Re: IntroductionThanks for the welcome to Conlang. I am very glad I was told about i

 --- John L. Leland skrzypszy:

> Thanks for the welcome to Conlang. I am very glad I was told about it at
> Kalamazoo.
Welcome!

> I have to say, I may not be able to stay on if it goes into another huge
> batch of off-topic discussion--it literally took me hours to wade through it,
> the first few days I was on.
Yels, it has been pretty bad lately: enormous amounts of off-topic posts, and
almost nothing even remotely related to conlanging. Well, on a list like this
one, off-topic traffic seems inevitable. After all, we sometimes spend more
time with each other than with our best friends. But let me assure you that the
on/off-topic ratio is usually

> I am now ruthlessly deleting all offtopic messages without reading them--many
> are interesting in themselves, but I just don't have time to deal with them:
Well, normally I try to read everything, although I am sometimes disappointed
by the contents of a message. It would already help a lot if people would
change the subject header when the subject of a thread changes.

> Fortunately, the proportion of relevant material has increased since
> the survey and I hope it will stay that way.
So do most of us.

> About myself and my conlangs: I am 53 years old, and began creating my
> first major conlang in 1962 when I was12. (Sara in her paper at
> Kalamazoo noted many begin conlangs about that age).
Indeed. My own first steps into conlanging were also at 12, perhaps 13, in the
form of huge grammatical tables for a Romance language. Many of us have stories
like that. Perhaps it is no coincidence, since at least here in the Netherlands
it is the age when children start to learn foreign languages at school.
Before that, I remember playing with invented words, but I wouldn't call that
conlanging.
My first "real" conlang was started only at the age of 25, though.

> That language was Natece Atechana (Sacred Language) ; it was supposed
> to be the deliberately invented sacred language of a conworld.
> The earliest texts were very limited chants (on the order of Aum Mane
> Padme Hum with less profound meaning) but I developed the language by
> translating the Book of Genesis and some shorter Bible passages into it
> (as many natlangs developed their literary form from Bible translation).
The whole Genesis? That's quite impressive!

> Natece eventually became a "dead" language
Well, that's the fate of so many of our "first" conlangs: as we develop, they
cease to fit our standards.

> In that world there are theoretically several conlangs, but the only
> one developed significantly so far is Meridonian, a Romance conlang
> derived from Latin by a regular set of sound (and spelling) changes;
As a great fan of a posteriori conlangs (and as a collector of romlang stuff),
I would be very interested to see as much of this language as you wish to
share.

> Apparently I cannot attach them to mailings to this list (I tried and it
> bounced) but I couldsend them individually to anyone interested. My
> custom is to actually compose the text first in Rihana-ye, then do an
> extremely literal English translation.
An interesting approach. I have been trying to do so writing Wenedyk, but I
always end up translating from Polish :) .
As for the files you mention: this list AFAIK does indeed not allow
attachments. However, you can always add them to the files section of the
Yahoo! group <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang> . Or open a website, place
them there, and communicate the links to us. If you don't have your own
webspace, many of us, including myself, will be happy to provide it for you.

> I hope now with the inspiration of the Conlang list audience to go
> back and develop Rihana-ye and the other langs of thatconworld more.
We'll do you best to inspire you! I have experienced whole truckloads of
inspiration from the list(s) for my own conlanging, at least.

And of course, share anything you wish to share.

Welcome again,
Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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