Re: CHAT: Which world? Which culture?

En réponse à Harald Stoiber :

>A warm greeting to the list, :-))
>
>It is said that language is a mirror of its speaker's culture. In fact, this
>sounds so very true to me that I am even creating an entire world for
>my current conlang. On the other hand it seems to me that there are
>people on this list who don't create cultures when they create languages.
>So my question to those fellow conlangers would be: Which culture do
>you mirror into your conlangs? Your native one? Another existing culture
>that you deliberately choose? Or some ancient culture? Just curious...
>*smile*
As a creator of conlangs both with and without associated cultures, I think
I can give some replies :) . In short: it depends ;)))) . My first
languages didn't have an associated culture per se, but did have some
indications of some cultural facts. For instance, in Azak, a complete name
is: personal name + "son of"/"daughter of" + mother's personal name (or
repetition of own personal name if the person is an orphan) + clan name.
Although I never actually created a conculture for this language, it could
indicate that the speakers of Azak are a clan-based matriarchy. Of course,
it's not much evidence for such a claim, but without any other evidence,
it's as good a guess as any other.
Moten is peculiar since it's the language of a single person, and that
person is not even myself! ;))) Being the language of a single person who
is, apart from his L1, amnesiac, the culture it's associated with is a
mystery (in other words, it allowed me to do pretty much what I wanted ;))) ).
Chasmäöcho, as its name indicates (it means "the good enough one") was
meant to be a personal language which would be "good enough" for me. So the
culture it reflects is the sum of my personal opinions and beliefs, which
is not quite the same as the culture I grew up with.

But nowadays, even for the conlangs I create which are not to be associated
with a full-fledged culture, I always create at least a skeletton of
conculture going with them. Itakian, for instance, is the language of a
strange African diaspora with a peculiar sense of nationality. Maggel, as a
(semi-)joke, could be the language of the modern descendants of the Picts,
with cannibal tendencies ;))) .

>Another solution to the problem could be to make a culturally neutral
>language - which sounds so extremely impossible that my writing fingers
>keep asking my brain if it really would like to even mention such a
>strange idea. *g*
Soooo boring. Even Esperanto is *not* culturally neutral. It has a culture
of neutrality, which is something entirely different ;))) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.