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

On Sun, 7 Nov 1999, Dan Sulani wrote:

<...>
>     One wouldn't go into a community of staunch religious
> fundamentalists and happily proclaim that one belongs to
> a group of people that finds fun in making up all sorts
> of new religions, some of which may be wild and wierd!
> "Arrogant"  might be the _least_ thing said about you!
That's a very good point - I like inventing religions to go with my
concultures and conlanguages, but I have been known to be shocked by
people who wanted to enact their invented religion as if it were
real. That was ten years ago, though, and I don't think I'd be
shocked nowadays.

<...>
>     In other words, when describing what we do to non-conlangers,
> I think that language's social and identity functions should
> be taken into account as well as the grammar and
> communication aspects.
In the Netherlands, despite the fact that everyone knows the standard
dialect, local dialects are going very strong. Indeed, the situation
is almost Valdyan, where local dialects have a lot of prestige,
and not to be able to speak dialect is frowned upon.  (I can't - my
mother was a schoolteacher's schoolteacher and she abhorred anything
dialectical, the dialect-appreciation situation has changed rapidly
in the past two decades.) So I when I see the conversation veer in
the direction of speculative linguistics, I mention with approval the
myriad dialects, pronounce my conversation partner's dialect to be a
language in its own right, mention Tolkien in passing, and then say
I'm constructing languages for fun and eddification... It provokes
a lot of understanding, making clear that you love all languages,
and aren't interested in disappearing their own language.

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt