Re: artlang-blindness of linguists (was ...)

On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 08:21 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:

> Hallo!
>
> On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 12:26:55 -0700,
> Dirk Elzinga <dirk_elzinga@...> wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday, December 9, 2003, at 10:31  AM, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
[snip]

>> It has not escaped the author's attention that languages may be
>> constructed for personal or artistic reasons. He is also the author of
>> _A Priori Artificial Languages_ and _Mixed Artificial Languages_. In
>> the preface to the former he said: "I am primarily interested in those
>> languages which were constructed with some serious purpose in mind. A
>> fair number of languages, or (much more often) fragments of languages,
>
> Fragments of languages... indeed true.  Few artlang projects ever
> reach the stage of actual usability.  Makes it even more difficult
> to take them seriously.
Yes, this is indisputable. It is probably even more true of artlangs
which are "Artificial Descendants of Latin" (the title of the book);
it seems almost obligatory for conlangers to produce at least one
Romance conlang.  I produced fragments of several in my late teens &
early 20s.

But.....

[snip]
>> So any discussion of artlang projects would have to be rather general
>> and vague (if there is discussion at all); they're moving targets.
>
> Yes.
Only if the author had discussed artlang projects in general  :)
Not all artlangs are moving targets.

I submit that his discussion of con-IALs would also be general & vague
if he discussed IALs *in general*, especially if he'd picked auxlangs
that are moving targets (they do exist!).

[snip]

> But there is a handful of artlangs which have reached a rather stable
> mode of existence.  Andrew Smith's Brithenig is pretty stable;
Yes, indeed, not your "moving target" - and it was "constructed with
some serious purpose in mind", i.e. to reconstruct as plausibly as
possible what the Vulgar Latin of the Romano-British might have become
if it had not been displaced by Saxon.

I wonder too how many of the the listed LatAuxlangs survived their authors:
1.1 Carpophorophilus's Language
1.2 Kosmos
1.3 Latino Moderne
1.4 Latino sine Flexione
1.5 Latinulus
Ach-y-fi! What a name for a language!
(In real Latin it'd mean "a little person from Latium [Lazio]" -
with meaning of endearment or, more likely, scorn)

1.6 Linguum Islianum
1.7 Mundelingva
1.8 Myrana and Communia
1.9 Nov Latin
1.10 Reform-Latein
1.11 SIMP-LATINA (SPL)
1.12 Universal-Latein
1.13 Uropa
1.14 Weltsprache (Eichhorn)
1.15 Weltsprache (Volk and Fuchs)

I must say the list doesn't tempt me to part with 44 euros  :)

If it's a YASLA ('yet another simplified Latin auxlang') you're
after, I can supply one any time.  ;-)

Ray
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