Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?

On 21 April, Andrew Nowicki 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.
Questions of  artlang vs practical lang aside,
even when discussing "simple everyday communication"
one should bear in mind that this concept is very
relative. On the minimum side, in my work as a
speech-language-pathologist, I have seen people
communicate very effectively with a whole lot less
vocabulary! On the maximum side,
"simple everyday communication" among people of
one natlang  may involve many concepts that people
speaking another natlang may find difficult,
if not impossible to locate within their own vocabularies.
Does this mean that not all natlangs are "real"?
    IMHO, what is more important is the
_potential_ for increasing communication.
In the above examples, a person entering lang
therapy with no lang, can exit therapy with a lang and a
large vocabulary. He/she can increase that vocabulary
through education and/or experience, just like we all do.
The speakers of the natlang can always learn the
concepts and increase their own vocabs by either
borrowing or creating new words.
    Similarly, IMHO, many conlangs contain within themselves
the _potential_  for rich vocbulary. Whether or not
the creator of the conlang decides to invest the work
needed to bring the level up to some given standard
is another matter. But the potential for doing so is
usually present right from the beginning! Meaning that, IMHO,
although a given conlang may be at a less developed stage
than someone may desire, it is nevertheless a  "real"  lang
if it has the potential to grow.


> Has  anyone in this mailing list made a real conlang?
    OTOH, of course, sometimes, we just like to play with
ideas! :-)
    Forget "real". What _would_ a non-real conlang involve?
    How about non-real in the _mathematical_ sense?
Instead of using what are known as "real"  numbers
for the three dimensions in which the speech articulators
(tongue, lips, etc)  are usually described as moving around in,
how about using a system of complex numbers?
(For those who haven't had the joy of meeting them,
they are basically numbers which have both a real
component and a component which involves the square
root of minus one.). One could then ignore or reduce to
zero the "real" part of the measurement of each speech
movement, and use, for a conlang, only the "imaginary" part.
    One could "speak" a lang with this kind of phonology
without producing any "real" mouth movements! :-)
    Of course,  _listening_  to such a lang might be
a little bit of a challenge! ;-)

Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.

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