Re: New Guy

Hi Caleb,

Welcome to the list!   I was wondering why no one else responded to you
(there's usually dozens when there's a new list member), but then I saw that the
list was put on hold.   Since you're new, I'll explain (unless you know how
listserv's work, which I didn't when I was new, in which case this'll be old hat).
  Our listserv has a cap of 100 messages per day (I think it's down to 100
now), and if more than 100 get sent in a single day, then a hold is put on the
list, and while you can send messages, no one receives them.   These messager
are then undelivered until the list owner releases the list.   So that's what
happened.   In fact, though no one's responded to your message in *my* inbox
yet, this'll probably be like the 18th message you get, in which case everything
I'm saying now might have been said a hundred times over already.   But, what
the heck.

<<One, Akathanu, /A-kA-TA-nu/ is the language that will be...>>

Sounds neat!   Do you have a website up?   (I've found that it's hard to get
any info out on your conlang unless you have a website.   This was a tough one
for me, since I didn't even know that HTML was a thing, but now I've gotten
the hang of it, I think.)   If not, post some data to the list.   We'd love to
read anything.

<<To change topic, I was noticing some of the discussion about
auxlangs, loglangs, artlangs, and natlangs. I don't really care much
for auxlangs, except to the extent that English seems to be becoming
pretty universal as an international language. But if people insist
on having a non-English auxlang, what's wrong with Latin? It worked
well for centuries from the Pax Romana, right up through the
Rennaissance. Scientists still tend to use it as a sort of
international naming language, right? Not that I really care.>>

One of the many reasons is that a maxim that's been taken on as law by pretty
much all auxlangers is that an auxlang should be "easy" to learn.   What do I
mean by "easy"?   Ask them.  What's easy to one is absurdly difficult to
another.   For example, Esperanto's tenses may seem simpler to a Spanish speaker,
whose language has multiple tenses which agree in person and number, but may
seem much more difficult to a Vietnamese speaker, whose verbs exhibit no
morphology at all.   At any rate, though all auxlangers would probably disagree on
what is "easy" to learn in a language (and I'd probably disagree with all of
them, in turn), I think they'd all agree that Latin would be too hard.   After
all, it has: (1) Complex tenses, (2) complex noun cases, and (3) numerous
idiosyncracies common to all natural languages.   The difference between an
artificial and a natural auxiliary language (examples of the latter being Latin,
Hindi, Malay, English...), though, is that natural languages are adopted as
auxiliary languages often out of necessity or coercion--or simply because it's the
common second language of three or more group, and learning one is easier than
learning two or three.   Anyway, I think those are the basic points.   There
are many others.

<<Actually, I'm thinking about a background for Akathanu. It might have
once been an auxlang on its planet, which has since degraded and
evolved into a mere natlang. Or more likely a family of natlangs
across the planet. Languages do seem to have a tendency to do that.
The advantage I would gain by doing that would be that it would allow
me to make the language more structured than a confusing natlang like
English, but not to the extent that it would be as rigid as a
loglang. I would still have some flexibility to add odd quirks. Has
anyone done something like this in a conlang before?>>

Many have created families of languages.   There've even been a couple group
projects, one enormously successful (the languages of Brithenig), and one not
so (the Arda-lang project).   There've probably been others I don't know
about.   I'm not sure about an auxlang which became a normal language...   I'm
remembering something, though.   A language spoken only by the gods, which was
perfect, and which men adopted, and then corrupted...   I know someone on this
list created such a language, but I can't remember the person or the language...
  Sorry.   :(   Post!

-David

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