Re: Uglossia and Utopia

FFlores wrote:

> > Is there any way, though, that
> > any of you artlangers look upon your creation as "utopic" in the
> > way this word has come to be used--as an improvement upon society,
> > or upon language and expression?
>
> Boudewijn said it already: the world needs more languages, and each
> one improves it in a way, it makes it richer. Society won't benefit
> from my creating languages, except maybe indirectly: I learn while
> doing this, my expressive skills grow, I see things from different
> angles -- that alone is someone that this world full of one-track-
> minded people needs. But that is a side effect, and a minute one.
It's a sad fact that hundreds of natural languages are in their death
throes, and that that loss of diversity is truly a loss of immense
proportions.
Language encodes so many ways of viewing the world, and with a
language's death so dies a culture, all too often.  It's usually difficult
to graft those cultural artifacts onto another language; e.g., Quechua's
evidentiality is only barely manifested in the Spanish of the region.

<sigh>

If only conlangs could move in to fill up the vacuum! Alas, I fear this
is impossible -- conlangs are, more often than not, I think, the product
of rich Westerners with much idle time on their hands, and so are more
often than not the product of Western minds, Western ways of thought,
however much we, those Westerners, might want to be otherwise.

=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Denn wo Begriffe fehlen,
Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.
   -- Mephistopheles, in Goethe's _Faust_
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