[PW] English to ???

[Dennis Lien]

At 10:34 PM 6/12/2008, you wrote:

> >From a friend of a friend:
>
>Got a call from a patron today looking for a story that he read about 20 
>years ago. However, he said the story was not a new one of that time, just 
>that's when he read it. He cannot remember the title or author but gave 
>this description.
>
>It's an essay or short story. It starts in English and progresses to tell 
>how a language might be changed by substituting a letter or symbol for a 
>letter we have in English. As the story goes on the author is subtly 
>changing the
>letters to the symbols or new letters he has discussed so that by the end 
>of the story you (the reader) are actually reading this "new" language 
>that has morphed from English. He strongly thinks the "new" language is 
>German or is similar to German. He also has a vague notion that it might 
>have been written by Samuel Clemens
>but says that is very vague and could be totally wrong.
>
>At first I thought he was describing Ella Minnow Pea but as he went on I 
>realized that story does not meet his description. Also, it wasn't written 
>too long ago. Does anyone have any idea what he is talking about?


I believe you are describing this essay/story from ASTOUNDING sf magazine, 
which has
been reprinted several times in (mostly) ASF-derived anthologies, the first 
of which
is probably the easiest to find:

  Meihem in ce Klasrum · Dolton Edwards (pseudonym of W. K. Lessing)
           Astounding Sep 1946
     * The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr., 
Simon & Schuster 1952
     * The Second Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, ed. John W. 
Campbell, Jr., Grayson 1954
     * The First Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, ed. John W. 
Campbell, Jr., Four Square Books 1964
     * The Great SF Stories 8 (1946), ed. Isaac Asimov & Martin H. 
Greenberg, DAW 1982
     * From Mind to Mind, ed. Stanley Schmidt, Davis 1984
     * The Golden Years of Science Fiction: Fourth Series, ed. Isaac Asimov 
& Martin H. Greenberg, Bonanza/Crown 1984
<and maybe more>


Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.edu