On Demons à la Catholics.

So why is it that demons always speak Latin? 

What mechanism caused all of the eternal evils of the underworld to band together and learn Latin?

I mean obviously Catholics can talk to God in Latin because I imagine He'd be able to understand any language. So, why aren't the demons speaking in super old demon-speak that Catholic priests can't understand, or if they plan on communicating, why don't they use another language? What's with all this "jesus rex interfectus est!"
Why can't they man up and learn English? 

Seriously. Is there some mystical reason why all the demons happen to speak the language that is only marginally known outside academic circles because it happens to be the language of the church?

If I were a demon, I would learn Swahili or something. Why would I, as a hater of the church, conform to their language choice?

It's preposterous, Catholics. Change your story. I know you're great at retconning. I think it also helped when you didn't allow people to read or own a Bible in their own language for fear that they'd "misunderstand". Right. 

Grapes

I have a problem with grapes.
They start off deliciously as you pick the finest of the bunch, but after a while the tastiness begins a spiral downward! Then near the end your picking around trying to get the best ones and inevitably failing a few times; getting mushy/sour ones instead.
My last grape is almost always distasteful.

Why I Conlang

Conlang is the term conlangers use to refer to a "constructed language".
It is the complement of a "natlang" or "natural language".
You may have heard of Esperanto, in the conlang community, Esperanto is referred to as a "auxlang" because the language is trying to bridge gaps and be easy to learn. It tries to be a lingua franca or an auxiliary language.
There are also artlangs, languages which intend to be artistic, and the converse, englangs which intend to be efficient and logical. An example of an englang is lojban, a language based on predicate logic.

Art is to art history as conlanging is to linguistics.
I like the idea of creating a language because it's a challenge. It forces me to think about things in a different way.
Some languages are created to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which contends that our language determines, at least in part, our culture.
Studies have been done that found a native Spanish speaker and a native French speaker will talk to forks differently. A Spanish speaker will talk to the fork as if it were a man and the French will talk to it as if it were a woman. The study concluded that this is because in Spanish, "fork" is a masculine word (tenedor). In French it's a feminine word (fourchette).

When you create a language, you have to decide how to solve certain problems that other languages solve in other ways. For instance, Spanish has only one word for "miscarriage" and "abortion", in both cases the word means "terminated pregnancy" but the difference is whether the "aborto" was intentional or accidental.
Or how a Spanish speaker says "I feel bad" and "I feel heat". One means "I feel as if I'm bad" and the other means "I sense heat". In Spanish this is solved with reflexiveness. They say "me siento mal" for "I feel myself bad" and "siento calor" "I feel heat".


Some people conlang for their books. It is very unlikely that in a fantasy world or on another planet everyone speaks English. So, like J.R.R. Tolkein, they create languages. The linguistic elements of languages in The Lord of the Rings is fascinating. I'll paraphrase a quote the source of which I can't find right now.
"The aesthetics of the language is why Aragorn became king and was renamed Elessar Telcontar instead of a Nazgul becoming king and being renamed Sauron"
Nazgul just sounds evil, Aragorn sounds ancient and Elessar Telcontar sounds regal.
Aesthetics is an important part of a language.

Currently, I'm devoting all my spare time to a conlang I call "thoiteg", I'll be writing a post about that soon.
And when I'm done with thoiteg, I think I will create a language which is based in legal theory- so in my fantasy world everyone understands the law because their language is the law. 

Dearest grammar Nazis,

I've never had a problem with people misusing words, I could always tell by context what they mean. Occasionally, just for fun I will tell someone that their sentence REALLY means something else, but only if it's kind of funny. I certainly don't get mad when people misuse words when the meaning is obvious and clear. So I have written a letter to the grammar Nazis asking them to kindly quit it. 

your vs. you're

If you see someone say "your crazy" or "your an idiot", and you get upset because they misused "you're" then you either want to show off your knowledge (arrogant) or you're not as grammatical as you think.

If the possessive "your" is followed by an article ("a", "an", or "the") or an adjective, it means "you are" if it's followed by a noun, it is possessive meaning belonging to you. 

 

there, their, they're

When someone says "there here" do you think they mean "their here" (nonsensical), "there here" (two locations), or "they're here" (obviously makes the most sense).

If the "there" is followed by a location, it means "they're". If the "there" is followed by a noun, it means "their". If the "there" is followed by the verb "is" plus a noun, it is locative saying that a noun exists "there is a cat", if the phrase is followed by a preposition, "there is a cat on the TV" it tells you the location of the cat that exists. If the question is "Where?" the answer is "There."




Who vs. Whom

This one is, perhaps, the easiest. When "who" is used accusatively, they mean to say "whom". However, they don't want to be pompous like you, so they say who. In the common sentence "Who are you talking to?" the correct phrasing would be "To whom are you talking?" or, if you're of the school of thought which doesn't think that prepositions should be avoided at the end of the sentence, "Whom are you talking to?"
The same goes in reverse. If someone says "Whom are you?", they are probably trying to be grammatical and failing, if you correct them, you risk being just as pompous as they are.

In conclusion:
You don't have to pretend you don't know what they're talking about because they didn't use the proper form. You obviously understand if you know an inkling of grammar.
This really isn't hard, grammar Nazis. Stop showing off.