Bon Wen is a really cool language created by Arpee9216. It has over 200 words and only 11 letters. Almost 1 year ago, Arpee updated the Bon Wen language by adding new words and changing the "y" into a "j" in the Freewebs Bon Wen dictionary. There's also a Bon Wen dictionary on Scribd but it doesn't contain the updates, and a few months later he got rid of the dictionary on Freewebs and gave a link to the Scribd dictionary, and he even prevented everyone from reading the second half of the dictionary unless they pay $2, and I can't pay coz I don't live in USA. The Scribd dictionary doesn't contain the extra words, so I don't know whether Arpee got rid of the updates on purpose or not. All these actions almost "killed" Bon Wen.

you don't live in the US? NY is not US?

Generally such actions are caused due to some form of desperation financially - in this case, he might want to further the development of Bon Wen but have little resources with which to do so.

I'd say "screw it" though (pardon my French). Actual paid dictionaries are useful no doubt, but if you need to pay in order to look at all the words, then... yeah... It's not really worth it (even if Bon Wen is cool).

It's like if Sarkozy went "Ah, sorry mes amis, but if you want to learn French you must pay us $10 in order to use half of la vocabulaire. Otherwise, speaking notre langue sans paying is an act of copyright infringement, and you will be seeing our lawyers."

ceigered:
Otherwise, speaking notre langue sans paying is an act of copyright infringement, and you will be seeing our lawyers."

I'm not sure this copyright issue has ever been settled, has it? I think the closest thing was the fight over Lojban. Can anybody really explain how that turned out? I never did understand it.

I expect this to genuinely be an issue in the future. For example, who owns the Klingon conlang? Technically, Paramount Studios paid for it's development and, therefore, ought to reap all the benefits of it's use. But, is it actually possible to "own" a language? I don't see how.

Well... in theory it's possible via a patent. Or if you consider that a language is a piece of art (some are).

I also consider that paying to see the vocabulary is unfair.

-> Loglan (Lojban is the offspring that resulted from the fight with the creator of loglan).

We also can consider that Volapuk as "failed" because of "overcopywriting" (at least it didn't have enough without-change support).

Luckily any copyright on Volapük has expired a long time ago.

I think Arpee should get rid of needless words. Instead of saying "bad", one could say "not good" like in Esperanto "malbona" (not bona).

k1attack:I think Arpee should get rid of needless words. Instead of saying "bad", one could say "not good" like in Esperanto "malbona" (not bona).

Hm... Sounds like Vuyamu...

jan aleksan:Well... in theory it's possible via a patent. Or if you consider that a language is a piece of art (some are).

I also consider that paying to see the vocabulary is unfair.

-> Loglan (Lojban is the offspring that resulted from the fight with the creator of loglan).

We also can consider that Volapuk as "failed" because of "overcopywriting" (at least it didn't have enough without-change support).

The best tutorial/guide for any lanugage conlang or not belongs to Lojban. You can find it here. It's incredibly detailed and entertaining as well. Too bad the language itself is quite complicated, but if anyone interested, I suggest giving it a try

jan aleksan:Well... in theory it's possible via a patent. Or if you consider that a language is a piece of art (some are).

I would say that most conlangs are a work of art, as most works of engineering are. It is one of those things where you almost have to be an artist to appreciate the art.

jan aleksan:
I also consider that paying to see the vocabulary is unfair.

-> Loglan (Lojban is the offspring that resulted from the fight with the creator of loglan).

We also can consider that Volapuk as "failed" because of "overcopywriting" (at least it didn't have enough without-change support).

I'm not sure if "unfair" is the word I would use. I would say "foolish" because of the reasons you gave. It doesn't make sense to propagate a language if you're putting barriers up to keep it from propagating.

However, designing a conlang requires a lot of effort. Doesn't the creator have a right to remuneration. (assuming someone finds it valuable enough to pay for ... And good luck with that, BTW)

I honestly believe it could become a problem. Klingon was a language which was created by a linguist who was contracted and paid by Paramount pictures. They use the language in their films.

What rights does Paramount own? If I write a novel in Klingon and sell it, do I owe royalties to Paramount?

There is a Klingon Language Institute which runs a website. (www.kli.org) They are a nonprofit and they clearly state on their homepage that Paramount owns the copyrights and trademarks to Klingon. Could they get in trouble if they tried to raise funds by selling T-Shirts or Pens?

Obviously, Paramount knows this organization exists and is propagating their work. I'm sure they are happy about it. I wonder what type of agreement they have with the movie studio.

I don't think this is an isolated instance, either. Didn't Tolkien invent an Elvish conlang for his "Lord of the Rings" books? Doesn't he (or his publishers) own the rights to those?

If Star Trek or the Middle Earth books created a demand for the conlangs they spawned, doesn't the creator deserve something? They never gave away their languages for egalitarian reasons (like Zamenhof did) At the same time, if I choose to write something in those conlangs, would I owe royalties to someone else for my creative efforts? I'm not sure the law has honestly settled this in any country, has it?

andogigi,

I think you're right, but maybe until now no entity (such as paramount), tried to get money from it, because it's a very good advertisement. Maybe the public wouldn't like that kind of thing, so it would be a bad publicity.

Finally, maybe the amount you can claim is small and not worth the pain.

the list is very long: Na'vi, Klingon and Vulkan language, Syldave, Newspeak, Goa'uld and Ancient, huttese (Language of Jabba the Hutt in Star wars), Quenya and Syndarin (elfic languages), etcetc...

And the list is much longer if you add alphabets (like for example the one used by the alien in "V", which is in fact, used for english words).

It can include also languages used in videogames, and in songs (the group Urban trad finish 2nd at Eurovision with a song written in a fictive language).