Re: Conlang Flag Design

David Peterson wrote:

> Wow, that's cool!   And your explanation makes it even better.
> Even though it's a rough sketch, one can get the idea, and I
> think it's great!
I'm glad you like it :-) It was the simplest design I could think of
(and flags ought to be simple) that captures the spirit of conlanging.

> But yeah, something in the middle...  Something circular, symmetrical...
> Well, unless someone came up with a crest/coat of arms.  Then that
> would have to go in the center.  What do stars symbolize on flags?  We
> could have a big four pointed star in the midle.  Provided it symbolized
> something appropriate.
Coat of arms: Why? Most countries have a coat of arms and most of them
don't appear on the flag. Germany is the only exception that I don't
have to look up.

As I said, I would have experimented with a Celtic knot using the
tongues if my skill had been up to it (although without experimenting,
I have no answer to questions such as "where in the knot do you
invert the colours?"). Conlangs can be as intricate and detailed as
any knot. Of course, then again stars are brilliant, and ... :-)

I disagree with the 'circular' idea. There are already two circles on
my flag - another circle in the centre would look as though someone
had rolled a dice and thrown a three. Something more elongated would
look better, and tilted in a direction halfway between the horizontal
and that of the diagonal divide.

I don't think a star is appropriate, because stars tend to be very
symbolic indeed and I don't think one could be justified. Sometimes
stars represent a particular constellation in the night's sky, such as
the Southern Cross in the flags of Australia, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, etc (incidentally, the PNG flag is one of my favourites in the
world). Sometimes stars represent states and territories, either by
the number of stars (as in the American flag) or the number of points
(as in the Australian flag - the seventh point originally represented
territory that Australia used to own in PNG but is now generally taken
to stand collectively for all Australian land that is not part of any
of the six states). Sometimes a very specific star has an established
cultural significance, such as the Star of David on Israel's flag. The
only way you could justify a four-pointed star on a conlang flag, is,
I believe, if you identified precisely four different types of conlang
- but we all know that the number of types of conlang is not a
well-defined quantity.

It disappoints me that there has been little input to this so far.
Surely we have some inspired artists? Most of the other ideas are
quite frivolous, but a flag could really work. For example on web
pages. I wondered last night whether it might even be worth making
this a collaborative, joint project with other artlanging groups on
the Internet, not just the List (I lurk sometimes on zompist's bb,
although generally I just read the good stuff - i.e. I jump straight
to <http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/search.php?search_author=zompist>). If
someone's got some spare time and a book on necromancy, we could ask
Tolkien! :-)

Mottos/slogans: We all know that "fight linguistic extinction" is a
joke - nobody invents a conlang in order to fight linguistic
extinction. Personally, I think the slogan that captures most
succinctly what conlanging is all about is, "Creativity to speak of".
:-)

Adrian.

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