What kind of conlanger are you?

[Nortaneous]

Filler. I currently have six conlangs in various states of pathetic incompleteness, and they fall into either two or three categories depending on what I do with the batshit insane one and the one with two vowels.

[Kehgrehdid]

I'm kind of a loyalist with a scrapper vocabulary - Fedrelar is evolving, I understand well how it works, but I still know only a few dozen words in it despite working on it off and on for more than 5 years. (I have a con-verse, but really only one or two other in-universe languages even conceived of. If there's a house-sized sapient creature that communicates by sending vibrations into the ground with its feet, it's not so conducive to a human conlang.)

[Curlyjimsam]

I'm a filler verging on a loyalist, as I've got a couple of conlangs that I've probably done about as much work on as all my other languages put together, both of which go back several years.

Never really fully understood the "scrapper" tendency, myself. If it doesn't work, change it so it does. You might end up creating something that's changed almost beyond any recognition (this has happened with several of my conlangs), but you can still keep the stuff that does work.

[Ainuke]

I was a scrapper, until I got tired of zero progress, then I forced myself into being a Loyalist. I now have a great, still developing language, that I and my friends love the sound of! :D
I'm even starting to be able to say stuff in it without thinking (much). Sticking to one idea really does work ;3

Danuka kuej/niej!

[Micamo]

Never really fully understood the "scrapper" tendency, myself. If it doesn't work, change it so it does. You might end up creating something that's changed almost beyond any recognition (this has happened with several of my conlangs), but you can still keep the stuff that does work.

Some people enjoy the journey more than the destination. For a (non-self-begrudging) scrapper, playing around with something new and strange is far more appealing than having a "complete" conlang you can translate Hamlet into.

[Ossicone]

Some people enjoy the journey more than the destination. For a (non-self-begrudging) scrapper, playing around with something new and strange is far more appealing than having a "complete" conlang you can translate Hamlet into.

I can see it both ways. I enjoy being able to try new ideas, but having a fully functional conlang is also very satisfying.

My original ideas for Inyauk are nowhere close to as interesting as what it has turned into. What is currently most fascinating to me is the pragmatics which have developed as I used it.

Then again, I don't like to directly manipulate things (ex- I need a fully formed animacy system! ), I'm happy to have things appear (ex- I like using this suffix for people and this for objects).

I do think there is a depth that can only be achieved by sticking with a project though.

[SLiV]

I think I am what Ossicone just mentioned:

I enjoy being able to try new ideas, but having a fully functional conlang is also very satisfying.

Mostly Loyalist with a tad of Filler, although I have scrapped a 1000 word conlang one or two years ago.

I started completely anew; the current one (Lurioneski) has about 800 words as well.

My conlangs don't seem to do without a conworld of some sort. I've tried several ideas lately (Fjarthech, Hwong Zheng, 'New Conlang'), which have drawn away attention from Lurioneski.

My plans are to keep expanding my lovelang Lurioneski, and on the side develop my altlang Hwong Zheng and my new artlang, which I am developing purely so I can have a lang with 960 noun conjugations. Of course, only time can tell whether or not I actually stick to that plan.

[roninbodhisattva]

I'm a scrapper, definitely.

[Jarhead]

I'd say loyalist, even if I've been conlanging for just about four months. I've never dumped completely my grammar, and I think I won't do that. I'm just working and reworking every single aspect of the language. Maybe I'll do a dialect, someday.

[kadani]

I am a loyalist to Rejistanian and dabble with a few other ideas...

[Ilaeriu]

I used to be a scrapper - when I first started conlanging and scripting (mainly conscripts, when I was around 5 or 6, so ten years ago) I would toy around with letterforms, shapes, and so forth, producing nothing really but having fun along the way.

When I picked up conning again a couple months ago I started as a definite filler - and am mainly one today, with Loyalist streaks. In my opinion, you can't really be a Loyalist without being a filler, and you can't be a filler without being a scrapper, and... well, you catch my drift :P
My point is, complex conlangs need culture; culture is food to languages, it makes them thrive, grow, evolve. You can only get culture from people, and you can only get people from a world.
Languages cannot exist by themselves, rigid and uninfluenced - yet they cannot exist in a state of perpetual change either, blown away through every whim. I think you can be both - you can basically try anything you want, like a scrapper; but you can still keep those scraps instead of sweeping them away, and actually work with them, like a loyalist, and use those growing scraps to become something enormous with a life of its own, a world.

I apologize for the stream of consciousness I've just regurgitated - I'm sick and I've been manipulating con-alphabets for the past two hours, it seems. I need a break. (Never!)

[Mbwa]

I am a terrible scrapper. I get close to nothing done every time I start a conlang. I kinda want to start conworlding a little, so I guess I could become somewhat of a filler, but the idea of having one conlang that is really developed appeals to me a lot, and I am trying to get on that.

[LetoAtreides]

Loyalists with some filler tendencies.

[Avjunza]

Scrapper-Loyalist. I have Jenhuatao, which I've been working on for years, and dozens of other languages I either drop after giving them a quick grammar and vocab, or keep around to work on again someday; I guess that makes me a bit of everything.

[Relic]

I'd like to think I'm in-between a filler and a scrapper, seeing as how I move on through multiple languages trying to get the perfect one (at which point i would likely become a loyalist towards it xD) but all the older languages I create I get vocabulary ideas or syntax formation ideas from, I kind of build off of old ones along with fresh ideas from either real world languages I start to read about or other conlangs.

[sangi39]

I'd place myself between a loyalist and a filler, but more to the loyalist side of the scale. I have a number of (IE) conlangs but they all descend from a single common ancestor spoken about 1500-2000 years before the "modern period" and for the most part that's all I've been working on for the last year and a half :)

[Veris]

<insert obligatory "I don't think your classification system is remotely accurate or at all useful" speech here>

In all aspects of my life, I am multifaceted almost to the point of a multiple personality disorder; if I met ten different people and each one of them wrote a page-long description of me (personality-wise, not appearance), I don't doubt that you'd have ten pieces of paper describing ten seemingly very different people. This extends to my conning, and certainly to my conlanging.

First, I conlang for multiple different reasons and on multiple levels. On one level, I have a perlang, kuna, which is "my language." This is the conlang I devote most of my efforts to, and the one I intend to work on until it's comparable to a natlang in vocabulary. It's essentially already complete; I inherently know how all the grammar works, even if I lack the technical knowhow to accurately describe it to another human being. The only thing, really, is a severe lack of vocabulary, which I intend to fill up over my lifetime. Eventually, I would like to write my own personal papers (diary, philosophy, manuscripts for books) in kuna, rather than English.

Another way I conlang is for the sake of conpeoples and conworlds, to make those peoples and worlds more well-rounded and lush. It is not my intention to actually make all of these languages fully speakable, only to describe their grammar and come up with enough of a vocabulary to provide ample examples and flavor the language enough so that other people could actually come up with additions to the vocabulary, or at least come up with correct-sounding proper nouns in the language. A good example, if you're familiar with it, is the conworld of Morrowind, Tamriel. They take their conworlding just far enough so that the computer games they produce are immersive; they don't intend to compete with Tolkien's Legendarium in volume or breadth. But other people interested in Tamriel constantly add their own lore, so the conworld grows and expands. It's as if they created a seed and lovingly grew it into a sapling, then donated that sapling to a college campus where others tend to it further. That's my intention with some of my conlangs.

Yet another way I conlang is, well, you might call it exploratory/academic/scientific. Rather than actually build a whole language, I like to mess around with interesting ideas of grammar, pronunciation and writing systems. As above, the intention from the outset is not to actually create a fully-speakable language. In this case, it's to better understand how language works, and to push the boundaries of con linguistics, mostly for myself, but if I ever stumble upon something noteworthy, I'd be remiss not to share with others. Think of it as working on a car engine to teach oneself how it works; it doesn't matter if the car has seat warmers or power doors; you're focused on the engine.

[lordofthestrings]

I'm too new at it to know what I'll be! I imagine I'll end up as a filler/loyalist. I want to fill my conworld with different langs, but my first one will most likely be my favorite and most well developed. I loved the way my phonology turned out, so it seems a little late to scrap it now. I don't like throwing work away.

[Trailsend]

I'm too new at it to know what I'll be! I imagine I'll end up as a filler/loyalist. I want to fill my conworld with different langs, but my first one will most likely be my favorite and most well developed. I loved the way my phonology turned out, so it seems a little late to scrap it now. I don't like throwing work away.

This is what happened to me with Feayran. I have plans for, and have started working on, other Domhantirian languages, but Feayran is just too much fun :P

[Ossicone]

Well your first love is always different. :D