Re: Fictional auxlangs as artlangs (was Re: Poll)

Yes, the particular combination of features in Klingon was designed to
be unlikely to be found in an Earth natlang.  The canonical phonetic
realizations of the phonemes are a good example: it has [d`] and [s`],
but [n] and [t].  Likewise [E]and [o] (vs [e], [O]). It has [I] but
not [i], even though the latter is nearly a phonetic universal
   Grammatically, its OVS - the rarest structure on Earth.  Its
agglutinating, but a single atomic verbal prefix (or lack thereof)
indicates both subject and object.  Etc, etc.  People on this list
have certainly come up with stranger languages, but as
naturalistic-but-alien goes, its hard to argue that tlhIngan Hol isn't
something of a tour de force.



On 12/16/08, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 19:01, deinx nxtxr <deinx.nxtxr@...> wrote:
>>>   [snip]
>>> >>      Even Sindarin or Quenya could be
>>> >> expanded to serve as an auxlang if UN so wished it (now there's
>> an
>>> >> interesting alternative history    ;)
>>> >
>>> > I have seen such proposals at least for Quenya.
>>>
>>> That doesn't surprise me one bit.
>>
>> Me neither given that Klingon has been brought up too.  The only
>> problem with these are they are artistic creations so not really
>> designed to be easy to learn and use.
>
> Heh. Wasn't Klingon even specifically designed to be "unnatural" from
> the point of view of "common" Earth languages? (For example, in having
> odd gaps in its phoneme grid, and an unusual word order; possibly
> other things, too.)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
>
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Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>