Re: conlanging and journaling

On 2/12/08, Rick Harrison <rick@...> wrote:

> No diarist writes down everything he does or every thought
> that crosses her mind during the course of the day. We
> censor ourselves, omitting many of the negative thoughts,
> the less than praiseworthy deeds, the less than helpful
> things we say to others. We portray ourselves as being a lot
> more saintly than we actually are.
That was one of my main reasons for wanting to create
gzb and write my journal in it: so I could afford to be honest
about my faults.  Even then, though, time limits my options.
I can't possibly write everything that happens, and a fortiori
I can't do so in gzb in which I write more slowly than in
English.   (See _Tristram Shandy_.)  If I'm not filtering
for the events and deeds that show me in a good light,
I'm still filtering for what seems most interesting.

> (Thoreau's journals are perhaps the most incredibly extreme
> example of social posturing within a journal; take a gander
> at them sometime. My respect for Thoreau plummeted when I
> read some of his journals.)
I read a book of excerpts from Thoreau's journals many
years ago, probably when I was in high school.  I don't
remember much about them, except that I enjoyed them
though not as much as _Walden_.

I think I remember reading in the introduction to said book
that most of _Walden_ started out as journal entries.  The
other journal entries felt like more of the same, though
not quite as good.

> > If by "for an audience" you mean "hoping that others
> > will actually learn and use your conlang", yes, that
> > indeed limits your options, but only as any set of
> > goals and design criteria naturally limits your options
> > once chosen.
>
> Agreed. Although I would say, if attracting users is a
> design criterion, you might be basing your work on a mistaken
> belief that you know what will attract users. I don't think
> anybody has quantified what qualities made Klingon, Lojban,
> Toki Pona, Esperanto relatively popular; it seems to have more
> to do with the milieu than anything in the language designs.
Yes, there's a huge amount of luck involved in whether a language
attracts users or not.  All you can do is make the language
interesting and learnable, and hope for the best.

--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/review/log.htm