[conlang_learners] Thoughts

[Jim Henry]

2009/6/14 Olivier Simon <cafaristeir at yahoo.com>:

> Well, I want to reassure you; I have participated for two years at the
> "Auxlang list" where debates are sometimes very passionate, and I never
> flamed there anyone. The only time this happened to me occurred per private

I said "verges on flaming", not "is flaming"; I'd not describe it as
flaming per se because (1) MacLagan isn't on the list here, and (2)
critical comments about someone's work, even if in emotionally charged
words like "ugly", aren't the same as personal attacks.  In retrospect
even "verges on flaming" was probably too strong a term.   Still, I'd
not like to see such tendentious comments about specific conlangs
here.


> ..... In any case, the way that Adelic, though it rests on natlangs,
> debases the roots it takes is a useless complication (and it seems to me
> that it's grammar is not very germanic).

As I understand it, MacLagan was aiming for an alternate history
Indo-European language, not a specifically Germanic altlang.   It was
vaguely inspired by Germanic languages as well as IE languages in
general, but not supposed to be a Germanic language per se.  That is,
it's descended from Proto-IE and is apparently intended to be more
similar to the Germanic languages than to, say, the Baltic or Celtic
or Romance languages, but still it's a distinct fictional branch of IE
rather than a fictional descendant of proto-Germanic.  From the
introduction page:

"I could take this mechanism [Grimm's Law] and slightly alter its
effect on actual PIE root words to come up with a language that
looked, sounded, and felt like a Germanic language, but was distinct!"

Also (with debater-hat on instead of moderator-hat), "debases" seems
like an unnecessarily loaded term -- why not "alters" or "mutates"? --
and "useless complication" seems to me like judging an artlang by
standards applicable only to auxlangs.


> In general, constructive comments are possible between auxlangers, and I
> could even advice for tiny additions into others' projects.

That's fortunately more true now than it seemingly used to be; I've
been favorably impressed with the civility of the worldlangs list, and
AUXLANG as well has been pretty much flame-free in time since I
resubscribed, in contrast to the last time I was active there three or
four years ago.

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/