Re: Tedious if you're not the Graying Wizard

At 6:18 pm -0500 5/5/01, Patrick Dunn wrote:
>Why are people being assholes all of a sudden?
>
>Just curious.
I'd venture to guess because IALs have reared their ugly head again.  They
seem to bring out the worst in people - and I don't except myself from this
censure.

Wiz, if I understand aright, was seriously posited as a possible IAL and
Tuentimin is a take-off of the sort of outline-sketch auxlangers too often
give as the 'language'.

It is clear that David, in fact, has gone a bit beyond the mere sketch
stage.  But in my sad experience, the world of auxlang is bedevilled with
misunderstandings, putting the worst possible interpretation on what others
say, complete lack of humor, ad_hominem attacks (absolute necessity for
auxlang propaganda) and flames.

In the artlang world, we think of Tolkien who worked on his languages for
years & years and, indeed, died without Quenya or Sindarin (the most
developed of his languages) being completed.  The artlangs of list members,
e.g. Tepa, Kinya, Amman-Iar etc etc, keep being reworked.  Even non-artlang
projects like And's Livagian and my "briefscript" (which still hasn't got a
name after 4 decades!) are not complete after many years.  I can well
understand that from that point of view the idea of creating a language
within a month, let alone three days, seems crazy.

But I still remember the youthful days of my teens when I did churn out
IALs within just such time limits.  Of course they were not 'complete
languages' (What languages are?) but they were often rather fuller than the
"one sheet of paper complete grammar of Esperanto" which Esperantists
certainly presented at that time.  (This is _NOT_ meant to be a criticism
of Esperanto, but of the way some propagandists portrayed their language -
a very different matter)
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At 2:44 pm -0400 4/5/01, John Cowan wrote:
>When an "auxlang contest" was proposed here (even though it doesn't
>look likely to come off),
I sincerely hope it doesn't - at least not on this list!

Someone suggested me as one the judges.  No thank you.  I got rid of my
asbestos suit a few years ago.

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At 10:43 pm -0500 5/5/01, Patrick Dunn wrote:
[snip]
>
>I liked the list better when people were more or less nice, though.
Amen.

The descent into ad_hominem attack takes me back to bad old days of five
years ago.  I had hoped we'd not return.

....and can't we keep auxlangs where they belong?  I mean, there was a
reason for setting up a separate Auxlang list.

Ray.




=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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