Re: Yaguello

On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Of course, to appreciate a conlang, you have to study it, while you can
> appreciate a painting without going into detail about it, just looking
> at it.  Of course, you CAN study the deeper meaning to the painting, or
> the technique used by the artist, etc., but there's really no way to
> casually appreciate a conlang.
>
        I disagree.  I've heard people say that "French is such a
beautiful language" without actually knowing French; I've heard people
say that "Japanese is a cool language" without actually knowing
Japanese; I've heard people say "the vocals in that song are really
nice" without even actually knowing what language the vocals are in.
And surely it can't be reserved to trained linguists to derive some sort
of pleasure from looking at a well-written foreign script (e.g.
Mongolian), even if you don't understand what has been written.
        So it seems to me that there must be some sort of underlying
aesthetic sense for language.  And this sense definitely applies to
constructed languages -- otherwise, languages like Klingon (which was
specifically designed to sound harsh and violent) wouldn't be nearly as
popular.  Tolkien's Tengwar is another good example: you can appreciate
the way it *looks* without knowing how to decipher the underlying
language.

Later,
Adam
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             myth@inquo.net |
http://www.inquo.net/~myth/ |
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