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Re: conlanging and journaling

From:Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
Date:Monday, February 11, 2008, 19:31
 --- Jörg Rhiemeier skrzypszy:

> I sometimes write music myself, which I intend to perform some day.
I truly hope for an occasion to hear (or read) it! BTW, I realise this is pretty much off-topic as far as this thread is concerned, but this reminds me of thing I have always been curious about. It has always been my opinion that conlanging is primarily an art. Just like music, literature, painting etc. A good artist has a personal style, which makes his art recognisable as his own, and distinguishes it from the work of others. A work by Stravinsky or Picasso, no matter in what period it was created, can instantly be recognised as such. Can the same be said about conlangs? And, more importantly, if a conlanger is also a painter / composer / poet / whatever, is there a link, stylistically speaking, between his language(s) and his other art?
> > I have the impression that nowadays there are a lot of conlangers > > who actually started conlanging AFTER they saw conlangs online. > > They start conlanging because there are others doing it as well. > > [...] > > Yes. Old Albic would not be the way it is now without the online > conlanging community. Many of its features are inspired by what > I saw in other people's conlangs. Well, nobody exists in > isolation; we are all influenced by what we see around us.
That is certainly true. Yet, I would still describe you as a conlanger of the Old School, i.e. somebody who started conlanging, while being completely unaware of the fact that other people are, or might be, doing the same. For me that is definitely the case. When I made my first attempts at conlanging, I'm pretty sure I had never heard of Quenya or Klingon; all I knew about constructed languages created by others was Esperanto, but that's an entirely different kind of thing. On the other hand, I also think the conlang community has heavily influenced my work; the very fact that I think expanding and improving a language is worth the effort alone is an example of that. Regards, Jan __________ "The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain." — G'Kar quoting G'Quon, Babylon 5 http://steen.free.fr/ ___________________________________________________________ Support the World Aids Awareness campaign this month with Yahoo! For Good http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/

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David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>