Re: Conlanging as a personal thing

Mike Ellis wrote:

> Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>
> >> What would "full" communicability be?
> >
> >Simple: if you can have reasonably long conversation by e-mail (or
> telephone,
> >for that matter) without having to create new words. I'm mean, if you
want
> to
> >write: "I just received your letter and found it very interesting",
mende-mende mawupan añuriti, me yaciyon niya katrayi -- comes close, except
the 2d clause means more literally "....it seemed/appeared very interesting
to me" (and without looking, I'm not _totally_ sure katrayi means
"interesting", maybe just trayi)

and
> have to
> >create five new words for that, than a language is clearly not ready for
> >communication yet.
No :-)
>
> Ah. I thought maybe you meant having the grammar necessary to communicate
> any concepts *once you plug in any needed words*.
Well... maturo rum{open}-ka finduni 'please open the door' or
{mouthpiece}-ni cicit caka{broken} 'the mouthpiece of the telephone got
broken' is sort-of communication, but not exactly in the conlang. This was
my problem the other day, trying to translate the UN proceedings (plus
everyone spoke too fast....)

I was always amused in Indonesia, when academics (especially!) loved to
throw in English words.  When I arrived at my school, there was a big
"kursus upgrading" going on for Engl.-language students.  (They also used
the verb meng-upgrade, di-upgrade etc..)   The upgrading group (and I) took
a long-weekend trip to Bali-- we met with the local Tourism office for about
an hour, with much tea and photographing (which made it official and paid
for by the school). The rest of the time was spent on touristy junkets
hither and yon.  On the last morning, as our bus was pulling out of downtown
Denpasar, the leader suddenly stopped it and called out, "Siapa mau shopping
lagi?" (Who wants more shopping?), at which the bus emptied in a nano-second
and we all went scurrying off for last-minute souvenirs.

(There may not be an exact Indo. equivalent for "upgrade", but there
certainly is for "shopping", though maybe "belanja" doesn't quite connote
shopping in the Western sense.......?)

Reply