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tenpo toki (story idea)

Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2013 5:18 am
by janAetherStar
(I've put this in misc rather than musi as it is not directly related to toki pona, just language in general.)

So, I've thought out a bit of a story line, thought I'd share it.
(Story takes place someime in the future.) Large languages have been taking over and wiping out many smaller ones that do not get passed down. Shortly following, a legion of conlangers are arising to take their place with languages of their own. Interest in language is like a new market, and almost all the world's population is at least bilingual. People are slowly coming to terms with how many languages they've lost in 'the downfall'. About 25 years pass. During this time, a solar flare strikes Earth, disabling a lot of communication between electronic devices. The world is no longer so physically 'unified', and people grow into their own colonies, still growing a multitude of dialects and linguistic communication. Human minds proceed to expand at a rapid rate as more people invent deeper meanings and new concepts and have incredible linguistic discoveries. There's even a whole university in (insert country name here, Nova/Neo-Something maybe?) where people can study linguistics intensively, if they can get there. One person, however, after studying language for so long, turns to his own knowledge and the history of his people and discovers that there may be another way amidst this 'sound fever'. He deducts, using long-forgotten co-ordinates, the location of a stone that could assist humans in the most powerful revelation ever. He is a strong believer in an ability slowly growing amidst the population - the innate ability of telepathy, linked minds. Around five years pass, maybe ten, and a group of students set out to discover the stone where the man failed.

Sorry if it sounds kind of unrealistic or cheesy in places. Still, if enough people jumped on the bandwagon, the bit with the 'legion of conlangers' could happen, maybe... Just, maybe.

Re: tenpo toki (story idea)

Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 2:58 pm
by jan_Pusa
Hmm... you know, I had something similar in my head: it's the 23rd century, and New Earth is a result of a colonization/linguistics experiment. Instead of speaking the tongues of their ancestors, they were taught to speak conlangs.

Re: tenpo toki (story idea)

Posted: Tue Oct 15, 2013 1:00 am
by janAetherStar
I also had another idea before this one, one set on a different planet, where sound has become a market. People trap words very precisely in bubbles from these blue-ish bubble gun things, and after the light enters the bubble film it refracts violently around the sound waves, creating sort of colour streams. Inhaled, you can memorize any concept fast as you can literally 'absorb' it. It's a big market, and language is the basis of the world. (To be honest, I made this world so I could inhabit it with 'speakers' of the languages I was learning and keep them distinguished easier.)

I wonder if we can get an ideas list going...