zompist bboard

How sufficiently must a conlang be developed before I can put it here?
How many words must be done, how many grammatical rules must be elaborated?
I'm asking this because:
First, when I posted my first project (KAPMAN. You know, baby steps) I got lot of backlash.
Second, I can't work without constant feedback and nudging in particular directions.
So, which is the threshold before which the conlang is not ready yet and after which it can be shown to the community?

I've got a psychlang and ecolang, but all I've worked out is some grammar, and not much of that. No phonology, no orthography, no name even. And yet there they are.

I've got others, Gnoughish and Alahithian which are more developed, and yet they are not finished. Perhaps never finished.

shinkarom wrote:So, which is the threshold before which the conlang is not ready yet and after which it can be shown to the community?

there is none.

Here's how you can go about it:

- come up with a name for your conlang
- post your "phonology", saying you've got grammar ready to post later (you don't actually need this bit though). Make your phonology just a list of letters -- "b as in bat" etc. Maybe put something about syllable structure, but make sure that any short example text you give includes at least a sound or two not listed in your inventory, and a combination of sounds that you've said wouldn't be permitted (so like, say you want to keep it simple CV and then include words like palka etc)
- you will attract replies from people who camp here waiting to tell people to learn the IPA. You'll also get a couple of replies saying that since your exact inventory of sounds isn't attested elsewhere, it's unrealistic.
- rather than figure out what makes a realistic phonology, decide your list of letters was somehow onerously complicated and scrap the project as a non-starter.
- come up with another name for a conlang and repeat.

Kereb, I think you've read too much "How not to Write a Novel".

ain't no threshold, but if you only post like a bunch of phonemes and go "what do you think about this" there's not gonna be a lot to say about it.

Well, you could share the phonology alone, as long as it's not with "look at my language" but rather "look at the phonology I have for a possible language", or something like that.

I wouldn't say there's necessarily a minimum amount you have to present, although a post along the lines of "my conlang will contain the phoneme /t/" is probably not enough. A lot of threads here literally are little more than the phoneme inventory and as far as I can tell even these often get some sort of response. Perhaps the quality is more important than the quantity if you want to avoid "backlash" - e.g. a phoneme inventory that can be considered not to be very good might not go down very well.

Personally I tend to post very little about my languages until I have a significant amount present - I don't think I posted anything very much about Greater Atlian until I had a 70+ page grammar, and my first really substantial posting on the latest version of Viksen was a link to the 27-page syntax. For this reason, I have a lot of conlangs that I've never posted anything on at all. But this may not necessarily be the best course of action as I suspect you're more likely to get more response if you post things in a lot of smallish chunks - and this is also a better way of getting feedback as you go along.

The ZBB is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. No teaching is contained here. Your conscript looks like Tengwar.

... or, to maximise the chance of useful replies, post at whatever stage you feel a) you feel you cannot go any further and b) you know exactly what kind of help to ask for.

As a general rule - and there are some exceptions to this - you've got two options:
A: post when you have very little stuff to post
B: post when you have a lot of stuff to post

If you pick A, people will tell you to come back when you have something meaningful to post. If you pick B, people will ignore you.

Your choice, really.

Hey, that's not true. Choosing B, you at least get WeepingElf's RockN'Roll's...

I choose option C: create a Questions and Answers thread, post there my questions (I need a lot of mentoring) and from time to time post updates to get feedback, advice and comments.
Is this option available?

You could spam the C&C question thread and start a scratchpad.