Re: What criteria do you have for your own or others' languages?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sai Emrys" <sai@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 3:27 AM
Subject: What criteria do you have for your own or others' languages?


>
> Please list, in your own words (preferably detailed) what criteria you
> apply to conlangs to judge them to be (in your opinion / for your
> purposes) "better" or "worse", or more or less "likable" or
> "impressive" etc etc. They can be subjective, objective, or both.
>
>
I create fictional languages for fictional people and "toy" languages for
real people.

I like conlangs that are at least complete enough that one could hold a
conversation
or tell a story in them. In fact, a conlang gets extra gold stars in my book
if the creator
has written stories, songs, poetry or instructional materials in or for the
language. I like
languages with creative idioms and metaphors built in. If there's a
conculture attached,
that is also a plus, because it gives context for those idioms and
metaphors, as well as a
particular context for talking about the language.

Phonology is probably the part of conlanging that I care the least about.
There are very
few languages, con- or otherwise, that I don't enjoy hearing, and a project
of my own
design either sounds right to me or it doesn't.

I like conlangs that have little irregularities, whether they were
originally intentional or not.
I like languages that are serious, as far as being made to be as "real" as
possible, as though
they were really spoken by Such-and-such a tribe on a small island on Planet
So-and-so. I
also enjoy other languages that have their less serious moments. I find
in-jokes, puns, odd
borrowings and other humourous bits in conlangs to be delightful, like
finding candy in your
pocket. I don't really care to maximise the "exotic" factor, but I do like
trying to take some chances
with unusual grammatical features, even if it turns out that it was better
in theory than in practice,
causing a major revision along the line. I think it is interesting in my own
languages and in the
languages of others to see semantic space diced up in ways that make me
think or that are
very different from the natlangs I know.

I don't really care so much for languages derived from real world languages.
I just don't.

I find that I am happier when I don't worry very much about what other
people think of
my projects, since they only purpose they serve for me is to make me happy.
I try to look at
the work of others in the same light, but when I see a conlang that is
really well fleshed out,
I can't help but admire it.

...Mia.