Re: What to Call Non-Conlangers

On Friday, March 4, 2005, at 01:53 , Damian Yerrick wrote:

> "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@...> wrote:
>
>> I like Muke's "nonlanger".  Natlanger, while a sensible construction,
>> still feels too active to me.  Natlanging implies the creation of
>> natlangs, which makes no sense.
>
> Modern Hebrew.
So is revived Cornish (in all three varieties). As no one was around to
record either Biblical Hebrew nor Cornish before they ceased to be anyone'
s L1, there's bound to be some "conlanging". Also, of course, the world
moves on after languages die or, like Hebrew & Latin, have an liturgical
existence only, so some creativity is inevitable in order to express
things and concepts unknown to earlier speakers of these languages. But,
in every case, the revivalists were really upgrading natlangs, albeit
creatively at times - not really true conlanging.

> 18th century prescriptivist English.
Well, the same can said of the French of the French Academy or the Spanish
of the Spanish academy or, indeed, any 'official' prescriptivist notm.

>> On second thought, a natlanger could be someone who shows great
>> interest in natlangs and learns several of them.  A distant cousin
>> of the conlanger, so to speak.
>
> The term is "polyglot".
Yep - it has been for the past few centuries   :)

>
> "Bryan Parry" <bajparry@...> wrote:
>
>> We could just call em 'humans' *rolls eyes* ;)
>>
>> How about "Clangers".
Are they mice? They're certainly pink. But tho their language is indeed
tonal, it doesn't sound like Morse Code - more like Solresol   :)

==============================================

On Thursday, March 3, 2005, at 11:01 , Sally Caves wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joe" <joe@...>
[snip]

>> I was just playing with the Natlang-Conlang distinction.  Since a
>> Natlang is the opposite of a Conlang,
>
> well...  and mind you, I'm being obnoxious and ornery here, unlike my true
> sweet self; I just had/have problems with "opposite" in this case.  But
> again, what do I know?
Quite a lot, IME   :)

I too have problems with "opposite" in this case. In fact, I find
'oppositeness' too vague - it covers things like privative opposites,
equipollent opposites, complementaries etc, etc. (and some conlangs -
AFAIK not creations of list members - treat 'oppositeness' in a very
confused manner). But, if you asked most people what the opposite of
'construct' is, they'd probably answer 'destroy'. So the opposite of a
language constructor, is arguably a 'language destroyer' - someone who
wants the whole word to speak English  :)

But I appreciate Joe was being facetious.
=================================================

On Thursday, March 3, 2005, at 09:08 , Ivan Baines wrote:
[snip]
> [nonlanger]
> Definitely gets my vote.  But it doesn't necessarily imply people
> without language.  I see it this way: there are a number of words
> ending in -langer, right, which describe people who engage in
> various related activities - e.g. conlanger, romlanger, loglanger,
> etc.
Exactly!! (Don't forget engelangers  :)

> These people could be collectively called "langers".  Thus
> those who don't engage in such activities would quite clearly be
> "non-langers"!
Yep - 'nonlanger' seems the obvious choice to me - it fits in with all the
other langers.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com
===============================================
Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods
as of the reason."      [JRRT, "English and Welsh" ]

Reply