Hallo!

On Fri, 8 Apr 2011 17:07:28 -0400, Matthew Martin wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Apr 2011 22:22:50 +0200, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> 
> wrote:
> 
> >> That, more than the technical structure of the language at hand, imho, is
> >> what
> >> colors the differences among the online communities.
> >
> >Yes.  Of course, the technical structure of the language reflects
> >the purpose of the language, as I have detailed above.
> 
> I was talking about the differences among the online communities social-
> wise. I 
> wasn't talking about how the *technical* purpose of a language reflects its 
> *technical* structure.   I was talking about the social purpose.  If could, 
> hypothetically, write an auxlang, a second fictional conlang, a third  
> loglang/engelang and each be to merely show of how clever I am, with no goal 
> of anyone attempting to use those languages to speak to anyone.  Technically 
> these will all follow your taxonomic description. As far as their social
> purpose 
> goes, it will lead to an online community with either nothing going on or 
> maybe 
> a few cult followers (ha! like that ever happens)

I see.  Regarding social purpose, the gulf is between auxlangs on one
hand (languages meant to be used by large numbers of speakers, ideally
by every human being on this planet if not elsewhere), and artlangs
and engelangs on the other.  Yet, some artlangs and some engelangs
have garnered speaker communities, and some engelangs (such as Lojban)
come with a "may be used as an auxlang, too" tag.

> Then what do I call this interesting axis where at one end of the spectrum 
> the 
> language designer doesn't really want people to attempt to speak, use, or 
> write 
> the language, somewhere in the middle the designer would like to use it in 
> some 
> context with other people (beyond show and tell), and at the radical far 
> end, 
> some wants everyone to speak their language (be it Esperanto or a 
> nationalist 
> Hindi speaker)?

Perhaps one could talk about "private" and "public" languages (though
the term "private language" has already been used in a very different
sense by Wittgenstein).  At any rate, the "wants everyone to speak the
language" category is pretty much what auxlangs are all about, while
artlangers and engelangers usually don't care much about other people
speaking their conlangs, and some conlangers may wish that *nobody*
else speak their personal creations - but the latter are probably in
a minority: aren't we all a bit flattered if other people take active
interest in our languages? 

> Anyhow, the artlang/conlang/englang taxonomy doesn't explain real world 
> phenomena either: Na'vi & Klingon users go to conferences to talk to each 
> other (despite the fictional conculture).  Lojban conferences, ditto,(well 
> it's 
> been rumored they try to talk to each other).

Yes, they do.  In that way, they are indeed similar to auxlang
enthusiats; yet, most of these people do not display the missionary
zeal characteristic of auxlang communities.  (There are some
Lojbanists, I have heard, who seriously try to promote their
language as an auxlang; but proposals to use Klingon or Quenya as
an auxlang are to my knowledge rather humorous.)

>       As for the personal languages, I 
> sometimes read the reference grammars and the concultures and get the 
> feeling that these are great big signs that are saying "look, don't touch" 
> (i.e. 
> don't attempt to write in *my* language), and these personal languages 
> sometimes are self-purported or structurally art/con/eng/aux-langs. 

There is a common notion that one may *appreciate* a work of art,
but should be respectful to it.  You don't add a stroke to someone
else's painting; and because using a language very often means
contributing to it (which conlang is so complete that you never
have to coin new words or fill holes in its grammar?), people tend
to abstain from actually using someone else's artlang.

Part of the problem is that many artlangs are so incomplete (or at
least, incompletely documented) that you can hardly use them the way
they are - you *have to* "add your own strokes to the painting".

For an example, look at Tolkienists, who are divided into two camps
as regards the usage of the master's conlangs.  The "purists" limit
themselves to the study of the canonical material and reject all
conjectural or creative additions from others; the "reconstructionists"
try to fill the gaps with linguistically informed methods (e.g., when
the Quenya word is known and the Sindarin word is not, the latter is
reconstructed by applying the known sound correspondences to the
Quenya word), similar to the way Cornish revivalists reconstruct
unattested Cornish words and grammatical forms.

> I think a more pragmatic taxonomy is one that captures what I was trying to 
> express is crackpot langs vs personal langs vs community languages.  The 
> presence or absence of fictional stuff is an orthogonal, except that 
> presumably 
> a rational writer of a community language wouldn't have xeno-language 
> features or engelanguage that are so hard no one can hope to use them in 
> real 
> time.

Yes.  The distinction between "personal" and "community" conlangs
may be useful.  The "crackpot lang" is yet another dimension; one
could divide community conlangs by the rationality of the proposal
(Ygyde would be a crackpot lang, while Esperanto would not).  So
Klingon, Na'vi, Quenya and Sindarin would be community conlangs,
none of them in the crackpot category (one could argue that Q and
S started as personal conlangs, but while Tolkien never published
grammars or dictionaries during his lifetime, he *was* helpful to
people who took deeper interest in his conlangs; also, the two
major Quendian languages *did* develop user communities, whether
T. intended that or not - I think he would have appreciated that).

> The crackpot lang is the sort of language promoter whose behavior is somehow 
> odious.  Promoting one's work or favorite language is not automatically 
> odious, 
> but being a crackpot is.

Right.  One cannot say that Zamenhof's behaviour was "odious" just
because he did what he could to promote the usage of his language.
One may discuss how useful his language was for the solution of
the social problems Z. was trying to fix; but it is certainly the
case that a bridge across the language barriers would promote the
good of humanity, and the design principles of Esperanto are widely
agreed upon in the auxlang community, even if some people feel that
the design could be improved.

>       Making radical efforts to not promote one's language 
> isn't the solution to odious behavior, imho, but rather the solution is to 
> just try 
> to figure out what passes as socially acceptable promotion and doing it.

Yes.  If I was to promote Old Albic as "the true language of Atlantis
and embodiment of superior wisdom directly inspired by God, and the
ultimate solution of the world language problem" that would be odious;
but I don't do that, and announce Old Albic as being merely an attempt
at portraying what could have been spoken by an ancient civilization
in the British Isles.  Other people are welcome to use it (once I have
the full documentation on my web site), but I won't try to shove it
into other people's throats.

> So back to the original question, if one is looking for an online community, 
> that 
> represents some slice of the fake-lang world, one would be more served by 
> picking the on social criteria rather than structural criteria. Even more so 
> when 
> each of these communities that exist are dominated by a disjoint set of 2-10 
> personalities, when you pick a community, you are picking which 2 or 3 
> people 
> you want to have an extended conversation with.

How many conlangs have online user communities of significant size?
The only ones I can think of right now are:

Auxlangs: Esperanto, Ido, Novial, Occidental, Interlingua,
          perhaps Volapük
Artlangs: Klingon, Na'vi, Quenya, Sindarin
Engelangs: Loglan, Lojban, Toki Pona

There are a few others which have been learned by a few friends
of the author's (I am thinking  of cases like Tony Harris and Jim
Hopkins who have learned each other's conlangs here).

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