Re: CONLANG Digest - 4 Oct 1998 to 5 Oct 1998

> Heck, if it weren't for the fact that painting, poetry, and so forth have
> millennia to back it up, _those_ would be considered bizarre, too. ;-(
>
Yes Tom. You may be right. However did you notice that conlanging is making a
LANGUAGE (I mean tongue : French 'langue', not 'language')? I'm sure you did
;-) I think that's the flaw. A lot of people equate language = thought. I met
linguists who explained to me that words enable your mind to create the
concepts you need to think. So that making a language is regarded as creating a
new thought, a different thought, a thought nobody else can actually think :
you see a painting, you listen at music, but you don't think others' thought.
Therefore : different painting = artistic expression // different language =
lunatic behaviour. I've heard in Cambodia of deaf-mutes expressing themselves
with signs they never had learned anywhere : they could handle concepts and
communicate thought without knowing what a 'word' is. I'm not sure they would
agree that 'words' precede concepts - or language precede thought ? :-) I don't
think either they were considered lunatic. Maybe they wouldn!
't!
!
!
 because they 'made' this language to communicate, not for their own artistic sake.

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