history of conlanging (aka Conlang influences,aka Lest darkness fall)

andrew <hobbit@...> wrote:

> This can be contrasted with the fantasy worlds I was mapping at the same
> time, decidedly under the influence of Tolkien, separate from my
> language.  I remember my brother and I were collecting the Star Wars
> dolls at the same time and we used them as fantasy characters of our own
> in adventures of our own making.  I started keeping a notebook of a game
> of my own detailing characters, items and places in a high fantasy
> kingdom.  That was influenced from reading _The Chronicles of Thomas
> Covenant_, especially the lists at the end of the books.
That could almost be my story too. The fantasy settings, the
careful noting of city and river names, kings, species of trees
and birds, etc., came a lot before conlanging itself, and before
Tolkien or any other reading of that type. Tolkien only helped
by showing me that these things were perfectly good and sane,
and could be fun and entertaining by themselves. Nowadays I think
I'm more into language, but only because that's the part of a
culture I can figure out the most. I'd love to be 'encyclopedic'
and to know of zoology, astronomy, chemistry et al. to the point
(even amateur and shallow) that I know of linguistics. (Maybe it's
a good thing that I don't -- I'd jump from one to another all the
time, and wouldn't have any spare time after that. You know, I'm
one of those people who can't stay in bed when an idea pops out
just before getting asleep -- I jump out, turn the light and write
it down.)

Oh, and I didn't collect dolls... except the He-Man ones, but I
was disappointed at their small versatility. I preferred ones
that were called PlayMobile (here), which came with many accesories.
Me and my brother made whole cities of them, with official currency
and all. :)


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/