Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

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 http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-name: NikTailor