Re: CHAT: Which world? Which culture?

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, Harald Stoiber wrote:

> 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*
>
> 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*
>
> So, just another question out of curiosity... yearning for responses. :-)))
>
> All the best,
> Harald

Howdy!

As a conlanger who minimally conculturates, I find that I still tend
to have some idea in my mind of a culture to go with the language.
It varies depending on the language, but I will have an idea of
technological level, climate, social structure, etc.  Sometimes it's
closely based on some real-world culture, other times less so.  Also,
my languages are sometimes inspired by RPG contexts, so there may be
fantastic elements involved.  (For example, my language for an undersea
race.)

But as you say, it seems impossible to create a language without a culture.
In fact, often the langauge will inspire parts of the culture, and vice
versa.  Just creating a pronoun system, for example, seems to require
assumptions about the social structure, etc.

As an afficianado of the exotic (and bizarre), though, I usually try
to avoid just mirroring my own culture as much as I can.  (How well I
succeed is hard for me to objectively judge, of course.)

--Apollo Hogan