Panglish

Suzette Haden Elgin, author of the Native Tongue series, sent a message to LINGUIST list yesterday announcing that one of her science fiction stories about linguistics is available online:

There's a science fiction short story in which a linguist from 'the U.S.
Corps of Linguists' tries to save an endangered extraterrestrial language
-- title, 'We Have Always Spoken Panglish' -- online at:

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/elgin/elgin1.html

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Since I'm supposed to be interested in both linguistics and science fiction, I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't yet read the Native Tongue series, but they're on the list, I swear (along with Ian Watson's The Embedding).  I've also been remiss in not mentioning that Elgin has a weblog (hat tip: Heideas and scribblingwoman).  Her series of posts (1, 2, 3) about her troubles getting new work published is both interesting and sobering—there's something wrong with the publishing industry if having previously written well-received novels that are often assigned to students disqualifies you from being published in the future.