Re: CHAT: t-shirt

At 9:05 am +0000 26/9/00, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
[....]
>
>BTW, Ray: How about Classical Latin and Koine Greek the conlangs?
>
Classical Latin can be regarded as a literary conlang.  it was no one's L1.
It was consciously created from spoken Latin in imitation, to strat with,
of established Greek models.

But such a literary creation is rather different, I feel, from what we do
here.  If we included Classical on such grounds, we would have to the
English of the King James Bible which was also no one's L1 and consciously
modelled on the English of a century before, i.e. Tudor English.  We'd
have, similarly, to include literary Welsh and a whole host other literary,
non L1, versions of natlangs.

Koine Greek is a koine  :)
As such I don't think it constitutes a conlang.  A similar process is
currently happening to English as it is used daily as an auxlang between
different communities.  Global, international English is becoming a koine.

I did not like the inclusion of natlangs on the last T-shirt proposal.
Someone is bound to feel slighted if this or that natlang is not included.

You can, in fact, get T-shirts with Latin on - I have one  :)
I have no doubt that T-shirts exist with both ancient & modern Greek on.

I think we're better sticking to what we all recognize as conlangs.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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