Re: Let Me Introduce Myself

On Monday, November 26, 2001, at 02:29 , Hiroshi Kato wrote:

> From: "Yoon Ha Lee" <yl112@...>
>
>> Konnichiwa!  (Here's hoping it's the right time of day...)
>
> Doumo hajimemashite !! (Nice to meet you!)
>
<bowing>  And I'm afraid I've exhausted most of my Japanese...can I say
"doumo hajimemashite" back or is there another phrase I should use?  :-)

>> BTW, is native language influence something you're seeking to avoid?
>> (God
>> knows, my conlangs are peppered with obscure and mangled borrowings from
>> Korean or Latin or Turkish or whatever strikes my fancy.)
>
> That's a really interesting point.
> I have a book on conlang movement - " Der Kamph gegen Babel" by Paulo
> Ronai
> and in this book, the auther points out examples of  unintended influence
> from the
> designer's native language.
> (By the way, as you can easily see from its title, this book might have
> too
> much emphasis on 'universal language'
>  side of conlangs,
> but this book actually contains lots of interesting conlangs, for example,
> "babm" by Fuishiki Okamoto,
> one of the conlangs designed in Japan.)
>
That sounds fascinating--I must see if I can seek out my own copy.  Thanks
for the reference.

> So, at least, there are some people thinking this kind of influence is
> not a
> good idea.
> As for me, I'm just trying to avoid influence from Japanese language
> simply
> because I don't like the idea of
> Japanese people having more access to the language than other people.
> So my idea is trying to adopt from as various language as possible ( in
> reality, not so many, because of the limitation
> of my ability) to naturalize the influence from the specific natural
> language.
> On the other hand, I have no control over 'uncoucious' part of influence,
>  so
> I hope some of you guys point it out
> to help me.
I'm sure people will be happy to comment.  :-)  Do you intend your conlang
to be used for communication?  I don't mean to be flippant; many people on
this list, myself included, either deliberately pattern our conlangs after
features of languages we enjoy (Finnish seems to be pretty popular, IIRC),
or work on "artlangs" for the pleasure of it.  My conlangs are not
intended to be used in "real life," but rather for my whimsy.  You are a
braver soul than I.  :-)

Jaa mata (I hope that's not too informal),

Yoon Ha Lee [requiescat@cityofveils.com]
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com

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