Re: Let Me Introduce Myself

Christophe Grandsire a écrit :
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I've heard about it, but IIRC it's more about the Auxlang
movement than the
conlang movement (most people who are not conlangers fail to
see the difference
usually anyway). As for other books about conlanging,
unfortunately the only
ones I can think about are quite negative about it. I think
Umberto Eco wrote
one once, and in it failed to see the difference between
conlanging
and "speaking in tongues" (or glossolalia, but I may be
wrong), and there is
also the infamous book of Marina Yaguello (is it her name?)
"Fous du langage"
(I don't remember the English title). Ask Sally Caves about
it, she knows quite
a lot. She wrote a presentation about conlanging mostly in
reaction to this
book. You can also ask Mathias (Kala Tunu) about it, he read
it in the French
version.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
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Marina Yaguello's book is a a survey on several persons with
pathological problems related to language-making: one is
pretending she speaks martian, the other tries to describe
the whole universe from symbolic sets of letters and
figures, etc. MY also misses the historical and
philosophical background for the "encyclopedic" frenzy of
many of the first makers of languages (including Leibnitz).
reading her book, i really had the feeling that she must
have been angry at some language-maker for some reason (her
linguistic professor was an esperantist? :-). Umberto Eco's
book "La Recherche de la langue parfaite" mostly deals with
his own passion for the cabalistic and encyclopedic legacy
and concludes in a sharp happy-ending with esperanto. on the
other hand, it is true that conlanging as a mere "artistic"
hobby is fairly new so they would not be aware of it yet.
and i think they wouldn't care a zambian peanut about it. i
think the problem is that constructed languages are called
languages. for scholars, a language is a system of
communication used by a people. the people express
everything in it and it is all they can express. this is a
tautological definition. i think a conlang is more like the
partial suggestion of a complete fictional language, like a
novel is a partial suggestion of a complete fictional event.
as intellectual works, both a conlang and a novel can be
complete, but scholars wouldn't consider a conlang "a
language" or a novel "an event". we just need another word
for "conlang" (i'm kidding!--don't hit me--ouch!!!) and
convince people it's another genre of literature. that
wouldn't make it more popular. and anyway few artlangs are
developped enough like many auxlangs are.

one Australian conlanger, Robert Dessaix, wrote about his
secret vice in his book "A Mother's Disgrace" (Une Mère et
sa honte" en français) and in other essays. it's a wonderful
book. i met Mr. Dessaix in Paris to discuss about a tv
programme on conlanging that i could not make eventually.
he's a radio journalist in Melbourne i think. i still have
the few lines he wrote for me in his indoeuropean conlang.
he seemed to be quite fluent in it.

Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm