Re: Average life of a conlang

Jim Henry wrote:
> Recently there's been a thread on the ZBB about the average life of a
> conlang; that is, the average amount of time a conlang is under
> continuing development by its creator, from initial creation to
> abandonment of the conlang or death of the conlanger, not counting
> auxlangs that continue to be developed by a speaker community after
> the death or loss of interest of the creator.
I don't have accurate figures for most of my languages, but the average
would be misleading as it would include a vast number of sketchy langs
with a lifetime of less than a year. I guess you could call them
mouselangs. My first conlang, Olaetian, was under development for around
15 years, from the late 1970's to the mid 1990's. I've been developing
Tirelat since 1999, but since I started developing Minza in late 2004
until recently, Tirelat has been on hold for most of that time. It's
always possible that I could revive older languages from the mid-1980's
which have been dormant all these years (but not likely).

Replies