There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: R A Brown
1b. Re: Average life of a conlang
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
2a. Alternative histories of the letter Y (was: English diphthongs)
From: J. 'Mach' Wust
2b. Re: Alternative histories of the letter Y (was: English diphthongs)
From: Benct Philip Jonsson
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "R A Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:43 am ((PDT))
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:46:59 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
>
>> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>>> Hallo!
>>>
>> [snip]
>>> On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:38:22 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>> Help? Could I then suffer the same fate as Jespersen? Memories of
>> the Novial-wars come back when competing camps (at least 4 IIRC)
>> were flaming each other, and at least one them claiming to know the
>> mind of Jespersen himself! (It was during this internecine flaming
>> I decided it was time to quit Auxland).
>
> I sincerely hope that this sort of thing won't befoul you and your
> language. Novial is not the only case of that. Look at places like
> TolkLang or Elfling, and you see the same. Quibbles about
> reconstructions of unattested Quenya and Sindarin words all the time,
> with many scholars taking the position that such reconstructions are
> overall illegitimate.
Groan - I forgot that one. I cannot imagine that JRRT would've been at
all pleased. I remember seeing him interviewed on the TV many years ago
and saying how he would not want to meet with fellows and talk High
Elven all afternoon. It seems to me that he regarded his languages as
part of his literary creation and that they belonged there, and not *here*.
> Avoiding this alone is a good motivation to develop a conlang to a
> fair degree of completion before you pass away.
Though I guess it depends to some extent on the language concerned. I
suspect most conlangs would simply be left to rest in peace, unless
there was something other about it that made people want to continue or
resurrect it. In the case of Sindarin & Quenya it was the whole appeal
of the LotR and Middle Earth. It is just possible that Briefscript/
Piashi might be 'finished' if I failed to develop it any more in that
(a) some people have ever since Dutton's day shown interest in the idea
of an international briefscript, and (b) I have received private emails
expressing interest in my project.
I have no similar fears about mu experimental loglang. If that's not
finished, people can do what they like with it. As for rival camps
flaming each other over it - extremely unlikely, I think ;)
>> Nah - I had better get the thing finished soon :)
>>
>> As it happens, I've had two or three emails sent me privately about
>> Piashi (the final incarnation of the Briefscript project). These
>> have prompted me to turn back to the project again - and I have
>> been working on it fairly seriously again in the past week.
>
> Good to hear that you make progress with it.
Thanks - I hope I will have got some stuff into a form that I can put
onto my website before the end of the year.
--
Ray
==================================
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Frustra fit per plura quod potest
fieri per pauciora.
[William of Ockham]
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
1b. Re: Average life of a conlang
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 29, 2008 8:33 am ((PDT))
Hallo!
On Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:44:56 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> [...]
> > I sincerely hope that this sort of thing won't befoul you and your
> > language. Novial is not the only case of that. Look at places like
> > TolkLang or Elfling, and you see the same. Quibbles about
> > reconstructions of unattested Quenya and Sindarin words all the time,
> > with many scholars taking the position that such reconstructions are
> > overall illegitimate.
>
> Groan - I forgot that one. I cannot imagine that JRRT would've been at
> all pleased. I remember seeing him interviewed on the TV many years ago
> and saying how he would not want to meet with fellows and talk High
> Elven all afternoon. It seems to me that he regarded his languages as
> part of his literary creation and that they belonged there, and not *here*.
He would certainly been severely displeased by what is going on
in those fora these days! I don't know whether his statement
against real-world usage of his conlangs was meant against fan
usage, or rather against the possible misunderstanding that any
of his languages could be used as an IAL, but what happens in
the TolkLang and Elfling lists is certainly not at all what he
wanted to happen.
> > Avoiding this alone is a good motivation to develop a conlang to a
> > fair degree of completion before you pass away.
>
> Though I guess it depends to some extent on the language concerned. I
> suspect most conlangs would simply be left to rest in peace, unless
> there was something other about it that made people want to continue or
> resurrect it. In the case of Sindarin & Quenya it was the whole appeal
> of the LotR and Middle Earth.
Yes. I once observed that if Tolkien had not written _The Lord
of the Rings_ but _A Historical Grammar of the Eldarin Languages_
(the book all the people in TolkLang and Elfling dream of), his
languages would have been forgotten by now: they would be seen
as a quirk of an eccentric Oxford linguist and nothing else.
Only the vast popularity of _The Lord of the Rings_ caused
thousands of people to take interest in the languages featured
therein.
Most conlangs will probably fall into oblivion after the death
of their authors. There are, however, a few classics of the
genre which will likely be studied by future conlangers, such
as Teonaht or Verdurian.
> It is just possible that Briefscript/
> Piashi might be 'finished' if I failed to develop it any more in that
> (a) some people have ever since Dutton's day shown interest in the idea
> of an international briefscript, and (b) I have received private emails
> expressing interest in my project.
While I don't think any kind of briefscript (or any other kind
of artificial language) will have a chance to attain world
language status anytime in the foreseeable future (after all,
even Esperanto is far away from that), it is as legitiamte an
intellectual challenge as any other kind of conlanging, and
I am indeed interested in seeing which way Piashi will develop
in the future. It would also be a pity if those 50 years of
work on it failed to bear fruit ...
> I have no similar fears about mu experimental loglang. If that's not
> finished, people can do what they like with it. As for rival camps
> flaming each other over it - extremely unlikely, I think ;)
Same to my sister project of it, X-1, which doesn't seem to
have garned much interest - much less, in any case, than
Old Albic. X-1 is also not a matter of much importance to me,
while I definitely want to develop Old Albic further.
> [...]
> > Good to hear that you make progress with it.
>
> Thanks - I hope I will have got some stuff into a form that I can put
> onto my website before the end of the year.
Good.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Alternative histories of the letter Y (was: English diphthongs)
Posted by: "J. 'Mach' Wust" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:46 am ((PDT))
On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:30:01 +0200, Ina van der Vegt wrote:
>I'm pretty sure it was, as the Dutch version (Ethymologically related)
>of the word Price (Prijs) is spelled with 'ij', which I've always heard
>was originally a spelling for [i:], and still is pronounced that way in
>some local dialects.
That reminds me of an interesting topic. Not every instance of the letter Y,
though normally thought of as originating from the Greek letter Y, really
originates from it. There seem to be several other origins:
* In Africaans and in Alemannic German (as for instance in the name
"Schnyder"), but also in older Dutch orthography and Dutch names, the letter
Y is a replacement of an older ij-digraph. Note also the "intermediate" form ÿ.
* In some samples of Middle English, the letter Y is a replacement for an
older Thorn letter þ, as for instance in "ye olde shoppe".
* Regarding Old English, there is the theory that the letter Y originated
from a combination of the letters V and I, or at least was understood as a
combination of these letters, hence the name U-I that regularly developed
into the modern name "wye". I can't judge whether this theory is still
upheld, but I find it interesting.
I think this is what may happen when you have an appearently superfluous
letter in your alphabet: It may pick up or merge into an originally
unrelated use.
--
grüess
mach
Messages in this topic (2)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: Alternative histories of the letter Y (was: English diphthongs)
Posted by: "Benct Philip Jonsson" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Aug 29, 2008 5:59 am ((PDT))
On 2008-08-29 J. 'Mach' Wust wrote:
> * Regarding Old English, there is the theory
> that the letter Y originated from a
> combination of the letters V and I, or at
> least was understood as a combination of these
> letters, hence the name U-I that regularly
> developed into the modern name "wye". I can't
> judge whether this theory is still upheld, but
> I find it interesting.
>
That the letter y was **thought** to be a ligature
of VI or rather vj (remember that j and i were
merely graphic variants in the Middle Ages) is
bejond doubt, since we have the word of the
unknown Icelander who wrote the First Grammatical
Treatise for it, but whether it also **was** so
is highly doubtful.
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)
Messages in this topic (2)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
