Re: conlang versions and revisions

Hallo!

On Mon, 23 May 2005 14:51:40 -0700,
Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> wrote:

> Emaelivpeith René Uittenbogaard:
> > But my question is this: I've recently participated in relay 11 with
> > Calénnawn; if I start changing it again, the "current" version on my
> > website won't be like the one I participated in the relay with. Is this
> > a problem? Is there a proper way of dealing with this?  Should I ask
> > Irina to specify on the upcoming relay site that this was
> > specifically Calénnawn-0.80.3 ?
>
> Well, language change is an inevitable fact of languages in use. :)
> For my part, I let official relay pages keep the version that went
> through the relay, for historical purposes and to let future browsers
> see my text as the participant following me did. However, on my own
> site, I update texts to keep up with "modern" Asha'ille.
>
> YMMV, of course.
>
> Now that I think about it, it might be fun to reconstruct some Old
> Asha'ille samples to compare side by side against Middle Asha'ille and
> Modern Asha'ille. :)
However, with fictional languages, there are two dimensions of
language change involved.  One is the "external" history, i. e.
the sequence of variant designs done by the conlanger.  The other
is the "internal" history, i. e. the history of the language as seen
within its conworld.  The point is that internal history changes
over the external history.  For example, Tolkien's Gnomish language
as found in the _Book of Lost Tales_ was an external ancestor of
the Sindarin language found in the _Silmarillion_ and the
_Lord of the Rings_, but *internally*, by the time Sindarin was
valid, this language never has been!  Sindarin evolved from Gnomish
in the real world where Tolkien lived, but it didn't in Middle-earth.

It should also be noted that the external history of the language
often doesn't make sense as internal history, because natlangs don't
change by being revised, but by sound changes.

Greetings,

Jörg.