‘Shnyeewh’ and the elbows spread wider and wider.
The doctor doubled as ethnologist because of his experience in physiographic measurements. He was unable to help. ‘Why don’t you try Jimmy Anson? He’s better on the psycho side than I am. I’ve a lot on my hands just now. I’m much more worried about our leucocyte counts than you are over your precious relics.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Oh, no cause for immediate alarm. But they indicate we’re adjusting to something, some foreign body or bodies; I don’t suppose it’s one so much as a whole host of different alien entities. It isn’t doing us any real harm — but how would Earth react?’
Jacob sought out Anson, the linguistician. ‘You have the advantage over us, old man; you can at least take back all those analyses and recordings. All we’ve got is photographs and film. I can’t think why they’re so down on letting us have specimens. I shall be darned unpopular with the powers at home. Never happened to me before.’
The linguistician had been added to the expedition almost as an afterthought, together with a great deal of equipment which had caused some bad language among those who were working out loads and logistics. Pitied by the interpreters at first, he was later regarded with envious tolerance as he took, with their only too necessary assistance, recording after recording, from cubs and adults of both sexes and all ages, often using thumbnail sketches to get his or their meaning across, or to keep the victims amused. He had a battery of results which seemed to keep him perfectly happy working on day after day, only now and again breaking surface to get the interpreters to arrange a new test interview. The Shm’qh let him torment them with palatograms, pharyngoscopes, torches, and X-ray photography, uncomplaining. Eventually he took to wandering in the settlements with a pocket recorder, sometimes sketching the vegetation to distract attention.
‘Are they adamant about it then?’
‘A flat refusal every time I ask — quite cheerful, but always No. I think we must have offended them more deeply over Scatterthwaite’s gaffe than we realized. You know two of them threw it back at Simons and Harte the other day?’
‘Really? I can’t believe it! What were they doing?’
‘Doing no harm, simply carrying the genny up to Blue Knoll the day the beano was on. Two Shmur’ — Jacobs usually called the race that to his crew — ‘did the grin gesture at them and called out — you know — tchuffjim or whatever it is.’
‘You mean ty-whdy-m, I suppose?’
‘That’s it. Only they used the short-z vowel. Could there be anything in that? Does that take the sting out of it, do you think?’
A slow smile spread over Anson’s face, then became a grin. ‘In a way, yes, but not the way you suppose. I think I have the answer to that problem.’
‘Do you indeed? well let’s have it, for God’s sake, man. We might be on the edge of a volcano — they could beworking up to attack us!’
‘No, it’s all right, I think. There’s no malice and no guile in this race, as far as I can see. But first about that vowel. These vowels aren’t phonemes in the strict sense—’
‘What’s a phoneme, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Take too long to explain properly. But roughly speaking, it’s a class of sound, like say t or d or short o, recognized by a particular language, which makes a brick you can build meaningful words out of. Now these Sshm-qh vowels aren’t like that at all. They’re more like the intonation in an English sentence. They carry feeling-tones. If I say Sshm-qh by itself, with a sort of murmur-vowel — we’d call it schwa — in the middle, it means I am just mentioning the Sshm-qh without any special feeling. (By the way, if you can’t use a phonetic schwa-symbol when you’re writing the language, why not write an ordinary e, instead of that ambiguous
The doctor doubled as ethnologist because of his experience in physiographic measurements. He was unable to help. ‘Why don’t you try Jimmy Anson? He’s better on the psycho side than I am. I’ve a lot on my hands just now. I’m much more worried about our leucocyte counts than you are over your precious relics.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Oh, no cause for immediate alarm. But they indicate we’re adjusting to something, some foreign body or bodies; I don’t suppose it’s one so much as a whole host of different alien entities. It isn’t doing us any real harm — but how would Earth react?’
Jacob sought out Anson, the linguistician. ‘You have the advantage over us, old man; you can at least take back all those analyses and recordings. All we’ve got is photographs and film. I can’t think why they’re so down on letting us have specimens. I shall be darned unpopular with the powers at home. Never happened to me before.’
The linguistician had been added to the expedition almost as an afterthought, together with a great deal of equipment which had caused some bad language among those who were working out loads and logistics. Pitied by the interpreters at first, he was later regarded with envious tolerance as he took, with their only too necessary assistance, recording after recording, from cubs and adults of both sexes and all ages, often using thumbnail sketches to get his or their meaning across, or to keep the victims amused. He had a battery of results which seemed to keep him perfectly happy working on day after day, only now and again breaking surface to get the interpreters to arrange a new test interview. The Shm’qh let him torment them with palatograms, pharyngoscopes, torches, and X-ray photography, uncomplaining. Eventually he took to wandering in the settlements with a pocket recorder, sometimes sketching the vegetation to distract attention.
‘Are they adamant about it then?’
‘A flat refusal every time I ask — quite cheerful, but always No. I think we must have offended them more deeply over Scatterthwaite’s gaffe than we realized. You know two of them threw it back at Simons and Harte the other day?’
‘Really? I can’t believe it! What were they doing?’
‘Doing no harm, simply carrying the genny up to Blue Knoll the day the beano was on. Two Shmur’ — Jacobs usually called the race that to his crew — ‘did the grin gesture at them and called out — you know — tchuffjim or whatever it is.’
‘You mean ty-whdy-m, I suppose?’
‘That’s it. Only they used the short-z vowel. Could there be anything in that? Does that take the sting out of it, do you think?’
A slow smile spread over Anson’s face, then became a grin. ‘In a way, yes, but not the way you suppose. I think I have the answer to that problem.’
‘Do you indeed? well let’s have it, for God’s sake, man. We might be on the edge of a volcano — they could beworking up to attack us!’
‘No, it’s all right, I think. There’s no malice and no guile in this race, as far as I can see. But first about that vowel. These vowels aren’t phonemes in the strict sense—’
‘What’s a phoneme, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Take too long to explain properly. But roughly speaking, it’s a class of sound, like say t or d or short o, recognized by a particular language, which makes a brick you can build meaningful words out of. Now these Sshm-qh vowels aren’t like that at all. They’re more like the intonation in an English sentence. They carry feeling-tones. If I say Sshm-qh by itself, with a sort of murmur-vowel — we’d call it schwa — in the middle, it means I am just mentioning the Sshm-qh without any special feeling. (By the way, if you can’t use a phonetic schwa-symbol when you’re writing the language, why not write an ordinary e, instead of that ambiguous
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