Talk:Skiff/Mad

Intuitive Leaps
I figure that since there isn't yet any kind of Rosetta Stone for the Skifandrian language, we might as well have a place to record any leaps of logic that might help crack the code. (It's a long shot, aye, but why not? Maybe there's a Michael Ventris buried somewhere in the fan base.)

Some preliminary suggestions:

Phil and Kaja seem not to have used a substitution cipher for Skiff or Geisterspeak -- the sentences flow too easily off the tongue for that. If I were to hazard a guess, the languages were constructed from a base of knowledge about how languages grow and evolve in the real world. I conjecture that there is a 'pattern language from which Skiff and Geisterspeak were both built using some kind of linguistics. (A common pattern language would help explain the similarities between them; even if they're not the same languages, they would be related to each other in the same way that modern romance languages are related.)

Going out on yet another limb, I'm going to say that English is the pattern language. Possibly others may have been involved, but it's as good a guess as any I have, since Phil and Kaja are fluent in English.

An example of a (possible) transition from English to Skiff:

You're talking in Skiff?

You're talkin' in Skiff?

You're talkin' Skiff?

Ye're talkin' Skiff?

Yer talkin' Skiff?

Zer talkin' Skiff?

Zur talkin' Skiff?

Zur balkin' Skiff?

Zur balken' Skiff?

Zur baken' Skiff?

Zur baken Skiff? <--

(Starting with broken English -- not as good a fit)

Me talking Skiff!

Mor talking Skiff!

Mor [baken] Skiff! (See above for derivation of 'baken' from 'talking')

Mor baken Skiff! <--

As for "D'Jorok'ku Skifandias von?", I have only the vague suspicion that the work 'Skifandias' is derived in the following way:

Skifandrian (seems to be the now-standard English way to denote something from Skifander)

Skifandrias

Skifandias <--

As such, my tentative translation of the sentence is: "Are you Skifandrian?" That isn't completely satisfactory, though, since 'Jorok' in "D'Jorok'ku" is capitalized, and so suggests a proper noun. The apostrophes are also suggestive of a contraction, which makes it hard to think of what's being left out.

138.78.100.159 20:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)Interested Lurker