Paul Frommer and Arika Okrent on conlangs

[Payoang]

Frommer and Arika Okrent chat a bit about conlangs. http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/questions-answered-invented-languages/

Here, a most wonderful excerpt:



Q: Why would artificial languages be needed? ...

A: Arika Okrent: I like to make my own bagels at home. It's pretty time-consuming, but I like the result. Some might argue that if I just bought bagels, I would have time to weed my yard, or read up on the situation in Afghanistan, or tutor an underprivileged child. The truth is, I probably wouldn't do any of those things with the extra time. I'd probably just sleep in.

[neosis666]

Paul Frommer: In a word, yes. Given the legalities of the situation, it's not clear what I can do on my own. I'm eager to put out learning materials, and I hope it won't be too long before I'm able to develop language lessons that beginners can access online. In the meantime, the community of Na'vi enthusiasts has done a jaw-dropping job of analyzing the bits and pieces available to them and helping each other learn the language. The forum on the fan-created learnnavi.org site has now surpassed 130,000 posts. Three linguistically sophisticated versions of the Na'vi-English dictionary are available online, each with its own merits. And it astonishes me that I'm receiving long e-mails written entirely in remarkably accurate and inventive Na'vi.


This made me happy

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

This made me happy

Oh yes, he mentioned what he's planning in his letter to us a few days ago:

http://forum.learnnavi.org/news-announcements/frommer-needs-our-help-official-vocabulary-expansion-project/

[Nyx]

I liked this part too: "To each his own passion. To each his own time to waste."