Hallo conlangers!

On Wed, 4 Apr 2012 11:07:41 -0400 George Corley wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 9:56 AM, MorphemeAddict <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
> >
> > I suspect that the language would have been too weird or too 'hard' if it
> > had been any better. It was nearly optimal for its purpose.
> >
> > stevo
> >
> 
> Really?  Klingon is not "too hard".  Na'vi is not "too hard",  Dothraki is
> not "too hard".  When you are creating a constructed language for a work of
> fiction, specifically in the modern literature market, then I think you
> should take linguistics geeks as the target audience for said language.

Or rather, linguistics geeks are a noteworthy *part* of the
audience.  There are millions of Star Trek fans who are not
interested in the Klingon language beyond a few set phrases.
The same goes, mutatis mutandis, with fans of other media
franchises featuring conlangs.  Such people won't care about
the conlangs being shallow relexes of English or whatever;
on the other hand, I haven't heard of anyone who said that
Sindarin, Klingon or Na'vi was "too difficult".

But quite a few people *do* care about the quality of the
conlangs used in books, movies, TV series or games.  They are
certainly a minority of the audience, but the days when the
quality of the fictional languages in a media franchise "just
didn't matter" are over.  Fantasy and science fiction fans are
now aware of the fact that a language is much more than a list
of exotic-sounding words, and expect something original and self-
contained, just as they expect excellent special effects when
they go to the movies (even though the most important matter in
a film is of course still the *story*).  Good conlanging simply
has become part of good worldbuilding craftsmanship.

>  Even if your overall work is intended for a general audience, the kind of
> people who will be interested in the language itself are often the kind of
> people who will dig as deep as we will.  And once again, there are plenty
> of ways to avoid the issue entirely without making more than a few token
> words.

Yes.  Those who care for the languages look deeper and are
disappointed when they find that the languages work just like
English and the glyphs are just a letter substitution cipher.
Those who don't care for the languages won't complain about
such naive conlangs, but they won't complain about languages
that are "too difficult".  This is not like a Prisoner's
Dilemma, it is like Pascal's Wager, where you can only win or
draw but never lose when you "believe in God" and make a good
conlang.  (Pascal's Wager goes like this: If God exists, he will
reward me if I believe, and censure me if I don't.  If God
doesn't exist, it makes no difference whether I believe or not.
Hence, it is rational to believe in God.)

Conclusion: Well-developed and original conlangs are state of the
art in imaginative fiction, and doing them satisfies those who
care and won't hurt those who don't care.

--
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