Re: Aesthetics

Edgard Bikelis wrote:
> On 10/18/07, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
>
>> I'm a bit late entering this thread, but I'll add my twopenceworth.
>>
>>
>> Edgard Bikelis wrote:
>>
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>> I was wondering: as we surely are guided by some aesthetic
>>> principles in
>>
>> our
>>
>>> conlanging, what are those principles we use?
>>
>> Sorry to disappoint, but aesthetic principles don't figure in the
>> three (work in progress) Conlangs on my website:
[snip]
>
> Maybe aesthetics are just for vain tongues : ).
Some would hold that all conlanging is vain.

I know well that there are some conlangs in which aesthetics do play a
part. They are, I guess, mainly artlangs. Indeed, there is IMO no reason
why aesthetics shouldn't play a part. I'm sure they played a large part
in Tolkien's Quenya.

But what I was saying was that one should not assume that all conlangs
are guided by aesthetic principles.

Maybe, when I've got EAK & Piashi out of the way (not sure about the
"reformed Plan B" one), I will treat myself and design an artlang purely
for my own pleasure    ;)

>> I haven't really analyzed this. Maybe one day I'll get around to a
>> 'pure' artlang. Who knows? I prefer Quenya to Sindarin. Like
>> Tolkien, I find Finnish beautiful but, unlike Tolkien, I also like
>> Gaelic. I rank Italian as the most aesthetically pleasing of the
>> Romancelangs.
>
> It was so strange to me to find Tolkien liked the palatal nasal, if I
>  remember well, in Que_ny_a. That would be the last nasal on my
> rank... but pure velars are not so much better either : ). But I
> prefer Quenya too. Gaelic not so much... their orthography is for
> crying about.
The orthography adds to the interest  :)

But if you don't like the traditional orthography of the Irish & Scots
versions of Gaelic, there's always the Manx version which has a much
more "normal" orthography.

[snip]
>>
>> But palatals are lovely.
>
>
> Now I know ; ). It needed much sanskrit for realizing it.
Good. Palatalization is one of the features i like about Gaelic - and
the Slav tongues.

[snip]
>
>> Ancient Greek is a mess, not so Latin, Sanskrit just a
>>
>>> bit. I can't think about much more here...
>>
>> Aw - Greek is great. Latin can have a rugged sort of beauty, but
>> it's somewhat stolid compared with the exuberance of the ancient
>> Greek language with all its diversity.
>
>
>
> If by exuberance you mean several ways of saying the same thing in
> each dialect, and by diversity several dialects, I can't disagree. I
> was hard on Greek anyway. But Latin is more cute : P.
But "several ways of saying the same thing in each dialect, and by
diversity several dialects" is surely a mark of _living_ language on the
lips of people speaking it. I feel with Greek - before, alas, the
artificial Atticisms set in towards the end of the Hellenistic period and
during the Byzantine period - we are close to what was the real, living
language.

Classical Latin is too obviously the carefully cultivated & somewhat
artificial language of an educated minority - things get better, however,
during the Middle Ages when to some extent we find in Latin "several
ways of saying the same thing in each dialect, and by diversity several
dialects"   :)

--
Ray
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