Re: New Survey: Celtic Conlangs (and other lunatic pursuits)

Sally Caves wrote:
>
> PART I.  FOR CELTIC CONLANGERS:
Not I, thought it's probably only a matter of time.

> PART II:  INSPIRATION BY TOLKIEN (tangential to the questions on inspiration
> by Celtic languages):
>
> How many of you were inspired to invent a language because of your exposure
> to Tolkien?
Me, partly. Actually, the name of one of my languages is a bit of a
Tolkein pun..."Samadurian" comes from Tolkein's referring to melliflous
sound combinations as "cellar doors".

> How many of you based your conlang on one of Tolkien's languages, or your
> conculture in Middle Earth?
Not I.

> How many of you have a constructed world, and, if so, does it include some
> of the races we associate with Celtic or Scandinavian mythology? (Elves,
> Dwarves, medieval societies of humans, Faeries or Fays?  Selkies?  Wizards?)
I do, but it's not a fantasy world and doesn't contain any mythological
aspects. It's technically post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but the sci-fi
aspects are really low-key--basically it's to allow me to create
cultures in a medieval/primitive setting that draw on modern cultures.

> How many of you were inspired to examine Welsh, Hebrew, or Finnish because
> of your examination of Tolkien?
Welsh to a certain extent.

> How many of you were inspired to invent a conlang or a conculture because of
> some influence OTHER than Tolkien?
One of the languages I'm working on was inspired by learning Latin and
wanting to "improve" it. It only became attached to a conculture later.

> How many of you were inspired to invent a language because you engage in
> Roll-Playing Games?
Not I, although I've played RPGs.

> How many of you were inspired to invent a language because you heard of this
> listserv?
Not I, although finding out that this list exists was eye-opening.

> How many of you are members of the Mythopoeic Society, or the Society for
> Creative Anachronism, or other High Fantasy Groups?
Nope.

> PART III:  NON-CELTIC CONLANGERS:
>
> In the discussions I've witnessed on Conlang in almost five years, I've
> observed that many conlangers have deliberately avoided "Tolkienesque"
> languages, and even Indo-European languages as models for conlangs, and
> especially the "Celtic."  Why?  Boring?  Overdone?  Trite?  Too pretty?
> Too Western?  Or none of the above--just more interested in something else?
> <G>  I don't want to give the impression that I think we conlang only
> because of Tolkien, and that anything we invent has to be INSPIRED BY or a
> DEPARTURE from the "Great One"; but in this question I'm eager to see some
> eschewal of or at least indifference towards the Tolkien, the "Celtic,"
> and/or even the Indo-European model.
>
> What is your name and what do you call your conlang?
Garth Wallace. My conlangs are Samadurian, Kulaqíl, Ekmartenkar, and one
without a name because I haven't decided on the sound changes I want to
apply to the parent lexicon yet. Plus a couple of unnamed sketches. All
are still in the early stages.

> How did you start conlanging?  What was your initial inspiration?
Latin class. Rereading the LOTR appendices gave me a boost.

> Did you know about Tolkien's inventions?  Read the books, the appendices?
> etc.  Or not?
Yes.

> What language types have you modeled your language(s) after?
Japanese is a stealthy influence on Samadurian. Mostly my conlangs are
groups of ideas mashed together without being inspired by any one
particular language or language family.

> What features of these languages or language types appeal to you?
Japanese is wonderfully regular.

> Some of you, and I'm thinking in particular of a conversation I had with And
> Rosta, are not interested in producing a language that is
>  "mellifluous"--that "mellifluousness" is a thing to be avoided in your
> conlang and especially as it is associated with Tolkien's Elvish or copiers
> of Elvish.   Is this so?  Why?
Nope. I like my languages to sound nice.

> For how many of you, though, is beauty and/or efficiency a factor in your
> language?  Or elegance?  How would you define these terms?
Beauty is definitely a factor for me--although I don't know how I'd
describe it, it's just a matter of personal taste. Tense vowels,
sonorants, and may fricatives tend to sound pretty to me. Efficiency is
a strange word to apply to language, since there is no way of making
every utterance "efficient". Elegance I define like engineers
do--creatively simple solutions to problems. It's definitely a factor
for me. It's actually sort of problem in itself for me, because I'm
always tempted to make things orthogonal (one thing to do, one way to do
it), which just isn't how people talk.

> For how many of you is the "exotic" a desired feature of your invented
> language?
Big factor. Even my Latinate language has some oddities that I threw in
because they seemed cool. Samadurian and Kulaqíl both have fairly odd
grammars (Samadurian uses tonal contour grammatically, Kulaqíl uses a
weird variation on a trigger or head-marking system). And Ekmartenkar is
agglutinative VSO.

> How many of you invent a non-human language?  And if so, how alien are its
> sounds and constructions?
I've been playing around with the idea of a language for dragons (part
of a different fictional world from my usual one), using the principle
of vibrations in a heated tube rather than vocal chords, but nothing
concrete yet.

> Do you prefer inventing an a posteriori language or an a priori language?
> In other words, how many of you invent a language wherein you base it
> closely on a natural language (Arabic, Tagalog) or a combination of
> languages, and how many others of you invent a language from, well, scratch?
> (if that can be done.)
All but my Latinate language are a priori.

> How many of you invent a language based on a particular type (Ergative,
> Accusative, Trigger, etc.)?
Kulaqíl was inspired by Pablo David Flores' description of trigger
systems, although I'm not sure if it could really be called a trigger
language.

Ekmartenkar is an attempt to create a language that uses prefixes to
show case, and that would have a linguolabial series of consonants).

> To what degree is difficulty and irregularity of language important to you
> in your conlang?  what natural language eccentricities (or efficiencies) do
> you like and try to reproduce?
Irregularity is important because it makes the language seem more
naturalistic. I try to make common verbs irregular, and come up with
idiomatic phrases that don't really make sense when analyzed literally.
I really have to fight my regularizing tendencies.

> To what degree is accessibility, efficiency, and regularity important to
> your conlang?  What natural language "faults" are you correcting?
Accessibility is fairly important to me (although it conflicts with my
love of exoticism). I intend to use these languages in a writing project
(ha, like that'll happen), and I want people to be able to learn enough
to understand some dialogue without having to take a college course in
them. ;) Regularity is part of that (as well as being an aesthetic issue
for me), but I also feel like a totally regular (if that's even really
possible) language would seem unnatural or "dead".

> How many of you invent logical languages?
Not me.

> How many of you invent IALs?
My Latinate language started out as sort of a half-hearted attempt at a
"universal language", but I quickly realized that just fiddling with
Latin's inflections probably wasn't going to solve the world's
communication problems.

> How many of you have invented non-Tolkienesque or non European concultures
> and what are they like?
Ouch. Well, my concultures tend to be a combination of several
influences, so only a couple could really be considered "european"
although they all have european aspects.

> How many of you started out by pulling words out of the air, originally?
> How many of you have chosen a more methodic form of vocabulary building?
> I.e., how have you gone about setting up the framework for your words and
> your grammar?
> (I started out pulling words out of the air.)
I usually start with a couple of words that sound interesting, then put
together a phonology to fit and use that as a basis for more words.
"Samadur" was a slight mangling of "cellar door". "Ekmartenkar" and
"Kulaqíl" just happened to sound nice.

> PART IV:  THE LUNATIC SURVEY REVISITED (because we are all "fous du
> langage," according to Yaguello and other French critics.
>
> Why do you conlang?  Who will speak it?  Read it?  What's the point?  What's
> the beauty?  what's the intellectual draw?
Well, the ultimate goal for me is to write an online comic series with
dialogue entirely in my conlangs, with an interface that would display
English translations. This is of course nuts, and would probably have an
audience of 5 readers max, but what the hell, it's something to shoot
for. Really, I just do it because it's fun, and because it's a challenge.

> To what would you compare a conlang?  Is it a miniature?  Is it a model?  Is
> it a tapestry?  Is it an act of obsession and madness? <G>  Or is it a
> communicable language?
All of the above? None of the above? :) A conlang is what it is. It's an
intricate sculpture, it's a puzzle, it's a game, it's a potentially
communicable language. I would actually compare it to architecture or
musical composition: there's a technical framework with rigorous set of
rules but within that framework the potential for creative expression is
infinite. This balance of left-brain engineering and right-brain
creativity is a big part of why it's so attractive to me. It's cognitive
jazz.

> If it is a communicable language, to whom do you speak it?
Anyone who won't run away. ;)

> To what extent is the opacity or "alterity" of your language something that
> pleases you?  In other words, the sounds and the script have, even for you,
> a quality of being foreign, and this delights.
> Comment?  (I know that when I make maps of cities, and imagine myself in
> them, they delight me because they are both familiar and foreign at the same
> time.)
I haven't really thought about it that way, but yes, that's probably a
part of it. I tend to enjoy things that are obscure, unknown, difficult,
or just strange: comic art theory, progressive rock and the musical
avant-garde, conlanging, etc. There's an attraction to knowing about
something that isn't widely known.

> This is a difficult question:  how is it that a word sounds "right" to you?
> We recently discussed this.  To what extent are you finding righter, better
> words for the world in your conlang?  (Perhaps unanswerable).
I'm not sure I understand the question.

> How many of you are fictive map-makers, designers of fictive floor plans,
> fictive yachts, fictive star-ships, world-builders, calligraphers,
> cartoonists, etc.?  (These pursuits have been associated with conlanging.  I
> 've done most of them.)
I'm a world-builder. I'd draw designs of things from my worlds, but my
drawing skills suck.

> How many of you have a special script in your conlang?
Oh yeah.

Samadurian uses sort of a featural code: syllables are written in blocks
  that incorporate initial consonant, vowel, and final consonant
symbols. Each block is written in a single brushstroke, not counting the
diacritics that modify the consonants.

Kulaqíl has a writing system that is sort of the inverse of Japanese.
Stems are written phonemically, while inflected endings are written with
ideographs (I'm not sure if they'd technically be called ideographs, but
close enough).

Ekmartenkar doesn't have a writing system yet, but it'll have to have
its own, since the roman alphabet is a really poor fit for the sounds
(my transliteration scheme uses numbers for the linguolabials).

> If you use Roman script, how recognizably "phonetic" is your writing system?
> In other words, do you use unconventional letters to represent sounds?
> Why?
My Latinate language is reasonably phoemic. I'm thinking of adding some
irregularities to make it seems like it was derived through a more
natural process of evolution.

> This is a question Heather asked, but I also asked it four years ago:  how
> many of you write in your language?  What do you write?
None of my languages are complete enough to write anything yet.

> How many of you sing in your language and have invented songs for that
> purpose?
See above.

> How many of you started conlanging when you were a teenager and have stuck
> to the same language over many years?   Why?
I did. I first started work on the Latinate language when I was in high
school. I probably stuck with it because I didn't want to see it go to
waste.

> How many of you change conlangs regularly, developing structures for many
> languages but not sticking with any one for very long?  Why?
I do, to a fault. I can't concentrate on working on just one for very
long, which has pretty much prevented any of them from reaching a usable
stage yet.

> For how many of you does your language function as a spiritual instrument?
> This is a deeply personal question--let me give you an example.  When I
> first started inventing "Tayonian" in my early teens, what I wrote were
> spells and prayers.  They had a talismanic quality.  Does that ring a bell
> for anybody?
Not me. I find mystical beliefs like Gnosticism interesting as something
to learn about, but not as something to believe in. I'm an agnostic and
skeptic.

> For how many of you was your language at least at one stage of its making
> meant to fool others, or to write secret diaries? (Me, waving my hand).
Not me.

> How many of you can speak your language, at least to yourself and your pet?
> child?  spouse?  <G>  To what extent?
If only any of my languages were complete enough to do so...sigh...

> How many of you have put up websites where your language can be showcased?
> If so, what is the website address?
I will eventually.

> How many of you have made soundbytes of your language so the rest of us can
> hear it?  If so, give the site.
Nope.

> How many of you are comfortable talking to your boss, your professors, your
> family members about this pursuit?   How many of you have received
> condescending or other negative responses to your disclosure?  (I have.)  Or
> even been called "pathological"?
I've never been insulted for it. Most of the people I've talked to about
it are people I know pretty well. Actually, my experiences have been
almost the reverse online: I got on the subject in an unrelated IRC
channel I frequent oce, and found that there were several other people
in that channel who either were working on their own languages or were
otherwise interested in the subject.

> If this attitude is changing, to what do you attribute the change?  (On New
> Year's Eve, a delightful, elderly gentleman could not understand why I would
> be interested in this pursuit.  What purpose could it serve?)
>
> For how many of you is the damning statement "better to learn real languages
> than invent private ones" a criticism you have encountered?  What would be
> your response to such a remark?
I've never gotten that reaction. If I did, I'd probably point out that
they're not mutually exclusive.

> PART V:  GENERAL DEMOGRAPHICS:
>
> What is your age (optional--and can be general: 30-40, for instance).
early 20s

> What is your profession or your station in life (i.e., if you are a student,
> what is your MAJOR; if a middle or high-school student, what is your
> intended major)?
I work part-time at a publishing company.

> What is your gender?
Male.

> What is your nationality and your native language?
American. English.

> What natural languages do you speak or have studied?
Latin (high school, almost 4 years) and Japanese (college, 3 years).
Before high school I studied some Spanish in junior high and a little
bit of Russian in middle school, but I've lost almost all of what I
learned from them (I know 3 Russian words: nyet, borscht, and yoj).

While I find languages fascinating, I've never been very good at
learning them. It's quite frustrating.

> How many of you have chosen a profession in linguistics because of your
> interest in inventing languages?  Or plan a profession in linguistics?
Not I.

> What have you learned from conlanging?
That I need to be more patient. :)

> What texts on language and linguistics have you consulted to help invent
> your language?
Other than online resources, a couple of study guides by Geoffrey Finch.

> Do you know of anyone who has not connected with the Internet or the List
> who has invented a language? (I'm firmly convinced that "conlanging" has
> been a private pursuit for many people long before the list started, but
> that the list has increased its visibility as an art).
Nobody offline, although I've met a few online who were previously
unaware that anyone else shared their hobby, and didn't know about the List.

> Can you give me a short sample of your language with interlinear description
> and translation?
Not at this time, sorry. :( Samadurian, which has the largest lexicon so
far of any of my languages, has a grand total of about 6 words.

> Would you object to my mentioning your conlang/and or your name in my talk?
> I will be discreet about some of the more personal questions you answered.
It would be a little strange, since none of my colangs have gotten very
far past the theoretical stage yet, and my record of completing hobby
projects isn't very good. But I wouldn't object.

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