By the time you've reached this page, if you're like most people,
you're probably wondering: "Why in the world would anyone be
interested in making a new language? I mean, isn't the one they
speak already good enough?" And the answer to these questions is,
yes, most definitely. The thing is this: creating a constructed
language has, historically speaking, rarely been an attempt to create
a new method of communication.
Languages like Esperanto or Volapük, which were created with the
idea that a common language would bring about peace through
mutual understanding, while always having caught the lion's share
of the attention directed at constructed languages, have never
really made up a sizeable percentage of them. Indeed, personal
languages, made for whatever purpose, from artistic or aesthetic
creations like Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin, to attempts to create
perfectly "logical" languages like Loglan and its offspring Lojban,
have always been the most numerous, if perhaps not the most well
promoted, productions coming out of the Conlang community.
That having been said, my personal experience with conlanging began way back in highschool,
after I had become a little disenchanted with Esperanto. It was a fun and
above all easy language to learn, but there was something lacking
in it; it lacked an interesting history, it lacked pinache. At or
around the same time, I was delving into all sorts of interesting
aspects of language and linguistics, and I began toying around with
the idea of creating a language like that of my own. At the time,
I truly wanted to create a language that would rid itself of the
irregularities that even Esperanto had (unknowingly) kept, and
also create one that was just plain more esthetically appealing.
To accomplish that second feat, I researched into the history and
structure of Proto-Indo-European to provide a good interesting
background for the language to be built around. I gave it a spiffy
name, Degaspregos, derived from *dhghém-, "earth", and *spreg-, "speak",
as I liked the ambiguity between my goal to create a world
language, and the fact that the Indo-Europeans were surely a people
tied to and dependent on the earth.
As time progressed, however, and as I learned more about linguistics
and how language structures operated, I came to feel this was an
unrealistic 1
goal, as no language can be truly perfect in conveying information. The
language thus came more and more to be a project in aesthetics, to develop
a language which, the above fact notwithstanding, would be flexible and
capable of conveying information accurately, and easily, and beautiful to
my own tastes. So, although it was by no means just another Esperanto, it
became more or less relegated, in my own mind at least, to that area of my
psyche which dealt with things that are personal and sublimely
meaningless expressions of creativity. Because I know these facts consciously,
I have no interest in proselytizing my language as the Esperantists have
done.
A lotta times you may find that I have pretty much just stopped in midsentence
on something and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that way. Of course it
doesn't, but I can't always finish sections like I would want to, so, I'll get
around to it sometime.
Also, many times when I've redone a whole section, or made some alterations
for this or that feature, I forget to go back thoroughly analyze every
section, so there may be "archaic forms" (i.e. forms of the language I used
to use, but the language changed, and I forgot to update these pages accordingly).
After a while, I'll get to it, but if you notice inconsistencies, then please tell
me!
Lastly, I like to hear what other people think about my work. If you have
comments, questions, or just want to say hi, please
email me.
Your comments and critiques are truly appreciated.
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