perfidy

Flipper emailed to inform us that the actual transliteration (according to the standard Kree'nee'(click) scheme) is Iey iy-*chee-iy (click) Nieye.

Flipper is sick and tired of your phallocentric linguistic imperialism, and wants to inform the people at sea world that squid tastes much better than cod.

B, I'm sick and tired of this weird Dolphin-Forward thing you have going on. It's really kind of uber-PC of you and it doesn't seem to fit with your personality. What does Flipper have on you?

For the n^2th time. Queen Kk'nee'ree'kk has overhauled Dolphin grammer many years ago. A recondite proscriptivist like Flipper can kvetch, moan and 'nkkkk all he wants to, but it doesn't mean that his heavily porpoise-influenced dialect is the mainstream of Standard Dolphin these days. I say Ee’e’eee’e’e’neee, you say Iey iy-*chee-iy (click) Nieye, and it all adds up to a bunch of fish and synchronized aquatobatics.

After the Great Cetacean Diaspora, cetacean languages branched profoundly. What were once mutually intelligible though somewhat distinct dialects (somewhat akin to the situation in Chaucerian England) hardened at least a millenium ago into distinct languages. Just try to talk to a humpback in Dolphin and see how far it gets you. I understand and respect Flipper's love of his native mid-Atlantic ridge heritage, and I would never say that the literature of his people would be improved by translation -- after all would Robby Burns benefit from cleaning the Scottish out of his poesy? -- but he and you need to come down off the high (sea)horse and swim with the rest of us. Not that porpoise-inflected Dolphin doesn't have its charms. But when's the last time you wished somebody a mickle Sabbath instead of a good weekend?

I happen to know that Flipper is a university-trained blueblood who slums because it's fashionable. Great guy and all, hella good swimmer, but I'm shocked you got taken in by that maritime dilettante.

Sometimes, man. Sometimes.

Wow. I'm left both speechless and clickless. Other than everything you've just read, plus this entire sentence.

I don't cotton to Flipper's spin on human-dolphin interactions over the years, personally. But as a favor to him, I relayed his message to you. Flipper bought into the whole post-modernist and colonialist view back when he was in Hollywood. Second hand post modernism is, if anything, even more irritating than the pure quill.

If you know the guy, he's great for hanging out and munching on some herring, but his historical chops are kinda weak. Nevertheless, his command of literary delphin is unparalleled. He was at the top of his game in the world of dolphin theater, doing translations of Shakespeare (you should have seen King Lear with Flipper as an aquatic Iago, simply stunning) and the works of Kr'iy(click)- ieyenkk, the greatest Dolphin Dramatist. Flipper headlined for years in Death of the Orca before getting swallowed up by Hollywood.

Flipper couldn't help but notice the parallels between his experiences as a supremely talented dolphin actor forced into hackneyed and stereotyped roles and those of early black actors. This probably led to his adoption of some of sillier post modernist thought. You can see why, even if you don't agree with it. He's still waiting for the breakthrough role - a Mr. Tibbs for dolphins. In the meantime, all he can do is complain about a studio system that makes umpty-billion Free Willy movies and not one decent role for a dolphin.

He's pushing a script for an action thriller, a war pic about human researchers caught in a war between dolphins and sharks. It's great, and he thinks it could lead to better roles for dolphins; but Hollywood just won't buy it. I just hope he doesn't get sucked into the anti-porpoise bigotry that has tainted the lives of so many otherwise respectable dolphins.

Speaking of which, if he heard you refer to his delphinese as "porpoise-influenced" he'd probably shit a squid. That's like saying Kenneth Branagh's got a bit of Sambo in his dialect. Sure, all the cetaciean languages were once one language. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors and Ayotollah Khomeini's could have understood each other. But Farsi and English are more than a little different. The Porpoise language group diverged from the main body of Delphinese more than two hundred thousand years ago, dude.

The rich and expressive dialect of the poor (and let's face it, a bit dim) porpoises is a matter of academic study for Dolphin scholars - any impact the language had on Delphin was in the far distant past. Queen Kk’nee’ree’kk (and I'll grant you your transliteration for now) came up with a new standard for transliteration, sure. But how many people are really satisfied with Pinyin, compared to the more elegant Wade-Giles? And the huge population of mid-Atlantic dolphins would argue that the imposition of a Pacific authoritarian meddler like the Queen hardly constitutes the definitive word on how modern Delphin should be represented for humans, let alone on how dolphins should be spoken amongst dolphins.

Flipper tells me that the best analogy for the Queen's reforms is the attempts of various French government bureacracies to enforce the "Frenchness" of the French language. It's pointless, annoying, and will have no long term affect on the language.

The Mid-Atlantic ridge is home to the most vibrant part of dolphin culture. Their language is having a huge influence on other dolphin dialects, and we're even starting to see mid-Atlantic coinages and neologisms appearing in humpback songs. If Flipper (and most of his compatriots in the Kee'nkkk (tock) iey'iy League think that they've got a better transliteration scheme, we'd best believe them, rather than some officious pseudo-fascist pretentious Royal from the North Pacific.

And besides, we all know how much influence the Killer Whales have on the Royal Court.

While I will grant you that there are many attractions to the mid-Atlantic Ridge's culture, (and no place on earth has tastier squid), I think it's just as shortsighted to denigrate Queen Kk’nee’ree’kk's efforts at lexicographical reform as officious pseudo-fascist pretension. Leaving aside the humanism evident in "fascist," a concept that means as much to dolphins as "Wankel rotary engine" means to a cat, I think it is a mistake to discard the reforms as imperialistic or wrongheaded.

Humans cannot reproduce, or usually even hear, the sounds made by our seagoing brethren. As such, any attempt to transcribe their language into Roman letters is doomed to be a half-failure from the start. But some innovations, such as substituting "kk" for "click" and '' for rising glissandos, just make sense from an efficiency standpoint.

Pidgin it ain't, and what's wrong with pidgin besides? Yes, the Pacific dolphin population has a centuries-long headstart on cultural complexity over the Atlantic population, and yes, this makes them a bit arrogant. But for now -for now- it makes sense to me that we humans go with the prevailing currents as it were, in order to reach the largest number of dolphins possible. Do I speak mid-Atlantic Delphin as well? Yes. Do I feel that the tongue does contain a large proportion of phonemes and loan-words from - yes - the porpoises? Yes. But in casual conversation among humans, I prefer to keep it simple and use the current accepted standard.

I will issue my apology to the irascable Flipper, my good friend, two ways:

Nee'ee'e''kk'e'e

Kree'ee'nee'click'eee

Postscript: I *have* seen Flipper's Iago, and it *is* stunning. It's shocking how universal some things are, even if there is no direct translation for "bare bodkin" in delphin. What did they use... some compound meaning "narwhal-snout-rampant?" I can't remember.

The translator was brilliant, I think, in relating the term a dolphin's ability to use sonar to, um "assess" the condition of another dolphin's tumescence. Sonar's ability to "see" into living flesh has long been a theme in delphin verse and drama.

The interplay between sight and sonar is central to Mid-Atlantic delphin haiku - puns based on the limitations of one or the other are impossible to translate into human language, except in the most clumsy way. But going the other way, it provides a powerful metaphorical tool for dolphin translators to get abstract human concepts into a form that a dolphin audience can understand.

Of course puns on the Narwhal are a commonplace in both low and high delphin. Kind of like the phallus was both high and low culture in Greek plays - both the tragedies and the comedies. Dickk jokes are, I guess, a universal for sapient species. Unless they have only one sex, but we'll have to wait to see on that one.

As far as cultural complexity, the byzantine rigidities of the royal courts of the pacific can certainly be called complex. But do they represent any true depth of cultural development? In human soceities, we have seen that an appreciation for and level of comfort with ambiguity is a surer sign of cultural development. The black and white (opaque and transparent, sonar-wise) classifications of the Pacific dolphins represent more a tedious expansion of primitive structures rather than a flexible, versatile and vigorous soceity like we see in the Mid Atlantic.

It's only a matter of time before the expanding cultural dominance of the Atlantic dolphins has political fallout. Only the threat of shark and killer whale violence has kept the kingdom together, and Queen Kk’nee’ree’kk's unwillingness to provide suitable reforms - or allow the Mid-Atlantic leagues a voice at court could lead to political schism.

Flipper could very well become the Sam Adams of the Mid-Atlantic. If he doesn't get fed to the squid by the queen's porpoise goons.

It just occurred to me that Flipper himself may well be his generation's Chaucer - the sign that Delphin may be reaching a watershed moment where it crosses over into a powerful literary medium. More on that later... I need to do some research.