Aspies For Freedom

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I'm an NLDer.  I'm new.  I decided to post to this forum after learning about autlang.  I thought I'd start a new thread, because I don't want to distract from proper discussion about autlang.

I'm basically writing to ask how people would feel about another language for people on the spectrum.  I'm a conlanger, and before learning about autlang I wanted to start working on a language of this sort.  When I found out that some other people had already begun to work on a language for people on the spectrum, it didn't bother me, because I think any contribution to autistic culture ought to be celebrated.  What's more, once I started to read about autlang, I got the impression that the makers had different design goals than the ones I had in mind.  It seems that one of the primary goals is to help people (on the spectrum) communicate their ideas quickly.  While this is a fine goal, I think it's possible to create a language for people on the spectrum with a different set of design goals and not in any way detract from the efforts of the wonderful people contributing to autlang.

One of the design goals I'd like to implement is to offer vocabulary to help those of us on the spectrum communicate ideas that aren't so easy to communicate in currently existing languages.  (I think Kamex has already introduced this idea in the autlang thread.)  For example, it recently occured to me that it would be useful for me to have a term for "near-relationship" -- more specifically, the relationship I had with someone I failed to become romantically involved with, because I had difficulty reading her nonverbal cues.  Or those of us who aren't interested in romantic relationships might find it useful to have words comparable to "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" but that convey a very close platonic relationship rather than a romantic or sexual one.  And what about words to help us express the unique sensory experiences a lot of us have, either because we have "sensory integration issues" or because we're synaesthetic?

I don't think it's unreasonable to envision an autistic culture that has more than one language.  I've read about parts of the world where it's not unusual for people to grow up learning something like a dozen languages.  And given how interested some of us are in languages and grammatical rules, why wouldn't the people of an autistic culture be multilingual?

Anyway, I think it's possible to start another language project that would compliment the one that already exists, rather than detracting from it.  To that end, I hope to ask the creators of autlang what they do and don't hope to accomplish with autlang so that I could be sure to create a language that does something different, should I continue with the task of making one.  I'd also like to get feedback from the greater community concerning what they think of this idea.
Ithink I like that idea. Autlang caught my interest early on but, it never seemed to sound right, perhaps the sounds weren't consistant enough.

I can understand the idea of making words that don't exist in English. It sounds good. It would help autistic culture to develope by making a memepool; an exchange of similar ideas. Good luck with your idea.

Logical paradox Wrote:
I can understand the idea of making words that don't exist in English. It sounds good. It would help autistic culture to develope by making a memepool; an exchange of similar ideas. Good luck with your idea.


This reminds me of another design goal of the language I'd like to start making: It would be easy to export words useful to people on the spectrum to other languages.  That way, if someone found themselves in need of a word to describe their experience, they could look at the language's word list and use the word they need without having to learn the entire language.  I really like the word memepool.

Thank you for the encouraging words.

A couple thoughts:

There could be be a word for less-is-more and a word for violations of it (e.g. instead of "the extra gear caused problems" there would be "the extra gear is >*word*<") There could also be a word for complexity that works (has no >*words*<Wink, simplity that is complex small scale and it's antonym, missing parts, and a whole host of similar things. Though all of these seem like engineering words I think that they are interdisiplanary.
Wink was an accident.

Logical paradox Wrote:
There could also be a word for complexity that works (has no >*words*<Wink


Let me make sure I understand.  You want to be able to use a phrase in the form "has no X", where X is a plural noun (or an equivalent phrase), and you want this to mean "is complex"?

Logical paradox Wrote:
Though all of these seem like engineering words I think that they are interdisiplanary.


I agree.  Terms like this would have useful applications outside of engineering.  These are some great ideas!

This all sounds rather complicated: the only other language I could think of really wanting to learn would be some kind of pictorial language.

Pakrat Wrote:
This all sounds rather complicated: the only other language I could think of really wanting to learn would be some kind of pictorial language.


Hopefully it wouldn't be as complicated as I've made it sound.

Anyway, yes, a pictorial language would be interesting.

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