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English Language Essays

An Essay on Naturalism in Conlangs

Jeffrey R. Brown created his first language at the age of 21, and was surprised, upon the birth of the Internet, that there were others who did this. He has lived most of his life in Minnesota, but now calls San Diego home. Jeffrey speaks English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Hawaiian, with various degrees of incompetency. He has been long retired from a peripatetic career of accounting, engineering, adjunct faculty, technical training, business management, and consulting. He still is creating languages, though.

Abstract

There are four facets of an artistic conlang that influence the degree of its naturalism: the three linguistic aspects: the phonology, the lexicon, and the grammar; and the cultural aspect, that is, the conworld. Of these, the elaboration of the conworld, and its integration with the conlang, is the most important. This essay presents the views of the author about how best to strive towards that goal.

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