Re: "Conlang" and "Artlang" in Swedish

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
> Hej allihop!
>
> The thread about French conlang terminology[^1] has
> reminded me about a rather delicate problem in
> Swedish conlang terminology.
>
> I have long felt that the proper Swedish translation
> of 'conlang' is _konstspråk_, not least because the
> word is kind of a pun: _konst_ is the Swedish word
> for 'art' -- cf. German, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian [Kk]unst_ --, but
> _konstspråk_ can also be understood
> as a contraction of _konstruerat språk_[^2] analogous
> to English _conlang_ <- _constructed language_.
A third possible parsing, and to my mind the most natural one, is
_konst-_ "artificial" (as in _konstläder_, _konstbevattning_, etc) +
_språk_.

A drawback is that the term is also used in the sense of "literary
language", particularly one that's diverged far from the colloquial
spoken form.

<snip>
> _Estetiskt språk_ would in principle be contractible
> to _estetspråk_ but few Swedish speakers would pause
> to consider that _estetik_ really means 'the science
> of (evaluating) beauty and ugliness', but would simply
> take _estetisk_ to mean '(visually) well-designed' or
> 'pleasingly designed/arranged', and _estet_ to mean
> 'artistically/aesthetically (over-)sensitive person'
> (and again the younger generation lets us down utterly
> by thinking that _estet_ means 'an art/music/theater
> nerd who takes a so-called _estetiskt_ 'Highschool'
> program!)[^3].
I've actually heard _estetspråk_ used in the sense of "jargon used by
pupils in the aesthetics high school program", so I certainly agree it
won't do for present purposes!

<snip>
> I would appreciate any thoughts on this subject that
> anyone may have, but especially of course I'd like to hear
> from those who know one or more Germanic languages other
> than English, since the situation is likely to be similar
> there (I know for example that _Kunstsprache_ has been used
> as a German translation of 'conlang'!)
I fear it's impossible to find a term that's short, unambiguous and
transparent. The phrase _konstgjorda språk_ "artificial languages" is
established enough to have an entry in the National Encyclopedia (it's
mostly about IALs, a bit about philosophical languages, and ignores
artlangs completely), but it's a bit of a mouthful. The obvious
contraction _konstspråk_ becomes ambiguous as per above.


<snip>

--
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?