Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?

Eamon Graham wrote:
EG> ...While my own Singala is quite humble...

I could not find Singala on the web.

EG> Well, I just checked the file, and my fiancée's
EG> Ninfeano languages has almost twice that (1797 words).

All I could find was a web page made of dead links:
http://www.avenned.com/eamon/ninfeano.html

EG> I think the total number of Talossan vocabulary has
EG> upwards of 5-digits (10,000 or more??).

The web page is dead: http://glhetg.talossa.com

EG> Once again, take a look at the websites and decide for
EG> yourself. Mau Rauszer's Long Wer is one of my recent favourites!

LangMaker.com description of this language boasts a
vocabulary of 2000 words. In fact, the vocabulary has
only 487 words. By the way, most vocabulary sizes
listed in LangMaker.com are exaggerated, sometimes by
several orders of magnitude!

EG> I respectfully and politely must ask you to consider
EG> that you've missed the point.  I think to most of us
EG> these are works of art (Mau's work certainly is, and
EG> I consider Ninfeano and my own Singala to be works
EG> of art).  So here we get in to the question of whether
EG> or not art must be "useful" (a tool) or is it useful
EG> in itself?  Not prepared to go in to art axiology
EG> right now, but I must insist that art and personal
EG> expression are lofty enough aims.  After all, isn't
EG> that what language is: personal expression?

Although I enjoy controversial topics, I am not trying
to offend anyone. I agree that art does not have to be
useful, but there is a question of what is a language
and what is merely name of a language. An automobile without
the engine does not deserve the name of automobile...

Perhaps there is a need for a new name for something that
is bigger than an alphabet, smaller than a language, and
made purely for fun... What about "funlang". Now, how would
we define a complete funlang? Maybe alphabet + complete
grammar + vocabulary of 100 to 999 words?

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Andrew Nowicki wrote:

AN> Making a real language is a huge effort, almost like
AN> building a pyramid. Team work is a necessity, and yet
AN> there is not much team work among the conlangers.

Peter Clark wrote:

PC> Probably because all conlangs that are created by a
PC> committee die a rather sudden death. In the case of
PC> conlangs, team work is a great hinderance, rather than
PC> a help. All the great conlang masterpieces have been
PC> solo performances; I can't think of any committee
PC> conlang that would qualify as a "masterpiece," although
PC> I suspect that some would disagree with me. (I.e.,
PC> NGL, Folkspraak, etc. But NGL is moribund and I'm not
PC> really sure of the status of Folkspraak.)

Good point. Lone mavericks make inventions and discoveries.
The word committee is almost a cuss word, but the idea
of people brainstorming and working together is not totally
absurd. The problem is that most people are arrogant and
have short attention span.

PC> Plus, you obviously have not been around the FLOSS[1]
PC> community long--the NIH[2] syndrome runs rampant. Just
PC> search freshmeat.net for "text editor" to see how many
PC> times you can re-invent the wheel. There for a while,
PC> not a week went by that some PFY[3] didn't announce the
PC> creation of a new mp3 player...which was usually just
PC> a front end for another mp3 player.

Most wild species are parasites. Humans emulate nature...

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