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Re: Internally artificial conlangs (Was: Re: T-Shirt)

From:Matthew Kehrt <matrix14@...>
Date:Sunday, October 1, 2000, 21:58
Yes, Eviendad"il is something of an artificial creole.  It was
commissioned by one of the emperors of Cadar, the original speakers of
Eviendadil, because the various Cadara language was overly complicated
and tortuous, as it was essentially a creole of several hundred
languages.  The emperor wanted something much simpler and easy to
understand for official use.  Eviendadil was the result.  It was a
streamlined version of the common speech of the empire, which came
mostly from some sort of Proto-Cadara, with about fifty percent of the
vocabulary being from various conquered realms.  The language was
called Eviendadil, which means 'good language', or , as I normally
translate it, 'the noble tongue'.  It, over the course of the next
five hundred years, became adopted as the common speech of the empire,
because it was essentially a subset of the original language and it
was used on all official documents.
-M

"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> > On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 09:06:07AM -0400, Padraic Brown wrote: > > On Sun, 24 Sep 2000, Nik Taylor wrote: > [snip] > > >But not an artificial auxlang, right? > > > > Artificial in that Tolkien created created it; or artificial in Middle > > Earth? It's artificial in that Tolkien made it, but within the history > > of ME, it is a natural formation. > [snip] > > Hmm, interesting. So, how many of our conlangs are artificial in their > *internal* histories? Just curious... > > My current conlang is internally semi-artificial, in that it was, um, > shall we say, adapted from regional dialects and *heavily* modified? In > the beginning, the Experts spoke many different local dialects (which are > properly distinct languages), but as they developed their philosophy, the > languages melded together into a common Expert language which carries > heavy influences from their philosophies. It's hard to say whether this is > (internally) a natlang or a conlang, because the Experts *did* actively > try to incorporate their philosophy into their language, but OTOH the > language is based on existing local dialects. > > For a long time, the Experts were the only ones who spoke this language, > but later, they basically became the ones in charge of the education > system, and so the language became a lingua franca. > > T
-- Saráth evenü, cán el-sayü liné! "The difference between physicists and mathematicians is that physicists get to play with toys." -Mr. Casebolt, my Physics teacher