Re: Language and "mysticism," whatever that is.

Sally Caves wrote:

> Vyko, Conlangers!  I've taken a long long holiday (which
> essentially amounts to doing my dayjob at the university).
> I hope you haven't forgotten Teonaht!
How could we?  Welcome back!


> 1)  How many of you old- and new-comers started inventing a language
> in isolation from the list?
I did.


>         1a)  If so, how old were you?
>        1b)  Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
I did my first few conlang sketches when I was around 9 years old.  These were
exceedingly primitive English relexes--in some cases barely disguised English
(I remember that "how are you" was "hu ar yoo" in my earliest 'Elvish'
language).  At around age 11 I spent a few weeks collaborating on a project
called Jibberish with a classmate of mine.  This one was also a relex, made up
of English-style nonsense words ("gabbledoober", "zeemie", and the like).  This
project was unique in my conlanging experience in that it was my only
collaboration, as well as my only foray into linguistic satire.

I began what became my first 'geniune' conlang (i.e., non-English grammar and
morphology, structured sound system, etc.) at around age 13.


>         1b)  Did your invented language have some kind of private purpose?
>                 esoteric?  erotic? religious or mystical?
Those first relexes were blatant imitations/emulations of Tolkien's Elvish
languages.  Their purpose was purely aesthetic.  Jibberish was intended as a
'secret code', but my collaborator lost interest in it before we got far enough
to use it.


> 2)  How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
> Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
The list (and the internet, for that matter) did not exist when I began
conlanging.


> 3)  How many of you, when you were starting out on this on your own,
> did this kind of thing:  you have a list of words you want to invent
> new ones for, so you drew di-and polysyllabic words out of the air.
Yes.  To build the vocabulary for my first 'genuine' conlang, Messyen, I copied
out the wordlist from the "Charlie Brown Dictionary" (a popular illustrated
children's dictionary) into a notebook, and then added Messyen equivalents for
each word.  At first, the vocabulary was entirely a priori and unsystematic,
but eventually I got the hang of deriving new words from previously-existing
words in the language.


> 4)  If so, how important was it that the new word sound "exotic,"
> "beautiful," or
> "suggestive" in some personal way of the word you wanted it to stand
> for?
This was a strong impulse.


> 5)  How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
> expressed in your native language?
I didn't start doing this until much later.


> 6)  How many of you used it for prayer?  For secrecy?
Neither.  However, I did attempt to devise a religion for my Messyen speakers,
and even wrote a few passages of their 'holy book', which reflected my
spiritual beliefs at the time (a naive mixture of Taoism, transcendentalism,
and Gnosticism, 'flavoured' by an interest in Islamic and Jewish
ritual/iconography).  I also wrote some creation myths, and translated these
into Messyen.  This was probably my first serious attempt at conculturing.


> 10)  What is your definition of a mystical language?  Would any of you
> characterize your conlang as such?
My main interest in conlanging has always been "creation for creation's sake".
I would not consider any of my conlangs mystical in nature.

Matt.