Re: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG

Dear Oskar,

It was of course inevitable that I should feel obliged to write a reply to
your curious comments.

You call Uusisuom 'another obscure conlang'. It's worth mentioning here that
EVERY conlang, including Esperanto is obscure to the vast majority of people
in the world.

Moving on, the language's homepage is extremely small and rough around the
edges, so please don't take much from it.

I think that Zamenhof's Esperanto was an excellent beginner's artlang. So, I
am not in bad company!

'While at best a naive auxlang'. Well, I'm not sure what to make of this
comment.

Auxiliary languages can be successful, depending on various things:

- original and appealing design
- exhaustive promotion
- ease of use and fun to learn
- community spirit among speakers
- well run organisation
- various publications etc.

Just because Uusisuom does not stink of rehashed Latin does not mean it is a
'naive' language or somehow bad or inadequate as you seem to imply. It has
no accents or diacritical marks so can be automatically fed into a computer,
word processing system or the net, it has an 18-letter alphabet, simple
totally regular grammar, no accusative case and no articles. Vocabulary is
occasionally related to natural languages and is often related to other
words and concepts.

To be honest, I am not interested in studying more linguistics. I have found
many linguists to be tedious, back biting and pretentious and I know enough
of languages from my own study (as was the case with Zamenhof) that I have
the confidence to create and promote my language.

I am not interested in 'improving' Uusisuom for the same reasons that
Zamenhof largely rejected demands to 'improve' Esperanto. The language is
interesting, appealing and sufficiently easy and fun to learn and use to
satisfy my objectives.

I admit freely that Uusisuom is not a perfect language (show me one that
is), but that does not make it 'naive' and I resent such a comment.

From what I can gather, criticisms of Uusisuom come from those who are quick
to judge and even quicker to criticise. I have not simply picked at bits
from other languages, nor have I attempted to copy an existing auxlang.
Uusisuom is my own creation and design, and as its father I will be happy to
watch it take its first steps and stumbles along the path towards, I
believe, significant success.

More info, online Uusisuom lessons -
http://pub56.ezboard.com/buusisuomanewworldlanguage

Daniel
daniel44@btinternet.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "Oskar Gudlaugsson" <hr_oskar@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 4:06 PM
Subject: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG


Since I started reading the list again only a few weeks ago when the
Uusisuom discussion was nearing an end, I totally missed that whole
discussion. I presumed "Uusisuom" to be just another obscure conlang (which
it indeed is), so I never bothered to check out where the "Blandness (was:
Uusisuom's Influences)" thread had started. But recently I gathered that
this Uusisuom is some kind of auxlang, so I inquired on it.

Having viewed the lang's homepage and read through all the threads about it
of late March - early April, I must honestly say that it's the most
hilarious CONLANG thread I've ever seen; no offence to Daniel (Uusisuom's
author) or anyone else involved :) As for my opinion on Uusisuom, I
wholeheartedly agree with most that it would make an excellent beginner's
artlang, while at best a naive auxlang. I hope the friendly comments and
criticisms of this list will inspire Daniel to study more linguistics,
especially phonology, to improve his designs; we all started this hobby
somewhere :)

I now realize, however, that my whole auxlang discussion may have entered
the list at a bad time, when some were getting tired of the subject. I
noticed iterations of this not being a list for auxlang design. I'm sorry,
for example, that my threads spurred a brief flame-war between list members
about Esperanto, which would otherwise not have occurred.

Though no-one has openly complained of my writing on the subject, I wish to
explain why I feel these writings belong here. One big reason is: they
don't want them in AUXLANG! The difference between CONLANG and AUXLANG
isn't necessarily, I think, in what can be discussed, but rather _how_ it
is discussed. AUXLANG discusses auxlangs in a completely non-theoretical
manner; the main subject is the political reality of such languages, and
not design questions. If we see my auxlang design as design ponderings for
a futuristic artlang named "Unilang", whose nature is that it is the
intermedium of all humans in some ideal future, I think it is easier to
accept its presence here.

Again, nobody even criticized, but I felt obliged to explain why I've taken
up this somewhat flammable subject here. The discussions have generally
been positive, and I am grateful for the attention the subject has had,
after all :) May it remain so.

Regards,
Óskar

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