The League of Lost Languages (was Re: Fakelangs)

Hallo!

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 13:34:40 +1000,
Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...> wrote:

> I would like to join the LLL...
Welcome!  Tell us about the history of Føtisk!

>       [[Is there a Yahoo! Group for it yet?.]]
No, not yet, nor a website.  At least at first, we can conduct
our communication here on CONLANG, I think, if we mark our subject
lines with an `LLL:' tag.  I am planning to set up a website,
but first I'll have to find a web space provider.

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 16:32:11 -0400,
Sally Caves <scaves@...> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tristan Mc Leay"
>
> Sally krespr:
> > > I have to say I love this idea of a "fake" natlang.  Put me on board!
>
> Tristan:
> > To be honest, I always thought this was half the point of conlanging;
>
> To fool people into thinking these are natural languages? :)
Well, not really to make believe that they actually exist, but to
create the impression that these languages *could* exist.

> > Discussions of Ancient Føtisk would refer to
> > discoveries of ancient documents from the  (Though rather than citing
> > works in English or Italian or whatever, most of the fakeworks I'd
> > considering referring to were going to be in Føtisk.)
>
> If I hadn't been so enthused about CONLANG, I might have considered putting
> Teonaht on-line as a real but somewhat obscure language.  The T. however
> have too many bizarre properties, though, to convince anyone.  I might list
> some reference works, though!  That would be fun.  :D
I see two problems with including Teonaht in the LLL:

1. It is spoken by an entirely fictional non-human race.

2. It is spoken in an entirely fictional country which winks into
   and out of existence in a very counterfactual way.

The League of Lost Languages is about the survival of languages that
existed or could have existed in the world we live in, but disappeared
without leaving any living descendants.  The idea is that in the LLL
world, some languages survived that died out *here*, without changing
the world more than necessary to accomodate the languages in question.

Examples include European languages of pre-Indo-European origin,
modern East Germanic languages, fictional branches of Indo-European,
sister groups of real-world families and isolates, etc.
Of course, this is not limited to Europe.  An LLL language could be
yet another of the many diverse languages of the North American
Pacific coast, a modern-day descendant of Sumerian or a pre-Bantu
language in the Congo basin.  It is also not ultimately necessary
that the languages are spoken today; they might be extinct but having
left written records.

The participants would contribute their conlangs, say where and when
they are spoken, and write fake scholarly papers and similar stuff
about them.

So far, these seem to be LLL members:

Name                    Language(s)

Tristan McLeay          Føtisk
Jörg Rhiemeier          Albic
Christian Thalmann      Hajro

If you want to join, just drop me a mail or post here.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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