Re: conlang t-shirt

On Wed, 3 Nov 1999, Jay Bowks wrote:

> Just do me a favor... humor the auxlangs
I will not start a flame war.
I will not start a flame war.
I will not start a flame war.
I will not start a flame war.
I will not start a flame war.
(repeat 100 times)

Would it make a difference if this list was called "artlang" not
"conlang"?

What would you say if it was the auxlang list coming up with the
T-shirt idea, and one of us artlangers came over and more or less
demanded for a lot of artlangs to be put in?

We're just a different subset of the conlang community. Please let us
do our own thing.

> But for this... some of you antiaux-artlangers
> better come up with goodies to fill the void. ;-)
What void? Have you seen the variety of artlangs already sent in? Are
they not good enough?

I'm not ashamed of making up a language that isn't meant for easy
international communication or to change the world, however much
trouble people take to make me ashamed either of making it up, or of
not using it for idealistic purposes. Neither do I feel guilty for
not wanting auxlangs on an artlang T-shirt.

I'd say:

- all proposed artlangs (that's what it's *for*, after all; to show
off)

- only those auxlangs *sent in by the maker* (I won't be so picky as
to stipulate that the maker should be on the conlang list). Yes, this
rules out Esperanto, because Zamenhof can hardly send a mail message
from the grave.

- a few (very few!) natlangs with as distinctive scripts as possible,
say one in Latin script, one in Cyrillic script and one in a
character script. At least one of those should be so widely known
that people can actually read what the shirt says and deduce that all
the other phrases mean the same.

Note that I'm not expressing a preference for English, French or
Spanish; perhaps we should vote on that.

   Irina

            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)