tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Oct 02 11:30:16 2001

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Artificial languages (was RE: Enterprise)




> I hope a discussion of Klingon's merits versus other artificial
languages 
> isn't outside the bounds of the use of English on this list.  I
mean, it's 
> not grammar or vocabulary, but it is about the Klingon language.

I certainly hope so, too, since I am currently writing a paper about
negation in different artificial languages (yes I am still at it...).
At the moment I am working with Esperanto, Lojban, maybe Volapük, and
Klingon. I am still looking for another language like Klingon though,
meaning a full language that was not intended to be easy to learn
(like Esperanto & Co). Huttish and Gargish unfortunately weren't what
I was looking for, and I have the impression that there are two
versions of Vulcan (?). Any suggestions?

As Russ already pointed out, it is possible to distiguish artlangs
between those that are meant to be easily learnt and those that try to
be as alien as possible. I personally think this distiction is very
interesting and I think this shows us a lot about how people perceive
languages. So if phenomenom A occurs in several auxilliary languages
and phenomenom B occurs in several languages like Klingon (that are
supposed to be "alien" or "strange"), that basically means the people
think phenomenom A is easier to process, to learn, to whatnot, whereas
phenomenom B seems to be regarded as more difficult.

This is one of the arguments I gave my professor for letting me write
the paper... And she agreed!
(Somebody tell me if this discussion is outside if the list's scope.)

Daniela


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