The CBB

I think we may have a new type on our hands.

Perfectionist: Keeps trying new things in order to make the perfect language. Like a scrapper, but each "new language" is just another attempt at the same thing. Each sketch is almost identical to the previous.

I'm somewhere in between a loyalist and a scrapper, if we must put labels on things. I don't work on a lot of small projects, but rather a selective handful of 2-5 bigger projects, which I generally remain faithful to for half a year or so. I don't scrap things, really, but I also don't stick only with one 'lang at a time. I've got Kari in the spotlight right now, with Castian poking its nose up behind it and Wa Qan desperately trying to make itself heard while HyPry is basking in my re-attentiveness towards it and Culphecc Glyw is hiding under its bed.

Scrapper. 100% scrapper. Even if a gun were to be pointed at my hand, I wouldn't be able to settle on one.

Loyalist, I'd say. I've made a couple of other sketches in the past, but plausibly developing the Macaronesian Hellenic family should be enough to keep me busy for many years...

I am all three kinds of conlanger at once.

I have a conworld which I fill with languages, but then I scrap them and rework them ad nauseam. The current version of Kaıpó is the fourth one, the current version of Proto-Littoran is the third one...

Whoops, how did I end up here? I really should get out of the house and visit some of these other threads more.

Anyway, soooooo a Loyalist. Straight out of Central Casting, a loyalist.

I'd have to say that, generally, I'm both a Scrapper, a Filler and possibly something along the lines of a Perfectionist. I'm basically a serial polygamist who happens to have a particular "type" of conlang.

What I tend to do is create a conworld or an alternative history on Earth, which I try to fill with languages, cultures, etc. In this sense I am a Filler.

However, I never hold on to a conworld or althist, or the languages within them, for much longer than a few years, often scrapping the majority of my work. In this sense I am a Scrapper.

This, however, is where I might be considered, to some degree, a Perfectionist. I don't scrap everything entirely. Every time I fill a world, I create elements of languages and cultures I either like or don't like, and elements that either work or don't work. Every time I scrap a world, I carry over some elements of languages and cultures into my next project.

I think overall, though, I might actually just be an "Experimenter". Every time I start a project, it seems to have a main goal. For example, I once started a world in which I attempted to fill it with languages, but which had no real culture attached to them. The main point was to try out various linguistic features to see what worked, what didn't, and to see what kinds of languages I liked most. Then I took part in an online collaborative conworld with several members from the CBB and elsewhere (one member named Nataniel always sticks in my mind), where I had several different cultures (one called the Bevan Empire and another whose national symbol was the swan, hopefully some other members might remember), where I only came up with brief sketches of languages, used predominantly for naming people and places, with the main focus being on the workings of each society (the Bevan Empire, for example, was an attempt something like an expansionist nationalist state which allowed direct voting on local matters, indirect voting on more regional matters, while all matters could be overruled on a national level by the Emperor). This world, however, was abandoned when the site was hacked and taken down.

The current project I'm taking part in is almost entirely an experiment in diachronics, creating, effectively, an entirely new version of the Indo-European family. In recent months, however, my involvement in it has almost halted, and I think my "rapid filler" days may be coming to a close, and I may be falling more in a "slow filler" stage, starting with one main focus and then working outwards from there

Hmm... let me think...

Ah, yes, I'm probably like my iMac here, all in one: Working on the part of the conlang which I currently want to be usable = perfect, while ideas flash before my eyes to bring it into a full context (like a con-island located west to Sardinia, housing three dialects springing off the Proto-Conlang in the high Middle Ages), complete with history and shots...
And then I have to redo the thing I'm working on because it feels so auxlangish/nooby/wrong. I guess things are getting complicated...

And there is the conlanger's dilemma: I don't have vocabulary because I don't have a grammar to incorporate it into because I don't have a vocabulary to put the grammar into use (, thus... [infinity])...

Egerius wrote:Ah, yes, I'm probably like my iMac here, all in one: Working on the part of the conlang which I currently want to be usable = perfect, while ideas flash before my eye to bring it into a full context (like a con-island located west to Sardinia, housing three dialects springing off the Proto-Conlang in the high Middle Ages), complete with history and shots...
And then I have to redo the thing I'm working on because it feels so auxlangish/nooby/wrong. I guess things are getting complicated...

Getting a conlang to the level where it's usable is already an achievement to be proud of. Let's leave "perfection" (whatever that means) to the gods .

It's just my personal opinion, but I think one doesn't need to invent islands or lands when they are already here. West of Sardinia lie the magnificent Balearic islands, which have indeed a long and complicated linguistic history: Spanish, Eastern Catalan, Arabic, Latin, Greek, Phoenician and perhaps, if we go back in time even further, an early eastern dialect of Proto-Vasconic. I think there's enough ideas for a conlang there.

I myself "annexed" the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries and Cape Verde to give some territory (or lebensraum, or rather biyotwofos, as they'd probably say) to the speakers of Atlántiqa. Conlanger Martin Posthumus (see http://www.veche.net/) didn't settle for a few dozen islands and annexed half the Russian Federation for his Novegradian Republic. But then I guess that a great conlang also needs a great con-country .

Budding loyalist with perfectionist pretensions, I hope... But an exceedingly inefficient one. My first conlang Sōkoan was lurking at the back of my head for about ten years before I finally started putting something down on paper last year. I've been making some real progress on it this year, although I still know almost nothing about nominal morphology.

Only in the last few days did I start work on a second conlang, Nınuıntı. I just want a short vacation from Sōkoan, I guess. I'm not gonna be precious about Nınuıntı, and am sort of speedlanging it. I'll see whether I scrap it...

I was a very serious scrapper. Then I was a scrapper that made 10,000 of the same thing because I couldn't stop getting into arguements with myself as to what I wanted, what I needed, how to fit that with what writing system, etc... So after a long time of:

I want a complex phonology and a syllabary!

But I want to be able to remember what each character stands for!

But if the phonology isn't complex, on top of having lots of consonants and vowels, it will have too many words sharing a single syllable!

And the arguements continued. I was left with Ishtarawi, Galleme and Godeme/Gutian.

Godeme was supposed to be what I wanted, before it became what I wanted. I wanted too much at once, without making a long complex history. But then if I did that history, then it would take so long that the sounds might've changed away from what I wanted them to be!

So I made Galleme. What for? Not even sure, but it managed to survive, because it sounds cool. Its a sumerian, spanish, latin, other mix.

Then there's Ishtarawi, that was scrapped way back almost as soon as I've made it. Though its managed to survive.

Then there was Sepatuk. It was moreless a testing ground for how I was to make PaleoCaspian, which turned out to not end up being a language, more like a language family. It's still in production.

Now, I've become a full time fillerloyalist, and my job as a scrapper has been pushed to a part time side job.

Unfortunately, I am nothing more than a Scrapper, although I'm trying to change - hopefully to a filler :)

Looks like I'm a hardcore Filler, to the point where it's paralyzing my ability to conworld - my main focus - because I just cannot have random languages lying around and cannot have made-up words for anything (they all must be from the conlangs), I must make all their ancestor languages, and the other daughter languages of those ancestor languages, and have semi-realistic sound changes, and other things.

Bah. I guess I should lean more towards the Scrapper/Loyalist side so I can actually get to conworlding instead of continuously revising my existing conlangs and their diachronics.

cybrxkhan wrote:Looks like I'm a hardcore Filler, to the point where it's paralyzing my ability to conworld - my main focus - because I just cannot have random languages lying around and cannot have made-up words for anything (they all must be from the conlangs), I must make all their ancestor languages, and the other daughter languages of those ancestor languages, and have semi-realistic sound changes, and other things.

Need help?

Click wrote:

cybrxkhan wrote:Looks like I'm a hardcore Filler, to the point where it's paralyzing my ability to conworld - my main focus - because I just cannot have random languages lying around and cannot have made-up words for anything (they all must be from the conlangs), I must make all their ancestor languages, and the other daughter languages of those ancestor languages, and have semi-realistic sound changes, and other things.

Need help?

What kind of help...?

The most obvious assistance suggested is him doing you your conlanging at least in part.

I have an old version of Proto-Littoran grammar and I want to get rid of it, that's why I'm offering cybercam help.

MrKrov wrote:The most obvious assistance suggested is him doing you your conlanging at least in part.

Well, yes, I guessed that much, but I was a bit uncertain because I thought my original post didn't suggest I needed help (not that I don't appreciate it).

Click wrote:I have an old version of Proto-Littoran grammar and I want to get rid of it, that's why I'm offering cybercam help.

Ah, it's okay, but thanks for the offer. It's not so much I don't have enough conlangs or conlang ideas for my conworld, it's that I'm never satisfied with any of them and I keep revising them, and that's a problem because if I revise an ancestor language I'll have to of course change the daughter languages, and it further frustrates me because conlanging isn't my main focus - conworlding is, but I want to get the conlangs I have straight so I can conworld semi-realistically.

I am a filler to a horrible degree. Right now I'm working on two languages with three in the pipeline. It's too much. Especially when I forget stuff--I used to be practically "fluent" in Pazmat, now I can't fully decline even one noun...

I think I'm a Dabbler. I dabble in Loyalism (I only have two fairly developed conlangs), I dabble in Scrapping (I have several unrealised ideas) and I dabble in Filling (I('d) like to create a world/s with a variety of conlangs and concultures). I'm a dipper: I dip in and out when time warrants.

I suppose I swing more towards filler, wanting to build a world with a variety of languages and cultures, but have other priorities. I started as a sort of Loyalist, developing Alahithian, and Gnoughish a bit, then tried to head towards Filler, but it takes a lot of time. Sincé then I've made a hobby out of a sort of Scrapping, but without scrapping anything, just putting things aside (perhaps indefinitely) until I get them out again. A tri-consonantal psychlang's been fermenting in my mind for quite some while. I'm not really working on it, but it's never really gone away.

My general conlang quandry is that when I get involved in making my conlangs, not a lot else gets done.