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Re: has anyone made a real conlang

From:Andrew Nowicki <andrew@...>
Date:Saturday, April 26, 2003, 21:50
Markus Miekk-oja wrote:
MM> I suspect the reason you'd be unable to distinguish
MM> a computer-made language from a man-made, is that
MM> you don't enjoy quirkiness, you don't enjoy
MM> irregularities, so you don't search them out.
MM> Is this true? It is in the irregularities you can
MM> find the marks of human hands.

I believe that diversity is the essence of good music
and good art. Diversity has nothing to do with randomness.
Randomness can be described by a simple mathematical
formula, and therefore lacks complexity which is the
foundation of true diversity.

Phonemic diversity is a desirable feature of a language
because it helps distinguish the words. Other forms of
linguistic diversity (irregularities) may not be desirable,
because they make the language difficult to learn.

David Starner wrote:
DS> As a totally different twist on where this thread is
DS> heading, how much help is it to have a wide variety
DS> of languages available?

I feel that artlangs are the most productive when they do
something that other languages cannot do. For example, a
sci-fi novel can use words of its own coinage to describe
a future world. If the novel is well written, its novel
vocabulary may be imported into the English language. The
word robot is such a word; it was invented by Karel Capek.

An off topic comment:

Most sci-fi novels are not good, because they are not
based on science and common sense. To the best of my
knowledge nobody made a convincing description of the
future world dominated by creatures of artificial
intelligence (AI). Hans P. Moravec, Rodney A. Brooks,
Ray Kurzweil, George B. Dyson, Steven Levy, Peter Menzel,
and Faith D'Aluisio wrote semi-scientific books on the
subject, but none of them described evolution of the AI
creatures well. Fermi Paradox seems to imply that the AI
creatures exterminate biological creatures and then
become extinct.

Replies

Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...>
Joe <joe@...>