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Spocanian, a Dutch conlang

From:Hawksinger <hawksinger@...>
Date:Thursday, April 15, 1999, 2:18
Is anyone on the list familiar with a conlang called Spocanian?

Today while cleaning out a desk drawer, I came across an email from
the Linguist listserv (dated June 21, 1994!)  The author had
posted a set of sentences in a mystery lg and had asked for opinions
and analysis.  After a few weeks, he published a very long message
detailing the lg and its background.
He seemed not too familiar with the world of conlanging or even
very much aware that others did this, he was somewhat shocked he
was still doing it at the age of 45!
I will quote a very small bit of his message:
        "Spocanian is the result of almost 35 years of playing around
with grammar...and is not intended as a follow-up of a language like
Esperanto. [I]ts grammar consists of approximately 1500 pages and
its dictionary consists of over 25,000 entries..."

Standard word order varies with the tense of the verb (SVO=neutral,
SOV=past, VSO=future).
He has a country to go with this, Spocania, consisting of 7
islands in the Atlantic (20 degrees, 40 minutes west, 49 degrees, 12
minutes north) with a good deal of conculture to go with it apparently.

There appears to have been an actual travel guide published in Dutch,
"Uit in Spokanie - nooit weg".  The author/conlanger is or was a
linguist at the University of Amsterdam named Rolandt Tweehuysen.

I emailed him at the time and told him about Nova but he never replied.
It would be nice to think that this massive project has somehow made
it too the web and we could get this guy into the body proper of
conlanging, he was very defensive about his work and apparent criticism
from fellow linguists.
--
Brad Coon
hawksinger@fwi.com
listowner battleship-l
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Gorge/7264/battleship-l.html
http://www.ipfw.indiana.edu/east1/coon/web/index.htm (home pg. et al.)
http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/Gorge/7264 (outdoor and prim.skills)
http://members.tripod.com/~Hawksinger  (wine and whisky pgs)

Civilize the mind and make savage the body. (Chinese proverb)