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