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Re: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG

From:Shreyas Sampat <nsampat@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 25, 2001, 3:31
: <wry g>  I have seen many fascinating conlangs pass by this list (and
: I've only been on here for less than a year!), yet I confess that had I
: the time to learn someone's conlang, I'd probably learn Teonaht, amman
: iar, or Verdurian.  And this has nothing to do with whether the ones I
*don't*
: want to learn are somehow inadequate, really, it has to do with my
: personal preferences in a language and with the fact that those are some
: conlangs that *are* fairly extensively documented (from my POV).  I like
: their flavor.  And we're all individuals in our tastes, else our conlangs
: would all look awfully similar.  :-)
On languages to learn - Yeah, Teonaht's charming.  I'd personally want to
learn Valdyan as well; it has a nice music about it.  I haven't seen enough
amman iar (yes, I know, sin!) to form an informed opinion on it, really.
I'd like to learn something with Semitic triconsonant morphology, too, and
something with an elegant phonology like Finnish.
On taste - I recently noticed that all my conlangs have retroflex
consonants.  I'm in a rut):

: And come to that, I don't expect *anyone* to ever try to learn the
: conlangs I've put effort into.  Granted, I conlang for culture-building
: and learning about linguistics, not to create an actual language that
: people would use.  (Though I keep having really evil ideas for Tsuhon,
: the German-Japanese blend--perhaps I should post what I have for
: phonology and ask for help--that I've really wanted to put more work
: into.)  If anyone deigns to learn a phrase or two in my languages, I
: confess I'm very flattered.
Learning - Occasionally i pick up phrases from the mailing list; I've caught
myself using 'iaf' in emails recently (So that's a natlng example, so?).
Sometimes something is just really apt and it has to be used.

: I am sure this has been done before, but I would love to see a conlang
: phrasebook for this echo; I just don't know where to get to the search
: engine, and going through past postings to glean translation gems would
: be a massive undertaking.  It'd be a fun pastime, though--and I *would*
: someday like to know "greetings!" or some friendly sentiment in a conlang
: by everyone on this list.  It probably isn't happening in the near
: future, but that'd just be neat.
The Archive:
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
A phrasebook would be a nice webpage sort of project, I think.  If we can
make up a list of phrases that would be interesting to translate and
possibly useful as well, it'd be rather entertaining to see what comes of
it.
There was an attempt, apparently, at a Phrasebook some time in the past,
which was cheerfully replied to by a multitude of listmembers, but I know
now what came of it.
This echo, incidentally?

---
Shreyas