Results of Poll By Email No. 30

        I apologize for the extreme lateness; I could blame it on the fact that I'm
in the throes of moving preparations, which is true, but not the whole story.
The fact is, the polls are no longer as fun and inspiring as they used to be,
and now das rollt mir die Fußnägel hoch. Well, that's a bit extreme, but I
think the time has come for me to hand over the poll maintenance to someone
who has more enthusiasm. If there are any volunteers, now is the time to
speak up. Otherwise, this could be <cue type='gloomy music'>The Last Poll By
Email</cue>.
        Twenty-two of you responded, and now I remember why I usually don't permit
open-ended questions. :) Almost everyone had something good to say, but this
is supposed to be a précis, not the whole essay itself. But...since this may
be the last Poll, we might as well go out with a bang, right? So while not
quoting everyone, I won't worry about length. Think of it as a poll digest.
:)
        Here is a rough categorization of what people find burdensome and/or grievous
with constructing a language:
        Creating vocabulary: 5
        Placing material on the Web: 4
        Syntax: 3
        Worldview: 2
        Creating a corpus of literature: 1
        Grammar: 1
        Phonology: 1
        Finding research material: 1
        The Conlang list itself: 1
        Balance: 1
        Lack of progress: 1
        Documentation: 1

        Arnt Johansen sagely observed, "I think for many conlangers, what feels most
burdensome is what they feel has to be done on their language, but aren't
very interested in. For instance, a conlanger who likes phonology a lot, will
have a ball drawing up the sound system of his or her language, but the other
parts of the language, that is necessary for it to become complete, may feel
like drudgery." This doesn't account for all cases, but it still is a
significant point. Specifically, in your own words:

        Creating vocabulary:
        Estel Telcontar is troubled: "Matching sound to meaning.  I can make up
phonologies, I can decide what sorts of grammar and syntax I want, I can
decide what meanings I want words to have, but I just can't seem to decide
which sounds to match to which meanings, whether for vocabulary or for
affixes."
        Mau Rauszer murmers: "Teaching, learning the words and writing the grammar
book! Okay, actually in the creation of the conlang, for me the word building
is the worst. But just because I often forget that I already made a word for
that idea and I make another one."

        Placing material on the Web/Archiving material:
        Robert Wilson wistfully writes: "Probably putting stuff on my web site... I
hand-code all my html and I'm using a mail2ftp server to upload files, so
it's sort of difficult to get my notes (on paper) organized, html-ized, and
uploaded..."
        Jan van Steenbergen laments: "Probably the making of websites for my
languages. To me, that is an important secondary purpose of conlanging, but I
don't really like working on websites. It is a time-consuming activity, that
has little in common with the real conlanging process. The same thing also
applies to composing music BTW: after writing the last note, I need to write
a readable score in a sculptured handwriting, and that can be days of hard
work without any artistic satisfaction."
        Sally Caves cries: "Most burdensome:  the fact that most of Teonaht exists in
a handwritten notebook that dates back to 1969, and a lot of the words are
obsolete.  The fact that I can't seem to stick to any system in getting the
old words into my teoeng.html file.  I've tried the alphabetical route,
starting with "A." Then I lose my place.  Start with Z and work back.  Lose
my place.  I've made a huge taxonomy of words in English that are grouped
according to categories." Sally also wrote a *lot* more, and hopefully she'll
repost it, as it is rather insightful and many would identify with it.

        Syntax:
        David Peterson kvetches: "I'll tell you what I hate: Syntax.   I
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE syntax! If it were up to me, it wouldn't
exist.   I spend hours and hours making a perfect, naturalistic phonology,
and an orthography to go with it (and I always create a font for the
orthography, which, believe you me, takes many more hours), spend precious,
precious class time creating morphological systems (what else are you
supposed to do in class?   [Especially when that class is SYNTAX!!!]),
deciding whether I'm using too much or too little, etc., and vocabulary
design--my favorite part--is a life-long process.   But syntax?!   I'll
choose a word order, but beyond that, what can they expect of me!?   I'm a
mere mortal: Give me my dignity!   Not that I think it's unimportant, or less
important than the rest.   It's quite possibly the *most* important
structural aspect.   But, to create it?!"
        Roger Mills, still stuck in the Stone Age of Linguistics :), mourns: "SYNTAX,
aargh.  Although I was in grad school when Chomskian TG was in full bray, and
although I managed to manipulate it reasonably well then, it never struck me
as a coherent way to describe a language. OTOH I haven't kept up with changes
in the field of syntactical analysis/description, so to my chagrin I had to
fall back on late 19th/early 20th C. models for the description of Kash.
Well, I think it worked, but I feel somewhat embarassed professionally not
to have done something more "modern.""

        Worldview:
        Sylvia Sotomayor sobs: "Reconciling my supposedly non-human language with the
very human assumptions in translation exercises. I don't yet have a clear
enough picture of how my people think and act to make cultural translations,
yet occasionally I come across something that I really want to translate.
Related to this is generating vocabulary. Would they have a word for that?"
        Likewise, Chris Rodrigues rails: "The part of conlanging that is hardest for
me is understanding the modus operandi, the weltanschauung of my conlang.
Sure, I can come up with new words, idioms, constructs, but I have to ask
myself, "Would they actually say it this way?" That leads me into
conculturing so that I can understand how their language proceeds from their
culture, and that is a slow process -- a tedious process when ideas are not
at the ready, upon which vocab generation must wait; and if I want to
translate something, then that has to wait upon vocabulary generation. My own
humanness is holding me back in creating this alien language."

        Creating a corpus of literature:
        H.S. Teoh grumbles: "Corpus building. I was about to say lexicon, but I
changed my mind because although it is tedious, I nevertheless have a lot of
fun making up new words. But it is the corpus which is burdensome; I am not a
good writer, and my few attempts at writing a story in Ebisedian (i.e.
directly not translating from English) fell flat on their faces."

        Grammar:
        Tristan McLeay moans: "Grammar, though. It's hard; there are so many things
to make, and I only get a vague idea of what I want to do next when I decide
that «no, I really want to do something else», or, «no, this is becoming too
much like English», or, «no, this is too regular for my taste. ARRGHH!». And
so in the end I can never get beyond a rough sketch of the stuff like
normal word-order..."

        Phonology:
        Garrett Jones whimpers: "If I had to pick one though, I'd say phonology,
since I usually pick a simple 1 for 1 system with no allophony or
alternations for my conlang/s since the other aspects of languages are more
interesting than laboring over sound systems. As far as the other aspects go,
the parts that require the most effort (which includes more grief!) are the
most fun and fulfilling in the end, so I like them the best."

        Finding research material:
        Danny Wier sighs: "For me, it's the acquisition of materials for research,
such as books on languages and linguistics. Since my intent is to create
"realistic" conlangs that obey linguistic universals (while stretching the
limits as much as possible). It's a matter of knowing the rules so I can
break them. Tech in particular is modeled after the great classical languages
and reconstructed proto-languages -- requiring a great deal of knowledge
about both, and occasionally the purchase of expensive and sometimes
hard-to-find books to acquire this knowledge."

        The Conlang list itself:
        Hanuman Zhang sputters: "The massive tonnage of email on the Conlang list (so
much intriguing email and so lil time to reaaaally read them in-depth... hey
I have other interests too..."
        Can I hear an "Amen," brothers and sisters?

        Balance:
        Carlos Thompson whines: "I was inclined to say vocabulary but it is actually
balance.  Trying to find the balance in having a concise yet expresive
language in which the most simple things can be said is frustrating.  This is
what actually aborts most of my conlang sketches."

        Lack of progress:
        Camilla Drefvenborg gripes: "I find that my answer is word creation. Strange,
since it's the part which I love the most. But wanting to actually use
the language for all manner of things, I find my lack of  progress on
the dictionary to be my main irritant...
        "The only part of conlanging I can think of which causes me actual grief is
my current inability to with comfort participate in complex translation
exercises. Or, in other words, my general rate of progress. Or, in truth, my
impatience."

        Documentation:
        And Rosta ruminates: "The gigantic yawning gulf between invention and
publication. The invention will not feel right to me until it is published: it
feels somewhat fictitious, for though many of heard of Livagian, few have
glimpsed any of it. But the effort of documenting it in an intellgible and
publishable way is immense, is infinitely less rewarding than the invention,
and takes time away from the invention."

        Well, there's the very long-winded Poll by Email No. 30. Thanks to everyone
who participated, thanks for all your insights. I hope in some small way, you
all benefited from this exercise.
        :Peter

--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!

Reply