made-up languages

[DamaNegra]

I believe there was already a thread about this topic, but I needed to ask. I'm writing a fantasy novel that involves a made-up language. My question is, how much of it to use? Will it be enough to include a translation of everything that's said?

[Elijah Phoenix]

How do you say "slippery slope" in your made up language?


Only twins do that stuff.

[FOXTALE]

I'm writing a fantasy novel that involves a made-up language. My question is, how much of it to use? Will it be enough to include a translation of everything that's said?== Do some research on Klingon. From the Star Trek series. They actually followed rules as to the development of language.

[Saanen]

Unless you're something of a linguist, be cautious about using a made-up language in your book. It can look/sound so corny, and the rules of English are not an across-the-board set of rules for all languages. If you're just using a few words/phrases here and there, you can probably get away with it, though.

[Andrew Jameson]

Seconded. If your POV character understands Elvish, then the character can provide a translation to the reader:

"Yo, dog," said the elf. He gave the traditional raise-the-roof greeting and switched to Elvish. "Ready to rock the house?"

If your POV character *doesn't* understand Elvish, then your reader shouldn't either:

"Yo, dog," said the elf. He pumped his hands up-and-down, open-palm, and added a stream of incomprehensible syllables. It sounded like a question.

If you're enamored of creating your own language, however, then give it a shot. I think moderation is the key, though: first because of the cornines factor, and second because hardly anyone is actually going to *read* a dozen lines of gibberish.

[DamaNegra]

Creating the language is not a problem, at least for me. In fact, english isn't even my language, I'm spanish speaking and I can also speak french plus I know the basics for italian and japanese, so yeah, I know about the structure of different languages.

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.

[Bufty]

How could it be other than boring if it isn't understood?

[Aconite]

Creating the language is not a problem, at least for me. In fact, english isn't even my language, I'm spanish speaking and I can also speak french plus I know the basics for italian and japanese, so yeah, I know about the structure of different languages.
This does not, however, give you the kind of linguistic experience you'd need to create your own language. For one thing, three of those languages are Romance languages, and have the same basic structure. I am not a linguist, but I know some linguists and they all wince when someone says, "Oh, I can create a language, no problem."

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Simlanoggle ahle hfoolsmeig g'smoora,?
hoosn...aoslsmeimnng-soolawi ague Wlsiixk,woosks xos]aOoosl! ?Ilvssok goells? .maKlsoof 8emm.

[Andrew Jameson]

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.Yes. Yes, it would.

[Nateskate]

It depends on your fantasy. But as far as preference, I prefer thoughts to flow, which means sparse use of things that need to be defined.

Some people like to throw in extra jargon for reality sake, but none of what we do is real. So, if they call a cup "a cup" on Zorg, no one is going to get upset. "He poured a cup of grog" is not going to destroy a novel,

In my opinion, the more, "He vrued a stenit of grog" the more readers you'd lose. "Huh, this is just too complex." Runs to appendix- stenit...where is stenit...he didn't leave a translation of stenit! Bah!"

It's like art, the more abstract, perhaps a certain audience will like it, but the smaller the audience.

When people go to foriegn places, they like a blend of familiar with their exotic.

[Elijah Phoenix]

Go ahead. Write yourself out of a market. Marketability is the word I keep hearing out of New York. Will it sell? Money money money.

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

[Nateskate]

Go ahead. Write yourself out of a market. Marketability is the word I keep hearing out of New York. Will it sell? Money money money.

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

Art can be recognized and some people put art above everything else, but the question of what will make it in the marketplace is publisher's primary consideration. Tolkien made up entire languages and succeeded because there was a great story in between that was told in the common tongue. And for those who dig deeper, they can look up the meaning of various names in the story, because in general, most have a meaning.

[Elijah Phoenix]

Tolkin wrote the hobbit trilogy when people were half *** literate.

Harry Potter is a strange phenom tho. i think the media had more to do with the surge of Potter. Kind of like the cabbage patch doll phenom. Of course, I personally have never met or talked to someone who read Harry Potter. I think the success of Harry is powered by British sales. Europe sales.

Case in point. Watch this new Usher movie. It will be number one at the box office and make a hundred million. Why? because he is a rapper and it's about a deejay turned bodyguard and inter racial relationships. I can quarantee you that it will do ten times what , say, "The Notebook" did in theatres.

[Elijah Phoenix]

And furthermore, America has been in a rapid state of moral and intellectual decline for the past 15 years. Amazing, considering the information age and all.

I watch "Jaywalking" and shows like "Street smarts" and get physically sick when I see teachers and college students with the IQ of a chimp.

[Peggy]

I personally don't like to see many made up words, simply because they take me out of the story. Where they can be an asset is if they are used to describe items or concepts unique to your world. So I don't think it makes sense to use a made up word for a cup, for example, but it would be appropriate to use new words for a unique weapon or the concept of "honor before family" or anything else we don't have a word for in English.

The Harry Potter books are a good example of using foreign words: "muggle" and "quidditch" are unique to Rowling's universe.

(Elijah, I'm surprised that you have never met anyone who has read a Harry Potter book. Most people I know have read at least one of the books, and kids (and their parents) were lined up out the door of my local Barnes and Noble when the last volume was released.)

[Torgo]

Elijah - you'll be sorry to hear that not only do I manage a slushpile for a publishing company, I also greatly enjoy people 'talking trash into microphones.' Amazingly, the slushpile I manage is completely devoid of 'great stories'. Perhaps I'm just unlucky, or perhaps I have abysmal judgement. Who can say.

Ah well - time to put on my Mos Def CDs and plot more vile betrayals of the reading public...

[veinglory]

LOL

Funny how every generation says the next is sliding into a terrible decline.

My 2c is throw in the few words, names etc but please translate the real content.

[Elijah Phoenix]

I'd fight but I'm stressed out right now. Lucky you.

I don't think that everybody is stupid because there is a market comprised of cerebral readers. Like 1 or 2% of the population. Some people do enjoy a clever movie.
This is the video game generation. They want cheap thrills.
Let's see, what movies are big money makers.
"Good girls gone wild" thats the one where young girls expose their breasts.
"College girls gone wild" thats the one where girls expose their breasts.

What books are hot?
Well, there's "I should be dead by now" by Dennis Rodman. He's the guy that also wrote "Bad as i wanna be". I think there was a movie by same name.

Theres "Get rich or die tryin" by some dude named .50 cents. He makes records but doesn't sing or play an instrument.

Your going a wonderful job with that slush pile girl. I wonder why you can't find a great story?

I'm gonna put in my temptations tape and pop in "To kill a mockingbird" in my vcr. Enjoy Mos Def ???? and The Paris Hilton sex tape. Ah, the shortcut to fame.

[DamaNegra]

LOL, I believe MY generation is going to the dumps, along with the next generation (and I'm not that old).

So yeah, what I was thinking about doing was just throw in some sentences in a strange language and then have someone in the story translate or make the translation myself in the same place so the reader won't be confused.

Personally, I enjoy watching made-up languages or foreign languages and try and decipher what it means by using what I already know, I've learned some german words that way.

Anyway, knowing two and a half romance languages is pretty useful when making up one, because then I can see how latin evolved through the ages. It is really interesting, and can account for the evolution of my own language. And I can always learn a non-romance tongue, I'm still young http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Sage]

What I personally do, DamaNegra, is use words that would not obviously translate into English (or whatever the POV character's language is), which are usually cultural in nature. Because language is thematically important to my non-NaNo WIP, I felt it was important that these were not translated (plus often they would be really awkward to mention them casually w/ a full use of their meaning).

The newer novel is in the same world, but my MC is from that world, so she knows her language & the one that is usually used in the novel. Once again, I kept the words that would be too awkward to translate, even though she is often exposed to people speaking totally in that other language. Unlike the MC from the other novel, she is translating everything so its like Andrew Jameson suggested w/ elvish. In the other one my characters are dependent on a spell that translates everything (that is simply translatable).

Of course, I haven't been published yet, & this is just what happens to work for me.

[Torgo]

Of course, Elijah dear, I understand if you're stressed. You get better and stick it to those punk kids! With their hula hoops and their rock'n'roll and their horseless dragsters! Why, in my day we used to step out of the cave at five sharp every morning to kill us a stegosaur for breakfast. Of course, in those days, it wasn't called five o' clock, because we didn't have clocks - didn't need them! We got up when we had to, because we had gumption, not like these kids today, with their tuneless music and their smart mouths and Brylcreem. Then we'd swing down to the Parthenon and listen to Orpheus play intellectual music on his lyre, and perhaps take in a bit of Plautus at the theatre. If you ask me it all went wrong when those scruffy Beetles started all that heathen Mersey music, or maybe it was that awful Elvish Parsley and his suggestive hip movements.
Slush piles are worse now, you know, because what with this Interweb and the Hollywood Liberal Conspiracy and the IQ-destroying fluoride in Cheerios, nobody can write worth a damn. Back in my day unsolicited manuscripts came in chipped on slivers of marble - Homer, Voltaire and the Beowulf poet all at once some days, and we'd have to turn down Dumas because he was too commercial, you know, all dumb thrills and padding. And don't get me started on that big lunk Gilgamesh. Literature! Don't talk to me about literature!

[Jamesaritchie]

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

Well, no on every count. Publishers didn't merge because they were going broke, they merged because they were making money and someone with a lot more money thought they were a good investment and literally bought as many publishers as possible. Publishers didn't say to each other, "Do you want to merge." In each case, one man, or one group, with billions of dollars, moved in and bought them up precisely because they were making money. The publishers had no say in the matter. Anything is for sale, if you have enough money to buy it.

And talent is sought after just as much as it ever was. Maybe more so. But talent can really only be defined by whether or not large numbers of people think something is worth reading, listening to, or viewing. If no one wants to read it, listen to it, or watch it, it isn't talent, it's just bad.

And it's easy to tell you've never actually seen a slush pile, let alone read thorugh one. I've read slush piles, or tried to, and believe me, what's in them is as far from great stories as it's possible to get. There are almost no good stories in them, let alone great ones. About 70% of what's in slush piles would make a saint start drinking, and another 20%, while not horrible, is still pretty bad. Bad enough it stands zero chance of ever selling. It simply isn't any good. If you're really, truly lucky, about 1% of what lands in slush piles even approaches good, and finding something that's actually great in a slush pile is as rare as finding chocolate pudding in a, uh, crap factory. And about as easy.

Thinking slush piles are full of great stories really is like thinking your commode is full of oversize Hershey Kisses.

And great flicks don't bomb because the audience is stupid, they bomb because the flick wasn't so great after all.

[Euan H.]

And furthermore, America has been in a rapid state of moral and intellectual decline for the past 15 years.

Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.
- Gustave Flaubert

[Jamesaritchie]

Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.
- Gustave Flaubert



Well, my wife says I''ve been in a state of intellectual decline since the day we were married, and as often as she has to correct me on things I used to know, she's probably right. I don't have the energy it takes for rapid moral decline, so I'm safe there.

[Elijah Phoenix]

Puh-leeeeze!!! Nowadays a singer can't sell a record because the only thing selling is spit into a mic.

"Artists" make a word rhyme to earn the title artist.

Musicans who train for years to "learn" music, can't make a buck because everything is electronic.

Performers LIP SYNC because they are packaged and their voice is electronically fixed.

MTV is a instrument of lunacy. Video's are the attraction, rather than the music. Who has the most nudity or who has the most HO'S shaking their fat *** gets the award for best video.

Girls gone wild sells millions of copies. these are young girls baring their breasts and participating in lewd PUBLIC behavior.

I could go on and on but if you're in a state of denial, well............

Writers can't make sales because the population is dumb as a rock. they don't vote, don't read books, go to movies for the sex,violence and special FX, a good story goes right over their heads.

Who's going to buy the ticket to a historically signifigant movie, a cerebral story, buy a book with a clever plot? THE GOOD GIRLS GONE WILD! THE RAPPERS WITH THE GOLD CHAINS AND MILLION DOLLAR MANSIONS WITH FIVE SUV'S IN THE DRIVEWAY , BUT NOT A BOOK IN THE HOUSE. THE ONLY MOVIE THEY LIKE IS SCARFACE=SEX,DRUGS,VIOLENCE,NUDITY.

Everybody wants to be one of those "artists" so they can get gold chains to show everybody they have money. A big house to hold their stripper pole and video games, suv's to go out lookin for ho's with.

I was at my friends house the other day. We were sitting there watching a nice movie called "Second hand lions". Her son came in and watched about five minutes of it because his mom said it was a good flick. He got up and put on his headphones and played with the gameboy. enuf said.

[Jamesaritchie]

I'd fight but I'm stressed out right now. Lucky you.

I don't think that everybody is stupid because there is a market comprised of cerebral readers. Like 1 or 2% of the population. Some people do enjoy a clever movie.
This is the video game generation. They want cheap thrills.
Let's see, what movies are big money makers.
"Good girls gone wild" thats the one where young girls expose their breasts.
"College girls gone wild" thats the one where girls expose their breasts.

What books are hot?
Well, there's "I should be dead by now" by Dennis Rodman. He's the guy that also wrote "Bad as i wanna be". I think there was a movie by same name.

Theres "Get rich or die tryin" by some dude named .50 cents. He makes records but doesn't sing or play an instrument.

Your going a wonderful job with that slush pile girl. I wonder why you can't find a great story?

I'm gonna put in my temptations tape and pop in "To kill a mockingbird" in my vcr. Enjoy Mos Def ???? and The Paris Hilton sex tape. Ah, the shortcut to fame.

No, you just think 98% of the poulation, all us unwashed, Uncerebral readers who actually enjoy much of what's on the bestseller list are stupid. Hey, I love classic novels. I think they're wonderful, and I've probably read as many of them as anyone. If there's a great writer from Shakespeare to Hemingway I haven't read at least in part, I can't imagine who it might be off the top of my head.

But I thinking you're living in your imagination. The good old days were no different than today. In his day, Shakespeare was considered a hack who wrote for the masses and money, and so was Charles Dickens.

And the great, classical writers of tomorrow are alive and well and publishing books today. And just like throughout history, teh naysayser are protesting that nothing good is being written today, and that talent isn;t being sought. Rubbish. Poppycock.

As for rap, I don't like it either, but that in no way means it doesn't take a great deal of talent to do it well. How well can you rap? If it takes no talent, you should be wonderful at it. We all should. But I sure can't do it well.

What books are hot? Many, many books are hot. So what if Dennis Rodman has a book many want to read. Do you honestly believe he's the only writer out there? You are aware that bookstores carry more than one book, right? Why, last time I was in a bookstore, it had at least seven or eight books.

And, ignorance of history again, in every other period in history where books were published, there were the Dennis Rodmans who attracted the interest of some members of the reading public. What, you think teh few classic still being read today were the only books published in past centuries? Do you even believe for a single second that a majority of those classics were read and celebrated by the intellectual, cerebral 1-2% of the population at the time? If you do, you'd be dead wrong. Many of them were considered pure junk by the pseudo-cerebral readers of the time, just as pseudo-intellectuals today call writers such as Stephen King and Ray Bradbury hacks.

As for "Girls Gone Wild," I have some startling news for you. Now, you may not believe this, but some girls have always been wild. And some guys have always liked wild girls. I remember being kind of fond of wild girls in my youth, now that I think about it. During the civil war, D.C. had more houses of prostitution than any modern city has, and these houses were filled with the influential bigwigs of the day. During the Revolutionary War, there were often so many prostitutes following the troops around that they got in the way of battles.

As for a video game generation, who ever told you that any generation, at any time in history, was made up of people who were cerebral and liked to read? That's another case of the good old days that never existed. The same people playing video games today are, by and large, the same people who would have been doing things other than reading a hundred years ago. In fact, in the "good old days" of cerebral writers and readers, when the great works of literature were being written, a large majority of people couldn't read at all. If they'd had video games, about 90% of the population would have been sitting around reading them.

There's some truly great writing being published today. A lot of it. But in all honesty, when you start talking "cerebral readers," you aren't talking intelligence or talent, you're talking pretentiousness. It's the general, reading public that always has and always will decide what is and isn't talent, what is and isn't a great book. They read some great books, and they read some junk, and always have. But they know the difference between caviar and popcorn. In the end, they keep the caviar and trhow away the popcorn, and history proves that in teh long run, the general reading public is right far more often than "cerebral"readers. .

This all reminds me of a quotation I once read: "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer (106-43 BCE)

Seems there were naysayers even in the good old days. Hmm, I also seem to remember they had stage plays then that were remarkably like "Girls Gone Wild."

[Elijah Phoenix]

I couldn't disagree more if I tried.

We're going to hell in a hand basket. Admit it !

When i used the "terrible term" cerebral, I meant as in capable of rational thought. Not pretensiousness. And please, spare me the famous quotes. They're a dime a dozen and they don't have the sway you think they do.
I can pull others quotes out of my fanny.

[pepperlandgirl]

And stay off Elijah's lawn, damnit!

Kids today.

[My-Immortal]

I couldn't disagree more if I tried.

Then at this point you should stop writing because by writing anything more you're trying...aren't you?

Perhaps you should also stop picking fights. I mean, what's the point? Are you trying to convince everyone that you're right and to join you in your negative world? Why would you want that? If everyone believed as you did you wouldn't have anything to rant about - right?

Honestly, it sounds a bit like you're jealous of other people's successes.

Now, before you start slamming me and calling me names let me say that I actually think you have some valid points. I'm sure there are some talentless people in the world that have made tons of money and I'm also sure there are some very talented people that have struggled their entire lives and have never been recognized for it - and no, that's not really fair.

But where is it written that life is fair? It's not - and again, I'm surprised that you would want it to be fair...because it would seem that you are including yourself in that upper 1 to 2 percent of the literate poplulation - the upper crust of society that has brains, and taste, and talent...and if life were fair, then ALL of the population would be the same...just as equally good or equally bad as you are claiming to be.

It seems like you've written yourself into a dilemma there.

As for the actual topic of this thread - the use of a made-up language - I think the use of it is tricky. Putting too much in could turn some readers off, but a few phrases here and there (I've seen it more commonly done in fantasy novels), would probably not be the kiss of death. The main issue should be - does it advance the story? If it adds something, then fine, include a little of it, but if it's just a way for you to try and show off and pad the word count, then I'd say no, don't do it, or find another way to reveal the characters are speaking different languages.

Take care all -- and good luck with your writing endeavors -- :)

[Euan H.]

And please, spare me the famous quotes. They're a dime a dozen and they don't have the sway you think they do.
I can pull others quotes out of my fanny.
"There is nothing worse than aggresive stupidity"
--Goethe

[Andrew Jameson]

I couldn't disagree more if I tried.

We're going to hell in a hand basket. Admit it !

When i used the "terrible term" cerebral, I meant as in capable of rational thought. Not pretensiousness. And please, spare me the famous quotes. They're a dime a dozen and they don't have the sway you think they do.
I can pull others quotes out of my fanny.And all of this has what, exactly, to do with "made-up languages," which I believe is the topic of the thread?

Your views are fascinating and controversial, enough so that I would suggest that they are worthy of a thread dedicated to this topic exclusively.

[zornhau]

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.

Returning to the topic, and IMvHO:

As suggested upthread, if you're writing in tight 3rd or 1st, then the reader only "hears" what the POV hears, either gibberish or the words in translation.

Now, if the POV character is a linguist and the story is about languages, you still have to provide intepretation from his/her point of view, you can't just dump the words onto the page and make the reader do the work.

Just for example (ahem)
The jungle elf drew his dinosaur bone knife. "Karumba kurmba cafe latte starbucko!" he cried, advancing on me. More equally incomprehensible words followed.

I just stared at him, unable to move. There was something familiar about his grammer. I slapped my forehead. "My God! Smith, he's using High Ork Past Plu-subjuncto-imperative! Do you know what that means?"

Smith's gun belched. The elf looked at where his arm should have been then, fountaining blood, toppled into the lush greenery. "No, should I?" asked my companion.
You could have explained the rules of High Ork Plu-subjuncto-imperative earlier and then thrown the raw transcript at the reader. But there's a reason why even Tolkien didn't do things like that.

[Aconite]

Tolkin wrote the hobbit trilogy when people were half *** literate.
Uh huh. When many, many people never got more than a junior high education, and did manual labor for the rest of their lives. You mean the wealthy and the literati of the time, so be sure you take that into account when making comparisons.

JRRT was a scholar, and spent a lot of time crafting the languages, mythologies, and the histories in those books and basing them on what he studied, but before he wrote them down, the stories were ones he made up for his son out of the things he spent his days studying. He wasn't trying to make Art. You would probably be surprised to learn that the literati of the time were horrified at the obviously fantastical elements--like dragons--in his books. (Beowulf was considered by some of the same to be crap because of the monsters in it.)

Have you ever studied art history, or the history of any of the arts? Many of the works now considered masterpieces were considered populist crap in their time. Impressionism? Just sloppiness, without the rigor of true art. Shakespeare? A hack. Jazz? Don't get me started.

[Elijah Phoenix]

Everybody will want to read my new How-to book .

It's titled : "How to pick up Ho's and influence Pimps"

Any slushpile managers want to read the manuscript?

[Elijah Phoenix]

I'm not appreciated in my time either. 50 years from now, I'll be like another Nostradamus. You should be nice to me since I'm a underappreciated genius and all.

[Aconite]

I'm not appreciated in my time either. 50 years from now, I'll be like another Nostradamus. You should be nice to me since I'm a underappreciated genius and all.
There, there. We all know that feeling. No one--no one!--fully appreciates the fullness of our Art, ever.

But mine is more genius than yours. Neener.

[My-Immortal]

I'm not appreciated in my time either. 50 years from now, I'll be like another Nostradamus. You should be nice to me since I'm a underappreciated genius and all.

Don't forget the Golden Rule: Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

Show others kindness and you may find others treating you nicely.

Be rude and offensive, and that will probably be all you get in return.

Take care all - and good luck with all your writing endeavors...
:)

[Jamesaritchie]

I couldn't disagree more if I tried.

We're going to hell in a hand basket. Admit it !

When i used the "terrible term" cerebral, I meant as in capable of rational thought. Not pretensiousness. And please, spare me the famous quotes. They're a dime a dozen and they don't have the sway you think they do.
I can pull others quotes out of my fanny.

I know what you meant with the term "cerebral readers." But what you meant isn't what it really is. It is pretentioness.

As for famous quotations, they're actually much cheaper than a dime a dozen. I paid nothing for that one. And when they have no sway, it's merely because people are too stubborn to listen to anyone but themselves.

But, yes, I can see you are very adept at pulling things out of your fanny.

[reph]

But, yes, I can see you are very adept at pulling things out of your fanny.
Maybe with one exception . . .

[Elijah Phoenix]

I musta offended somebody cause I got a written warning. Wonder what it was i said that made people complain enough to turn me in to the fuzz.

Cerebral must a been the jawbreaker.