I would show you the Japanese version of this song, but I can’t find it in the text.
I did manage to drive the learning-the-other-language thing to the point where many could read the Drac when Davidge begins teaching the baby Zammis its line: "Naatha nu enta va. Zammis zea dos Jeriba estay va Shigan, asaam naa denvadar."
The story completed. I moved on to other things. A year later, however. I found myself writing the book-length sequel to "Enemy Mine," The Tomorrow Testament. Again I was faced with humans and Dracs rubbing elbows, and other things. This meant, of course, keeping consistent with the language used in "Enemy," as well as the tidbits of Drac customs and whatnot mentioned in the original story. The only problem was that I had none of this information. It was necessary to go though the original story, pull out the Drac language, and make up a vocabulary. Since the main structure of The Tomorrow Testament depends on the Drac bible, The Talman, a philosophical work by Dracs, about Dracs, and for Dracs, would be necessary to expand the vocabulary considerably, not to mention writing the bloody Drac bible.
The Tomorrow Testament done, I again got on with other things. Among them were several other alien languages, and I made a point of doing some planning and taking careful notes. Two real screw-ups, however, involved a tribe in my fantasy novel The God Box, whose only use of the verb "to be" is the word "be," as in "I be hungry," and "we be a family." If Aristotle had been born into this tribe, his famous statement of identity would be "A be A," although there would be no change in Shakespeare’s "To be or not to be."
This tribe also cannot pronounce L’s. Instead of substituting another sound, they simply leave it blank, showing this absence by the use of an apostrophe, as in 'o"ypop. In other words, Aristot’e be a phi’osopher. It was after writing a few pages of dialog using this tribe and its language quirks that I began losing my hair.
Time passed, dust gathered on my Nebula and Hugo for "Enemy Mine," and about seventeen years after writing the original story, I signed a contract to do another Drac book, The Last Enemy a work told from the point of view of a Drac. Out came the notes, and I had to face a very uncomfortable truth: my memory of being a meticulous note-keeper is somewhat at variance with reality. Back again through everything, picking out names and language. Perhaps now that I’ve got the vocabulary in a book (at the back of this volume) I won’t have to write it up again.
What I have learned from the above experiences, beside planning ahead and keeping accurate notes, is that alien languages, as well as alien names, need to be understood and used by humans, at least the alien languages that appear in print science fiction. Movies can get away with a bunch of squeaks, glottal stops, clicks, grunts, and whistles. The characters are usually so one-dimensional anyway, whatever they say isn’t important. In print, however, names need to be remembered, and the alien words that appear at least need to be gotten through, if not understood and remembered.
All too often, though, writers find themselves in need of an "alien-sounding" name for a character. The result often looks like a convention of consonants assaulted by a shotgun full of apostrophes, hyphens, and asterisks. I have seen grown men and women turn blue from asphyxiation as their tongues became knotted from trying to pronounce some of these efforts. For myself, if I can read my alien words and names out loud without stumbling, I figure the reader won’t have any trouble. For those of you who do have trouble, the character Uhe’s name is pronounced YOO-ee. The rest sound just like they’re spelled in Spanish, Japanese, and Urdu.
Let’s face it. None of this would have happened except for Mr. Meekle. He was a teacher of mine at the Harrisburg Academy in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania, when I was in the eighth grade. He taught a unique course designed to make one’s choice of a foreign language in high school easier. It went like this: for the first quarter we studied Latin. Second quarter we studied French. Third quarter we studied German. Fourth quarter we studied Spanish. After all of the grammars, verb forms, vocabularies, and irregularities, by the time I entered high school I was confused to the point where I was hardly able to speak English.
I’ve always wanted to learn another language, though, but did miserably in school in this regard. I took Latin in high school, and as I dropped the course and walked out, I told the teacher, "I’m not going to be a Latin teacher, and I can’t think of another reason to take this course." Years later, as I was doing mountains of research on ancient Rome and trying to make out various inscriptions, I wept as I begged God to let me take back what I had said.
I didn’t do well at Spanish, either. I reached my peak in Spanish at Wayne State University in Detroit in 1966. I was sitting outside wondering what to do with the rest of my life when a distinguished gentleman in a very natty three-piece set of pin-stripes came walking by. He asked a student something, the student shrugged, made like, man, a peace sign, you know, and wandered off. However, the man’s question had been in Spanish! This was my chance to do a good deed and put to use some of this stuff I’d been studying for years. I stood up, went to him, and in a perfect Castillian accent asked, "Habla español?"
What then erupted was a "Si!" followed by a highly relieved verbal machine gun that ran on at top speed for about a minute. When he finished, I smiled lamely and said, "That’s tough, because I don’t." Then I got the hell out of there.
My most recent attempt at learning a language involves a dream of mine. When I was in the Army I was stationed in Okinawa, and did not take the opportunity to learn the language. I did learn this demented patois that evolved between semi-literate soldiers and the resentful inhabitants of an occupied country. It is not, however, the kind of language to use among Japanese with whom you want to become friends. Besides, way too many persons on this planet hold black belts in karate.
My dream, especially after getting into science fiction and getting to meet a few men and women in Japanese fandom, is to go to Japan, tour the country, do a science-fiction convention or two, and be able to converse adequately in Japanese. For health reasons, I find myself walking on a treadmill half an hour every day. That is a brain-dead half-hour, so I purchased a Walkman and some Japanese language tapes. I must confess that I am learning something of the language, but, because of the learning environment, it appears that I am developing a rather strange accent.
"Konnichiwa puff puff! Watakushi wa gasp! Barry Longyear desu. wheeze!"
RUN DRAC RUN
It was February, 1978, deep in a Maine winter so harsh bears were taking time-outs from hibernation to move into the motels. This was before I discovered either cross-country or downhill skiing, hence I was deep in cabin fever and in one criminal mood.
I was trying to think up something I wanted to write when I turned away from my word processor and looked at the snow falling outside my home office window. There was already a great deal of snow on the ground, and it looked like lots more was on its way. The temperature was in single digits and a wind was picking up.
I can get hypnotically captured by falling snow, fog, and starry nights. I was mentally lost in watching the snow when I started thinking about building a little shelter out in the woods to see if I could survive in the snowstorm. When I was young I used to sneak out of my parents' house late at night and go deep into the woods and build little lean-tos, and even more elaborate shelters. I’d build a warm little fire and spend the night safe from the insanity back at the house.