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

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
[snip]
>
> First of all, I think that any conlang ought to be measured against the
> purpose or design goals set by the creator.
Yes, that, I think, is the most important criterion. Languages are
designed for all sorts of reasons - the conventional distribution of
conlangs into auxlangs, artlangs and engelangs is just that:
conventional. It's a convenience, but IMO it can also be misleading. So
few conlangs seem to me to fit nice and neatly into one of those categories.

To evaluate a conlang we must, it seems to me, know _why_ its creator
designed it; and the end product should be examined against it.

[snip]
>
> What unsettles me is any claim made by a conlanger that his language
> was "ideal" or "optimal".  One should be very, very careful with such
> absolutes.
It unsettles me as well. It reminds me too much of AUXLANG and its flame
wars. IME language creators that claim their language is "ideal" or
'optimal" generally leave much to be desired.

IMO such absolutes are illusory. The question is "ideal for _what_?",
"optimal for _what_?"
===================================

Antonielly Garcia Rodrigues wrote:
 > Given that a conlang would have a limited practical advantage for
 > learning, it has to be relatively easy to learn for me to engage into
 > this task. If it is overwhelming, I give up. So, I prefer conlangs
 > which have either a regular grammar with simple rules or a vocabulary
 > which I can mostly recognize

...which, personally, I find dead boring  ;)

Certainly if the conlang is aiming to be "naturalistic", these are
things I would not expect or want. I expect, for example, Quenya,
Sindarin or Tepa to be as complex as any natural language; I would not
expect their grammars to be any entirely regular not their vocabularies
to be "recognizable at sight."

[snip]
 > Finally, everything should be documented in a comprehensible way. The
 > quality of the tutorial materials is one of the most important
 > extralinguistic quality factors of a language.

This I do agree with. As Antonielly says, this is 'extralinguistic': it
is not a measure of the language as such, but rather a measure of how
well the creator has explained & presented his/her creation. It is,
however, very difficult to evaluate a poorly documented language.

[snip]
 > However, Jörg is right in his opinion that any conlang ought to be
 > measured against the
 > purpose or design goals set by the creator.

I also, of course, I agree with that   :)

============================================

As for _my own_ criteria, these are are set out in:
http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Briefscript/ObjAndDesign.html

But this applies *specifically* to my briefscript project. If I ever
develop further my 'Experimental Loglang'
(www.carolandray.plus.com/Loglang/index.html) the objectives and designs
principles will not, of course, be the same.

And who knows - maybe one day in my anecdotage I'll even get around to a
bit of artlanging  ;-)

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}

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