Re: Calling all Conlangers!

Padraic Brown scripsit:

> _I_ took it as a slight that the art inherent in conlanging is
> not worthy of serious study. Or by inferencece that the products
> thereof are somehow less artistic than modern art or music
> (neither of which, by the way, I can stand; but I do not deny the
> artistry inherent!).
Ah. I thought you were talking about someone denigrating artlangs
with respect to auxlangs.  I did see that, but I thought it
was basically correct.  No artlang has, or can have, anything
like the depth of a natlang.

Why study natlangs, other than for severely practical reasons,
after all?  (Why study Latin nowadays, e.g., when it can
neither help you buy cattle in Rome nor get you into the
civil service?)  For two reasons, I believe: to gain access
to a literature, and to learn something about a people,
specifically about the way they saw themselves and their environment.

Now the second consideration can hardly apply to any conlang,
art- or aux-, and the first can apply only to a tiny minority.
There is no doubt E-o poetry that one must study E-o to understand,
and if one learns Sindarin, there are a dozen or so works of
JRRTs that become open to one.  But neither of these are to be
compared to what one gains access to by learning Apache or
Navajo or Hixkaryana.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
Please leave your values        |       Check your assumptions.  In fact,
   at the front desk.           |          check your assumptions at the door.
     --sign in Paris hotel      |            --Miles Vorkosigan

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