Re: A proposal to bring together the conlang communities

On Tuesday 29 January 2008 09:58, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:13:18 -0600, Herman Miller wrote:
> > li_sasxsek@NUTTER.NET wrote:
> > > I'm just wondering if this isn't just reinventing the wheel.
> > > There already is a conlang wiki out there at Langmaker.com.
> > > Unfortunately it hasn't been too well maintained lately (server
> > > failures, etc.) but it's a perfectly good resource.
> >
> > There's also FrathWiki, which I prefer because it also covers
> > concultures and world-building.
>
> I also prefer FrathWiki, for just these reasons.  An alternative
> would be KneeQuickie, which is more or less the "official" ZBB wiki,
> but I like FrathWiki better.
>
> >       Languages are the main focus of my
> > interest, but a language needs people to speak it, who need their own
> > culture and a world to live in. So I end up with pages like my Zireen
> > music page (http://wiki.frath.net/Zireen_music) with very little conlang
> > content.
>
> It is the same to me, as it was with Tolkien - the whole world of Arda
> was ultimately created to give his languages a place where they could
> be spoken.  My languages do not and cannot exist in a vacuum; I always
> felt that they needed people who speak them, with a world they live in
> and a culture.  A wiki only for con*langs* at the exclusion of con*worlds*
> and con*culture* would not work for me.
I myself cannot subcreate without language creeping in.  The stuff I was
waffling on over the Xmas-New Year holidays, has turned up some numbers and
some names:
odaiin
dvaiot
trivan
kataihia
pettaian
sekoweh
hebataia
autoia
noianaia
tehemaia

though most people in that world will cut the larger numbers down - the
three-or-more syllable numbers seem to have crytallized during a difficult
period and more-or-less stuck.  Blame it all on Bin Boutros's affair with
Ivanna, or at least that's what everybody who survived that episode - ie,
everybody, or in other words, their descendants - tend to do.

Names tend to be like Antaia or Edeiun, with a number like Unrudna, and the
stress is on the penultimate syllable.  I have yet to work out what they
mean, if anything; I just expect they will either mean something, or have
meant something.  (Except I can't make their meaning "cutesy" - Antaia and
Edeiun will beat me up, and Unrudna will let them.  It's hard being a
subcreator, boo hoo hoo! ;)

Wesley Parish
>
> However, there are many conlangs not connected to a fictional culture.
> This holds, for instance, for most engelangs.  But that does not
> constitute a problem with FrathWiki.
>
> > [...]
> >
> > The PDF thing could be good for more polished articles with
> > illustrations, more professional-looking typography, etc. but it would
> > also be convenient if the text of those journals would be available in
> > an alternate web-page format for quick browsing.
>
> PDF is fine for texts that constitute a well-defined, self-contained
> document, especially when it comes to printing.  But HTML is more easily
> browsable and searchable, and thus preferable for overview articles,
> abstracts, tables of contents, work in progress and other such matters.
>
> >       I don't know about the
> > blog format for discussions. I guess I think of blogs as discussions
> > directed mainly by one person with comments from visitors to the site.
>
> I don't like blogs much.  They are good for quick, volatile comments
> on current events, but little else.
>
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla
warfare means up to their monkey tricks.
Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom
of the foolish.
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.