Re: Men vs Women on Conlang
| From: | Sally Caves <scaves@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, December 11, 2002, 23:55 |
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Waving back at ya', Jeffrey! You've probably landed by now...
Greatly complicated... My 1962 invention of "Teonean" had neither the
stature nor the complexity that it has now, and could hardly be called then
a "Conlang of Account" (to mimick Richard Mulcaster's "English... A Tongue
of Account"). The Internet has indeed revealed conlangs of yore, but I
think that it's directly due to the opportunities the Internet provides,
visually, aurally, and textually, that we can display them--leading to the
Renaissance of "langmaking" that you refer to. It has also, I think, led to
a "renaissance" of all number of private interests, something that media
scholars have noted about it. The more opportunities strangers have of
getting together--easily and affordably--to talk about their hobbies or
interests, the more explosions we see in such interests. But the Internet
has been particularly ideal for such a hobby as conlanging, because until
then there was no way to showcase this private art except in popular novels
or TV shows. Not something everybody had access to. My point was that the
"private art" may have been practiced by many many silent, forgotten
individuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nay, further back,
even.
My husband is calling me to dinner... it's his turn to cook tonight.
Fascinating topic, hope you landed safely! How nice to have a laptop!!!!
I've always been afraid to get one (drop it, lose it, have it snitched).
Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Henning" <Jeffrey@...>
> Sally Caves <scaves@...>:
>
> > As for gender and conlanging, I think that more men in 1990 had access
to
> > computers, but as that changes we'll see how many more women are drawn
to
> a
> > public display of their inventions. As for Jeff Henning's statistics,
> aired
> > a few days ago (showing how many invented languages were known to the
> > world), it seems so completely obvious to me that the great number of
> > conlangs he reports appearing in public after 1990 is directly due to
the
> > formation of the Internet listservs. When we didn't have that, how
could
> > such a uniquely private art get aired except through novels or special
> > interest groups that happened to get some publicity? (This observation
is
> > in my on-line article) So the five or the seven known conlangs that he
> > reports in this or that pre-nineties year may be no indication
whatsoever
> > that private language invention was rare.
>
> *waves to you* [At this moment -- 3:51 EST -- I'm flying above upper-state
> New York. Clear skies. :-)]
>
> It's actually more complicated than that. Here's the raw data:
>
http://www.langmaker.com/db/mdl_index_year.htm
>
> Note that you are one of the three entries for 1962, Sally. Now, without
> the Internet, Teonaht wouldn't be listed. Paul Hoffman and Mark
> both have languages listed in 1978. Again, without the Internet, we
> wouldn't know that.
>
> Hypothesis 1: Since Internet usage is demographically skewed towards the
> younger generations, as more people come online, we will see more and more
> "older" languages added to the index, beefing up the numbers for the
1960s,
> 1970s and 1980s.
>
> Hypothesis 2: The ability to communicate with each other has acted as a
> catalyst to encourage much more language creation. Many of us have
sketched
> out more languages than we would have otherwise because we are inspired by
> each other's work and by the many resources now available to assist us.
>
> Hypothesis 3: We're enjoying a Renaissance of langmaking (following the
IAL
> explosion of the late 1800s) in popular culture. Next week you can go see
> three movies with invented languages: Parseltongue (Harry Potter & The
> Chamber of Secrets), Romulan (Star Trek X: Nemesis) and Quenya (The Two
> Towers). We've come a long way since 1951.
>
> BTW, the "0" on the year page means no year is provided. If you know the
> year for any of those languages, click the link for that language, then
> press the Update This Information button and add the year to the form.
And
> we will have even better data. And thanks to the dozens of you who have
> already submitted your language and year. If any of you have a list of
IALs