Re: CHAT: Conlang Cycles

Jeff Jones wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> First, welcome back to Sally and Duke(*), and glad to see Daniel Andreasson
> "active" again. Also welcome/welcome back to anybody else I've missed. This
> paragraph actually ties in with the next part.
>
> I while back, I started reading the earliest available list archives, at
> about the rate of one week of old messages per one week of new ones. The
> old ones are about 50 months back. I've notived something funny. Sometimes
> I don't know if I'm reading old or new messages. In the old messages, Duke
> and Daniel just joined the list, and they've just come back now. There are
> more parallels of that kind. Also, back then, they just finished a survey
> or two, and now, likewise.
>
> So does anybody think the Conlang list is cyclical?
>
> Jeff Jones
>
> (*) A note to Duke: I'm not a popular guy myself. I remember looking at Ok
> before, since brevity is one of my interests.
Its true about cycles. I remember thinking as I was writing my most
recent self RE-introduction; "where have I seen this before"

Every time I get back on the list I assume that no one will remember me.
I just don't post that often. So,I go through the whole schpiel, what my
langs are, where they are, what they're about etc,etc,etc.

Personally I actually like OK. But its kind of like showing your six
year old's art work to the local art critic, They smile and then change
the subject. :)

Ok is basically a relex. It covers the same morphemic space as English.
I started Ok before I knew anything about linguistics. And, truth be
told, I just wanted a quick vocaubulary to see if the thing would fly.
Ok is a lablang (Is that the correct usage people?). It has very few
interesting features to the folks on the list.

As far as popularity, If I can manage to keep from doing something
stupid, maybe I can avoid the torch bearing pitchfork wielding
list-mob!    ;)

The last time I was here I posted HTML to the list and pissed off
Irina.  :(
It wasn't fun.

Brevity? I got into conlanging largely because of Speedtalk.

I'm going to do it! I am doing it right now. I'm using Heinlein's
decription of the language as guidelines to create a speedtalk version.

Every one is now saying "But wait! That's what you did with Ok. I
thought you said it wasn't possible Duke."

Recently as I was lying in bed, halfway between sleep and wakefulness,
(This is where I get all my best ideas) I realized that it can be done.
It can be done from the *speaker's* stand point. Nobody will have a
chance in hell understanding it but......well, I don't care.

Right now I've got about 450 vowel sounds. I rounded up all the vowels I
was familiar with and stretched that number using nasalization, tones,
pitch, duration and combinations therefrom, Ala Heinleins description.

I did the same thing with the consonants, where possible, and I have 75.
This makes for a really vowelly language. Is vowelly a word? The ratio
right now is about six vowels for every consonant. This maybe some
people's idea of beautiful, but I like to have something to chew on in
the pudding. I'm trying to arrange it so that words represented by
consonants are the frequently used ones.

Simple addition tells us thats not enough words for *anything*. I hope
that if I use the English trick of letting words change their parts of
speech I might get close to  the number of words in Basic English. Then
I can start making compound words.

Anyways, this is the saturday I wanted to get to work on it and here I
am writing E-mail.

so,
Bye everyone! see ya in a bit!

-Duke