Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?

Andrew Nowicki skrzypszy:

> By the way, most vocabulary sizes listed in LangMaker.com
> are exaggerated, sometimes by several orders of magnitude!
As others have pointed out, not all elements of a lexicon are online.
I've actually had people who underestimated or left it blank, and I
sometimes do a quick line count on their vocabulary to determine the
number of items.  If someone claims to have more than 10,000, I usually
look for some evidence of this, because that's so unusual.  There are
six such languages:
http://www.langmaker.com/db/mdl_index_lexiconsize.htm#10179

BTW, if you haven't seen LangMaker.com in the last six weeks, I've
revamped the home page and made a bunch of other changes to the site, to
raise the bar a bit in response to constructive criticism from some of
you.


Eamon Graham wrote:

>Is it Jeffrey Henning who coined the term "model language"?  I
>believe that is a great term for what you are discussing.  A model
>language would be the rudiments of language used to create names for
>a fictional universe or to give a few lines of dialogue in a novel.
Yes, but since I hadn't heard the term "conlang" yet, I intended "model
language" to mean any constructed language.  Since we already have
plenty of terms for generic conlangs, of course, "model language" in
that sense isn't a useful distinction.  If pressed to make a
distinction, I think Eamon's is a useful one: I would say that a model
language is a language sketch or small artlang -- often created to
illustrate a key point or two, without much further development.  Those
tend to be the types of languages I dabble in.  Quite humble languages,
and I stand in awe of Teonaht, Talossan and Tepa.


Dirk Elzinga comunu:

>the vocabulary of Miapimoquitch is meant to deal with the world
>of a preliterate, puebloan culture.
I was on vacation in central and northern Arizona last week, and went
again to Montezuma's Castle and the different Wupatki ruins.  And I
thought to myself, "I really wish Dirk would publish a description of
Miapimoquitch."  OK, I actually thought "Mia-... mia-... neo-Tepa", not
being able to remember the name.  I did remember it was actually set in
southern Utah, but felt I was close enough in spirit.

So if enough of us tell you plaintively that our conlanging lives will
not be complete until we see a full description of Miapimoquitch, will
that be encouragement for you to continue documenting it?


Mia Soderquist scripsit:

>I do virtually all my work on paper. I have notebooks
>of every size and shape.
So nice to hear from you, Mia!  I wish I lived close enough to you to
have a chance to peruse one of your notebooks.

Warm regards,

Jeffrey

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