Re: poll 30? (long...Sal at her most voluble)

En réponse à Sally Caves :


>Thirdly: the sense that I was no longer so unique.  When I discovered
>Tolkien at the age of fourteen, I had the same mixed feelings: delight and
>let down.  Here was a writer who put my meager efforts into shade.  I got on
>CONLANG, and the feelings were strangely similar.  Joy, amazement, and let
>down.  The efficiencies of Tokana and other neatly described languages made
>my Teonaht feel gargantuan and unwieldy.
You shouldn't. Teonaht, as I often tell about, is the first artlang I found
online, and my first impression was awe. Here I was, working my little
sandcastles, while someone had already built a cathedral! I never felt
jealous, envious or ashamed (my competitive instincts go to other places),
just impressed and admirative :) . Since then I discovered plenty of oher
conlangs, some impressive for the achievement they present (like Kerno,
Tokana, and so many others), some admirable for their uniqueness and
features (Ebidesian comes to mind, as well as Vyääh), but Teonaht has still
a special place. It stays for me the artlang _par excellence_, the ideal
I'm striving to reach. You shouldn't be so modest about your achievement,
Sally. To me, you deserve a place in the pantheon of conlangers, along with
Tolkien :) .

>    I decided to revel in Teonaht's
>maggelities.  [I made some terrific friends whose faces I have only recently
>seen.  I have been helped immensely, and I have learned a lot about
>linguistics.
And you have also helped a lot of people, don't forget it. Your kindness,
your interest for other people, make you an irreplaceable person on this
list. And I am sure that your conferences and different public appearances
where you talk about conlanging are helping a lot to make conlanging
recognised as something else than a pathological state. If one day
conlanging is recognised as a valuable artform, your input will certainly
have been determining in it :) .

>    I wish I had the dedication to study somebody else's conlang
>and get proficiency.]
So do I! But I don't have the dedication to learn my own conlangs, so how
can I dare try to learn anybody else's?

>VOCABULARY BUILDING AND SHOWCASING:
>I made a huge taxonomy of words in English that are grouped according to
>categories.  The problem of having to fill them in by sorting through what
>is up on the Teonaht-English page and what is in the notebook or what is in
>my memory [OR WHAT IS STILL NOT THERE!] is killing me.  The taxonomy,
>modeled after Hildegard's--wherein I start with the body and move from that
>to the family, and move from that to the house, and move from that to the
>garden, and move from that to the farm, and move from that to cuisine (a
>huge and obsessive category), and move from that to the city, and all the
>careers in the city, and all the professions in the city, and the major
>terms for government and war and religion and
>medicine and art--has gotten out of hand.  It's definitely not ready yet for
>posting on a page.
Would you happen to have a file of this taxonomy? (just the empty one in
English) It seems extremely interesting, and more practical than most lists
I've seen. I ask that because I'm often at a loss when I try to make up
words. The problem is often not to find the right word, but to think first
of a meaning at all. I'm sure a taxonomy would help me, but all the ones
I've found until now are just too sterile for me. Yours looks more organic
and dynamic, and would probably be of great help for me.

>The fact that my once sharp memory is dulling with age and information
>overload, so that I need to consult my handwritten dictionaries more often;
>that I ought to have all of my Teonaht words memorized.  That the newest
>words I've made up are also the most forgettable.  That there are still some
>basic words that I don't have.  Like "beach."  How can I not have "beach"?
You don't have one close to where you live? :))

>Okay, that was my long beef.  In its "glorious fullness."  :)
Thanks. A very informative and interesting reply :) .


>Yeah, patience and perseverence seem to be the ticket.  Or obsessive
>compulsive disorder. :)
LOL. Or just jump from conlang to conlang where your whim brings you :) . I
stand in admiration in front of people who can work on a single language
for decades (although I'm feeling like settling a while with Maggel. It
looks a bit like a baroque cathedral built over three centuries and whose
blueprints were lost after the first decade of construction ;)) . As such,
it doesn't cease to surprise me in it behaviour and features, and keeps me
entertained :)) . I may become monogamous ;))))) ).


>Okay, this is what clinches it for me.  The main thing I'm hearing is
>vocabulary building, and documentation/publication.  Estel Telcontar, Mau
>Rauszer, Camilla Drefvenborg, and I find the vocabulary building the
>hardest; Robert Wilson, Jan van Steenbergen, And Rosta, and I, again, find
>putting it up on the web in any kind of completion onerous.  However, I
>don't find that it takes away from the creative process... it can solidify
>that process, and then make it harder for you to undo it.
Indeed. My motto is: "once published, never change it". This is why the
Conlang list is such a practical place to me. It helps me crystallising my
work without me having to make up a whole webpage for it :) . The drawback
is that if I become dissatisfied with some part of a language, the only way
for me to correct it is to invent a new one :)) .


>Which I've made even longer.
But even more interesting :) .


>Thank you, Peter, for your hard work on this, and for putting up with us. :)
>We are all grateful.
Indeed we are. Now, I just hope someone will volunteer to take over the job
(don't look at me, I haven't managed to lengthen days to 48 hours yet ;))))
). I always found those polls very informative and entertaining, and I
would find it too bad if they completely disappeared. Also, since we get
new members all the time, I don't think even by asking the same question
we'll ever get the same answers, so it would also be interesting in order
to have an idea of how the list is evolving with time :) .

Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.