Re: Conlang Dinner in NYC

En réponse à John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

>
>
> I am fairly sure that 18 July is correct.  That is the date of the
>
> first identifiable posting to a clear predecessor of this list
> (see below).
>
Then let's officially take it as the Conlang Day, even if it may be off by a few
days (after all, Christmas is too, and that doesn't prevent millions of people
to celebrate it anyway :) )

>
> I think that And and I are the only survivors from that era.
>
Isn't Amanda Babcock back here? I thought she was... And there may be others who
are simply lurking.

> Finally, the First Conlang Posting:
>
>
> Date: Thu, 18 Jul 91 16:32 EDT
> From: Ronald Hale-Evans <cbmvax!uunet!binah.cc.brandeis.edu!EVANS>
> Subject: Ding-dong! The list is up!
> To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu
>
> Saluton, amikoj!
>
> Glad to see the mailing list is working.
>
> I have a question for y'all: has anyone ever thought that Vladimir
> Nabokov's
> book *Pale Fire* might have been at least partially a satire of the
> Esperanto
> movement and Wm. Auld's poem *La Infana Raso*? I have just started the
> latter,
> and this thought seemed plausible to me for several reasons.
>
> (1) VN was expert with languages; he was a native Russophone, but his
> English-language stuff seems more beautiful and liquid stylistically to
> me than
> most stuff written by native Anglophones. VN could be quite elitist; it
> seems
> possible to me he might have scorned those who chose to learn E-o rather
> than
> become as fluent as he in other (European( languages.
>
> (2) A friend of mine suggested that since VN hated Communism, he might
> have
> taken a dislike to the Utopian ideologies of some Esperantists.
>
> (3) *Pale Fire* contains a constructed language (Zemblan), one which
> was
> constructed even within the context of the story, at least from one
> point of
> view. PF is all about mirrors and distortions of reality--could it be
> intended
> to mirror E-o?
>
> (4) A substantial chunk of the book is the poem "Pale Fire" proper,
> which seems
> similar to *La Infana Raso* in a few ways: it is an "epic" poem, it
> takes a
> strongly humanist stance (though not perhaps as strong as IR), and it
> is
> written by someone acclaimed as the greatest poet of an imaginary
> country
> (Zembla = Esperantujo; Shade = Auld ?).
>
> (4) Finally, I saw a chunk of PF (translated as "Pala Fajro") advertised
> in the
> ELNA catalog. Has someone else therefore noticed the similarities
> besides me?
> I'm too new to Esperantujo to know the history of E-o litcrit, and I
> haven't
> read PF recently enough or IR enough at all to be able to more than
> rough out
> the comparison. Can someone help me out?
>
> I hope to post more soon, including a grammar and vocabulary of
> Nabokov's
> Zemblan (such as it is; I've misplaced my notes on it meanwhile), and my
> notes
> on little languages I constructed when I was younger, including my
> favorite,
> Schklorpya (intended to sound somewhat like an English-language tape
> played
> backwards), and Huddr (not really remarkable to me anymore, except for
> its
> strong metaphysical bias). Plus, I believe I can dredge up a file on
> Klingonaase (the Klingon battle language) that I found somewhere, and I
> have
> Auld's translation of Lennon's "Imagine" ("Imagu").
>
> Meantime, I'm sketching out a dialect called New English, based on
> E-Prime and
> some other ideas (check out this month's *Magical Blend* if you're
> curious
> about E', or see if your local university library carries the journal
> *Etc.*)
> for my zine *Singularity*'s column "Postique Capta", which usually
> prints a
> bunch of new, mostly futuristic, terms.
>
> AL SINJORO ROSS: Have you spoken with the Planned Language Server folks
> about
> archiving some of this list's stuff?
>
> Hope to hear from y'all soon.
>
> Se oni dezirus, ke mi tradukas miajn mesagxojn al Esperanton, mi gxoje
> os.
>
> Ron Hale-Evans
>
> P.S. Can anyone tell me how to get off the damned ESPER-L list? I've
> done
> everything I can from LISTSERV and written to Turgut Kafaoglu (sp?)
> twice.
>
He he, I'm gonna keep this dinosaur :) . Interesting mail anyway, with a mixed
discussion about auxlang and artlang. I believe at that time Auxlang-l didn't
exist yet, did it?

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr