Rynabunny
Sun May 4 12:47:54 49558,
I think you all have valid points. Anthony thinks of conlangs as tools for communication. To them, a bad conlang is one that fails at that (by being too
simplistic, in the case of Toki Pona).
The others think of a conlang as having its own purposes. Someone said conlang creation is an artform. Some people, myself included, create conlangs for fun and/or for personal use. They don't have to be perfect, or good for communication, or even useable (e.g. kay(f)bop(m)!). For a personal conlang, they just have to make its creator satisfied and it will have achieved its purpose. Different conlangs set out to achieve different goals. Esperanto arguably achieves a lot of its goals (relatively simple to learn, useful tool for communication) and yes, it is a good conlang in my opinion. But that doesn't automatically make Toki Pona a bad one. The latter also achieves its primary goals (extreme simplicity and ease of learning), perhaps even overachieving.
So I guess Anthony has a fairly narrow view of what a conlang should be, and that's fine! But it should be understood that not all conlangs had/have/will have exactly the same goals, and I think comparing two vastly different languages is a futile exercise.
