Re: OT: auxlangers vs. artlangers (was OT: lingua fracas)

Does not knowing linguistics well  make someone a dork? I wouldn't say
so... I would say that if they are inventing languages the natural way
to go is to learn, and that the dorks are the people who are unwilling
to learn, but a lack of knowledge does not necessarily reflect an
unwillingness to learn, it might simply be that they have just started
and haven't had time yet to learn. I think everyone here made some very
bad or at least unimaginative choices for their first conlang or two,
and I know in my first ones I used letters to define the sounds of my
languages and assumed that everyone would give the letters their english
values.
 Now I tend to use tables ... place of articulation along the top, type
of sound down the side... my tables show what sound I'm assigning to
each letter, and then I use the letters to represent the values I've
assigned to them... writing IPA or any of its ASCII versions is too much
of a nuisance to be quite honest, and looks down right ugly, and if my
table at the start accurately specifies what sound each letter I'm using
represents what's the point?

>Mia Soderquist <mia@...> writes:
>
>
>
>>Can you imagine how much fun it was before The Great Split, when we were all
>>playing in the same sandbox?
>>
>>
>
>I wasn't on the list back then, but I can imagine.  Rivaling fractions of auxlangers
>bashing each other's proposals, probably with occasional collateral damage
>when someone bashed an artlang he mistook for an auxlang, etc.
>The Great Split was certainly a good thing; imagine having all that auxlang
>advocacy *here*, besides all that other off-topic stuff that weighs down
>this list and causes so many people (including me) to go nomail.
>
>
>
>>      I was on both lists for quite a long while after
>>the split, but I really doubt the need and desire for any sort of IAL, so
>>Ieft Auxlang for lack of anything to contribute.
>>
>>
>
>I only cursorily observe the AUXLANG archives and am not subscribed to it,
>as I have nothing of value to contribute.  I am not a disciple of any auxlang
>proposal (I was actually quite fond of Esperanto in my youth, but it has
>worn off long ago), and am mildly sceptical about the whole idea of an artificial
>international auxiliary language; however, I am interested in the history
>of conlanging in general, and this of course includes IALs.
>
>
>
>>Besides, artlangers hardly ever break out into fits of "My artlang is
>>superior because it has these features and your artlang sucks because it has
>>those features."  That sort of argument wouldn't even make sense, except
>>possibly as a joke between friends.
>>
>>
>
>Very true.  Auxlangs are subject to what I call the "Highlander condition":
>there can be only one.  The goal of an IAL is to establish *one single*
>language for everyone to learn as a second language, such that anyone
>can talk to anyone.  Thus, any new auxlang proposal implicitly infers a rejection
>of every previous proposal.  After all, if one was of the opinion that any existing
>auxlang proposal was fit to do the job, one would not take the trouble
>of inventing a new language for the same purpose.
>
>Artlangs, in contrast, usually have no such absolutist aspirations.
>They are created as part of a fictional world background, as an exercise of
>someone's personal opinion on linguistic beauty, or just for fun; creating a new
>artlang in no way infers the rejection of any other artlang.
>In fact, most artlangers appreciate the works of their collegues.
>
>I have also gained the subjective impression that artlangers tend to be
>better linguists than auxlangers, in such details as the fact that most auxlangers
>describe their languages in terms of letters rather than phonemes,
>and take idiosyncrasies of western European languages for granted.
>One frequently finds statements such as "the conditional is expressed
>by suffixing the letter |u| to the verb", with no explanation what exactly
>*is* the conditional.  In contrast, I have seen many artlang sketches
>that tell of a linguistic knowledge rarely found in auxlang proposals.
>
>Many auxlangers also have strange ideas about how language works or
>should work, and tend to fix "bugs" of language that are actually features.
>This is especially apparent in "philosophical" language schemes auch
>as Ygyde (to give a recent example that shows that philosophical languages
>are *not* a 17th-century matter that is now entirely discarded).
>The result are bizarre, unworkable proposals with a streak of madness
>running straight through them.
>
>This of course raises the question, why is auxlanger linguistics so doggy?
>I don't know.  Perhaps it is that someone who understands the way
>languages work realizes that the whole enterprise of creating an artificial
>international auxiliary language is a hunting of a snark, so the good
>linguists abandon the auxlang quest (if they ever embarked in it)
>and the bad linguists stay on.  But that's only my personal impression,
>and not all auxlangers are bad linguists, and not all artlangers are
>good linguists.  There is the whole range from complete dorks to
>brilliant scholars on both sides of the fence.
>
>Jörg.
>
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