meli pi toki pona li lon ma seme?

[Logomachist]

The "Reformed Egyption" of Mormonism was almost a conlang

,Smith probably intended to create a language and rapidly found out it was more work than necessary.

Better still, if the plates had actually existed then he really could have translated them.

[janKipo]

As a fan of "Reformed Egyption" (Smiths's spelling or yours?), the lingua sacra of occultism for at least 500 years, I would have loved to see some real samples, rather than the imaginative renderings of ordinary Egyptian as copied by the likes of Athanasius Kircher or created by John Dee from all those obelisks that came to be scattered around Europe, hoping to turn up the original of the Tabula Smagdarina or some other Thothian artifact.

[Logomachist]

I agree that stereotypes can be used to manipulate how masses think, and I agree the media can be used to create and destroy stereotypes, and so those who control the media will be able to exercise an extra degree of control over a culture by controlling which stereotypes they believe in and respond to. I also agree that the media can be used to shape the development of languages, especially when it comes to coining new terms and shifting the meaning of existing terms. What I disagree with is:

1) That language shapes culture more than culture shapes language. I believe that for a term to become widely adopted people have to be convinced that it accurately represents a preexisting concept. "MILF" got picked because ppl needed a word to refer to hotties with kids. http://www.urbandictionary.com/ is littered with coined phrases that no one ever uses b/c they're not things people actually want to talk about (e.g. too specific, ect...).

2) That women are particularly left out of this process. Most people (men and women, both) don't control the media. Only a tiny minority does (some of which are probably men, and some of which are probably women, but this is just a presumption- they're a mostly invisible elite and we can only guess at what their demographics are). But men and women both control language in the sense that every individual person decides what words to use, what to pass on and what to ignore. If men en masse decide that "cougar" is offensive or stupid or awkward and they don't use it, it'll be less likely to catch on and become part of the language. If women decide it's useless or stupid, they have an equal ability to veto it. Language is passed and adopted from one person to one. Celebrities/media introduce words but they don't decide what gets picked up, the masses do. And men have never had a monopoly among the commoners.

Re: the religion bit, that was interesting. It sounds like you're really part of a liberal sect. Mind if I ask what? I wonder if this is more prevalent among con langers than the general population. Has anyone done any polls?

[Kuti]

MESSAGE DELETED

[janMato]

If women decide it's useless or stupid, they have an equal ability to veto it.

Convention is a powerful thing. Except for a word here and there, it's hard to unilaterally stop using a word you don't like if the rest of the world is already using it. Slurs and epithets are the easiest to stop using because those most likely to be offended wouldn't be expected to use it and when they do, they tend to co-op the word and change it, for example geek is a rather positive word when used amongst technologists, but not so much when used from one non-geek to another.

If I particularly like the word "cromulent" or particularly dislike it, I will have a hard time doing anything about it. Among Simpsons fans it's already a convention, outside of Simpsons fans, I might as well be making up a word from scratch.

Re: the religion bit, that was interesting. It sounds like you're really part of a liberal sect. Mind if I ask what? I wonder if this is more prevalent among con langers than the general population. Has anyone done any polls?

jan Kipo has a blog out there somewhere about religion. jan Sonja and jan Pije are both unashamed liberals and on the left end of that spectrum at least by North American standards.

I suspect, but I have no data, that conlang's attract the audience the inventor says he wants. If a conlanger said, "I'm writing a language for chefs, that will allow people to communicate by assigning words to ingredients hence making meals into grammatical sentences" then some percent of the fan base will be chefs and gastronomists. People learn languages to talk to other people in a community, and generally its easier to talk to people who already are somewhat likeminded.

[janKipo]

Ooooo! I love the thought of a language for cooking, where a grammatical error would result in a spoiled dinner.
The world being what it is, we can be fairly certain that the media is run almost exclusively by men (changing in at least TV, but not changed). This includes the internet, alas -- aside from Facebook and the like, where women seem to have more presence at least.
All of which is pretty irrelevant to the questions at hand (what were they, anyhow?), since the media are the last ones to find out about most word creations (Safire's old columns in NYT were notorious for explaining idioms that were long since passe' to people who had never heard of them -- and then started using them inappropriately).
The usual problem with SWH is that it looks to language to somehow determine culture, when the influence is (at least) as strong the other way (and not determination in either direction).
For what it is worth, I belong to a broad-based cult, which, in its members and even leaders, fills a large space in a multidimensional religion matrix, though tending leftward in areas like social justice and aid-giving. Personally, I am with the tendency in those areas, rather left of the bulk in theological and historical issues (not only do I have doubts about the Resurrection, I don't even believe in the Entombment) and am rather to the right on liturgical issues. Since there are leader far beyond me in each of these, I feel quite comfortable here. (It may be significant that I taught Asian Philosophy and Occult Philosophy and Mysticism off an on over a forty-odd year career.)

[Logomachist]

Ooooo! I love the thought of a language for cooking, where a grammatical error would result in a spoiled dinner.

I doubt this would work functionally as a language; but maybe as some sort of cypher.

The usual problem with SWH is that it looks to language to somehow determine culture, when the influence is (at least) as strong the other way (and not determination in either direction).

I completely agree. If the SWH hypothesis was that culture effects language I think it would long have been proved by now.

For what it is worth, I belong to a broad-based cult, which, in its members and even leaders, fills a large space in a multidimensional religion matrix, though tending leftward in areas like social justice and aid-giving. Personally, I am with the tendency in those areas, rather left of the bulk in theological and historical issues (not only do I have doubts about the Resurrection, I don't even believe in the Entombment) and am rather to the right on liturgical issues. Since there are leader far beyond me in each of these, I feel quite comfortable here. (It may be significant that I taught Asian Philosophy and Occult Philosophy and Mysticism off an on over a forty-odd year career.)

Tell me more.

[janKipo]

I want to modify my right-wingedness in liturgy, because I don't know which wing is which. The spectrum is, for the main Sunday service, from a guy in a business suit, all alone, reading some text (not necessarily that assigned) and haranguing on it-- mainly about sin and personal salvation, with minimal hymns and prayers and no memorial feast (or maybe -- once in a great while -- one with Insta-Christ: grape juice and a 1/2" cube of Wonderbread in a plastic container at each seat in the plain white-washed church) to rising a dozen people in silks and gold embroidery (in appropriate colors and each in the right decorations for their job), with a thurifer swinging two runcible spoons full of incense in 360s horizontal and vertical, everything chanted, chorus singing in Latin (if not Greek), many hymns, full Eucharist with the host in a monstrance, all in a Gothic church with blackened walls and ceiling (though built in 1952), lots of standing, kneeling, sitting, crossing, bowing, sermons short and witty on abstruse points of catholic theology (as argued by Origen and Athanasius but with more talk about BVM). I tend toward the latter end, whichever side that is, though I was raised so far toward the former that I was two churches at least away from the one I am in now.
What more do you want to know about?

[jan Kanso]

I want to modify my right-wingedness in liturgy, because I don't know which wing is which. The spectrum is, for the main Sunday service, from a guy in a business suit, all alone, reading some text (not necessarily that assigned) and haranguing on it-- mainly about sin and personal salvation, with minimal hymns and prayers and no memorial feast (or maybe -- once in a great while -- one with Insta-Christ: grape juice and a 1/2" cube of Wonderbread in a plastic container at each seat in the plain white-washed church) to rising a dozen people in silks and gold embroidery (in appropriate colors and each in the right decorations for their job), with a thurifer swinging two runcible spoons full of incense in 360s horizontal and vertical, everything chanted, chorus singing in Latin (if not Greek), many hymns, full Eucharist with the host in a monstrance, all in a Gothic church with blackened walls and ceiling (though built in 1952), lots of standing, kneeling, sitting, crossing, bowing, sermons short and witty on abstruse points of catholic theology (as argued by Origen and Athanasius but with more talk about BVM). I tend toward the latter end, whichever side that is, though I was raised so far toward the former that I was two churches at least away from the one I am in now.
What more do you want to know about?

tenpo pini la mi lon ma Palata.

jan mute pi ma Palata li toki e ni tawa mi : tenpo ali la jan pi jan sewi wan taso li moli e jan ante.
jan pi jan sewi mute li moli ala e jan ante. jan pi jan sewi mute li ken sona e ni : jan poka li toki tawa jan sewi ante.

mi pilin e ni : jan sewi Jawe li ike mute. jan ijo li wile ala pali e wile pi jan sewi Jawe la jan sewi Jawe li pakala e jan ni li moli e jan ni.

mi wile olin e jan sewi ni : jan sewi ni li olin e jan ali.

jan Kanso

[jan Ote]

jan pi jan sewi mute li moli ala e jan ante.

ni li lon ala. jan Asina li moli e jan Sokate tan ni: ona li toki ala tawa jan sewi mute. jan pi jan sewi mute li moli e jan ante mute tan ni sama.

"tan ni sama" or "tan sama ni"?