{"id":1558,"date":"2009-08-21T07:30:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-21T15:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=1558"},"modified":"2009-08-21T14:03:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-21T22:03:00","slug":"all-nouns-all-verbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/21\/all-nouns-all-verbs\/","title":{"rendered":"All nouns, All verbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that the yuels and the jivas in Jim and the Flims <\/em> going to be better characters if they can talk\u2014but that their speech should be strange.<\/p>\n


\n[A jiva and a yuel.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I think of the Unipuskers in Frek and the Elixir<\/em>, who only talk in imperative sentences, that was rich, a great gimmick for expressing bossiness. And the devilish-looking Wackles in Spaceland<\/em>, they talked in a kind of Beat poetry. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a simple and powerful idea: the yuels speak in strings of verbs, and the jivas speak in strings of nouns! The whole thing is to give the aliens’ speech a different texture.<\/p>\n

It expresses a nice distinction between them. The yuels are more Zen-like, in action, flowing, shapeshifting. And the jivas are more capitalist, hoarding, acquiring.<\/p>\n


\n[A yuel dinosaur and a jiva sun.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally I had the jivas talking in a somewhat dull orotund society-lady Mrs. Earbore kind of way. Like a standard Hollywood SF-movie alien with a deep voice and *ugh*<\/em> a British accent—and no use of contractions. It’s so stupid that superintelligent aliens in Hollywood can never master the trick of saying, like, “we’re” instead of “we are.”<\/p>\n

It’s gonna be more fun, mysterious, poetic, and alien if my jivas speak in strings of nouns.<\/p>\n

Nouns seem easier to string together than verbs, by the way. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m still getting the hang of it. These are alien modes of thought! So I need to practice.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Suppose that a jiva and a yuel are going to rent a cottage at the beach with their families. Maybe they’d say, respectively, something like this:<\/p>\n

Jiva: \u201cOcean house family days.\u201d\u009d
\nYuel: \u201cSurge soak sleep eat nurture.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

Feel free to send in (as comments) some further examples of noun and\/or verb speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It occurs to me that the yuels and the jivas in Jim and the Flims going to be better characters if they can talk\u2014but that their speech should be strange. [A jiva and a yuel.] I think of the Unipuskers in Frek and the Elixir, who only talk in imperative sentences, that was rich, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1558"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1562,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1558\/revisions\/1562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}