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

Hallo!

On Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:40:07 -0400, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> I agree that conlanging goals form a continuum and not discrete
> points.  The "Balkanization" you mention is only necessary to the
> degree that auxlangers as a species are prone to proselytization and
> internecine squabbles that tend to spill over extranecinelly.  Not by
> any means a universal trait, and certainly one that can be overcome,
> but unfortunately common enough to have caused the split of auxlang
> from conlang in the first place.
Yes.  This is indeed the case.  People who design new auxlangs are
always aware that many, many other auxlangs have been proposed before,
and sooner or later are confronted with the question, "What's so great
about your proposal that we should adopt it rather than English or
Esperanto?"  This question gives an auxlanger only two options:

1. Abandon the proposal and shut up.

2. Tell the world that all other auxlang proposals (especially the
   major ones) are crap, and that a new proposal is necessary.

Most auxlangers are too proud to choose option #1 and instead
go for option #2.

And there we have that proselytization business that caused such
heated debate in CONLANG before it was banned, and still does so in
AUXLANG.  The problem is simply that international auxiliary languages
are subject what I semi-humorously call the "Highlander condition":
*There can be only one.*  The point of an auxlang, after all, is that
the whole world adopts *one single language* for international
communication.  *One* language will be chosen (if at all), and *all
others* go to the junkyard.

This problem is entirely not present in the realm of artlangs, as such
conlangs do not aspire at such an absolute as auxlangs do.  You don't
like what has been done so far?  Start your own, there is always room
for more.  Many artlangs live in fictional worlds, and thus do not
compete with other artlangs living in different fictional worlds.
Hence, an artlanger won't perceive someone else's artlang as a threat
at his own project at all.  It is as in any kind of art: it is entirely
normal for an artlanger to appreciate other people's works and draw
inspiration from them.  Nobody thinks of stopping making new art
because so much good art has been done in the past.  Au contraire.

Engelangs are somewhere between artlangs and auxlangs, though not
exactly.  They usually are designed to meet (more or less) objectively
tested design goals.  This "seriousness" puts them in the vicinity of
auxlangs.  But actually, they are more like artlangs.  There are usually
many ways to tackle a problem, and just because someone has found a
solution for design goal X, there is no reason to seek different,
perhaps better solutions for design goal X - or pursue a completely
different design goal Y.  Like artlangs, engelangs usually do not strive
for world domination.  They live and let live, just like artlangs and
unlike auxlangs.

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