Re: Language and "mysticism," whatever that is.
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, April 30, 2001, 11:02 |
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En réponse à Sally Caves <scaves@...>:
>...> 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!
>
Vyko, Sally! I'm so glad you're back! Your timing is good, I was about to ask
the list to know whether someone had heard of you or not! I think I can say for
all the list that we missed you (at least I missed you).
>...> 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."
>
I hope I'm not too late to answer.
>...> 1) How many of you old- and new-comers started inventing a language
> in isolation from the list?
>
I did. When I began conlanging, PCs hadn't taken over the realm of computers
(Atari and Amiga were the most important, at least in France), and the most
powerful game consoles were 8-bit :) . So, nothing about Internet :) .
>...> 1a) If so, how old were you?
Between 13 and 14, I don't remember exactly. I began after having a few months
of Latin classes.
>...> 1b) Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
Solitary. I had no friend at that time anyway...
>...> 1b) Did your invented language have some kind of private
> purpose?
> esoteric? erotic? religious or mystical?
>
Just for the fun of creating it. I didn't really have a purpose, though I had
heard about Esperanto and "pretended" to create it for international
communication. Really, what I did at that time was just creating relexes of
Latin, with identical grammar, but just regularlized declensions and
conjugations and made-up words.
>...>
> 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.
>
I did. To a certain extent, I still do, though I try to be more naturalistic and
try to use word roots (but those roots are most always never written down. They
stay there wandering in my head). Usually, when I come up with a concept, I try
to see if there's something related in the lexicon. If there is I try to see
whether I want to derive the concept from it, or if I want to come up with
something different. If I don't see anything related I have to come up with a
new word. Of course, this doesn't apply to Reman and Narbonósc which are
supposed to derive from Latin.
>...> 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?
>
Extremely important!!! Especially the "suggestive" part. It also has to sound
different from what i already did (very difficult, I tend to reinvent the same
strings of sounds over and over again). Still, my main interest lies more in
grammar, morphology, phonology and syntax than in lexicon, so I generally don't
make big lexicons. I just move on to a new conlang :) .
>...> 5) How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not
> be
> expressed in your native language?
>
There are certainly a few, but usually they were not invented as such but
sneaked in the vocabulary (like moten, which I use as a name for one of my
conlangs, but is really a word on its own whose meaning eludes me: motenku|lu
means "Moten language" - ku|lu means "language" -, motenva means "purple" - va
is "colour" -. I know this word expresses a concept, but I have no idea which
one). Only a few were invented on purpose (like No in Notya, which stands for a
kind of mystical energy some humans would be able to master, a little like the
Force in Star Wars but existing only in humans, not sustaining the whole
Universe). Generally, what happens is that I discover that words I already
invented have shades of meanings that I hadn't realized before, which make the
translations I gave before approximative.
>...> 6) How many of you used it for prayer? For secrecy?
>
None. I hardly ever create enough words to translate anything longer than a
Tshirt translation exercise anyway.
>...> 7) For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?
>
That's me. My main interet lies in creating *grammars*. I find it a nice
intellectual exercise, and quite fun!
>...> 8) A language for a conculture?
>
I always begin with the language, but since I discovered the list I've realized
that I could give more depth to my languages by adding a culture to them. I
sometimes try to, but it involves much more effort for me than creating a
language, and I'm rather lazy :) . Moten is an exception, but the conculture
with it is an exception too :) : it consists of a single amnesic speaker who
happens to be my exact lookalike and who doesn't know where he comes from at all
:) . Well, can you call that a culture? :)))
>...>
> 10) What is your definition of a mystical language? Would any of you
> characterize your conlang as such?
>
A mystical language? Latin, when it was used in mass excluding living languages,
or Hebrew when Isreal didn't exist yet, could be considered as mystical
languages. Runes too, though in a different way. I cannot really give a
definition, but I can give examples of what I feel could be considered as
mystical languages. Notya also could be considered as a mystical language in its
conculture, though it's more exactly the secret language of a mystical
organisation (kind of an interlang for them, since those people can come from
anywhere in the world and have thus different native languages).
>...
Good to see that signature again!
Christophe.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr