Re: Conlang Flag Design

Roger Mills wrote:

> The Indonesians call their flag "Sang Merah Putih" = (Honorable) Red White.
> The official (Alma Mater, not Fight) song of the Univ. of Michigan ends with
> a reference to the school colors:  Hurrah for the yellow and blue.  So I
> guess we could in time wax rhapsodic about "the purple and the black".
Yeah, but on Barry's flag the colours don't _mean_ anything so far as
I'm aware. On the other designs, the purple and black represent the
fact that while a conlang is a created and imaginative thing in the
real world, it is something that the fictional inhabitants of the
conculture don't think about much, any more than the average
English-speaker who isn't particularly interested in linguistics
thinks about English grammar. However, the conculture inhabitants can
_use_ the language creatively.

I don't see how one can possibly argue that Barry's design expresses
the same thing, because the above is too complex an idea to be
represented except by a combination of shape *and* colour. I want to
hear Barry's explanation of what his design, particularly the colours,
represents in his own mind, and how the design stands up on its own
merits. To say that colours were chosen as some kind of abstract
gesture towards the other designs does *not* constitute a rationale.

Whatever my own feelings about the design I'll gladly add it to the
others, but I strongly feel that first of all a rationale is owed.

Adrian.

[P.S. Every time I copy something from a Conlang message on the Brown
website and paste it into an email, all sorts of wierd things happen
with double spacing and so on, which is a real pain, and I mean a
*REAL* pain, to get rid of. Most frustrating.]