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

    Welcome back!  I'm David.  Interesting survey.  Here goes:

In a message dated 4/28/01 7:29:28 AM, scaves@FRONTIERNET.NET writes:
    

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

        1a)  If so, how old were you?
        1b)  Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
        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. >>

    I did.  I was nineteen (now I'm twenty), it was a project by myself, and 
my language was intended to write a Spenserian allegory in for my girlfriend.

<<2)  How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!>>

    Nope; I thought I was the only one, aside from Klingon, Zamenhof, that 
Volapük fellah...

<<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.>>

    Nope.  I wanted my language to have tri-consonantal roots, so I invented 
a bunch of infixes first, then invented roots to fit those, then invented 
more infixes...

<<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?>>

    I wasn't looking for "exotic", but "beautiful", a couple of tiimes (more 
like non-ugly), and suggestive a couple of times.  Then I just started making 
up roots that sounded appropriate to my language.

<<5)  How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
expressed in your native language?>>

    I did.  I have tons of color terms (all the basic ones, the non-basic 
ones, and the primitive combination terms).

<<6)  How many of you used it for prayer?  For secrecy?>>

    No, not so much.

<<7)  For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?>>

    It became that, but the purpose all along was still for my girlfriend's 
story, and I did do that.

<<8)  A language for a conculture?>>

    Absolutely not.  I've always thought that was the dumbest idea ever.  At 
least, I did at the time.  Now I find it somewhat interesting and still will 
never do it.  It's not for me.

<<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!>>

    You already asked this question, didn't you?  Number two?

<<10)  What is your definition of a mystical language?  Would any of you
characterize your conlang as such?>>

    A language that has that feel, or has that intended purpose.  It doesn't 
even have to be used for prayer or anything, per se, just for stories with a 
mystic's feel, or intended for stories and not used.  I think it's all in the 
intention.  None of my languages are like that.

As Tom would say, Cheers

-David