Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?

I make up languages for my characters in my novels, both real and projected,
because as a kid I was exposed to the prevalent idea in Papua Niugini, of Tok
Ples - the idea that each place, each location, has its own language.  My
reading of Tolkien as an adolescent, where the Eldar had Quendi and Sindarin,
the Gondorians had Sindarin and Westron, which developed into the Common
Speech, the Dwarves had their own language, and even the bad guys had a
language of their own.

Naturally most of my languages extend to the need of the story, thus in the
latest I can say with some authority that yes, Rdashtraye does mean The
Prophetess.  what her childhood name was, I have no idea, since it plays very
little part in the story, I only care that it would never have had the |-aye|
termination, because that is aorist passive feminine.  I suspect it probably
ended something like |-ne|, because |-on| (eg, Kablon - Stallion) is a male
ending, and |-ne| would be a femininization of a "male" name.  ( |-nye| is a
"genuine" female termination, so Hraivinye's name is probably something like
"Dawn".)  And this society is sufficiently close to the homo sapiens norm
that it appears to be a patriarchy, the standard form of Homo sap's social
organization.  (|Hrai-| is a stem for "up" and "out" meanings, so I guess the
word for "spring" incorporates it somewhere - |hraiyon| - "bursting out".)

In short, I could no more consider a language without a story and a people,
than I could consider dehydrating water.

As far as the 1000 word minimum, I find that neither Tolkein nor le Guin ever
got that far bafore they started using their languages in their stories - see
"A Wizard of Earthsea" for the four-line verse in the Old Speech, that is
completely untranslated, and the fragments - "Nam hiertha arw Ged arkvaissa"
- if thou seekest Ged here find him; "Arw sobriost" - Mount here - from which
we deduce that |arw| is "here" - in "The Farthest Shore".

As far as allowing others in to my creative park, that is going to be
difficult.  Why?  Do they also want to write stories about the difficulties
males would face in a crocuta-based human matriarchy, where the women are at
least 10% larger than the men, and thus hold the physical power?

It's a case of how closely people can sychronise their creativity without
interfering with other people's vision - Linux succeeded because Linux based
his vision of where it was to go, on a set of documents he had no control
over - all he wanted to do was to have on his PC, an operating system as
powerful as SunOS.  An enormous group of other hackers also had the same
idea, and surprise, surprise, he found he could carry on doing what he wanted
to, without compromising his vision.

Where would I find that sort of compatibility for my set of requirements - a
group of people with an almost encyclopedical knowledge of Tolkien and an
equal determination not to let his works dictate, a knowledge of crocuta
crocuta (Spotted Hyena) etc, and a bilingual background in English and Tok
Pisin with a belief that Tok Ples is how the world organizes itself?  That is
an unjustified assumption you've made there - that the situations are
comparable.

And Unjustifiable Assumptions have been ruled Heretical by the Cura - you
can't have any old blessed virgin going to Heaven on any old Unjustifiable
Assumption. ;^)

Wesley Parish

On Tuesday 22 April 2003 09:35 am, you wrote:
> It seems to me that most of the languages discussed
> in this mailing list are not languages at all, but
> names of languages that exist only in the imagination
> of the person who invented the names. I doubt a
> language can be used for simple everyday communication
> unless it has a vocabulary of at least 1000 words.
> Has  anyone in this mailing list made a real conlang?
>
> Making a real language is a huge effort, almost like
> building a pyramid. Team work is a necessity, and yet
> there is not much team work among the conlangers.
> Linux programmers have the opposite mind set - they
> love to work together, and often improve work of
> others instead of reinventing the wheel. Perhaps the
> reason for the difference is that the Linux programs
> are tools, while the languages discussed here are as
> useful as the pyramids. The main purpose of the
> pyramid is to say "My unique pyramid is sky high
> and made of white marble. I do not share it with anyone."
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."