Re: Lighting Some Flames: Towards conlang artistry

Here comes my counter-flame.

First, I agree with you that there would be nothing wrong with a slightly
more critical approach to each other's languages. Criticism that won't go
any further than sentences like "Three big hallelujahs for Mr. or Mrs. X's
language!" scores poorly, and so does criticism like "Your language
sucks".  But when people submit whole phonologies, morphologies or bible
portions, and explicitly ask for comments, constructive criticism will no
doubt be received positively. I hereby invite anybody to give his honest
opinion about everything that I will present in the future.
When it comes to criteria for judging the quality of a language as such:
the only thing that counts for me, is whether the language succeeds in
fulfilling the aims it set for itself; an extremely complicated auxlang
would be the same kind of disaster as a mixture of Korean with Icelandic
that claims to be a recently discovered new Bantu language and pretends to
be natural.

About your idea of building schools, I would like to make the following
remarks:

1. We should be happy that conlangers, after centuries of silence, finally
dare to leave their secret holes and throw their products into the public
arena. Most of us share the experience, that we always thought of it as
some strange kind of psychological aberration, until we found out that
hundreds of other people did exactly the same. This, however, does not
change the fact, that conlangers are a very, very small percentage of the
world's population. Until drawing, painting, writing poetry, or even
writing music, language building will probably always remain the terrain of
an extremely small community.

2. Secondly, not all of us are professional linguists, who speak fourteen
languages. With one exception, we are all amateurs, but with different
levels of expertise.

3. Not every conlanger has the same approach to his hobby/art. No doubt,
there are those who spend 23 hours a day doing it, and for whom conlanging
is the fulfillment of their life. But for many others, it is just one of
many hobbies. In my own case, writing music is my most important and time-
consuming creative activity, while conlanging is a thing I just do because
I am unable to leave it. As a result, I don't feel the ambition to be
recognized as an artist, at least not in conlanging. And I am sure many of
us feel the same way. It's typically the kind of thing people do for no
other reason than that they enjoy it.

4. The diversity of our languages is enormous. Some of us are deeply into
science-fiction and like to create strange, alien languages for strange,
alien beings that sound like: "qipL##53x&p'omn3çyy$fåor/bzzzzz…", while
others rather enjoy creating a latinoid language with some local flavour
from elsewhere in Europe. Or try to create a present-day version of Crimean
Gothic or Dalmatian. Not to mention the creators of logical and auxiliary
languages.

My point is: we have a very small and very diverse community. If we were to
follow your ideas, it would soon split up into numerous tiny fractions,
part of which would instantly cease to exist. I don't see what purpose can
be served with such developments. Why create tension between those for whom
it is art and those for whom it is hobby, or between professional linguists
and amateurs? Besides, what is art? Many of us do not even pretend to
create art. For most of us it is the creative process that counts, not the
result. This applies to conlanging stronger than to any other art form, and
makes it definitely harder to judge a product. If you nevertheless look for
recognition as an artist, don't try to hard in the outside world; most
people would think you're mad anyway. The way conlangers solve their
internal problems won't have much effect either. You will rather find your
recognition within this community, so I strongly recommend to leave it
intact.

There is nothing wrong with creating schools, as long as you won't
formalize them by separating them from each other or by creating a
distinction between "us" and "them". And especially not by hunting down
those who won't fulfill your artistic criteria.

If might be useful, though, to categorize all the artificial languages we
know. That can be done along many lines: by content (a priori, a
posteriori, and all that's between those two), by purpose (auxlangs,
loglangs, sci-fi langs, fantasy langs, what-if langs, just-for-fun langs,
etc.), by size… Labelling and categorizing conlangs could be a very useful
project and a nice challenge. But only in order to create a map, as
complete as can be achieved, and help ourselves find our place in conlang
land. Definitely not in order to throw mud at each other.

Like the vast majority of us, I would definitely belong to the "naturalist
school". However, the only criterium that I can more or less subscribe is
the first one. But when it comes to size, I disagree with you. Some of us
can focus upon one language for decennia, creating one big masterpiece the
size of a natlang, others might prefer to create one or more language
families, which implies that each language will be less detailed. And to be
honest, I would rather prefer a miniature that concentrates all it's
essence in just a few notes over a symphony that needs half an hour to tell
the same story.
I strongly object to the third criterium. This is typically the kind of
foolish avant-gardism that I often met in musical circles. Something
strongly rooted in tradition is automatically: not creative, conservative,
commercial… Besides, if you want to judge a conlang properly, then why take
the conlanger's nationality into consideration? According to your idea, a
Vietnamese pianist plays Beethoven automatically better than a German
pianist, and anyone would dance the tango better than an Argentinian
dancer. Why? When the performance is good, what does it matter who actually
made it? Why disqualify an Irishman creating a beautiful Celto-Romance
conlang? In my opinion, a conlang - as any other art form - should be
judged by its own merits. Thus, if a German creates a nice Germanic
conlang, that's just fine to me.

Let us respect each other and enjoy our differences!

Jan

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