Re: Language and "mysticism," whatever that is.

On Sat, 28 Apr 2001 10:33:36 -0700, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
wrote:

>Vyko, Conlangers!  I've taken a long long holiday (which
>essentially amounts to doing my dayjob at the university).
>I hope you haven't forgotten Teonaht!
Er, VYKO! I guess :) I should find out about this famous Teonaht lang...

>1)  How many of you old- and new-comers started inventing a language
>in isolation from the list?
Lemme see... I started before I found this list, so that would include me.
That was mostly auxlang-design, which got me tangled up in the AUXLANG-list
for a while; then I realized that this is a much more favourable work
environment.

In a way, AUXLANG is to CONLANG what religion is to philosophy...

>        1a)  If so, how old were you?
19, I think.

>        1b)  Was it a project with friends or a solitary project?
Solitary.

>        1b)  Did your invented language have some kind of private purpose?
>                esoteric?  erotic? religious or mystical?
Nah; it was an evil-knevil auxlang ;) ;)

>2)  How many of you newcomers heard of the list first and thought--
>Wow! I think I'll try my hand at conlanging!
Not me at least.

>3)  How many of you, when you were starting out on this on your own,
>did this kind of thing:  you have a list of words you want to invent
>new ones for, so you drew di-and polysyllabic words out of the air.
Mm, not me. I feel like I had an unfortunate childhood having begun this
hobby as an auxlanger... All those things you're nostalgic about and I
never did any of it! :(

>5)  How many of you invented words to express concepts that could not be
>expressed in your native language?
I've always kept that in mind, one way or another.

>6)  How many of you used it for prayer?  For secrecy?
Me, no.

>7)  For how many of you was it an intellectual exercise?
Certainly. The whole thing has always been an intellectual exercise. I
often work on things that happen to have political connotations for some
people (unfortunately), but that's usually because those tend to be most
challenging, intellectually. I do like artlanging, but the feeling of
freedom puts me down a bit, so I can only be bothered by so much of it.

>8)  A language for a conculture?
Like it! :) I must make a conculture for some of my langs one day. Perhaps
even for my auxlang... :D

>10)  What is your definition of a mystical language?  Would any of you
>characterize your conlang as such?
"Mystical language": I think the definition needs a concultural context...
sounds very sociolinguistic. Something a priori with very unusual, perhaps
even artificial, features.

>Yry poy poy firrimby, talk to you soon!
Já einmitt, hafðu það gott! :)

Óskar