Respond, Answer, Ask

[Leilis]

Long ago, when NaNoWriMo existed and had not yet disqus-ified their fora, the most active thread in the Fantasy genre forum was 'Respond, Answer, Ask'. Each post (after the first two) had three parts: 1. a response to the previous poster's answer; 2. an answer to the previous poster's question; and 3. a new question for anyone to answer. Shall we try this?

1. [no previous post; otherwise this would be feedback/reaction to that person's part 2]

2. [no previous post; otherwise this would be an answer to that person's part 3]

3. How do you organise your lexicon, and what kind of information do you put in the entries?

(Anyone who wants to answer can go ahead, and then leave a new question; the third poster, answering *that* question, should first respond in some way to the second poster's answer to *my* question, and at that point posts can have all three parts. If a post gets more than one response/answer, the earliest posted counts. I hope this isn't confusing. Once it got going, it always worked pretty smoothly.)

[Moose-tache]

1. [...]

2. It depends on the language, obviously. But I either make root dictionaries or phrase dictionaries. Anything in between just gets messy. For a recent project, in which verbs are highly labile, and can be used as nouns freely, and interact in semantically unpredictable ways with grammatical information, I've given an entry to each verb phrase, with columns for things like "transitive causative" or "verbal noun."

3. What do we do if someone make a post while you're writing yours?

[/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/]

I quite like this system actually, it seems like it's designed to prevent a single comment from taking over an entire conversation, as so often happens here.

1. I've never truly made an organized lexicon myself, but whenever I try to I always do the likeness a standard english dictionary; I suppose it's never occurred to me that there are other ways of going about it.

2. If someone has made a post while you've been writing one, it'll give you a message that tells you such and shows the post(s) in question when you try to submit yours. usually what I do is revise my post to show that I've seen the new information, though sometimes the new post answers whatever question I was aiming to answer and I'll just not post.

3. are there any common ways that languages are named by the people that speak them? I'm aware of just using the word for "person" or "language" or something derivative thereof, but are there any others?

[Moose-tache]

1. Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that.

2. It's pretty common for languages to be named after a place by its own speakers, especially if the official name post-dates the establishment of organized states.

3. What's something you find aesthetically repulsive in a conscript?

[xxx]

1.

2. create an alphabet (it's the equivalent of a relex for writing systems...)

3. this forum layout is appealing but represents a form of impoverishment: it enriches each contribution while limiting viewpoints to two, whereas the intrinsic value of forums lies in the multiplicity of viewpoints (however incompatible that may be with a contemporary world defined by polarization and the strict segregation of ideas...), what is your viewpoint...

[WeepingElf]

Apparently, who made that map confused Austria and Australia

[alice]

Apparently, who made that map confused Austria and Australia

And forgot about Patagonian and Nova Scotian, among others.

[Leilis]

1. 'alphabet' seems like rather a broad category to find repulsive. I guess if you mean 26 glyphs (or 54 glyphs, capital and lowercase) corresponding to English A-to-Z, for a language that isn't English, that's a little silly. (Even for the language that *is* English, it's a little silly! Or at least frustrating, as I am reminded every time I teach a preschooler to read ...)

2. My viewpoint is that the thread was supposed to be about conlangs (and concultures)! I thought putting it in the 'Conlangery' forum made that clear but maybe not. And it doesn't stop anyone who wants to have a longer discussion about a topic here from starting a new spin-off thread. This isn't the ideal way to have any particular conversation, just a way I've seen people get a lot of mini conversations going and work on semi-random snippets of complicated projects.

3. Do(es) your conlang(s) have any major texts, either imaginary or ones you've actually written?

[sasasha]

1. The main in-world text I've written about from my conworld is the Teotsaeun, ‘The Hive of Being’ in Peoppaeq (and widely translated). Part grammar, part philosophical treatise, it explains the secret ritual language of the Caebaeq priesthood, whilst introducing the reader to fundamental aspects of their teachings. They like bee metaphors. Other things that have had brief mentions are the Tales of the Originals, which is a pseudohistory of the Gods when they lived as mortals (that turns out to be uncannily accurate); the Hyiltean sayings of O Řoža, which consist of visions of otherworlds and the structures that connect them; the Iozhi genre of Actions which describe how mortals attempted (and sometimes succeeded) contacting the Gods; and I guess I could include the novel ‘Where the Yak Go in Winter’ (Yuyuþruþŋyuyuþsriþ) which I would posit as an in-world text though it is really a novel I was writing set in the Mutilic- and Salvian-speaking areas of my largest continent Orlok charting the rise of the first significant despotic empire after the Thermal Crisis. I would love to explore a thousand other in-world texts, but life is short compared to the combined literary weight of an entire alternate reality. And I find a lot of satisfaction in zompist’s literary imaginings, since the web of allusion in Almea is so dense and fertile.

2. I agree that this form has a usefulness of its own. Like in poetry, form instigates activity that would otherwise not have been called into existence.

3. Do others experience, with me, occasional waves of feelings of futility surrounding the kinds of activities we post about here, challenged by some vague but pervasive sense that it is personally and maybe corporately meaningful ‒ and how do you tend to cope with these?

[Leilis]

1. Developed religious/philosophical texts are always interesting -- and your 'Hive of Being' sounds especially so. Have you posted any of it around here?

2. Actually I find 'uselessness' comforting. Conlanging isn't the kind of thing that I can even hope will matter in the sense of getting me anything (like money or fame), so there's no outside pressure to get it 'done' or 'right'. It's fun to share bits here to get new/better ideas (and it's fun to see bits of other people's conlangs), but that's not why I'm doing it. I do it because I like it. If I don't like something, I change it. If I don't feel like working on it at all, I just let it sit. It feels good to make something, though, and I'm enjoying it a lot more since I started working mostly on paper.

Anyway, most things humans do are futile. At least with conlanging I don't feel I need to try to make it matter.

3. (new question for anyone) What kind of colour terms do(es) your conlang(s) have?

[/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/]

1. hmm, maybe I should start applying that mentality whenever I feel lazy and useless, too. (of course, I'm being sarcastic.)

2. Ṅaserrö has five color words, which I haven't come around to actually making but have had the idea for for quite some time, being a word for reds, oranges, and purples, a word for blues and dark greens, a word for light greens and yellows, and then light, and dark.

3. the way this forum works is that each topic moves up in the list for each person that posts, but it doesn't seem like it's been working that way. am I mistaken?

[xxx]

0. what strikes me as incongruous is the time spent on forums fruitlessly seeking opportunities to conlang... trying to reconcile a social activity that is vital to us as human beings with a deeply anti-social activity that is no less vital to us as conlangers, builders of incongruous means of communication that, ultimately, serve only to communicate with ourselves...

1. traveling light, I don't have color names in my roots, but the name "color" that allows them all to be named...

2. we need a moderator to wipe out messages from offenders

3. What do you think of the possibility, illustrated here at point 0, of scrolling back further through the messages (and in this point 3 which is also a point -2 responding to myself)...

[Lērisama]

1. I think Notenderdude was asking about the formula used to order threads in the fora here, in which case the answer is simple: they're ordered from most-recently posted in first, to least-recently posted-in last. And we do have moderators¹, but they don't tend to² delete messages based on who sent them.

2. Please don't; the whole point of this thread seems to be for short queries. Adding a “respond to anything you like as well” rule risks having the thread taken over by one discussion. This is especially true for your own topic, especially one which you raise every now and then and never get anyone else interested in.

3. How ready is your conlang for use? Only has the vocabulary for certain fields? Needs more grammar for complex texts? The notes in relay threads on what people are having to hurredly develop are always interesting, but obviously rarely that detailed.

¹ Mostly just Zomp now, I think
² I don't think they ever have? The closest I've ever found is a note in the Bob ban thread saying Zomp had cleared up some of the most egregious Bobbery

[xxx]

1. I have trouble with the linear and conclusive nature, perhaps a holdover from my experience with 3D conlang...

2. I would love to boast about my conlang, but I see it as being in an indefinite testing state… I can translate almost anything, but I am never really sure of the result, it feels more like a provisional solution that just needs to be delivered on time...

3. I struggle with the distinctions between auxlang, loglang, artlang... the fact that the most neutral communication seems to me to be the standard objective of all languages, especially natural ones; logic, the simplest way to progress with a single speaker across all semantic fields to be covered by any language; art which makes you feel another vibration of the world, in the Sapir Whorfian sense, which is for me to be the main motivation for conlanging... what other motivation and means do you see for undertaking such an endeavor while remaining within a single category...

[Leilis]

1. We are never really sure of the result, either.

2. I think when people choose to call their conlang an auxlang, or a loglang, or an artlang, they're saying something about the overriding purpose or goal of the conlang. For instance, calling something an auxlang labels it as primarily meant for easy communication among real-world people; it can be logical and/or beautiful as well, but only in ways that don't make it hard for people to learn and use. I don't think there's any requirement for a conlang to fall into a single category: if someone made an 'aux-loglang' or an 'art-auxlang' or something, it would be a valid conlang. (It might not be a very good conlang, if it has conflicting goals, but a lot of straightforward auxlangs/loglangs/artlangs are also not very good.) I think mine would be categorised as an artlang but I don't think about that very much.

3. What are some ways your conlang forms derived or compound words? (If your conlang doesn't exactly have derived/compound words, you can explain whatever you have that seems most similar.)

[Ares Land]

1. We are never really sure of the result, either.

2. I think when people choose to call their conlang an auxlang, or a loglang, or an artlang, they're saying something about the overriding purpose or goal of the conlang. For instance, calling something an auxlang labels it as primarily meant for easy communication among real-world people; it can be logical and/or beautiful as well, but only in ways that don't make it hard for people to learn and use. I don't think there's any requirement for a conlang to fall into a single category: if someone made an 'aux-loglang' or an 'art-auxlang' or something, it would be a valid conlang. (It might not be a very good conlang, if it has conflicting goals, but a lot of straightforward auxlangs/loglangs/artlangs are also not very good.) I think mine would be categorised as an artlang but I don't think about that very much.

3. What are some ways your conlang forms derived or compound words? (If your conlang doesn't exactly have derived/compound words, you can explain whatever you have that seems most similar.)

1. I don't think much about it either, but this is a reflexion of my personal tastes -- loglangs or auxlangs run somewhat contrary to my interests. I like variety and irregularity in language.
2. Non-concatenative morphology: keŋar 'propitiate, propitiating, worship' → kaŋŋar 'god, spirit'; or simply compounding: šeḫḫa 'deer' + weran, 'hunter' → šeḫḫaweran '(to be) a deer hunter' (vowel syncope often involved, but not in that particular example.)
There's a construction involving the definite article as well: Šaḥʾi Ħedos (sea=DEF anger) 'The Sea of Anger'
3. Do you work with diachronic much? Are your conlangs parts of a (real or fictional) language family?