Goals
Mirja has two complementary purposes. First, it is an attempt to play with and make use of some more advanced linguistic mechanisms and features than many conlangers interact with. This includes topics such as autosegmental phonology, information structure, and lexical compositionality. As someone who has advanced in the study of linguistics beyond the stage most conlangers reach, I'm trying to create a language that makes use of the new understanding I've gained of how languages really appear to work, and perhaps demonstrate what a more typologically informed constructed language might look like. Unlike an engelang, it is not necessarily intended to push the bounds of what language can be made to do, and it's intended to be largely realistic. It does a few things not seen in natlangs, but I'm not simply throwing concerns about realism out the window. It's meant to look like it could be a natlang, albeit one with a few unusual qualities. In fact, thanks to the typological awareness I can bring to the table, I think in some ways it looks more like a natlang than many more 'normal' conlangs end up.
The second goal is to create a language that meets my own personal aesthetic goals, with no intent to place the language in any sort of context (fictional or not) that would constrain or otherwise influence its form. It is not intended to be a part of a fictional cultural or historical context, nor is it made with any real-world use intended (besides my own). Whatever cultural context it has is my own personal ideoculture; though at times (especially in the lexicon), that ideoculture is relatively clearly visible.[1] In places, reference may be made to hypothetical historical processes that could have resulted in some aspect of the language as described here; these are intended more as interesting asides than as a core part of the project. One could perhaps create believable sister languages to Mirja, and doing so might be quite interesting; but this is not at all part of the purpose of creating it.
Thus, this language is entirely intended as a standalone artistic endeavour. I hope that it can be appreciated as such, and perhaps also be an example of what an attempt at a very deeply theory-informed artlang might look like. Perhaps it's not meticulously realistic to the degree of, say, a Renaissance painting; but I might venture to say it's more realistic than manga-style comic art. Just as one has to learn things like anatomy and lighting physics to really draw a realistic picture of an animal, even if it's an entirely fictional species; one also needs to learn about the deep mechanics of language to be able to paint a realistic picture of a language. That is, in part, my goal with this language - to create a realistic and yet aesthetically satisfying depiction of a fictional language. You can decide for yourself whether I've succeeded!
- ↑ Unlike most 'heartlangs', though, it isn't really intended to provide me with an alternative cultural identity to claim - at best, it's meant to reflect the cultural worldview I already have. Of course, cultural worldview and linguistic phenomena like metaphors and idioms are very interrelated, and so creating an idiom in Mirja is nonetheless somewhat like creating a small facet of a cultural identity.