Re: [tied] Re: Constructed or natural

----- Original Message -----

From: Håkan Lindgren

To: Cybalist

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2000 8:36 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Constructed or natural

 

I don't particularly care for the term "conlang"; it suggests a secret language spoken by con-people.

 

My hunch is exactly the same as Hakan's -- Thomas has invented both Melanaq and the "large valley" legend, and is pulling our collective leg by provoking this discussion. The crystal-clear algebraic regularity of its morphological structure betrays a language that has never evolved naturally, accumulating the usual historical mess. It's only in conlangs that morphology doesn't interact with phonology! The fact that there's absolutely no reference to Melanaq anywhere makes this suspicion a virtual certainty.

 

Piotr

 

 

 

 

Melanaq is definitely a conlang. Where did you learn about it - that is, if you didn't invent it yourself, which I believe you have!

 

What are my reasons for believing this? It has all the look and feel of a constructed language, no natural language would look or sound like that.

You wrote -

 

There are also some Germanic words, such as vanunga = appartment and
mavra = wall (f.ex. city wall).

Vanunga can't be a Germanic loan word; there's no such word for "apartment" in any Germanic language except Swedish "vaning" (I don't think "apartment" is called something similar even in Danish or Norwegian) and "vaning" is a very modern word, it probably wasn't in use before the 20th century. If it was borrowed, then the Melanaq people must have been in close contact with us here in Sweden just a few decades ago - how come no one here has met them...  This looks more like a Swedish or Scandinavian conlanger discreetly signing his own work (like Hitchcock used to appear in his own movies).

 

Other traits that make it look like a conlang are (quoted from your egroups page) -

Words with the same consonant base usually have connected meaning.

Example: c-n

cana - a smile
cina - the moon when it's mostly dark (has the shape of a smile)
cuna - an encouragement

And no real language would derive words as regularly as this -

tshooti - to shoot (verb)
tshoota - shooting (noun)
aitshoota - a gun
otshoota - place of shooting (location)
ötshoota - rifleman (by profession)
etshoota - one single shot
eitshoota - one series of shots
tshooty - "shootish" (adjective)
tshootu - shooting animal

Compare this to a 'deriving' language like Greenlandic, where the suffixes are not all of the same length; some are short, some are long, some involve sound changes. Perhaps it is possible to derive all these words from "shoot" also in Greenlandic, but if we put the Greenlandic list of words next to the Melanaq it would be easy to see which one is a natural language.

In the ancient times, the Melanians lived well in a large valley...

Definite proof - only conlang peoples live in valleys!

 

It has some interesting features - judging from your presentation it looks like one of the most ambitious and well constructed artificial languages I've seen.

Past tense, future tense and present tense are expessed by a separate
word, not depending on the verb. Ödö (past), ölö
(present) and ömö
(future) are the most common, but numerous other variants exist such
as kölö (from now on) or lödö (at the same time (in the
past)).

Hakan.

 

Has anyone ever been conned by a conlang? I doubt it is possible to construct a language that would look and feel exactly like a natural language.