Re: How to attract speakers?

Why do natural languages, including pidgins, attract more users? In the final
analysis, a natural language gains users for reasons having nothing to do with
linguistics or the attributes of the language itself. Those reasons boil down
to three benefits which new users of a language can accrue. These benefits fall
into the realms of commercial, social, and religious.

Commercial use of a language covers everything from merchants doing trade with
foreign lands to ordinary people buying and selling goods in the public market
in regions where more than one native language is in common use.

Social motivations for language aquisition can range from seeking social status
by using a language associated with greater wealth, status or political power,
to using language as a means of bonding with social group. Often one such
reward will overlap with others in the same social context. Speakers of
Klingon, for example, accrue a certain amount of status or recognition among
the greater community of Star Trek fans, and also experience greater bonding
with fellow Klingon scholars. Languages used in games and role playing can also
be considered to offer social rewards for their use. Another social use of
language might be for secrecy or exclusivity. Gang or clique members might coin
their own jargon not only as a badge of membership, setting themselves apart
from non-members, but as a way of preventing others from overhearing their
plans and discussions.

Religious motivations generally have to do with learning some archaic language
in use in ancient and revered texts of one sort or another. Hebrew, Latin,
Arabic, and Sanskrit are often learned for religious reasons, although within a
community of fellow users there may be significant social rewards accrued by
their use as well.

Languages do not attract speakers because people are interested in languages.
In virtually every case where the use of a particular language has expanded it
has been in service of some greater, or at least more urgent or more desirable
end.

For an auxlang to grow and be adopted by more than just a few hardcore devotees
it must occur in a context that has a larger purpose. The use of the language
would need to be a small part of a larger system of experiences and rewards.
Imagine an online virtual world, either a game environment like Everquest or
Worlds of Warcraft, or a non-game online social environment like Second Life,
where rewards such as status or power might accrue to those who learn and use
the "native language" of the virtual world. Virtual online worlds typically
have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of citizens. The online
world Second Life recently topped the 600,000 mark in population. No matter how
interesting or inovative an auxlang project might appear to linguists, it's
hard to imagine such a project ever attracting half a million participants on
the basis of its linguistic interest alone. There _must_ be some real reward,
some tangible benefit for using the the language or ot will never be widely
adopted.

--gary

--- Holger Ebermann <holger800@...> wrote:

> liqan tanati qenexin ti! (dear auxlangers :) )
>
> Perhaps you discussed this over and over again. What do you think, is the
> best way (the most efficient and most steady) to attract people to speak an
> auxlang?