Inadvertent Conlangers

You know, I'd really like to create an "Inadvertent Conlangers
Webpage"...  I've so often come across people who are doing conlanging
or something like it but are under the delusion or are determined to
convince people that what they create is real.  There should be a
"hall of fame" for them.

That fellow who's reconstructing Proto-World would get a page, for
example.  I have come across more than one article in one of my
favorite magazines, Fortean Times, which describes someone who
qualifies...  Also the forger of the "Manios me fhefheked numasioi"
fibula, for creating a false text in reconstructed proto-Latin.  And
maybe the fellow who produced an entire reconstructed Ionic Iliad,
"restoring" an original of the poem which never existed, based on now
discredited theories of the history of the text... though that's
perhaps a borderline case.

I fear, though, that such a page would emphasize the "Lunatic"
impression of conlangers that Yaguello promotes and that so frustrates
Sally.


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                       edheil@postmark.net
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Sally Caves wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
> >
> > Ed Heil wrote:
> > >
> > > Fascinating tidbit from the article on Nu Shu:
> > >
> > > "The penalty for creating new languages was death for the
> > > transgressor, their family and nine related families. "
> >
> > Wow!  I guess we can all be glad that isn't true today, eh?  :-)
>
> I was about to say "Wow!" too.  Conlang Persecution!  Worse than
> calling us lunatics.  Speaking of which, who has read Paul Auster's
> _The New York Trilogy_?  I heard/read somewhere that one of its
> three novellas is about a man who goes crazy inventing a language.
> Am I getting this mixed up with something else?  It seems Auster-ish
> to do this... after all, in _The Music of Chance_ he has an immense
> miniature town, built by lunatics.  I've got the book, I guess I
> could crack it.  But if I don't find it, I will wonder where I heard
> this.
>
> Sally
>
> ============================================================
> SALLY CAVES
> scaves@frontiernet.net
> http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage)
> http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage)
> http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
> =====================================================================
> Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
> "The gods have retractible claws."
>                                 from _The Gospel of Bastet_
> ============================================================