Hallo conlangers!

On Sunday 26 August 2012 14:47:15 Padraic Brown wrote:

> --- On Sun, 8/26/12, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > > We all have some kind of design principle in mind; but I do think
> > > Andrew went about it a little differently with B.
> > 
> > Yes; his design was not that much driven by an "ideal" of a
> > language (as was, for instance, Quenya), but by a "what-if"
> > question, and he took a scholarly approach to it by
> > analysing
> > what it means to be "British" and what it means to be
> > "Romance".
> > From that point, he proceeded to modify the sound changes of
> > Welsh in order to fit them onto the phonology of Vulgar Latin
> > and apply those modified sound changes to it.  I did just the
> > same with Roman Germanech, only that I used, of course, the
> > sound changes of German.
> 
> Indeed. Which is why I see B, at least, as slightly more "pragmatic" on
> that scale than purely "artistic". He (and you with O.A.) had to curb
> some of the more boisterous idealism that I see in Kerno in order to
> produce something more realistic.

It depends on what Mil (the one who proposed The Box) meant by
"pragmatic".  All four languages on the "pragmatic" side of the
box are auxlangs; so I guess it means "meant for actual usage in
communication in the real world".  Brithenig and Old Albic are
not meant for that; of course, they are meant to function as
means of communication in their respective fictional worlds, so
they would be failures if they were in fact unusable!

> > > [engineering in Brithenig]
> > 
> > There is, even if the product does not feel as "engelangy" as
> > Lojban or Liva do; though of course I know artlangs (even *good*
> > artlangs) that are much less "engelangy" than Brithenig.
> 
> A sign of good engineering is that a thing doesn't feel engineered.

Maybe.  Depends on the goals of the engineering.

> [...]
> 
> > Sure.  And I can't say that Kerno was a "bad" artlang;
> > it is simply of a different style! 
> 
> Quite so! On retrospect, it probably doesn't fit IB as well as it could
> simply because its design principles are so different. But it is what it
> is. Part of the problem I think was in importing and modifying a far older
> composite language that I'd worked on several years before Brithenig
> came along (and it truly was a horrific mess!) rather than starting over
> afresh.
> 
> I can say (perhaps with some pride of craftsmanship) that Kerno's been
> confused for French, Old French and some strange dialect of French. So,
> hodgepodge maybe, but not quite a mess and coherent and systematic enough
> to be consistently confused for a really cool natural language!
>  
> If I did it over again, I think I'd stick closer to the Brithenig model,
> though perhaps using Cornish where Andrew used Welsh.

Certainly, Kerno is neither an incoherent mess, nor is it
exactly to Cornish what Brithenig is to Welsh (even if it
assumes that role in Ill Bethisad).

Whether Kerno is a success in its role depends on what one
expects from the framework of Ill Bethisad!  When I joined with
Nur-ellen and Germanech, I expected it to be a plausible
alternative history (and that was, I think, Andrew's original
motivation with the project); but I soon found out that it did
not work the way I expected, and bailed out.  Actually, Kerno
fits the "crazy quilt" character of Ill Bethisad (as I perceive
it) quite well, perhaps better than the more straightforward
Brithenig (or the Cornish-based language you suggested above)!

> > Likewise, I would hesitate to
> > say that the Sex Pistols made "worse" music than Yes - it just
> > happens to be that the music of Yes moves me more because it
> > displays qualities that appeal to me while the music of the
> > Sex Pistols doesn't, and the music I'd like to do myself is
> > closer to that of Yes than to that of the Sex Pistols.  These
> > two bands are exponents of different *genres*, and are thus
> > hard to compare.  But I am digressing.
> 
> But the analogy makes sense, and it never hurts to see a thing from a
> different angle.

Right!

> > > he simply chose what perhaps at the time was a novel approach and
> > > thereby created a new niche.
> > 
> > Yes; your words fit it better.
> 
> Thank you!
> 
> > > [Ray:] It is put into the a_posteriori realism artism corner.  I
> > > would not quarrel with that, since:
> > > - it is a_posteriori in vocabulary, morphology & syntax;
> > > - it aims to be a realistic model of what a British Romance
> > > language _might_ have looked like;
> > > - it is, as nearly everyone has agreed, the creation of
> > > artistry and Andrew himself made t clear t was not created
> > > for practical use (pragmatism) but for fun.
> 
> I'm not arguing with the general region so much as it being the paradigm
> language. Even if we leave out the engelang angle, B is still a bit too
> pragmatic to be down at the corner.

Not really according to my understanding of "pragmatic" in The
Box (as I laid out above).  It is by no means an auxlang.

> > > As far as I can see, the argument about whether Brithenig
> > > has any of the characteristics of an engelang or not is a
> > > bit of a red herring.
> > 
> > Yes.
> 
> I should have just stuck with what I see as Brithenig's pragmatic
> qualities rather than trying to analogise with engelangs. Too much
> confusion there I guess!

Yes.  The "artism/pragmatism" axis of The Box does not seem to
correspond with the "artlang/engelang" axis of the Gnoli Triangle
as much as with the "artlang/auxlang" axis, or perhaps a line
from the artlang vertex to the middle of the auxlang/engelang
vertex.  As Ray has observed (below), engelangs pretty much fall
out of the picture in The Box!

On Sunday 26 August 2012 15:47:01 R A Brown wrote:

> On 26/08/2012 11:30, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >>> On Saturday 25 August 2012 21:09:59 R A Brown wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> >> This one has ditched the conventional
> >> auxlang-artlang-engelang triad and come up with
> >> something more original.  Interesting. I don't know
> >> Naeso or Kotava,
> > 
> > I don't know them well, either.  Naeso apparently is a
> > collaborative effort by some people on the #conlang IRC
> > channel.  Kotava apparently is an a priori auxlang. (All
> > the four "pragmatic" languages in the box are, at least
> > essentially, auxlangs.  Vorlin AFAIK started as an
> > auxlang - did the name originally mean "world language"?
> 
> No, not at all. See:
> http://www.vorlin.org/hist/vorlin1999.html#one

Yes.  I just wondered whether the word _vor_ had meant "world"
in an earlier version of the language that was still meant as
an auxlang, but perhaps the resemblance is just coincidence.
At any rate, Vorlin as it is now is not meant as an auxlang;
it is an abstract artlang.
 
> [snip]
> 
> >> The one thing that screams at me is that there is no
> >> corner labeled "engelang"!
> > 
> > Yes, this is a problem.  Where does one put something
> > like Lojban?  Somewhere between Volapük and Vorlin?
> 
> Not quite what I meant, really.  I meant we've been spending
> much time refuting the notion that Brithenig is an engelang;
> then when I look at the square that began this and related
> threads, I find the term engelang does not even figure there!

Indeed not.  The Box distinguishes between "artism" (where
assorted artlangs are found) and "pragmatism" (were assorted
auxlangs are found); between "a priori" and "a posteriori"
(which could be applied to *all* conlangs, but makes most
sense with auxlangs where this distinction was first made),
and between "realism" and "abstract" (which conflates the
two very different meanings of "naturalistic" in the auxlang
and artlang scene in the "realism" side).  Engelangs are
entirely left out of the picture!
 
> [snip]
> 
> >> To place Quenya firmly in the a_posteriori realism
> >> artism corner is IMO misleading.
> > 
> > It is in the "a priori realism artism" corner.
> 
> D'oh!  I meant _a_priori_.  Being lazy and doing a bit of
> copying & pasting without making the subsequent necessary
> change.  Sorry.

Sure.  I guessed that this was a simple error.  The point is that
it is not perfectly a priori; at any rate, the distinction as
defined in the auxlang camp does not work very well with artlangs
(or engelangs).

--
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