There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Basic Word Lists
From: Jim Henry
2a. Re: Fiat Lingua, September: Is a Collaborative Conlang Even Possible
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
Messages
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1a. Re: Basic Word Lists
Posted by: "Jim Henry" [email protected]
Date: Thu Sep 6, 2012 8:05 am ((PDT))
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 1:38 AM, Alex Fink <[email protected]> wrote:
> Not to be unduly harsh, but I think most of these are not as good than the
> previous suggestions on this thread (Annis' thesaurus and SIL's DDP list,
> both of which are awesome), or at least not as good for the purpose.
I haven't studied the latest version, but I remember that back in the
day Rick Harrison's Universal Language Dictionary was pretty useful
and non-relexy.
http://www.uld3.org/
--
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
Messages in this topic (9)
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2a. Re: Fiat Lingua, September: Is a Collaborative Conlang Even Possible
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Thu Sep 6, 2012 8:45 am ((PDT))
Hallo conlangers!
On Wednesday 05 September 2012 20:30:10 David Peterson wrote:
> I forgot to make this post on the 1st, but we're still pretty close to the
> beginning of September, so here goes.
>
> If you've been on the Conlang-L for even a month, you're probably read a
> post or two by Gary Shannon. In addition to his own projects, though,
> Gary's been at the head of some of the most innovative and successful
> collaborative conlang projects this community has ever seen. If you're
> new, though, you haven't heard of them because they fell by the
> waysideeven though they were successful. In this article, Gary asks the
> question: Is it even possible to put together a collaborative conlang?
> It's an interesting question, and I think Gary is in a unique position
> when it comes to providing an answer. You can read his article here:
>
> http://fiatlingua.org/2012/09/
That is an interesting article that casts a light on problems
I have encountered myself. It is hard to get and keep people
interested in a conlang. A language that exists only for itself
won't fly; it needs a reason to use it. I once observed that if
J. R. R. Tolkien had not written _The Lord of the Rings_ but
instead _A Historical Grammar of the Eldarin Languages_ (the book
that everybody on TolkLang and Elfling hopes to be discovered in
Tolkien's left-behind papers and published), his languages would
now be almost completely forgotten. He probably would not have
found a publisher for it, and his manuscript would now at best
lie unheeded in the basement of some library, at worst have been
thrown away by his heirs.
>From my own experience with collaborative projects, those things
indeed often bog down and go nowhere because the contributors
do not put enough effort into them. Consider the Noric project
of the League of Lost Languages ( http://www.frathwiki.com/Noric ):
the plan was to elaborate a proto-language as a group effort from
which the various list members would evolve daughter languages.
The proto-language never got far beyond a phonology, a few ideas
about the morphology and a word list (which was soon lost as the
database it was stored in went offline, but some items could be
retrieved from secondary sources and placed on FrathWiki). And
because Proto-Noric is stuck in an embryonic stage, the daughter
languages are likewise stuck and probably already abandoned by
their authors.
What works quite well in my opinion are projects where one member
designs a protolanguage and everybody take it and evolve their
own daughter languages from that. This has worked out quite well
several times in the Akana project ( http://akana.conlang.org/ ).
The difference between Akana and Noric is that in Akana, with
each of the language families of that world, a volunteer went
forth to design the proto-language all on his own, such that all
others could concern themselves with the daughter languages.
This works well because every participant can go forth with his
part of the work without getting drawn into lengthy discussions
of details which tend not to be productive.
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (3)
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