Re: Are conlangs fictional?

Jan wrote:
>Literature can be divided into fiction and
>non-fiction. The latter tells stories that have really
>happened and discusses their background, while fiction
>is made up by the author. This division could be very
>well applied to languages as well: non-fictional
>languages are those language that exist or have
>existed, fictional languages are those made up by
>somebody (no matter what it is used for).
>This works better than comparing languages to visual
>art, music (is there "fictional" music?), spaceships,
>or parrots.
What do you then say of Esperanto? It's as made up as you can ask for, and
yet you can't very say that it doesn't exist, can you?

                                                    Andreas

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