Re: A conlang free-for-all

Hi all,

On Mon, 22 May 2006, Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> Some years ago on this list I tried to start up a
> collaborative conlang project that turned out to be
> impractical. But I think I may have found a way to
> make it work. So here's what I've done...
>
> I have built a web site with a database containing a
> few simple sentences in a proto-conlang I call Kalusa,
> along with an approximate translation of each sentence
> into English. These sentences form the seed corpus of
> the language.
>
> Anybody who wants to can add sentences directly into
> the corpus from the web page. This function is public,
> and fully automated. As soon as a new sentence is
> entered into the corpus by any user at any time all
> all the words in the sentence are instantly index and
> cross referenced in the database.
>
[snip]
>
> Everyone is welcome to visit my linguistic sandbox and
> play around.
>
> You will find it at: http://kalusa.fiziwig.com
>
> Just to kick-start it, I've also imported my system of
> numbers from an older conlang of mine, so all the
> number words are givens.
>
Gary, this is just too much fun! I've already wasted ... er, spent ... I don't know
how long reading and adding to the corpus. There were 153 sentences when I left
it just now, and I wasn't the only one playing. The growth on this may well be
exponential!

I think you've hit on an extremely attractive and usable method to gain the
coöperation of many inventive people. Get a little more exposure for it
(starting on the Langmaker wiki?) and Kalusa may become all the rage for
netizens everywhere ... The rewards for adding a sentence are both immediate -
you give the feedback clearly and tangibly - and deferred - any contributor
would be likely to come back to see how his or her inventions had fared in the
voting. Any sub-graffitist (aka "tagger" who runs around defacing public
property asserting their existence in the dead of night may well be tempted to
make his or her mark on Kalusa; no problem! since the format is forgiving.

You've really done it this time ... you may just have given us a vehicle for turning
conlanging into a mass sport ;-)

Now, I have just one tiny request to make of you ... can I have one too? Just for
private use - I think it would be a great boon to any conlanger in the throes
of building up their own corpus in a new lang. (I see it's all PHP - would that
make setup too difficult on a single computer?)

Regards,
Yahya


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