Re: CHAT: Happy Conlang day!

Hallo!

On Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:27:36 -0700, David J. Peterson wrote:

> Jörg:
> <<
> It was a different server back then, though, and apparently,
> an informal network of people exchanging e-mails about
> conlangs and conlanging existed at least for several weeks
> before that.
>  >>
>
> That would seem to be the case.  In that message, Ronald writes:
>
> <<
> Glad to see the mailing list is working.
>  >>
>
> Rather presumptuous unless he saw that it was already
> working (i.e., there was at least one post before his).
Yes, there must have been some signs of life from the list;
presumably a few successfully delivered test messages.

> Regarding the content, I'm not sure if Pale Fire was a commentary
> on Esperanto, but I bet the idea of creating the Zemblan language
> (and the mania associated with such an inventor) might have
> been inspired by the IAL movement.  Zemblan itself, of course,
> doesn't look like an IAL at all.  In fact, with what words we see,
> it's a rather plausible hypothetical member of the Slavic language
> family--at least from what I remember.  I should give it another
> read.  I wonder if anyone's posted a wordlist online...
I haven't read the book yet, but judging from what I have read
*about* it, Zemblan is not an IAL.  It is, apparently,
the language of a fictional country in northeastern Europe
(which way a Slavic language would make sense), and it appears
to be somewhat unclear whether it is a real country within
the narrative of the book or fictional even within it.

> Well, unless I'm missing something, there isn't.  I'm rather
> surprised, because it shouldn't be that difficult to go through
> the book and note each Zemblan word, and then to put it on
> a webpage somewhere.  There aren't many words, and the
> book and author are rather popular.
I haven't found anything either.  There is a web site named
"Zemblan Grammar", but it is a blog that doesn't seem to have
much to do with the language; it is just that, apparently after
reading _Pale Fire_, the author thought that "Zemblan Grammar"
would be a nice fanciful title for his blog.

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