Some people amuse themselves at inventing languages and scripts; that sport’s most famous player was of course Tolkien. And some avidly study whatever notes Tolkien left concerning his Elvish language family.

Tolkien invented at least three scripts: Sarati, an alphasyllabary; cirth, a full alphabet; and tengwar, used both as an alphasyllabary (in the Ring Verse) and as a full alphabet (on the West Gate of Moria). But in human history such scripts have been invented less often than syllabaries, in which no two of the symbols for ti ta ki ka are similar. (The alphabets listed are more numerous, but most of them are descended from the same Semitic ancestor and most of the alphasyllabaries from Brahmî.) So I wonder whether the T-linguists would be offended if one were to design a syllabary for Elvish.
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Latin ecce, Italian ecco, Russian vot, French voilà, Esperanto jen — the nearest English equivalent I can think of is lo!, which is not in most bilingual dictionaries, for the same reason English-speakers know the word voilà. So how do I look up such a word in my English-Spanish dictionary?

Comments are always open: can you add to (or correct) the list?

Got an idea just now that might sell a few copies: Monty Python Annotated for Americans, containing answers to such questions as “What dialect is Palin doing in this bit?”

This thought was prompted by watching My Fair Lady. In the first scene where Higgins shows his phonetic jottings to Eliza, I obviously had to pause, and found that I could read it no better than she could; most of the characters look like International Phonetic Alphabet, but if so they’re a nonsensical jumble – and what’s the alveolar click doing in Covent Garden? “Ha!” my housemate snorts. “They couldn’t find anyone who could put together the real thing?” They rarely do, of course, but this was a major production. . . Later I learn that it’s not IPA but an older scheme, the Visible Speech of A.M.Bell.

Adventures of Mr Coo, a wacky bit of Flash animation from Basque-land. (Cited by JoAnne Schmitz.)

At Languagehat, some interesting brief remarks on the Belgian aristocracy’s efforts to seem less alien to Flanders.

Warren Meyer on why libertarians write blogs (cited by Arnold Kling)

I called a locksmith today and he said he recognized my voice’s “heavy tone” from a previous job. I wonder whether that’s a translation of a Chinese idiom. Perhaps my voice was gravelly, as it sometimes is in the early morning.

I sing baritone, and that word comes from Greek bary- ‘heavy’, though you’d think the metaphor would apply better to a basso profondo.

Ken MacLeod‘s recent novel Newton’s Wake (whose title I’m not sure I understand) has a character say:

What we do is you tell us some more about Eurydice and its beautiful people, and then you get tired and emotional, and then we take you home.

tired and emotional is wink-wink euphemism for drunk, popularized (I gather) by Private Eye. How many Americans, I thought, will be baffled?

Date: 13 Apr 2005 15:37:12 -0000
To: bronto@pobox.com
Subject: QUERIDO MIO
From: JAMES UDO INIEKPO

Estimado Sr.

Les saludos, soy JAMES UDO INIEKPO un director con el departamento de los recursos del petróleo y de la secretaria del agrupacion de revisión de contrato (CRP) de los Corporacion National Nigeriana de Petroleo (NNPC).

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