Artificial (Made-up) languages

Tolkein did pretty well out of the hobby.

I think all conlangs are absolutely useless, and people who invent them, just dont know what to do, well i can admit the great work of Tolkien, he was just a writer and his languages were just "for fun". But i dont understand others like Zamenhof - Esperanto was made on the basis of Romance languages mostly, and how this language can become a universal one? it can be such one for western europeans, but the world is much bigger, with many cultural differences, so if to create a real universal language, one must think of different world cultures and civilisations, of different writing systems and different languages (as languages "think" very differently), so do u really think its possible to make a language which will be appreciated by everyone? I'm sure it will never happen, conlangs are useless, nothing can be better then a nature language.

I heard Tolkien used a lot of Anglo-Saxon words to compose the common speech .Could someone confirm if this is true ?

I admire J.RR Tolkien in many ways . You really must have a tremendous imagination to create you're own language(s) !( Tolkien did not only compose standard forms, but many dialects too )...

I also heard some extremists learn Elfish ( dunno what kind ) and use it in small communities . ( this is probably just a rumour )

There was actually an old documentary about J.R.R. Tolkien on television the other day and it showed that on the 10th anniversary of his death, a group of his diehard fans gathered for a wedding conducted entirely in Elvish. They all struck me as the Dungeon's & Dragons-playing / Renaissance Faire-going crowd that we used to laugh at in school.

A site about the Elvish language(s):
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/

It's allright to know an Elvish language or other of Tolkiens languages , but think it's not OK to be obsessed (am I saying it right ? ) about it and use it in every day life

Studying artificial languages can be valuable inasmuch as you can learn a lot about grammar and how to get verbs to agree with their subjects. Since most artificial languages are based on existing languages (Esperanto - a blend of Latin, English, German and Romance elements; All Teutonish - a simplified blend of Anglo-Saxon English and German; Interlingua - a mixture of Latin and Romance with Chinese-like sentence structure) you can learn more about the world's natural languages by studying artificial (or constructed) languages too.

All I can tell you about Esperanto is that is spoken by gypsies, but I think they mix it with the official language of the country they live in.
Majority of them live in Hungary and Romania and I think there are quiet a few in Bulgaria. Not many anymore in Germany because they got kicked out a few years ago :)

Flemish-dude,

I'm assuming that you speak Flemish, if you don't, just ignore my question .
Here is my question:
I know Flemish language has become obligatory years ago, in early 90's, if I'm not mistaken, and I also know that it's a Germanic language.
How hard was for the French speaking people to learn Flemish?
And how much time they were given to learn the new language?

Thanks

Flemish is just a variety of Dutch.

american nic ,

That's true ( I'm a speaker of the Antwerp-dialect ) , but however there's one Flemish dialect which differs tremendously from the others . I'm talking about West-Femish (or Zeelandic ). No other Flemings/Dutch can understand this dialect ...

from OHIO ,

The french-speaking community doesn't even care that 60 % of the country speaks Dutch ( Flemish ). They are stubborn to learn Flemish ( I understand it's hard for them , but look at the region of Fouron , all those Walloons can speak Flemish almost perfectly ) . What's this about how much time they we're given ??? They can learn it whenever they like.