Monthly Archives: June 2011

This is the conlang question help desk. Can I direct your question?

Posted on June 29, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Question are different from discussions. Questions have answers. They solve a problem for you. Once your problem is solved, you are expected to move on with life. Questions are objective. Stackexchange, Quora, Shapado (and some others) encourage questions and answers. … Continue reading →

Posted in Questions and Answers, conlang | 1 Comment

How many people are taking conlangs at an A level?

Posted on June 28, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

This question is taken from my google search log. Probably very few. Only Esperanto has ever been taught alongside other natural languages. The other question in my logs was “How to make a conculture?” Either read up on what the … Continue reading →

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Fan Friendliness

Posted on June 28, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

If you do want to be fan friendly. You don’t have to write an auxlang, either in goals or in language features to have a fan friendly language. Keep it small–what ever feels like the smallest vocabulary. “Complete” the language … Continue reading →

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What it would take to finish Shyriiwook (aka the Wookie Language)

Posted on June 25, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Here is one of the longer documents on Shyriiwook. I’m in the mood the beat up on a middle of the pack conlang, one of the sort that seems like there is something there for a fan, but there isn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in conlang design | 1 Comment

Top Ten Conlangs According to Me

Posted on June 24, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

The criteria are all about the state of fandom. Is a language (and it’s community) fan friendly, has some competent users, is the language actually complete enough to be usable by an enthusiastic fan, is it active *right now* toki … Continue reading →

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My Conlang Manifesto

Posted on June 23, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Please see the Conlang Manifesto Manifesto before subscribing to any advice here. Unless you are me, this doesn’t really apply to anyone, least of all those writing conlangs as amusing reference grammars, auxlangs or conlangs to support the writing of … Continue reading →

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Fictional Linguistics vs Linguistics of Constructed Languages

Posted on June 23, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

I’ve been watching disagreements on the web on various conlang issues. I think there is a big misunderstanding (and maybe unavoidable one) between people discussing linguistics in a fictional world, versus discussing the linguistics of a constructed language. In a … Continue reading →

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How to Learn Klingon circa 2011

Posted on June 21, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Klingon has been around for 27 years. By the average age of Klingon fan websites, it appears to have passed it’s peak, i.e. fans aren’t updating their pages much since the days of Geocities, table based layout and the BLINK … Continue reading →

Posted in Klingon | 2 Comments

Conlang Manifesto Manifesto

Posted on June 20, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

The world needs a meta-manifesto. Manifestos are a recipe for creating one sort of conlang. As soon as you depart from that sort of conlang, the manifesto doesn’t apply. If a conlang author hasn’t explicitly subscribed to a manifesto, then … Continue reading →

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Review of DICT for conlang projects

Posted on June 17, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Pros- It is a free standard. There are free servers and clients. The project has amassed an impressive list of dictionaries that appear to be available to whoever wants to use them (some sort of GNU license on the dictionary … Continue reading →

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Realistic goals for Conlang learning

Posted on June 15, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

I’m reading on how to learn languages. The first item of advice, was to establish some realistic goals, for example, fluent enough for restaurants and shops, fluent enough for a job, fluent enough to have a lofty conversation with college … Continue reading →

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The Ariekei from the Novel Embassytown

Posted on June 11, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Embassytown is one of the best SF novels I’ve read. It’s also one of the best SF novels I’ve read where language played a star role, and a conlang at that. But the language isn’t complete. It isn’t even a … Continue reading →

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Conlangers Reading List

Posted on June 10, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

(I’ll be updating this with specific book recommendations… soon) Field Linguistics Manuals Especially the Morphosyntax related ones. Many field linguistics focus a lot on how to get information out of the head of the fluent speaker. Those techniques, obviously, don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in conlang community building, conlang design | 2 Comments

The conlangs worth learning list

Posted on June 9, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

I’m approaching the language list making project from the standpoint of a hypothetical person that wants to use a language, for something, for anything and not just to read an entertaining reference grammar. Most of this cogitation is related to … Continue reading →

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Machine Assisted Grammar Generation

Posted on June 7, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Machine assisted conlaning, imho, has a lot of promise. There isn’t enough time to create a lot of complete conlangs by hand. If they were machine generated, then they could be evaluated on various criteria, such minimal sentence length, reading … Continue reading →