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I get very frustrated with conlanging as a hobby. Mostly because it nearly never rises past the status of a hobby. People conlang in a lazy way, and I'd say it's fair to say that over 90% of all significant conlangs end up nowhere. There IS a way to make conlanging into something more substantial than just a hobby. Why can't we make it art? I certainly see my conlang as art. The fact that very few people seem interested in reading about what you do shouldn't matter. It's like, if you don't get raving reviews for your 1 page phonology, you give up immediately. Conlanging is about making languages that WORK. It's as if all amateur mechanics only ever drew shitty drawings of shiny red cars but never built anything. I'm sad because that's the best part of conlanging, when you can see your baby develop into something you never would have imagined.

I'm just annoyed at the HUGE amount of shit being produced that's called conlang (usually half-assed phonologies). I wish conlangers put more effort into what they do, and most of all, I wish conlangers would fucking finishing what they start once in a while! Even if it takes years!

I personally very rarely find anything worthwhile on here. I don't know what it is that we need to make people actually DO something rather than invent a billion phonologies that have 0 substance. But it's annoying.


I just needed to vent. Helvítis fokking fokk!

I agree with most of you points! The problem with conlanging becoming an art though, is that it takes some kinds of educational background to really understand it. While art itself demands some kind of educational background to be fully appreciated, conlanging is all about the quirks of linguistics, and a picture in a museum (which is the utmost traditional idea of art) is more open to the public than 300 pages of grammar (grammar, which is often dreaded in school) of an unknown language. Video games have just entered the process of maybe being rethought as art, even though they've been already in our lifes for some decades.

As for the phonologies, maybe we could invent a rule (about their substance) in order to minimize their number of threads. Phonologies have to be put into the "Random Phonology Thread".

Opening a whole subforum for phonologies would be ideal.

I understand your point. Conlanging is completely inaccessible to everyone except those who conlang. But so what? Does it matter whether one or 300 hundred people see it? Beauty is beautiful whether it is observed or not. The point is to find it, and to create it. If you do beautiful things, you will be a beautiful person.

I am not working on Siwa expecting the world to awake to the realization that it is a great work of art. I do it because I KNOW it's beautiful. I wish more people felt that way.

I also more people admitted to themselves that often when they conlang, they are copying a language they are infatuated with but cannot be bothered to learn. 'If I can't learn it, I'll just make my own'-mentality. It makes for generally lazy, uninteresting conlangs that fall flat and that contain no real beauty. It's a perfectly valid tool to use to propulse yourself in certain directions, but for fuck's sake, how many romance and germanic conlangs does there have to exist?


And then there's the difficulty in presenting your ideas. So many people have nothing written that can be shared.


I feel like gordon ramsay.

Oh man, I used to be like this. It wasn't until I made Pazmat--which is not based on any real language--that I truly started to enjoy con-langing.

But in regards to your other stuff:

I have a feeling that you're getting a little heated. Yes, conlanging to most is a hobby. Some people enjoy tinkering with different structures and constantly make new languages to test things. Some people like to work on one language for an extremely long time. I don't think one is better than the other.

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

Quote:

I also more people admitted to themselves that often when they conlang, they are copying a language they are infatuated with but cannot be bothered to learn.

Haha XD. True. And I find it often ends up being English with some of the other one's features.

But conlangs are not made from void, the features most come from a source.

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I don't think Monoba was criticising the fact that "lesser" works are being done, but rather that phonologies published on the forums are often labeled as "conlangs" while we got near to no information about their grammar or morphology.

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Myself I find sad that phonotactics is often plainly left out. So everyone is inventing words according to their random ideas of harmonious structures.

Also:



Well, for some, like me, we like to share our art. I like to share the conlangs I make and see others share theirs. That's the way I feel with all of the artistic stuff I create--what is the point if no one else can experience it.

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Banami bhjaddhos rafi mau cy vyaja cecerror.
Fools do not see the sun nor sail the seas
-Azenti Proverb

You can't. Even if you could, why the heck would you want to? I don't think there's a true problem here at all; It seems to me that your complaints boil down to "Gee, I wish there were more folks who conlanged in the same way and for the same reasons I do." That's a perfectly valid complaint to have, but you're acting like this is some sort of fundamental defect in conlanging culture.

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I guess you are right. But I personally can't see how it can be fun to be stuck in a perpetual state of phonology making. It's not fun to read anyways.

Well, I can't speak for others, but conlanging for me is less of a hobby and more of an interface for a larger fascination with language. Here's my typical process:

1. Decide to make a lang with interesting feature X, or add X to an existing conlang project.

2. Research X and find books that either discuss the feature specifically in several natlangs, or grammars of natlangs which exhibit X. Read them voraciously.

3. Discover new and exciting feature Y which are mentioned only in passing in one of these books.

4. Decide to make a lang with Y, or add Y to an existing conlang project...


Conlanging is the hook that both begins and closes the loop: It's what gives me direction for what to research next. For me, the experience of iterating through the loop and learning more and more amazing things about language is the important part, much more so than having a finished product I can show off to others. I think that's, fundamentally, why I scrap: Once I'm satisfied with my current knowledge of X and have moved on to Y, the conlang that motivated my interest in X has expended its usefulness. To flesh it out further just for the sake of fleshing it out further would be a waste, and a distraction from the much more important task of moving on in my research.

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I don't think there's anything substantial that can be done. There are people on here who can't stay on one thing and have several "conlangs" going at once and therefore can't develop hugely on one of them. I've never been one of them; all the conlangs I've started, I've developed to a reasonable degree, and with my current one I'm determined to take it to Siwa level, that would be my dream.

I agree with you though, it does annoy me to see people start something and the next week throw it away and start a new one. It's almost, dare I say it, pointless; wasteful. Fair enough if they can't decide on what they like, but I'd like to see people develop something to a really deep and admirable level.

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| [ˌdɛt͡ʃɛmaɹiˈetɪs] | | conlang skarihe

I think what is really pathetic is calling people who hobby differently from you pathetic. People conlang for as many reasons as people draw, or write or what have you. You don't have to like every style of drawing, every genre of fiction, and that's fine. But you needn't be a blowhard about it. It's quite unbecoming.

If you want to focus on a single conlang for years that is great for you. Don't presume to impose your ideas of fun and recreation on others. You aren't proving anything one way or another. There is no "better" or "worse" or "right" or "wrong" way to make up a fake language.

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Dotjen
Kotanese

I don't want to call it pathetic. I can't find a good word for it; I don't mind if people can't expand a language far but literally creating a new conlang every week just seems pointless.

In reality conlanging at all is just a hobby so it could be pointless however you do it. Sure I could be doing something more productive. I guess that's why it's a hobby, it's for fun.

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| [ˌdɛt͡ʃɛmaɹiˈetɪs] | | conlang skarihe

The only thing that annoys me at all about conlanging is that few people take you seriously when you try to explain it. Primarily because of simple lack of linguistic knowledge, one tends to get a lot of "So you make up languages? Like Pig-Latin?! Cool!" responses (at least once, I got "Like Esperanto? That is so awesome!") Alternatively, "WTF? Why would you do that?" - this one's pretty common.
But that's by no means a universal rule, just a tendency. And it's fine. We are secure in our love for this special, delicate art, and no amount of cynicism can take that away from us.

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I am a conlanger, a scuba diver, a belly dancer, an introvert, a reader, a writer, a gamer, a Superwholockian, a pianist, a clarinetist, a sailor, a CGI artist, a singer, a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hope-er, a pray-er, and a magic-bean-buyer. Who are you?

This is what I thought this thread was going to be about when I clicked on it... but what it seems to be is some sort of conlanging elitism.

*shrug*

Whatever floats your boat.

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Native: • Familiar: • Exposed: , 一些 • Creating: Mwakpołat and Cêtkãdo

I love this thread. We're truly discussing our love for languages, and for creating them. I agree - we need more people who have truly stuck with their languages to make a truly fascinating one. However...Micamo made a very good point about her way of doing things. I guess I am like you MONOBA. I've been working on one language for almost my entire langing history...and I wish I could see more filled out languages. I like Siwa, and I like Inyauk, just because they're the only languages I've personally seen much of.

Edit: By the way, I agree too with the people who have said that we shouldn't be elitist.
Also, my English teachers have taken an interest in my Conlanging. Most people think it's cool. Some people think I could sell it...somehow.

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First, I learned English.
Dann lernte ich Deutsch.
Y ahora aprendo Español.

In my case, conlanging isn't my main focus in conworlding - conhistory and conculture are. As such, I cant spend as much time conlanging when I have more important con-matters to take off so I tend to jump from conlang to conlang.

Not to mention I like making conlangs blatantly inspired by natlangs. It's kind of the point of my conworld, anyways, to see the progression of history with a different flavor, but very much familiarto any history or something like that.

I dunno, I'm rambling.

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I now have a blog. Witness the horror.

I think I think, therefore I think I am.
- Ambrose Bierce

Lucky... my language teachers have ridiculed me for suggesting to write to foreign people, I wouldn't dare to mention conlanging to them.

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| [ˌdɛt͡ʃɛmaɹiˈetɪs] | | conlang skarihe

Yeah, this reaction is why I don't ever tell people conlanging is a hobby of mine. I could picture people thinking I sit all night with a dictionary, going entry by entry making up silly sounding words. I'm surprised at how many people don't even know what linguistics is, when I've told (a few) people that its an interest of mine all I get is "so how many languages do you wanna speak".

I think there are several problems in conlanging, and I think they appear on several levels. I think the best way to explain my thoughts is to compare and contrast with earlier statements in this thread, so here I go:


Is it really laziness that is the problem? I suspect the problems rather are due to lack of imagination and also lack of knowledge. These days, when there's a billion papers on topics in linguistics available for free online, the latter is perhaps the least excusable problem. I find increase in knowledge also tends to help imagination flourish.


I think part of the problem here is that very many conlangers start out by religiously adhering to the order put forth in the LCK. If someone new asks how to go about constructing a language, that order also often is what is recommended. Alas, this means phonologies will be the bit every new language begins with, and so there will be a huge lot of them. Would you be as annoyed if the drafts that never get anywhere more often were, say, descriptions of how the case system and the verbal aspects of some language interact? Descriptions of how deixis is treated pragmatically? A system of deference? These are the kind of stubs I am going for at http://miniatureconlangs.blogspot.com


One problem here is that in nature, languages are huge things. Really crazily huge things even. A human could probably never create something as intricate as a natural language. On the other hand, paintings and sculptures never perfectly reproduce the thing they depict - they simplify and catch some or many of the visual essentials (or caricature them). In creating a conlang, we have to simplify - but we probably want to catch enough of the real thing to have it workable, of course, at least for the prototypical conlang.

However, I think a problem here is that many conlangers just don't realize how much there is to a real language- there's any bunch of idioms, almost every word will have connotations, there'll be variation in how the speakers use grammar and words, and with a big enough population this usually also will encode sociolinguistic data, there'll be poems and short stories that anyone wanting to properly understand the discourses in the language may need to know to be able to appreciate all of it. Languages are unfathomably large things to fully capture, let alone create.

Once this realization hits you, you may realize that some kind of not-quite-complete language is the only thing we can ever hope for.
On the other hand, I hope the idea that my blog stands for - minimalism, and downright avoiding phonologies - might be of some interest. I hope to develop some of the ideas deeper, and at some point maybe posting a bunch of ideas where I also provide some sample texts illustrating the idea, not just showcasing them using glossing.

I have more things to say, but I realized it's getting late so I will probably write more tomorrow or friday.

Good Little All, This!

A true natural language is full of intricaties. Even Esperanto, when learned as a natural language, is actually full of them. (But most people stay at lower levels in the language anyway) Creating a mimick of a language, what most conlangs are or aim to be, is a hell of work. To put it mildly, you have bazillions of things to think about, and this is if you are limiting yourself to a human language. Any grammatical sketch, no matter how details, will merely be a sketch, a pale shadow of the real thing.

Phonologies are part of conlanging, but a phonology is not a conlang, just one part. Zompist's most wonderful accomplishment is actually Xurnese, where he went as far as going beyond the sentence itself to go into how discussion works. (He still failed to give us something beyond simple conversation, but it's closer to reality than simply sentences...) A conlang would actually have to go as far, if not farther... And it's difficult.

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