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Languages
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Language is the quintessential medium of communication. I'm sure you're all familiar with how it works. Someone gets an idea, they form an utterance in their brain as a complex structure of nouns, verbs and some other components, and then this is put into physical form by means of movement of the mouth and air passages. Alternatively, it can be laid down for future reference by making marks on a surface, that encode words. At the other end of the equation, someone else either hears or sees the representation of the idea, then does the whole process of creating the utterance in reverse, and then the idea is in their head too. Isn't that amazing? Linguistics is the study of how that works, and what it says about how our minds are structured. Different sub-disciplines focus on different areas of that process. Then, there is that strange bird: the person who tries to combine all of the other disciplines by actually making a language. I'm one of them. Granted, making a full, potentially real, living language is all but impossible. So, I make what some call model languages, some call constructed languages (or conlangs) and some call artificial languages. Now, I use each of thee terms precisely, though the definitions aren't universal: to me, a model language is one made only in the briefest strokes, such as for a novel. A conlang is one made just for the sake of making a language, just to experiment with structures and ideas for idioms, et cetera. An artificial language (also an auxiliary language) is one made to fill a niche, usually something like Esperanto, made for international communication. Conlangs are my favorite. Here is my advice on making them. Thanks for all occasions. For those interested, my languages can be found here. |