Am 04/28 10:33 Sally Caves yscrifef:
> 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 I? Nostalgia if nothing else prevents it.
Yours was one the first conlang websites I stumbled across.
> 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?
Mid teens - sophomore-ish year of high school.
> 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?
No. Entertainment only.
> 2) How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
> Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
No.
> 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. And still do, to a lesser extent. Vocab building is my least
fav. part of conlanging so my langs tend to languish with small vocabs
for a long time.
> 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?
Not really suggestive of anything. But aesthetic is very important.
> 5) How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
> expressed in your native language?
Not yet. cf. answer to number 3.
> 6) How many of you used it for prayer? For secrecy?
No.
> 7) For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?
Pure entertainment.
> 8) A language for a conculture?
The language and the culture grow together and separately.
Neither completely dependant nor independent of the other,
> 10) What is your definition of a mystical language? Would any of you
> characterize your conlang as such?
My conlang is certainly not characterized as "mystical".
Andy
adchaney@louisiana.edu
http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~adc7593/