Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?

I definitely believe that there are some sound:meaning universals, which are
reflected in a variety of the world's languages.  Though from long experience of
having believed controversial things, I tend to avoid getting into arguments over
it; such usually degenerate into contests of examples and counterexamples.
Sound:meaning fit is never perfect, and counterexamples are often lauded as
disproving the idea entirely.  Sigh.

I've played around with this a lot in my conlangs, though the best examples are
often found in natlangs.  I think, e.g., that the Proto-Algonquian root for
'fight', _mikaθ-_, is a perfect fit between sound and act.  Don't ask me why; I
can't tell you.  It just feels right.

--- On Wed, 4/1/09, RoseRose <faithfulscribe@...> wrote:

> From: RoseRose <faithfulscribe@...>
> Subject: Re: does conlanging change your sense of reality?
> To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> Date: Wednesday, April 1, 2009, 9:35 AM
> That's an interesting aesthetic
> challenge.  Are you familiar with Margaret
> Magnus and phonosemantics <http://www.trismegistos.com/>?  She makes a
> strong argument for sound and sense connecting, not being
> arbitrary at all.
>  I toss this out knowing the controversy it can spawn 
> ;--}
> RR
>
> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 9:14 AM, Peter Bleackley <
> Peter.Bleackley@rd.bbc.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
> > staving RoseRose:
> >
> >  I'm personally of the Whorfian persuasion that
> different languages "cause"
> >> different forms of thinking and different thoughts
> therefore arise.
> >>  Having
> >> been so deeply engaged with Glide for 10 years,
> I've noticed I parse the
> >> world differently--see process, for instance, more
> foregrounded than
> >> things,
> >> flow more than form.  This is of course very
> subjective and not all that
> >> easy to describe.  I am curious if anyone
> else sees effects in your
> >> reality-sense that you attribute to your
> conlanging activities in any way?
> >> Diana
> >>
> >
> > OK, here's a slightly weird one for you.
> > Khangaşyagon is spoken by wizards, who because of
> their magical gifts, are
> > all synaesthetes. I'm not a synaesthete, but recently
> I was trying to think
> > up words for herbs and spices. I spent a lot of time
> in my kitchen, sniffing
> > at jars and trying to find a word that fit - or
> thinking up words and then
> > searching for something that smelt right for the
> sound. My thought processes
> > at one point went something like this.
> > "zurvin... Is that cloves?" <sniff> "No,
> definitely not cloves. How about
> > thyme?" <sniff> "Yes, that's right, zurvin is
> thyme."
> >
> > Pete
> >
>