'(body(article(h1"beginning work on LATL")(p"a little introduction to a project i started thinking about in early 2020,\n as i was learning how to do web development and wanted to try my hand at\n combining some hobbies")(p(a((href"#the-point"))"skip the story and get to the point"))(section((id"the-story"))(hgroup(h2"what even is this?")(p(em"a story of linguistics and hubris"))(hr))(p"so, when i was a wee little child, i discovered language. like, most\n wee little children discover language, but some wee little children\n get given the lord of the rings when they're ten or something and get\n into the narrative and the characters, sure. but those appendices....\n there's .. a language here? called quenya? and it's written in this\n script? called tengwar? and there's a related language, sindarin? and\n this tolkien guy just made all this up? ")(p"so, i did the precocious kid thing and said to myself \"if this dead\n british weirdo (who's like really into the concept of royalty) can\n make a whole new language, then surely i can too\"")(p"i did not, in fact, make a language. i made a relex of the language\n i already spoke (my own peculiar idiolect of u.s. english,) but we all\n gotta start somewhere")(p"for a long time the internet to me was mostly "(a((href"https://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html"))"the brown university conlang listserv.")" here i learned about different phonology, what the heck\n morphosyntactic alignment is, diachronicity and how different\n languages can be related. i got exposed to awkwords and sca2 (tools\n for generating words and modeling changes to those words.) but i\n never interacted with ppl much. i was a kid and the ppl in there\n really knew their stuff, and i never much felt comfy with the idea\n of being just "(em"in public")" on the internet like that")(p"anyway i got better at making languages and learning about how\n language works, and it's just been a (sometimes more consistent, at\n times less) hobby of mine for most of my life")(p"flash forward to a few years ago, i'm working on a language that has\n turned into the passion project that i've spend the majority of my\n conlanging on and i'm getting frustrated with my tools. other\n conlangers have made some really cool tools that i've used forever,\n but i wanted to change my workflow. i wanted to do more complex,\n phonological-feature-aware, sound change rules; i wanted diachroinc\n tooling for morhposyntactic bits of my languages; i wanted a tighter\n feedback loop between defining some changes, or lexical items, or\n whathave you, and seeing the results; i wanted to see how a\n derivational pattern at one stage in a parent form of a language\n branches out or collapses into different derivational patterns in a\n child language")(p"all was not well in my conlanging")(p"i would need to "(strong"do some programming"))(p"the thing is, i had just learned javascript. i had built a few\n little toy web apps, and i was not ready to execute on a vision\n for a multi-purpose conlanging tool that was beginning to take shape in my head")(p"i tried anyway")(p"and i made "(a((href"/settled/1"))"a bad first draft of a sound change tool"))(p"there's an e-bnf grammar in that project somewhere! the hubris i\n had then, to think i could make a little javascript-backed\n language tool with all of the bells and whistles i needed! with\n the knowledge that i had then! (or more accurately, didn't have)")(br)(p"but now..."))(section((id"the-point"))(hgroup(h2"reviving this project")(p(em"whatcha gonna do sorrel?"))(hr))(p"i'm still not ready")(p"but at least, today i'm forgoing bells and whistles for\n execution models. core abstractions. experience using "(a((href"https://racket-lang.org"))"a (programming) language-oriented programming language")" maybe. there's a lot to think about")(p"so,i'mgoingtotryrevivingthisproject.or,moreaccurately,
