Re: Conlangs used for instruction

From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>
Subject: Re: Conlangs used for instruction


> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> > It's indeed an interesting example! Academics seem to be discovering the
> > classics of conlanging. Maybe someday in a close future we will get
other
> > academics who are *not* themselves conlangers make true conlinguistics
> > classes :))) .
>
> This line struck me:
>
> "The good guys in his book speak beautiful languages, and the bad guys
> speak ugly languages," Hoyt said.
>
> I personally preferred the sound of little bit of the Black Speech we
> heard to the sound of the Elvish tongues.  :-)  The Elvish tongues were
> too soft to be really attractive to me.  They weren't ugly by any means,
> of course, just sort of bland, while the Black Speech sounded cool and
> vibrant, with a kind of strong beauty to it.
This seems to be a common observation with many people.  If I were to pick
the most beautiful sounding language in the world, I'd pick (if restricted
to natlangs) Mongolian and Rumanian.  They generally don't sound smooth or
flowing, and don't have the most beautiful single words.  But the overall
flow is at the right balance of flowingness and contrast.  Languages that
are short on consonants tend to flow together too much for my tastes.

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