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

On 12/6/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > 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.
This was intended to be a subpart of the question asked; my apologies
if that was not clear.

To rephrase: please (also?) specify what specific goals you have for
your languages, and/or what goals you find appealing, admirable, etc.,
in others' languages.

Certainly languages must be evaluated in the context of goals; I
thought I had made that explicit but perhaps I failed to do so, since
I consider it trivially obvious (and thus left it implied).

 - Sai