<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><DIV>Hi ! </DIV>
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<DIV>Here is a French list of auxlangs: </DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://www.europalingua.eu/ideopedia/index.php5?title=Id%C3%A9olangues_auxiliaires">http://www.europalingua.eu/ideopedia/index.php5?title=Id%C3%A9olangues_auxiliaires</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Olivier</DIV>
<DIV><A href="http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/">http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/</A> <BR><BR>--- On <B>Mon, 6/15/09, Jim Henry <I><jimhenry1973@gmail.com></I></B> wrote:<BR></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(16,16,255) 2px solid"><BR>From: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973@gmail.com><BR>Subject: Re: [conlang_learners] Welcome, and some proposals for what conlang to learn<BR>To: conlang_learners@conlang.org<BR>Date: Monday, June 15, 2009, 2:54 AM<BR><BR>
<DIV class=plainMail>2009/6/15 Brett Williams <<A href="http://us.mc574.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=mungojelly@gmail.com" ymailto="mailto:mungojelly@gmail.com">mungojelly@gmail.com</A>>:<BR>> 2009/6/12 Jim Henry <<A href="http://us.mc574.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=jimhenry1973@gmail.com" ymailto="mailto:jimhenry1973@gmail.com">jimhenry1973@gmail.com</A>>:<BR>>> Some well-developed conlangs we might consider include:<BR><BR>> You seem to have already posted my short list! (Well, I'm not<BR>> actually that familiar with Itlani, but I've heard good things about<BR>> it.) I'm interested of course by the depth of an Alurhsa or the<BR>> strangeness of a Kēlen, but there's also something to be said for the<BR>> humble simplicity and earnestness of a Vabungula.<BR><BR>I'd add Arthaey's Asha'ille (which apparently has over twenty short<BR>texts on the website, more than most conlangs -- my gzb has a
larger<BR>corpus, but Asha'ille has a much larger proportion of its corpus<BR>already online ready for potential students to read, whereas most of<BR>gzb's corpus is too private to share, and most of what isn't<BR>inherently private, I've been too lazy to transcribe and HTMLize) and<BR>maybe Roger Mills' Kash as well, depending on how many more texts are<BR>available than are on its website at the moment.<BR><BR><BR>>> It would also be possible to use this project to take a moribund but<BR>>> fairly well developed conlang and (with its creator's permission, if<BR>>> they're still alive and contactable) revive it, adding to its lexicon<BR>>> and further specifying its grammar as necessary.<BR><BR>> I had a thought, though I'm not sure if it's a good one, that we could<BR>> choose to revive the Lingua Ignota.<BR><BR>I see a few ways we could do it:<BR><BR>(a) Use it as Hildegard apparently did, embedding LI words into
Latin<BR>texts, and inflecting the LI words (all of which are nouns) with Latin<BR>case endings.<BR><BR>(b) Like A, but embedding LI words into English or other modern<BR>natlangs and/or conlangs and inflecting them according to the nominal<BR>morphology of the matrix language.<BR><BR>(c) Keep the LI noun list as it is, reverse-engineer its phonotactics,<BR>coin another couple of thousand words in other grammatical categories<BR>with the same phonotactics and Wortgefül, and devise a grammar for<BR>this neo-LI.<BR><BR>Any of those would be interesting, the last most of all, but I'm not<BR>sure it's within the mandate of this project. If we're going to<BR>revive a moribund conlang and learn it while expanding it a bit and<BR>filling in gaps, I'd prefer it to be one that was more fully developed<BR>by its original creator or creative team, so the resulting neo-conlang<BR>owes a lot more to the original than to us. Vorlin, Ilomi or
Kalusa<BR>would work for that, I think, and perhaps Adelic; not sure about<BR>Voksigid, whose grammar I like but whose vocabulary, or at least the<BR>surviving documentation of which, is really small.<BR><BR><BR>> We perhaps ought to give a little thought to what criteria, other than<BR>> pure personal preference, are most appropriate to apply here. I've<BR><BR>> I feel a sure sign of success would be if we could develop a<BR>> continuing, fluent population of speakers for the chosen language,<BR>> however small. I would like to see us accomplish that especially in<BR><BR>That would be the best possible outcome, yes. I hope that we'll pick<BR>something viable enough that some years from now some of us are still<BR>using said conlang, new people have learned it who weren't part of<BR>this project originally, the majority of the extant corpus was written<BR>by someone other than the conlang's creator, and there
are competing<BR>theories about how the language actually works, which cite actual<BR>usage more often than the original defining documents.<BR><BR>> I don't think we have to choose something<BR>> simplistic in order to accomplish that goal, though-- I personally am<BR>> committed to a serious study of the language we choose, and I think<BR>> there are others here who feel the same way. More important I would<BR>> think is that the language be a suitable medium for a real<BR>> conversation that we want to have, that it be useful to us. A<BR>> language that's a toy or unripe, we'll play with but then just put<BR>> away.<BR><BR>Yes. It's important that the language have seen enough use by its<BR>creator to show that it actually works for a range of uses, and that<BR>it be well enough documented (or have a creator willing to expand the<BR>documentation and answer lots of questions) that other people
can<BR>actually learn it. Unless it already has a pretty large vocabulary,<BR>it would also be best if the conlang's creator is open to other people<BR>coining new words, if only by following the rules of the derivational<BR>morphology using existing roots and derivational processes.<BR><BR>Another way to look at it, in terms of ecological sociolinguistics,<BR>is: what conlangs currently enjoy a certain amount of mindshare and<BR>have people learning and using them? And is there some ecological<BR>niche that isn't filled yet by one of the conlangs that already has a<BR>speaker community? Or if not, could a conlang that gets a boost in<BR>popularity from this project compete with one of the existing<BR>conlangs-with-speakers for new speakers on its own terms?<BR><BR>In the niche of "conlang associated with a fictional nonhuman<BR>culture", for instance, there's Klingon. Klingon has massive<BR>advantages in
publicity, but Kēlen, for instance, if we learned it and<BR>produced a larger corpus and so forth, would have important advantages<BR>too: it's more euphonious, and also more truly alien in its grammar.<BR><BR>In the niche of "auxlang that's relatively easy for Europeans and not<BR>terribly difficult for non-Europeans", there's already Esperanto, Ido,<BR>Interlingua, and maybe others. There may be other auxlang ecological<BR>niches that aren't filled yet (e.g. "worldlang" by any of several<BR>definitions), but I'm dubious.<BR><BR>Similarly, I doubt a new mini-auxlang or engelang with minimalist<BR>vocabulary and grammar could grow much with the niche already firmly<BR>occupied by Toki Pona. If it did, it might do so by starting out even<BR>more minimalist than TP, with a goal of gradually growing in<BR>complexity based on use and decisions by the speaker community until<BR>it's maybe twice or three times larger than TP (we
discussed something<BR>like this on the CONLANG list recently).<BR><BR>As for "engelang that's more precise and unambiguous than natlangs and<BR>which might or might not violate real human language universals, we<BR>won't know until more people try to speak it", Lojban occupies that<BR>spot with little real competition AFAIK, but I think Ithkuil or Ilaksh<BR>are different enough to potentially compete in that niche or a nearby<BR>one too.<BR><BR>What about the niche of "artlang with a unique mix of features but not<BR>violating any human langauge universal, associated with a fictional<BR>human culture"? Quenya and Sindarin, maybe, but they're so<BR>under-documented and the communities using them are so divided by<BR>arguments about what kind of reconstruction of unattested words and<BR>grammatical forms is and isn't legitimate that a newer,<BR>better-documented artlang with a creator who's still alive to answer<BR>questions might
compete there too.<BR><BR>Better still would be recognizing a niche that isn't filled yet at<BR>all, and an existing conlang with few or no speakers that could<BR>potentially fill it.<BR><BR>-- <BR>Jim Henry<BR><A href="http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/" target=_blank>http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/</A><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>conlang_learners mailing list<BR><A href="http://us.mc574.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=conlang_learners@conlang.org" ymailto="mailto:conlang_learners@conlang..org">conlang_learners@conlang.org</A><BR><A href="http://lists.conlang.org/listinfo.cgi/conlang_learners-conlang.org" target=_blank>http://lists.conlang.org/listinfo.cgi/conlang_learners-conlang.org</A><BR></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></td></tr></table><br>