Re: Psycho Conlanging Closet Hypnotized --- Film at 11!

> Diana Slattery wrote:
>
> > Sally,
> >
> > When is the conference?
March 17-21, Fort Lauderdale Airport Hilton.  I'm speaking 10:00 Saturday morning,
whenall the partyheads will of course be snoozing, having spent Friday evening at the
beach I'm
SURE...



> It would be a super project someday to burn a CD with
> > conlangers's web pages, audio files, special doo-dahs of all kind.  (open mouth,
> > insert foot).
Actually, that WOULD be a great idea, Diana... it would be the only way to convey some

of these projects visually and aurally.  I think a great deal is lost if we're not
HEARING
these languages we're making up, and not seeing the scripts they're written in.
Webpages
help, but I do know that when it's written out on paper, I have a hard time accessing
ANY foreign
language, and I'm acutely aware a lot of the time that Teonaht just looks like a bunch
of
gibberish--or worse, sort of enters the common stream of  "just-another-conlang" when
it's
typed out on screen.  One of the things I wonder about as I write this essay is to
what extent
all this exposure to one another threatens to take away the uniqueness of what we're
doing.
When you read "A Secret Vice," you realize how doing something like this in isolation,
as
Tolkien did, lends a kind of unparalleled mystery to the endeavor, that will be
rendered
commonplace by too much media attention... how-to webpages, and so forth.  On the one
hand, I'm glad for Conlang... my understanding of how Teonaht works and can work has
been vastly deepened by my contact with the linguistic gurus on the list.  On the
other, I
wonder what happens when everybody knows about it and starts doing it.  Shameful as it

is to admit this, but I took great pride as an adolescent and a young adult in this
"secret"
hobby of mine, absolutely sure that maybe only five or six other people in the nation
were
doing it (harumph... THAT was a misconception, wasn't it?).  I actually enjoyed
thinking
I was a little crazy.   I love the description in "A Secret Vice" where Tolkien
overhears a
fellow soldier whisper to himself in the messhall:  "I've got it:  I shall indicate
the accusative
with a prefix!"  But that was all he could get out of him.  After the closet conlanger
discovered
that he had revealed himself, he clammed up.

So I wonder then:  is the listserv changing a fundamental aspect of conlanging by
allowing us
to air our projects in a public forum?  What was once secret and unique now becomes
display and even agon?

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html