Re: How to evaluate a conlang

Hi!

Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...> writes:
> Staving João Ricardo de Mendonça:
> >How do you evaluate a conlang? How do you define a "good" or a "bad"
> >conlang? I understand this is a personal criteria, so I'm not looking
> >for a definitive answer. I just wanted to know other people's opinions
> >on this.
>
> I personally would start by reviewing the artistic aims of the
> creator. Are his or her aims interesting, or coherent? Are they flawed
> in some way (e.g. setting a goal that cannot realistically be
> achieved)? Does the conlang achieve its stated aims, and how does it
> go about doing so? e.g. Kélen aims to be a convincingly alien
> language, and does this by abolishing the large open class of verbs,
> found in all human languages, with a small, closed class of
> relationals.  ...
I'd say in *most* languages.  The counterexample I will cite without
knowing much about the language is Basque, which was claimed here to
have only very few real verbs.

Wrt. the original question: I do essentially the same: look for what
the author's goals were and see how nicely they were achieved.
Additionally, I can't help but also apply my own ideals to a conlang I
read about.  I usually find languages nice that are original -- they
don't need to be very alien.  This is very hard to formalise, of
course, and just pure personal taste.

When designing a conlang myself, I start making a list of goals.
Usually, those goals have developed over a certain time, then trigger
the start of a new conlang, and only need to be formulated.
Sometimes, however, this process leads to unsolvable problems because
the goals are contradictory, and then it either becomes a funny
conlang, or none at all. :-)

**Henrik