> 1) How many of you old- and new-comers started inventing a language
> in isolation from the list?
I'm a relative newcomer and I started my journey independent to this list.
>
> 1a) If so, how old were you?
It was only 2 or 3 years ago... I'm only of teenage age even now!
> 1b) Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
A solitary project. Alone...
> 1b) Did your invented language have some kind of private purpose?
> esoteric? erotic? religious or mystical?
No, I don't know, the idea just appealed to me. You know, it was "why
doesn't anyone else do this?" at the time...though I would entertain the
fact that you could mutter things to yourself and sound sophisticated too :)
So, yes, in some ways as a private purpose.
>
> Since the topic of my panel is "the language of
> mysticism,"
> I'm especially interested in this last.
>
> 2) How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
> Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
I sure didn't, I actually learned of it from a Laadan site with awkward
purple decor :) that still exists, I seem to have found.
>
> 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.
At first, I didn't seem to have many ideas, and applied exotic sound changes
to foreign words to make them sound nothing like their originals, but I've
been more imaginative since then.
>
> 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?
Yes, sometimes failing the above you would think of the word as a concept
and see if some sort of sound came to mind.
>
> 5) How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
> expressed in your native language?
I haven't been that original yet...my lexicon is quite scarce compared to
the others here...
>
> 6) How many of you used it for prayer? For secrecy?
No.
>
> 7) For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?
Yes, a way to express in my own way how I thought sometimes.
>
> 8) A language for a conculture?
The (in my opinion) awkward conculture came after the language.
>
> 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!
2) How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
My, almost verbatim :) Indeed I have only been on this list for only half a
year or a bit more.
>
> 10) What is your definition of a mystical language? Would any of you
> characterize your conlang as such?
An esoteric language used to differentiate or exclude the laypeople from the
mystic community, perhaps, but commonly a language that has links to the
unseen and unknown (if such things exist).