Re: New to the list

Hello, Oskar, and I second all greetings you've received!


Interestingly, a couple weeks ago I lurked into AUXLANG and noticed
your messages. I thought, at last they are busy with something
interesting, like in-depth discussion of phonology... No, that didn't
last long ;)

On Fri, 16 Jun 2000 02:21:55 GMT, you wrote:

> A more
>modern spelling is "íslenskur maður", or, the way I want it, "íslenskur
>madur".
What happened to the encoding? You used too sign your messages
Óskar Guðlaugsson - and it's perfectly OK with me... Well, I mostly
read (and post to) the list in http access (with encoding set to
Western = ISO-8859-1), and there were complaints recently that some
people don't see some characters in my posts :( . I can only guess
that you meant _Íslenskur (Íslenzkur?) maður_, but actually I see
capital A-tilde instead of capital I-acute, and something
undescribable instead of 'eth'...

>Always flattering to see people exhibit interest in Icelandic. I'm
>pretty objective as a linguist, but I'd still say that my own native
>language has many interesting characteristics, mainly lexical.
It has a lot of interesting features *everywhere*, I think! And some of
us (me included) will want to consult with you a lot!

<...>
>I lurked on this list a little while and noticed how you
>immediately define new conlangs that you're discussing, by the questions
you
>pose; when a conlanger makes a language, the first question s/he asks
>him/herself is "who speaks it?"; <...>
As for me, I usually start from exploring some typological possibility,
or rather a historical-typological one...

And from what I've seen of your phonological ideas... well, I suppose
*variation* isn't a typical auxlanger's concern... auxlangers tend to
be so prescriptive, and to make their constructs so strangely
prohibitive for potential colloquial loans... Do they ever bother about
such trifles as phonological problems with language contacts, including
borrowed phonemes, violation of sound combinatorics, etc.? First things
I'd think of, if I'd ever attempted at designing an IAL...

Happy conlanging!


Basilius,
who has never been sure how his name is spelled in Esperanto...