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

On 10/13/07, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
> How did you find out that there were other conlangers?
I went searching for "inventing languages" or "invented languages" or
something similar.

>
> How did you find out that it was called "conlanging", or find any of
> the online resources in general?
It don't think "conlang" had reached the point of being a verb when I
found the list. It was just the name of the list.

>
> How could that be made easier - so that conlangers who think they're
> The Only Ones (didn't the majority of us start out that way?) can
> easily be connected to the rest of us, have more resources at their
> disposal, etc.
>
 I think it is easier than ever to find information.
>
> Basically, I'd like to improve the reaching-out that we do, but I'm
> not sure how to go about it. Even using the term 'conlanger' is
> something that's community-internal. Once you know a few resources,
> the rest are relatively easy to find - it's that initial step of
> realizing that there might even *be* something out there, and finding
> it, that is difficult.
>
Perhaps an idea to help bring unconnected conlangers into the
community would be for people to tag their pages as broadly as
possible for the terms people might be searching for-- "imaginary
language", "invented language", "made-up language", etc.

> Stories? Ideas?
I recently went looking for the title of a made-for-TV movie I saw in
1978 when I was 7 years old and found it by Googling "giant turtle
movie", only to discover that there were a lot of people who had seen
that movie when they were somewhere between 5 and 12 years old and
found it the same way I did.

That was a pretty obscure thing to be able to look up. It should be
that easy, or even easier, to find conlangers and conlanging
resources. After all, we're making more conlangs all the time. Anyone
who wants to find stuff enough to actively look for it will find their
way.

M.

Replies