Tricky Linguistics...

Today, while doing some research for an essay on Macbeth, I discovered this website, an attempt to construct a non-human language, and I was hooked. This person is, beyond all reasonable doubt, my new hero.

I have always been fascinated by languages, and have been constructing them since I was a small child. Even before I began to formally ‘invent’ languages of my own, I would often speak (and still do, very often) in gibberish tongues that tended to annoy everyone around me, especially my parents, who couldn’t ever get a straight answer out of me. I would love to play at speaking foreign languages, from German and French to Sioux and Swahili. It tended to help that I was naturally adept at imitating accents.

My first attempt at creating a ‘language’ (if you could call it that) was a simple code-based set of symbols to replace the letters of the English alphabet. I didn’t work on any grammar, obviously, since I was... I don’t even remember how old.

I have always been obsessed with the fantasy genre, and it is from there that my fascination for constructed languages stemmed. Being born in the mid-90s, I watched The Lord of the Rings films long before I actually read the books, but was fascinated by the various languages presented in the films. This inspired me to create my own proper language. May, many half-heated attempts were made, from when I was about eight, till I was eleven. That was when I actually managed to create a language of any consequence. It was a hieroglyphic language, with hand-drawn symbols representing entire words. I didn’t create a proper grammatical structure, but I did compile a dictionary of about a hundred words. The language itself was crude, and created on whim, rather than on an evolutionary structure as real languages are, and, as I recently discovered while looking through my Class VI school notebooks (in which I had created the language during boring classes), contained words almost always ending in consonant sounds, particularly ‘-r’, which made the language terribly monotonous and tiring to speak. Here’s a sentence in the language (which never had a name): 
Denar raur duku masku dular!

('Give me more money!' Yes, some of those classes were so boring, we used to come up with gangster dialogue.)

When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I invented a script top be used in a particular nation in a fantasy land that I had been working on for about two years then (since November 5^th, 2006, to be precise). It was a rune script, created to be chiseled into wood or stone by the ancient settlers, which evolved into the lingua franca of the nation. I decided that I wanted to take this language seriously, and began to invent its words and grammar by translating texts from English. This proved to be extremely successful, and by the end of that school year, I had compiled a dictionary of 269 words. It was around this time that I began to read a lot more Tolkien, which inspired me to seriously consider working hard on my fantasy and its language. Unfortunately, school was starting to become a lot more serious at that point, and my dictionary remained stale at 269 words until very recently (which is ironic, considering this is definitely the most serious stage of my education till date). I had begun to work on my language again, but I will have to take a sabbatical from that area of my life for now.

I had bought a book sometime, called How Language Woks by David Crystal, which I plan to red intensely this summer. I will have to wait another month before I can actually begin to work on my language and my ‘world’, but that makes it all the more exciting. At least I have something to reward myself with after the dreaded board exams.

Maybe, after that, I’ll be able to share my world with you guys right here, on this blog. Fingers crossed!

Resolution...

It has just occurred to me that I have been on this earth for nearly two decades. Eighteen years- that's a long time. And although I have done and seen so much, it feels like I've simply wasted what is probably going to be the best period of my life, for until the end of this stage, I have been getting stronger, getting smarter, learning and learning more, being in a constant state of growth- both physical and mental. Live fast, love hard, die young- that has never made sense to me, and although it still doesn't quite resonate, I'm beginning to sympathise with what it stands for much more. It would honestly be much worthier to have a short, but productive, life, than to have a long one full of unfulfilled ambitions and dreams that cannot become reality because we have grown to weak and tired to work at them. To get out while the going's good and to be remembered for generations, or to keep on going well past your prime, like Michael Schumacher, until you disappear into nothingness and insignificance? I must admit, this is a terribly biased view, but one that has seen enough proof to not seem an impossible fate.

Of course, it remains to be seen if I will even live a life of significance, at all- one worth remembering. I had promised myself, long ago, too far back for me to care to remember, that I would leave a mark. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, thought the choice of actual profession would constantly chance, I would always reply "famous". No, not famous enough to be bombarded with paparazzi every time I stepped out to buy the groceries, just that right amount of fame for people to have heard my name, and for a few strangers to recognise me when I would be walking my dog, or dropping or picking up my kids from school. The right balance of fame and anonymity that would entitle me to the benefits of a good life without any of the cons of celebrity life.

Times change, of course, and with them, dreams. I am perfectly comfortable with the reality that I may not be famous (in fact, I'm almost thankful). But living a life of worth? Doing the things I want to? That can never change, for anybody. I swore to myself that, as soon as I could, I would leave this place that I've been living in since I was born. I don't have anything against it. I love Bangalore in all its splendour and quirkiness. I am particularly fond of Indian culture, particularly cuisine. I just can't imagine myself living here as an adult, or raising a family here. It just seems too been-there-done-that, barring, of course, places like Auroville. I swore to myself that I would get up and run away from the sedentary lifestyle that I'm living. The only problem is, I swore that I would be independent by the time I was eighteen. My eighteenth birthday has come and past, and it's almost concrete now that I'll be living this life for the next three or four years as well. Every plan that I make seems to be for "after school", and now, "after college". What next? "After I get a good job?" "After I make enough money?" I don't think I'll ever get out that way. I can almost see it: "We'll go to England after we get married, Sir Walten.", "The Amazon? We can't possibly spend the year in that horrid place!". And soon, I'll be just another old man complaining about the traffic, and how much of a workload the kids have at their regular city school.

I CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN. I will literally have to fight the urge to kill myself.  I have to get out of the goddamn loop. Everyone keeps telling me how dangerous that would be. How, if I did that, there would be absolutely no chance for me to get what I want. I don't resent their opinions, but they are their opinions. There's nothing wrong with what they think, but that doesn't mean I need to think in exactly the same way. "You'll be a dropout! Can you even imagine that?!" they say. Truth is, I can't. But what is wrong about being a dropout? No, I don't want to drop out, I wan't to be well educated. But, in recent years, I have come to realise that that is probably a weakness. The fact that I'd be shunned by most of society, is a fear, and fear isn't healthy. Neither is being a pawn of the whims of society, which, sadly, I am. What's even sadder, is that in the twenty-first century, not being a pawn of society means not being able to really live at all. Woodstock and hippies are long gone. Being independent from society means being worthless.

I could go on for ages, without really reaching any conclusions.
For now, all I can do is hope and pray that one day, I will be able to stand up and say "Fuck it". Until then, I am just going to try and make my life worth living.

I'm off now, to compile a list of all the things I want to do before I'm twenty.