Re: Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's wonderful sig.)

Ed Heil wrote:

>Perhaps in this context Jeffrey Henning's term (which nobody else uses
>but him, as far as I can tell), "Model Languages," would be useful. :)
>You seem to have made the same point via metaphor.
Well, in my defense, when I coined the term in 1986 I had never heard of any
other word for it nor met anyone else who practiced it.  I had read
Tolkien's Secret Vice essay and had seen a couple Dragon (D&D) Magazine
articles about inventing languages, but that was it.  Thank heavens for the
WWW, the Internet and -- before it -- CompuServe and the BBSes, where I met
others like us online.  Since then, I've had the good fortune of meeting Ben
Madison (the King of Talossa), Ray Brown and Leo Moser in person, and have
only my poor knowledge of NYC geography to blame for missing a meeting with
David Bell.  (If any of you are ever in Boston or south of Boston, please
ring me up.)

But I must confess that "conlang" has always seemed to me to be an ugly
word, reminding me for some reason of "chaingang", and "conlanger" strikes
me even worse.  I like "artlang", "artlanger", "auxlang", and "auxlanger",
but I do wish we had a better word for "conlang"/"modlang".  In English,
"con" is "convict", "swindle", "station to steer a vessel", "an argument
against
something", "one who holds an opposing view".  No wonder the CONLANG list's
early days were so tumultous!  Surely its name was its destiny?  :-)  While
I
know the idea of renaming the list was in jest, in my alternate Earth
history
the CONLANG list was named "fablang", since "fab" in English can mean
"fabulous" or "fabrication", and I think most fab langs are fab.

Best regards,

Jeffrey Henning
http://www.LangMaker.com/ - Invent Your Own Language
http://www.Jeffrey.Henning.com/ - Santa Paravia & Fiumaccio for Windows