Re: Gothic language

Padraic Brown wrote:

> When I can I'll have a look!  Of course, "Real Gothic" was a conlang as
> well, invented by St. Wulfilas (patron of conlangers?) in order to
> translate Christian scripture for the various Visigoth tribes.  In other
> words, a sort of interlanguage which could be used by more than just one
> tribe.
That's a little hard to believe.  Do we know for a fact that, even
ignoring necessary coinages to accomodate difficult-to-translate terms
and constructions, Wulfian Gothic was so distinct from any of the
tribal dialects that we must call it a different *language*?

This seems to stretch the bounds of the term "conlang" to me.  If
every time an author or speaker creates a unique idiom, we call it a
conlang, then the term begins to lose all meaning.  Is the dialect of
bureaucratic documents a conlang because nobody really talks like
that?  Are the newspapers written in a "conlang" because they often
are written in a way nobody would naturally write in everyday life?
Does every clique of children with its own slang have its own conlang?
 Is the "neutral, vaguely Midwestern" accent of American newscasters a
conlang?  How about the Englsh Eton school accent, which I understand
students once studiously cultivated?

Ed