artlangs/auxlangs/engelangs (was Re: LCC2: Meeting our Community)

Hallo!

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 01:19:02 -0400, Rick Harrison wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:05:07 -0700,
> Donald Boozer <donaldboozer@...> wrote:
>
> >The LCC2 is a great way to reinforce that conlangers
> >(whether they be artlangers, engelangers, auxlangers,
> >etc., etc...personally, I don't know whether I agree
> >with this 'Balkanization' of conlanging..but that's
> >for another post)
>
> Can we explore that? I've often thought that some of the older projects
> which were published under the guise of auxlangs might look better to us
> if we spin them as artlangs or engelangs. Sona, for example, tries to
> balance art and engineering. Babm is quirky and convoluted with a huge
> vocabulary, very artlangy. If we can acknowledge the beauty of constructed
> Celtic languages, why not also acknowledge the beauty of a naturalistic
> Romance language such as IALA Interlingua?
Amen.  The "Gnoli triangle" is a *continuum*, not a cabinet with just
three drawers.  There are infinitely many points *between* the three
corners.  A conlang may have multiple uses and design goals.
And there are sometimes cross-overs one would not expect.  Surely,
Quenya, for instance, is the epitome of an artlang, and yet I have
seen proposals of Quenya as an auxlang (which, however, lie beyond
what its creator intended to do with it).  There are many auxlangs
that are also engelangs, languages which mix art and engineering
(such as Henrik Theiling's conlangs), and auxlangs that are,
beyond their purpose, elegant and beautiful.

The same holds, a fortiori, for conlangers.  Many of use have several
projects underway, with different design goals.  My main conlang project,
Old Albic, is surely an artlang: I have no intention to peddle it
as an auxlang, and its design goals are more subjective (it is meant
to be beautiful and reflect my personal views and beliefs) than
objective (I do not attempt to build a maximally efficient, logical
or computer-friendly language with it).  Yet, I also have a few engelang
projects on the back burner, such as the Plan B-derived X-1, which
is meant to be a briefscript loglang with self-segregating morphology
based on bit patterns.  I currently have no auxlang project going
because I feel that the race for the "world language" is already run
- and English, love it or hate it, is the winner.

> But, on the other hand, it's easy to get caught up in partisan feelings,
> of hoping that one conlang will prosper more than another. I think this
> is a manifestation of the "us against them" bug in the human brain
> firmware.
Yes, that is part of human nature, and all too often clouds reason.
Human beings tend to classify things, and when it comes to classifying
their own kind, they tend to slip into the "us against them" fallacy.
Nobody is entirely above that, I am certain.  Being primarily an
artlanger myself, I feel a stronger connection to other artlangers
than to engelangers or auxlangers; and within artlangers, I most
strongly feel connected to those who are, like me, in what can be
called the "naturalistic-diachronic school" of artlanging.
Yet, *all kinds* of conlanging have their virtues, and there is
no absolute "best" conlang.  Each conlang ought to be gauged against
what it is made for, and especially with artlangs, the criteria are
subjective (and even with auxlangs and engelangs, they are often
at least difficult to operationalize).

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