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

li [Sai Emrys] mi tulis la

> ...
> 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.
First I would have to look at what type of language it is and what its
goals are.  I am mostly into auxlangs and mostly IAL's.   In my own
evaluation of an IAL I look for several criteria.  I think an IAL should
be as easy to learn as possible, but still fully expressive and should
represent influences from a diversity of languages and cultures (notice
I avoid the term "culturally neutral" because I don't think that's a
realistic goal).

Other types of languages would also make me look at their stated goals
and how elegantly they achieve those goals.  Secondly I do look at
esthetics though that part is completely subjective.


> Please don't get into whether some criteria are better or worse than
> *other* criteria; that is definitely not what I am asking. I'm ONLY
> asking about how YOU evaluate languages; i.e. what YOU like in them
> (when choosing which you want to learn, how you want to make
> something, or what other conlangs you think are really cool and 'well
> done').
What languages I have found that I like?   From the IAL category, there
are two other than my own that I think stand out:  Vorlin and Ceqli.
As far as philosophical languages go, I like the simplicity and euphony
of Toki Pona.  I've taken a fairly good look at Lojban lately and their
are things I like a lot about it like its predicate logic and simple
strcuture, but there are also many things I don't care for like it's
word shape and overcomplicated use of various types of particles.  I
have always liked Germanic languages so I do like to see the occasional
post for Alemensk.  I also like the way a lot of Austronesian languages
flow so Ilomi caught my attention when it was first published.