CHAT: a conlang of my very own :) (was: Re: unsubscribing)

--- In conlang@y..., Dan Jones <dan@F...> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Since I subscribed two years ago, conlang has become
more and more
> concentrated on odd natlang features and phonetic
thoery. Since neither of
> these really interest me and the load of messages
has become nearly
> unmanageable, I'm going to unsubscribe. If for any
reason anyone needs or
> wants to contact me my adress is dan@f...
I wanted to make a comment on this... what you say
about traffic resonates with me, I don't have the time
and energy to read conlang myself, so I skim it and
follow threads I find interesting or useful. In order
for me to follow Conlang _completley_ it would need to
be my only list. I get the digest, and I scan it on
the Yahoo site. Being a new person myself, I can't say
as I ever got the chance to know you, but I know what
it's like to move on from lists. Good luck, and
hopefully you'll find your way back here some time :).

At the same time, the natlang and phonology
discussions are tremendously interesting and useful,
_I_ think. To _me_ they have direct bearing on
conlanging, critical bearing in many senses, because
they expand your horizons, and give you an idea of
what is reasonable for a human language, based on the
sort of things that exist and how frequent they are
and how they are usually instantiated, and also give
you ideas for where you might explore divergences. I
can and do get a fair bit from books, but it's walways
interesting to see what people have to say. It's just
my view, but I think a study of natural languages is
essential in this art, and that conversely part of the
point of this art is as a means to study natural
languages from a new perspective!

Still, as some little currents seem to suggest, maybe
some kinds of traffic will get siphoned off
elsewhere... the natural history of mailing lists in
an environment of nearly infinite "resources" (because
Yahoo and Topica and whatnot is giving it away from
free) is a very interesting study :).

I'm pondering starting a new conlang. I'd be writing
it strictly to fit in, of course, to be part of the
"in" crowd, to be accepted by the "cool" people (can I
hang out with you guys!? huh!? can I!? lol) you know
how that goes... ;) but since I seem to need a
"reason", however preposterously flimsy, to maintain
my interest in any project, that will do :P. I've
batted around a couple ideas.

One project I thought of an rejected would be
code-named "Perversian". The idea would be to think
carefully on what features people find most risible
and offensive and unnatural in languages, what
attracts the most scorn and frustration directed at
natlangs (and con-IALs) and try to incorporate as many
as possible of them into the language, to create a
conlang designed to be universally offensive and grate
on people's nerves. It would need to be fairly
English, "English native-speaker bias" always seems to
get people's backs up somehow. One would have to be
careful to promote it using irritatingly chipper
superlatives and and tout its most hideous design
flaws as genius. For example, like when Esperantists
go on about "viro/virino", "patro/patrino" and the
supersigned letters, as _selling points_ of the
language, instead of the embarrassing and even grating
flaws that they are in terms of con-IALitude.
*shudder*... like fingernails on a chalk board.

But then I said "nah", better not go there, although I
might wind up putting some Perversian features in
unintentionally. The main reason is that I kinda
suspect it's nearly impossible to design a really
offensive language unless you try and sell it as an
IAL, in which case it becomes very generally Perverse
no matter what you do ;). *No* thank you, con-IALs are
fun to discuss as an exercise in intellectual
masturbation (isn't that what we're doing anyway? And
what's wrong with masturbation hehe...), I had a
rather enjoyable run over in the Auxlang list
recently, and I'm actually learning some Esperanto,
but you'd never catch me selling one of the things.
_Making_ one for fun, yes, especially if it was
intended to be a fictional interlang or to explore
ideas, but _selling_ one, no. The market's just not
there.

So, anyway, that leads me back to square one. I'm not
going to try and instantiate Talíwàn (dammit, now how
would I do the subsigns for stress in ASCII anyway? :)
), I still don't know enough to be able to do it, I
only know things _about_ the language, and a few vocab
items, mainly from place names ("kad" is forest, "sen"
is lake, "slár" is river, "baln" is sea, "at" is sun,
"dáká" is something like "salty", "um" unstresed is a
magnifying suffix, "an" as a stressed suffix means
"new", prefix "aí-" indicates clan affiliation, prefix
"vo-" means daughter-of followed by your mother's
given name, prefix "va-" means "son-of", also followed
by your mother's given name, "das" means "to rest",
"og" is a root with a meaning something like
"govern"... "ogaírà", emphasis on second syllable, is
province, only I don't know _exactly_ what it's
component parts mean!! and on it goes like that...).
It might start getting put together some day, but I
won't start unless and until I _know_ it's ready to
come out right.

I got an idea tonight for a feature I _will_ try and
build in and explore in my
please-won't-you-let-me-play-with-you-huh-guys-can-I?!?
lang. That is I notice, or think I notice, that people
seem to have a preference for sensible orthographies.
I want to make a language that is not conducive to a
sensible phonemic spelling system and is more easily
represented by one that does funky irregular shit.
Every other language I've worked on in one way or
another had phonemic-y alphabets. I have an idea that
some languages, say German, are well-ish suited to
those, but some, like Gaelic, or French (?) have a
natural affinity to crazed orthographies. Obviously
this is a flagrant and gross generalisation - I'm not
sure about it, it's just a thought. I'm turing over in
my head reviving a past experiment that took steps
down those lines...

Like millions of others, I have my pet revised English
orthography, mine based on the most perfect dialect of
English, that spoken by educated speakers in the
Maritime provinces of Canada ::ducks:: ;). This was
based on a couple prejudices of mine... one is that I
figure it's a sin we don't have a more phonemic
alphabet, and another is that I think we need a whole
pile of new letters.

Hër Aë røët (not ðe Kænädëæn vauwel räzing :) ) søm
tekst in maë prsønæl orþagræfë... ðe coëßes øv letrs
mäk no kläms tu inhärent supërëoritë øv enë sort ænd
ar æ kambinäxøn "artistik" ventyur ænd øltimætlë
_orþogræfikæl_ (if ðæt emfæsis mäks senß - søm
dësizhøns an speling wr mäd an haëlë flipænt
kraëtërëæ...) reprëzentäxøn øv maë nätiv daëælekt, ðe
most prfekt form øv Inglix ðæt hæz evr egzisted ;) ;).
I rot al maë prsønæl læb nots ðis wäy :).

Aend hyr iz soem riten in dhe daygraefikael vaariaent
oev dhe skript... :P

Anyway, I want to try swinging in a different
direction somehow, or maybe at the same time take some
of the ideas in my crazed little spelling scheme for
English farther... I want to know how the lang is
really pronounced but _write_ it to work with what its
speakers _think_ about it as opposed to the way it
really behaves.

That may sound like a really superficial
consideration, but it's actually what I feel
intuitively is my "in" for a more comprehensive
project.

If I ever start putting something concrete together,
I'll definitely get back to ye :). Thanks for putting
up with my musings :).

Stephen


______________________________________________________________________
Find, Connect, Date! http://personals.yahoo.ca

Replies