Language and "mysticism," whatever that is.

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!

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."

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

8)  A language for a conculture?

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!

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


Yry poy poy firrimby, talk to you soon!
Sally Caves
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scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/whatsteo.html
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonath.html
http://english.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/languages.html

Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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