Re: What is it we are saying in our languages?

----- Original Message -----
From: "David J. Peterson" <dedalvs@...>


> Sally wrote:
> <<
> An inspiring story!  It's something I'd love to see.  Do you have a
> sample of it on your site?
> >>
>
> Hmm...  You know, the whole reason I got this scanner was to
> scan stuff.  I could scan it and link to it on the main page.  I'll let
> you know when it's up.
I'd love to see it! :)

> [Groan...  Just saw that I spelled "except" as "accept" in my original
> message...  I should just spell them both as "xcpt", then I'll never
> have to worry again.]
Never even noticed it. :)

> Sally continues:
> <<
> But what I like about yours are the uproarious stories behind these
> aphorisms!
> >>
>
> Hee, hee...  And that's the whole point.  Thanks.  :)
Someone once responded to my Welsh signature ("What makes a gem out of a
hard stone?") with the following:  "Heat and pressure."  The Taliesin
questions are marvelously weird (this comes from a text called "Angar
Kyfygdawt," of uncertain translation, and has lists of questions (or
statements) prefaced by "I know...":  "why silver glitters, why a brook will
be dark, breath, why it is black, why liver is bloody, a cow, why it is
horned...why the puppy is drunk, why a billygoat has a beard..." etc. etc.
Each one of these could be a humorous story showing how Taliesin came by
this knowledge.  "Why is the meadowsweet sweet?  Why are the crows
greenish-hued?... To where is smoke dispersed?"

"I know where the cuckoos of summer will be in winter."  So do I, Taliesin.

> Your first invented language was only six years ago?  You make me  feel
> ancient! ;)
> >>
>
> Yep.  You've been conlanging since I didn't know what it was
Since you were a twinkle in your mother's eye. ;)

--and
> before.  In fact, as a member of conlang the whole time, you've
> witness my entire conlanging career, as have a few others.
Yep! :)

Sally:
> now I long to have the time to write historical, political, and
> philosophical texts, so that it be as Mulcaster said, defending his
> sixteenth-century English against the French, "a tongue of matter."
> >>
>
> See, that would be really neat.  I would love to sit down with an
> entire book--fiction or non, verse or prose--in *any* conlang,
> along with a dictionary and grammar, and figure it out.  That, I
> think, would be really neat.  I as a consumer would pay for that
> privilege.
I'll see what I can drum up, David.  I need the money.

> On the more metaphysical side of the discussion, John writes:
> <<
> Conlangers simply realize that language itself can be used
> as an artistic medium, i.e., a way of recreating the world in a
> personally
> idealized subjective fashion where the nature of the creation itself
> offers
> its own aesthetic and intellectual pleasure to enjoyed and subjective
> mysteries to be analyzed and dwelt upon.
> >>
>
> Yes!  That is an extremely elegant way to sum it up.  Quotable,
> too (though if anyone quotes it somewhere, note that there should
> be a "be" in between the "to" and "enjoyed").  Well said, John.
Yes, indeed!  And to be frank, I put much the same sentiment into my final
chapter, which is why, of course, I'm asking this question.  But maybe
hearing it from a conlanger would be better.  I so regret not being able to
find Douglas Koller, or "Kou," who dwelt in Japan, who has slipped out of
sight, for whom no webpages or new email can be found, and who wrote the
most incandescently joyful response to one of my Lunatic surveys in which I
asked about the sensuality of writing in an invented language.  He said, in
so many words, that he was like a delighted monk, surrounded by his slips of
paper, his coining of new words, his script, the use of the pen, and that it
was "like living in one's own rococo painting 24 hours a day."  Can't quote
it.

But the conlang as poetry concept has been expressed over the years by a
number of people in response to one or more of my surveys, and to
discussions like this.

Sally

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