Hmmmm...I feel like filling this out, even though it's a little
late...;-)
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!
>
Salë Cävsê, ë edór elith! sarTéonat sayü sa lir.
> I'm speaking, again, at a conference in a few days, and I
> wanted to ask you a couple of questions--sort of along the
> lines of my old "Lunatic Survey."
>
> 1) How many of you old- and new-comers started inventing a language
> in isolation from the list?
>
Yes, got the idea from Prof. T., of course...
> 1a) If so, how old were you?
ummm....12ish? I am now 17.
> 1b) Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
Solitary
> 1b) Did your invented language have some kind of private purpose?
> esoteric? erotic? religious or mystical?
>
> Since the topic of my panel is "the language of mysticism,"
> I'm especially interested in this last.
It was fun. Yeah.
>
> 2) How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
> Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
nope. see above
> 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.
> This is
> what I did when I was new at this and a teenager. Many of these still
> remain vocabulary words in Teonaht, but I've since then learned to build
> up through word roots.
This is pretty much how I started, ywp.
> 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?
It (andraimaeukir) was supposed to be pretty....
Aesthetics still plays a large part in word construction for me.
> 5) How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
> expressed in your native language?
On occaision, I do this.
> 6) How many of you used it for prayer? For secrecy?
>
no
> 7) For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?
It was, but was more for fun.
>
> 8) A language for a conculture?
It was, but only acause I was imitating Tolkien. Now, Mirér is somewhat
independant of traditional fantasy and Tolkienic influences.
> 9) How many of you newcomers (and I see a lot of names I don't
> recognize
> in the six months I've been away) heard of the list first and thought--
> Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
Nope. Didn't you already ask this?
BTW, I've been on this list several years, but I'm fairly quiet.
> 10) What is your definition of a mystical language? Would any of you
> characterize your conlang as such?
Hmmm. I'd say a mystical language is one that is used for some
spiritual purpose. Mine were most definitely not for me, but for my
second conculture, Andraimaeukir was the language of the gods.
> Yry poy poy firrimby, talk to you soon!
> Sally Caves
Sarán eyenair.
-M
[snip]