Monthly Archives: April 2011

Is there any point in learning a dead or artificial language?

Posted on April 30, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

This question is taken from my google referrer log. Why does anyone study any language? The languages on the shelf at the book store are uniformly lingua franca’s, i.e. languages that may have large populations that speak it as a … Continue reading →

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The auxlang, engelang, conlang (artlang) taxonomy

Posted on April 30, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Wikipedia, and many other people who write about conlangs like the tripartite taxonomy of auxlangs, engelangs and conlangs. Some people use conlang interchangably with artlang, some (like me) use it to mean non-natural languages in the broadest sense. Users of … Continue reading →

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Cutting Edge Linguistic Theory and Conlangs

Posted on April 20, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Nothing will make you feel as humble as reading cutting edge linguistic papers about language features. If a language, say Cree, has a feature and no one in academia agrees on how it works, one can still go that community … Continue reading →

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Forum Hacks

Posted on April 14, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

The combination of phpBB and letting users add non-text crap to a page has created some of the most breathtakingly ugly, MySpace-like websites ever created. I don’t like avatars, signatures or gratuitous images on forums. And I don’t like the … Continue reading →

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Alternatives to Language Revival, with application esp to the remnant language

Posted on April 11, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Why not go to the movies? Without a strong economic incentive to learn a language, any recreation is just is good. Presumably people are rational and will choose recreation that suits them. If learning rare languages is recreation, then governments … Continue reading →

Posted in ghostlang, Virginian Algonquian | Comments Off

How to learn a fake language

Posted on April 9, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

This article is inspired by a google search someone did to discover my blog. Step one, pick a goal. Do you want to read a reference grammar and peruse a dictionary for amusement? In that case, read all sorts of … Continue reading →

Posted in conlang use | 2 Comments

Ghostlangs: Some constraints are not good idea

Posted on April 2, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

A language is a system of communication subject to some constraints. In English, we can’t independently decide to start using clicks, dispense with -ed for past tense, etc. In a revived language, speakers will still be subject to these constraints … Continue reading →

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