Re: How to evaluate a conlang

On 9/27/05, João Ricardo de Mendonça <somnicorvus@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
A good conlang makes its creator happy. A bad one makes its creator vaguely
depressed. (Bad conlang! Bad! No biscuit! )

I'm not willing to judge other people's work as "good" or "bad", but more in
terms of whether or not it achieves the explicit goals of the creator and/or
happens to have bits and pieces that appeal to me personally. There are some
conlangs I like better than others, but I can't think of any that I
especially *dislike*.

I can be pretty hard on my own work, on the other hand. I love ea-luna, in
many ways, but I see so many shortcomings that it keeps spawning whole new
projects every time I go back to it. I love the sound of Muhilamanyani, my
very first conlang, but it had some really ridiculous points too. Heck, I
woke up today and completely revised the existing grammar of my current
project, which I am creating myself and for the amusement of friends on
another, non-linguistic list. What do I judge my own language on? It's a
subjective sense of how well I can express my thoughts without stumbling on
bad grammar and vocabulary choices. If I were to start evaluating other
people's languages, it might be in those terms as well... except, of course,
for those languages designed for alien minds.

M.S. Soderquist
Alas! Sigless!