Re: How did you find out that there were other conlangers?

On 10/15/07, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> Michael Potter wrote:
> > I think that the best way to introduce potential conlangers to our hobby
> > would be to go out and find them. I don't mean anything like a
> > professional advertising campaign, but the grassroots "activist" things.
> > Everybody wants to be on MySpace or Facebook, or whatever the new site
> > is this week, so maybe there's potential there. There are other online
> > communities, like MMO games or something like Second Life, where
> > conlanging could be "advertised". Especially if they have voice chat. ;)
>
> Hmm, could be interesting to create a simple language for a fictional
> subculture in an online game. You'd get exposed to it from personal
> names, ancient inscriptions, etc. and resources with varying levels of
> detail describing the language would be available.
Could you elaborate on this? It could potentially be quite interesting.

What about non-online games? For instance I was playing Starcraft
lately (and SC2 comes out at some point soon...); it has a Protoss
'language' and Zerg...whatever one might dignify it with :-P. But
neither, I think, is particularly thought out.

How viable/useful would it be to have these incidental(?) bits of
conlanging be better fleshed out?

> I designed the Gargoyle language for Ultima VI in my spare time as a way
> to add some local color to the world, with all the signs and books in
> the Gargoyle side of the world printed in the Gargish script. It was a
> pretty crude attempt at a language, but it worked. One day Richard
> Garriott got a letter from a fan written in Gargish and asked me to
> translate it!
*laugh* That sounds quite neat.

How much response did you get re Gargish overall? Do you know how fans
/ normal players of the game reacted? Did they notice? Gloss over it?
Suddenly become conlangers? Form a posse and get some pitchforks and
torches to defend the Mother Tongue? :-P

- Sai

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