Old Albic and the quest for the essence of Elvishness

Quoting Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>:

> Hallo!
>
> In my 400th post on July 21, 2004, I posted a sketch of Old Albic to
> this list. Now, this is my 800th post, and Old Albic has undergone
> some changes in the meantime.  So here's the new grammar of Old Albic:
>
> http://wiki.frath.net/Old_Albic
>
> Comments welcome.
I'm afraid I don't have any immediate comments about the language as such,
except to reiterate that I find it a nice blend of Tolkienian and original
elements. Well, that, and that I find the concultural background overly sugary.
:p But I wanted to take the opportunity to take a bit about elflangs and
"Elvishness" as regards conlangs.

I am, of course, an elflanger myself, and one of my goals in developming
Meghean* is to create something that's simultaneously original and recognizably
"elfy". Judging by the comments the project has elicited on this list, I've
more-or-less succeeded in that. Jörg, I think, has achieved something similar -
yet, Old Albic and Meghean are hardly very similar beasts.

The cynic would here jump to the conclusion that the only reason they'd both be
perceived as "Elvish" is that they loan various features from Tolkien. There's
undoubtedly some truth to this; afterall, Tolkien is to a great extend for the
modern popular conception of an Elf. But they do not borrow the same things**,
and no matter how many structural features it borrowed from Tolkien, I doubt
we'd perceive a language with a general sound of "Khuq-khaak-zbnug" as
particularly Elvish, so the debt to JRRT is hardly the whole story.

So, is there some set of features that have established themselves as "Elvish"?
Or are there just more-or-less clever Tolkein-ripoffs?


* The interested can read about Meghean at the recently updated webpage at
http://andjo.free.fr/conlang/meghean.html

** Well, of course there are things nicked by both; the use of 'c' for /k/,
frex. The point is, the set of stuff borrowed by Meghean isn't the same as that
borrowed by Old Albic.

                                                             Andreas

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