Re: Conlangs in Literature

Philip Newton wrote:
> On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 20:39:10 -0700, Adam Walker <carrajena@...> wrote:
>
>>I'm composing a
>>list of all the books, movies, shows, etc. that I can
>>think of which use or reference conlangs.  I had a
>>longer list at one point which I seem to have lost.
>>Here's what I have so far.  Pleas chime in with
>>suggestions for lengthening the list!
>
>
> _Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius_ by Borges apparently makes reference to
> fictional languages, though whether those are well-enough developed to
> be considered conlangs in the scope of your project I don't know.
>
> All I know about it is pretty much what's e.g. in the Wikipedia article:
...

Which isn't much different from what is said in the book. The 'Tlön,
Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' describes languages being described as real
languages, except that it's known to the narrator of the story that the
languages are not real. I certainly wouldn't say that Borges conlanged;
it might be acceptible to say that Borges' characters' referrants
conlanged (i.e. conlanging was performed by the people referred to by
the characters in the story by Borges). (The story is a creation of a
person describing the (fictional) discovery of the creation of a culture
who creates a culture (with a language). Its very good and because
unless you have ethical reasons against reading things illegally, no-
one with access to the web as any excuse for not reading it, so _go do
it_. Google will find at least two copies in English.)

--
| Tristan.               |       To be nobody-but-yourself in a world
| kesuari@yahoo!.com.au  |  which is doing its best to, night and day,
|                        |                 to make you everybody else---
|                        |          means to fight the hardest battle
|                        |            which any human being can fight;
|                        |                    and never stop fighting.
|                        |      --- E. E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"
|                        |
|                        |     In the fight between you and the world,
|                        |                             back the world.
|                        |      --- Franz Kafka,
|                        |         "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days"