Re: Necessity of Conculture?
From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
Date: | Saturday, May 29, 1999, 21:18 |
Chris Peters wrote:
> But is it possible to go the other way? To create a language for its own
> sake? What do the rest of y'all think? How important is that conculture,
> as a part of the art of the conlang?
Depends. If it's intended to be naturalistic, it really helps to have
at least some idea of the people who speak it, what their values are and
the like. Thus, an egalitarian culture would have no use for varying
levels of formality, as in Spanish tu'/usted, but a strictly
hierarchical culture would. But, there's certainly nothing wrong with
just creating a language as a purely personal thing, that's what an
"artlang" is. It's just a matter of personal taste, I think. I prefer
to have a conculture behind my conlang, but others don't.
--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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