Re: A proposal to bring together the conlang communities

I guess it's time for me to ring in on this thread........which has been
mostly going in one ear (eye?) and out the other. H.Theiling has posted
comments in the past with which I agree, and these by Rick Harrison/Henrik
are relevant too:

>Rick Harrison writes:
> > On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:36:41 -0800, Sai Emrys <sai@...> wrote:
> >
> >>However, one CAN try to make something that becomes a de facto central
> >>ground for everyone - and if it worked (i.e. all the major needs for
> >>specific-content areas are met) then it could just make other sites
> >>redundant.
> >
> > Just as Wal-Mart makes family-owned businesses redundant when they
> > open a SuperCenter in a small town?
>......
>I also totally fail to see isolation when there's a global electronic
>network that allows you in no time to search, read, examine and
>eventually join whatever conlang community appeals to you.
>
As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

As for Wikipedia: it is useful to many (not particularly to me); but it is
not The Authority and indeed is prone to mistakes and partisanship. I fail
to see why they're being so snippy about an article on Conlanging, which is
certainly a hobby/pastime/art/whatever that has been pursued in interesting
ways by a few known people in the past, and-- thanks especially I guess to
Tolkien and Okrand-- is now pursued by many. The closet door has indeed been
opened.

A lot of young and not-so-young people who are still in the conlang closet
might well look to Wikipedia or Google for their first information on the
subject. Therefore, a _general_ article on the subject would surely be
warranted, to explain what it is, where it came from, and its present state.
It might begin with the historical figures (with e.g. links to Hildegarde
von Bingen, Wilkins, Zamenhof/Esperanto, Volapük, Jespersen etc) and the
types of languages they devised-- Ignota, Philosophical, IAL.  Then move on
to the modern, influential figures like Tolkien and Okrand, perhaps Le Guin,
who AFAIK are the first (at least successful) "artlangers". From there one
could move on to modern times, where the practice has expanded thanks
mainly, I believe, to the computer and Internet--then into the various
modern schools/categories: art- (both a priori and a posteriori), enge-,
philosophical-langs, IAL and whatever others there are. The relationship
with fantasy/speculative fiction; gaming; real Linguistics... whatever
else... Credit should be given to Rosenfelder's Lang.Construction Kit,
perhaps also to Pablo Flores' similar web-pages (I hope they're still
around; they were very good).

No need to mention specific conlangs/conlangers. But there should be links
to the various compendia-- Langmaker springs to mind, but it's hardly a
complete list, and I don't know if there's anything comparable. A really
"complete" list would be very desirable*; and links to the various fora--
Conlang, ZBB, Auxlang, the various Wikis et al.; Spanish Ideolengua and any
other non-Anglophone lists that exist, etc. And the LCS of course.
--------------------
*A "complete" list may not be possible, given our productivity; I recall
that various Conlang members have produced good lists in the past, but such
a list needs constant updating, and who will be in charge of that?  By the
way, would it be possible to have such a list (at the listserv? a ref. to be
sent to every new member?) of all the languages devised by the members, past
and present?
---------------------

I'm reminded how, at age 65 with my first computer in 1999, one of the first
things I did was search (via Yahoo IIRC) for "invented languages", and found
a wonderful long list of refs. (not including, oddly, ConlangL ;-(( ). It
truly opened the door of that particular closet, revealing our world-wide
community; it truly re-started my conlang motor, and by circuitous vicus led
to my presence here, and all the work I've done over the past 8-9 years, not
to mention the sheer FUN of conversing with hundreds of like-minded
colleagues, past, present and surely future.

Unless I'm mistaken, Wikipedia didn't exist in those days; but a general
article of the sort I've described would certainly have been superior (well,
maybe) to the list of hits I got from Yahoo Search.

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