Zompist Bboard Again

Jeffrey Henning asked me to turn his stuff from Langmaker.com into a book. Mostly that's his essays on conlanging, but I'm also including his Big Catalog o' Conlangs.

If you're on it, I'd be happy if you'd look over your language(s) and make corrections:
-- date started
-- your name/alias
-- the nature of the language

You can see what we have here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060704043 ... r:Conlangs

Here's an example of the all too common minimal entries:

Dementian (Jeremy Boyd, 2004) is a fictional language.

Here's a barely better one:

Dekavurian (Geoff Eddy, 2001) is a fictional language, closely related to Gothic.

Here's a couple of good ones:

Deviasew (Jonathan North Washington, 1997) is the second language of the Elves, Men, Dwarves and Halflings of the land of Câlnima (“Land”), Deviasew has a Latinate grammar, with a vocabulary derived from Hebrew, English, French and Spanish. The name Deviasew itself is the plural of Devia (from Hebrew devar, “word”).

Dha-Patu (Karl Jahn, 1993) is completely analytical; it has only two parts of speech, radicals and particles. It has particles that form noun and verb phrases, classify the nouns and define the functions of the verbs. The grammar was conceived entirely on a priori logical princi-ples, and the core vocabulary was generated by random combinations of the given letters; it’s expanded by loans from natural languages.

Now, this list is a historical artifact— the last database dump we have is from 2007. So it will only include languages entered by that time, and ideally their state at that time. But, picture finding your name in the book: I'd rather make sure it's accurate, your name and the language's name are spelled correctly, etc., and the description is interesting, rather than rely entirely on the database.

(Also, it is just a catalog, so keep it pithy. You can include a sample sentence if you like, and I'll include it if the book doesn't get too big. )

Thanks in advance!

Thanks. The entries for Andanese and Pabappa look right. I gave up on Palli but it existed in 2007, so I have no objection if you want to retain it. Should I trim down the Andanese description maybe? It's a bit long considering that it's one of my minor projects.

Also, it's good to see Jeffrey Henning is still around.

I think I probably wrote my entries around 2005; a lot of what might have been said about those languages - including things like names, setting and fundamental grammatical attributes - may have been outdated even by 2007, though it's difficult to pin down when exactly I made a lot of the changes. What kind of entries might you want in this case? Should I attempt to describe the language as it was in 2005 or 2007 or what? Bear in mind I might not be entirely sure about all of the details anymore.

For Vônánà, something like the following might work:

Vônánà (Curlyjimsam, 2005) was an experimental language most notable for the size of its vowel inventory (25 vowels in one version). Different vowel qualities were marked orthographically with diacritics on the base symbols a e i o u. Vônánà was never associated with any particular culture. An example sentence is Genesis 11:1 Vônánà nà bî â vè kàtù "A single language existed in the world".

That sounds fine.

If it helps, think 2007. (The site crashed in January 2008.) I don't expect anyone to do a lot of research; I just want to provide an opportunity to correct what we have, and get more info for the really minimal entries.

I wish I still had the information on Ptokan from that time. It no longer exists, and there won't be another language with that name until I hurry up and make it.

The entries on my conlangs Germanech and Old Albic are correct (except the missing umlaut dots in my first name), but I shall take this occasion to post additions.

Germanech
Year begun: 2000
Type: fictional diachronic language

Germanech (later called Roman Germanech) is a Romance conlang made by Jörg Rhiemeier, inspired by Andrew Smth's Brithenig. It is made by applying (slightly adapted) German sound changes to Vulgar Latin and was originally intended for the Ill Bethisad collaborative alternative history as the Romance language of Germany. The author later left Ill Bethisad and re-assigned Germanech to a Romance-speaking minority in Germany (in the League of Lost Languages), and yet later lost interest in this language.

External link: http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/germanech.html

Old Albic
Year begun: 2000/2003

Old Albic (natively Elbirin) is a diachronic fictional language made by Jörg Rhiemeier. It is the language of the Elbi, a fictional ancient civilization in the British Isles which the author fancies to underlie the Celtic and Germanic traditions of Elves and the Greek traditions of Hyperborea and Atlantis, while at the same time reflecting the author's notions of the human condition and the meaning of life. The language is a member of the fictional Hesperic family created by the author, which is closely related to (or an early divergent branch of) Indo-European. The project started as "Nur-ellen", a descendant of Sindarin, in 2000, but was completely rebuilt in 2003, severing the connection to Tolkien's languages. As of 2019, work on Old Albic is still ongoing, especially in the realm of vocabulary.

External link: http://www.frathwiki.com/Old_Albic

I get a "Temporarily Disabled" message when I attempt to click on the "Qatama" entry, but that's hardly an issue as it's been an abandoned project for years now. Feel free to remove it or simply label it as such.

So funny, I was just browsing the archived version of Langmaker a couple of days ago.

Anyway, doesn't look like any of my conlangs were ever indexed there so nevermind me

masako wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:50 am I get a "Temporarily Disabled" message when I attempt to click on the "Qatama" entry, but that's hardly an issue as it's been an abandoned project for years now. Feel free to remove it or simply label it as such.

I'll keep it, since it has a sample sentence. I don't suppose you remember the year?

The Wayback Machine is awesome, on the whole, but there's a whole lot it didn't keep. There's a bunch of languages where we don't even have the author's name and the websites are gone.

Huh. I thought I had a language there under my actual name, but neither I nor it appear to be there, so far as I can see. Which solves a dilemma for me - let the information be promulgated against my wishes, or try to stop it by owning up to it, also against my wishes.

With respect, I struggle not to feel rather awkward about this sort of project, which takes information collected from people for one stated purpose (a free-access online register) and, years later, uses that information for an entirely different purpose (a published, commercially-available book). It may not actually be illegal, because the information collected was so minimal, but it seems... dodgy. A good principle in the harvesting and publication of personal information is that the individual should meaningfully consent.

[why wouldn't they? Well, most people probably would. But the point is, that should be up to them, not to Jeffrey. And there are reasons we can imagine. For one thing, some of that information may have been entered twelve, fifteen, or even more years ago, and there's lots of things we might regret having done that long ago - particularly since some of the contributors may have been minors at the time, and the internet was a very different place. Personally, I may, as a child, have been happy to put my name down as a conlanger, and associated with a particular (in hindsight pretty awful) conlang, on a remote internet site back when nobody I knew actually used the internet for anything much, but would rather not have that printed on paper and distributed in the year 2019. The fact that this is a book published presumably for (what I assume is a tiny) profit may also be a sticking point for some, just as a point of principle - if you're going to make money from my content, you should ask me first, as a general rule. Again, I don't imagine many people on this register will have any great objections, but it just feels icky to make that decision for them.]

[to be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of any malignant motivation here, and I'm sure we all have a great sense of gratitude for Jeffrey's role in the early online conlanging community. I for one wouldn't be on this board today without his influence.]

On the other hand, I do have a nostalgic fondness for langmaker and a fondness for the general idea of a conlang registry... it's a great shame that all the attempts at it back then quickly resulted in oceans of dead links (and were swamped in "conlangs" that in many cases were never anything more than two sentences the author wrote on a back of a napkin and never bothered actually recording anywhere...).


EDIT: if you are doing this, it might be worth reminding people to look at their Babel texts as well. In addition to the text, some of the Babel text entries have descriptive texts on the language, and these aren't inherently linked to the descriptions in the registry. The Babel descriptions may therefore either supplement or disagree with the registry entries.

EDIT EDIT: shit, there's a link to one of Maknas' old grammars! And I do mean 'old' - it says 2000, so he must have practically been an infant. Although I see the registry page actually mentions the ZBB, so that must be a date of language creation not a date of actual entry into the database...


EDIT EDIT EDIT: for isntance, Maks' two pages on that language link to different grammar sites. As it happens this doesn't matter - the registry just links to the site Mak moved the hosting to later on (also the site where he hosted IIRC my first published conlang description...), and I think it's the same document either way. But that's just a happy coincidence...

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:22 pm

masako wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:50 am I get a "Temporarily Disabled" message when I attempt to click on the "Qatama" entry, but that's hardly an issue as it's been an abandoned project for years now. Feel free to remove it or simply label it as such.

I'll keep it, since it has a sample sentence. I don't suppose you remember the year?

The Wayback Machine is awesome, on the whole, but there's a whole lot it didn't keep. There's a bunch of languages where we don't even have the author's name and the websites are gone.

It was probably '05 or '06 if memory serves.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 4:46 pm EDIT: if you are doing this, it might be worth reminding people to look at their Babel texts as well. In addition to the text, some of the Babel text entries have descriptive texts on the language, and these aren't inherently linked to the descriptions in the registry. The Babel descriptions may therefore either supplement or disagree with the registry entries.

Good thought, thanks. It could help with those pesky languages with no name attached.

With respect, I struggle not to feel rather awkward about this sort of project, which takes information collected from people for one stated purpose (a free-access online register) and, years later, uses that information for an entirely different purpose (a published, commercially-available book). It may not actually be illegal, because the information collected was so minimal, but it seems... dodgy. A good principle in the harvesting and publication of personal information is that the individual should meaningfully consent.

[why wouldn't they? Well, most people probably would. But the point is, that should be up to them, not to Jeffrey. And there are reasons we can imagine. For one thing, some of that information may have been entered twelve, fifteen, or even more years ago, and there's lots of things we might regret having done that long ago - particularly since some of the contributors may have been minors at the time, and the internet was a very different place. Personally, I may, as a child, have been happy to put my name down as a conlanger, and associated with a particular (in hindsight pretty awful) conlang, on a remote internet site back when nobody I knew actually used the internet for anything much, but would rather not have that printed on paper and distributed in the year 2019. The fact that this is a book published presumably for (what I assume is a tiny) profit may also be a sticking point for some, just as a point of principle - if you're going to make money from my content, you should ask me first, as a general rule. Again, I don't imagine many people on this register will have any great objections, but it just feels icky to make that decision for them.]

[to be clear, I'm not accusing anyone of any malignant motivation here, and I'm sure we all have a great sense of gratitude for Jeffrey's role in the early online conlanging community. I for one wouldn't be on this board today without his influence.]

Eh, I think you're applying considerations that are appropriate for Hollywood movies, or something else that actually makes real money, to things that are either money losers or provide beer money. Under capitalism it's hard to have nice things that are free for everyone.

Langmaker was a "profit-making entity", in the sense that it had Google ads, and back when Google ads were worth it. The site also sold Jeffrey's software. On the other hand, it cost money to run, just as this site does. (And I keep paying for the old ZBB just so the material is available.) Jeffrey is not expecting to make a profit on the book; if he does, it probably doesn't cover what he's spent on the site. If you object to beer money, you basically object to almost everything that's creative and interesting on the web.

I also think this material has historical interest for conlanging. Not that conlangers have a huge sense of history, but that's pretty typical for a new artform. I think it'd be sad if the only remnant of this phase of conlanging was (say) the minimal list in Arika Okrent's book. The Langmaker database is a pretty good snapshot and worth preserving. (And it's easy to forget just how fragile our record of the web is. The Wayback Machine attempts to preserve it, but it misses a lot of stuff, and once it's gone, it's gone.)

On the other hand, I do have a nostalgic fondness for langmaker and a fondness for the general idea of a conlang registry... it's a great shame that all the attempts at it back then quickly resulted in oceans of dead links (and were swamped in "conlangs" that in many cases were never anything more than two sentences the author wrote on a back of a napkin and never bothered actually recording anywhere...).

Jeffrey did better than most, so it's sad that his database crashed.

I don't think that the back-of-a-napkin languages are such a bad thing. I mean, I admire the hard work behind the 10,000-word, multi-year projects. But a healthy art form needs vignettes too. An example-- I'm going through Jeffrey's own conlangs now, and one of my favorites is about four pages long and doesn't IIRC contain a single actual cited word. It's extremely weird and unlikely, and that's what's good about it. Making it 50 pages long probably would spoil it.

I was assuming the Babel texts wouldn't be included in the book.... if they are, the Pabappa text is wildly divergent from what it would be today because I've changed the language so much. On the other hand, the phonology has been exactly the same since 2004, so it still looks and sounds just like today's Pabappa.
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I never really looked too deeply into Jeffrey's conlangs....I remember Nunihongo and Dublex.

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Also, I just noticed Xap II on the list, but the archive doesn't work....Its just as well, because I didnt get very far with that language and it was in constant flux.

Ah, to clarify, no, the Babel texts won't be included. But as Sal says, some of the pages include creator names or descriptions that might not be listed elsewhere.

None of the information about any of my conlangs is anything like up-to-date, and they're currently all being overhauled, so it may be best to ignore them for now.