Re: Necessity of Conculture?

On Sat, 29 May 1999, Chris Peters wrote:

>         I'm curious what the rest of you think about attaching a fictional culture
> to your languges.
[...]

>         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?
It was the other way around with me: the world was there first, and
it spawned names, and the names turned out to be part of a language.
Then, because language is in my bones, I paid attention to that and
it became a thing in itself.

I can't imagine the language without the culture, though, any more
than I can imagine the culture without the language. I won't say that
the culture is "a part of the art of the conlang", because it's the
culture that shapes the language; rather, the language is part of the
culture (as any culture or language in the real world).

   Irina


            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastinay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
       http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/index.html (English)
    http://www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)