictogram of a tail blade because a best friend you would trust even if they had their tail blade at your throat, but how does that explain the sounds 'sh-r-o-m' which humans make with their throats? is shrom the ketran word for tail blade? are all andalite words that aren't directly translated into english/thoughtspeak Ketran in origin?

( I can't provide sources for all of this but if you look on wikipedia long enough you should find it- i did this project ages ago)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BCalp


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieroglyphs

[wildweathel]

Well Andalite writing is probably like Chinese, Mayan, Hieroglyphs or Cuneiform, in that symbols would represent objects rather than sounds.

Most Chinese characters do indicate pronunciation: one half of the character (usually the left) suggests meaning, the other (usually the right) suggests pronunciation.  (Wikipedia)

instead of people inventing pictograms to represent objects they assigned sounds to pictograms  and then made the pictograms more abstract.

That's the "rebus principle:" using pictograms for their sound.  Abstraction is a result of trying to write quickly: compare Demotic Egyptian (written with a brush) to Hieroglyphic (carved or painted).  The two phenomena are somewhat separate: abstraction still occurs in writing logograms.

Having a symbol represent a sound it is much easier to become literate and create abstract concepts that cannot easily be represented in pictograms.

Well, maybe.  China and Japan have historically high literacy rates, while Latin America does not, despite Portuguese and Spanish having very phonetic alphabets.  I think education is a more important factor than the number of characters.  And, in my experience, Japanese is actually very easy to read, once the initial obstacle of acquiring characters (2-4 months of study; it's really not that bad) is overcome.

It should also be noted that people born mute or deaf find chinese easier to learn because having never spoken or heard anything it is much more logical.

Really?  I've never heard that, and I'm having a hard time imagining that it's true--written Chinese is a gestural language, similar to sign languages, but if that theory is true it should hold for any written language.

So a species that is basically mute (the Andalites) would lean naturally towards pictograms/characters.
Now as Kharina said this would make it difficult to represent abstract concepts like maths, geometry or democracy

I really have to disagree here.  Language is always abstract.  The spoken word "dog" isn't a pictogram, it's just an arbitrary set of sounds.  Chinese and Japanes represent some very abstract ideas--ones that can't be concisely expressed in English in one or two characters.

I guess the Andalites must operate on similar principles but it would still be very difficult, perhaps the andalite character for best friend is a pictogram of a tail blade

Or derives from one; that would make sense.  As you noted, "A" is an ox. 

The sounds 'sh-r-o-m' which humans make with their throats? is shrom the ketran word for tail blade? are all andalite words that aren't directly translated into english/thoughtspeak Ketran in origin?

And that is the million dollar question.  (It's "shorm" if I recall correctly, but you're point stands.)  Here's another one: what does ASL sound like?  Nothing!  It's a language made of non-vocal gestures.  Applegate states on several occasions that Andalites have at least some degree of sign language (though it may only survive as a military code--not a full language).  Furthermore, there is no reason to expect that even two species with vocal language will be able to speak each others languages.

My pet theory is that either:

The psychological mechanism behind shared delusions operated among the Animorphs to (quite subconsciously) create agreed-upon phonetic glosses for Andalite concepts (they're need something to say),

Or words like "shorm" are Andalite-created expressions (loaded in the translator-chip?) for the benefit of verbal species.  Andalites can certainly think about spoken language; thought-speak can transmit non-lingustic things like laughter; it makes sense that thought-speak can transmit an impression of sound as well.

Actually, in human written language, there's something called "ruby text," which pairs phonetic and logographic writing.  It's especially common in Japanese (which otherwise plays very loose with pronunciation), and is sometimes used for artistic effect--especially in comics.  I can see thought speech operating on many levels simultaneously.


Well, that touches on the "Andalite words" issue.  I still kinda want to write about Hork-Bajir language, small languages, displacement, etc.  Maybe after dinner.

[voodooqueen126]

didn't i say that chinese wasn't purely pictogram based? I thought it but may not have written it down.
the thing with the chinese is easier to learn for the deaf mute is that they don't have sounds (or so i heard once) it's not a deeply held belief of mine so i would be fine having it shot down in the face of evidence. It seemed logical with Andalites though that their language unlike hieroglyphs or chinese (which both have phonetic elements) would be purely pictogram based and they wouldn't have a reason to start assigning symbols to sounds.
As for the literacy is easier with alphabets/sounds rather than pictograms vs chinese and japanese literacy vs south american illiteracy... what i heard was that the japanese introduced chinese characters in the 10th century because to many people were becoming literate as it takes more effort to memorise thousands of characters than to learn a few letters and their almost randomly assigned sounds (A=ox) with less time devoted to memorisation it becomes easier to think of subversive or innovative ideas and this could result in the potential destruction of authoritarian systems... I suppose the south american thing is a result of lack of investment in education, so whilst chinese and japanese (despite their earlier desire to keep people illiterate) are now highly literate they do so with more effort and investment of time and money then would the south americans if they invested a little.
Quote from the Ellimist Chronicles that backs up my argument that voiced Andalite words (like shorm, kafit, nothlit, Andalite) are Ketran in origin.
They had no name for their race, no special gestural label for their species, only hand-wordsfor their tribe. As far as they were concerned, their planet was irrelevant, their species a useless abstraction. They were this tribe, this group, and no more. It was I who came up with the hand-word for their race and, for the bennefit  of my own word-oriened brain, a spoken name as well. I named them Andalites. this topic ended up being about linguistics in the animorphs series, a very interesting topic, i wish someone would bump it up.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LanguageEqualsThought