Re: THEORY: Language tech & conlang survival

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 04:10 , Sai Emrys wrote:
[snip]
> How do you make a (con)language survive and catch on? What are the
> factors?
Unless things have changed since I was on the list several years ago - and
I suspect they have not - there are a lot of folks on Auxlang that would
just love to know the answer to those questions!

One big factor is luck. For example, Esperanto happened to appear on the
scene at the time when Volapük had generated a lot of interest in auxlangs
but had collapsed (basically because of internal feuding).

Another factor is that the language should catch the imagination and
develop a sort of cult status - examples: Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin. How
that is achieved is rather more difficult to define IMO.

In the case of revived natlangs, for example Hebrew and Cornish, there has
to be a demand for its revival from a reasonable number of potential
speakers.

But while auxlangers do of course want their languages not merely to
survive but to catch on, I do not think that all conlangers, particularly
artlangers, necessarily have such desires. It would appear, for example,
that JRRT did not expect his languages to 'catch on' and be used - I think
he might have left Quenya and/or Sindarin in a more complete state if he
had wished that.

But it will be interesting to see the replies.

Ray
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http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
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"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
can change into anything"
          Yuen Ren Chao, 'Language and Symbolic Systems"

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