Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Tedious if you're not the Graying Wizard

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Sunday, May 6, 2001, 17:51
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) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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] =========================================

Replies

John Cowan <cowan@...>Auxlangs here (was: Tedious etc.)
Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>Auxlangs here (was: Tedious etc.)