Re: Aesthetics

Hi!

Edgard Bikelis wrote:
>...  Did anyone here ever wrote an 'aesthetic credo' before starting
>a conlang?  ...
Starting with my second conlang, S2, I've usually written down the
design goals before starting.  The major goals were always very short
and general and so far never changed afterwards without destroying the
whole conlang...

Or better, my ideas that started a new conlang were usually design
goals, which I then wrote down before I started.

These design goals are of course based on my aesthetical goals: the
primary design goal is always that I *like* the resulting conlang. :-)
The exact focus may be very different, of course.

S11 and some related sketches are an example where the design goals
changed: it's a mess.

It started with an interesting system of vowel harmory which also had
a pleasing romanisation.  But I did not write down goals for the whole
conlang then.  I added consonants and consonant sandhi and then a font
(yet incomplete, but I think it will eventually be a nice one), then I
changed the sound system, because the sandhi rules were awful.  The
font had to be adjusted now, because it was designed closely to
account for the phoneme/phone mapping and sandhi rules.

Meanwhile, I had an idea about a special kind of syntax that is
parsable with a context-free parser, which I eventually added to S11,
and which also influenced the design of the font, because some
morpho-phonological processes were marked.

And then I started a project (S22) without a phonology and without
syntax for an oligosynthetic or oligoisolating conlang.  I've got
vocab there now and about 10 different phonology 'modules' for
experiments.  Eventually, I wanted to use this for making words in
S11, use the grammar there and its current sound system, but I don't
know whether it will fit well.

Furthermore, one of the sound systems I came up with as an example is
extremely beautiful; it is inspired by Náhuatl.  It is suited for the
syntax system, too, but it would mean to discard what started S11
altogether (including that nice unfinished font).

I even thought about removing S11 from my website, but that would be
work, too, and it does have a fancy romanisation and sound system.
;-)

So, that's what I call a mess.  Three projects aiming at different
parts of an engelang, and none functional.

The subsequent conlangs S17 (Þrjótrunn) and S25 (Terkunan), my first
aposteriori langs, worked out very well so far, and I did write down
design goals (or better: they started as design goals).  They worked
so well that I am currently not in the mood to go back to the
above-mentioned mess.  I still consider everything between S11 and S25
'active' (those are three to six projects, depending on how you count
the mess), maybe I'll even get back to S9 (Da Mätz se Base) or S7
(Qþyn|gài) one day -- who knows, both have their weaknesses I might
want to try to fix.

**Henrik

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