Re: Kinya (& Miapimoquitch) (was: RE: [CONLANG] Silindion)

At 3:20 am +0000 27/3/02, And Rosta wrote:
[snip]
>
>I was aware of this irony; it amazes me that you could so artistically
>manufacture the fabric of Miapimoquitch without appreciating it as
>art. There is more than just 'language construction' -- there is
>creation of the external history of the language and of its documentation
>and rediscovery, which all goes into breathing life into the language.
..like Tolkien's languages; and like Kinya and Brithenig.

Darn it - that language I discovered half a century ago being spoken on
Venus - yes, there certainly was an 'external history', tho I can't quite
remember now how a young schoolboy discovered it - was art. I didn't know
it and now 'tis all but forgotten  :=(

I guess Skrikanth's 'discovery' of a family in the Chambal Valley of
central India who are in telepathic communication with the
extra-terrestrial Lynu makes Lin an art.

But then I get the impression that most (all?) artlangs are conceived with
some sort of external history.

But, hey, isn't Livagian spoken in Livagia which IIRC has an external
history?  So how did you discover it?

Ain't all artlangs, at least some loglangs (e.g. Livagian) art?
>I'd just been reading the framing introduction to the Babel Text
>translation; if this is not art, what crucial ingredient does it lack,
>that stops it from counting as art?
But what is art?  If a pile of neatly laid bricks or a bin of rubbish (can
of trash) can be called 'art', then what human ARTifact cannot be called
art?  Surely, by this criterion all conlangs must per_se be art?

But, like Dirk, I don't see conlanging as an art even if, as often, the
language has its own 'external history'.

Ray.








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