Frequently Asked Questions

Here are a list of frequently asked questions about the demlang and the official answers.

What is the demlang?
The demlang started out as a nickname for the "Democratic Conlang", a language that is being invented through the usage of a democracy to vote on language features in accordance with our Constitution.

Each week, members of a Facebook group suggest different proposals (e.g. "subject-verb-object" or "verb-subject-object") for a language feature (e.g. word order). At the end of the week, everyone in the group votes, and the proposal that wins the vote is added to the language.

What proposals have been accepted already?
Please check out the Voting History to see a list of past and current votes, or see the Winning Proposals Repository here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MZphQYiJz1jjZR-vEibUrZl0Kgv2R-QFyZ5Z8XHCF28/pub

How do I participate?
Join the Facebook group. There you can make, discuss, and vote on proposals. Be sure to arrive every Friday and Saturday to participate in the votes. Deadline to submit proposals is on Tuesday.

How do I help out?
Ask to join the Leadership group, where you can work as an Advertiser, Pollster, Translator, or Historian. You can even run to be Chair or Vice Chair, who are elected and appointed every three months.

Does this demlang have a name?
Yep! It's called Demlang in English, Demlingvo in Esperanto, and Snehék Blad in Demlang (which literally means "Democratic Language").

Is there a calendar for future votes?
The Demlang Leadership discusses each week what should be on the schedule for the next week, so it is not possible to know which language trait is upcoming more than a week in advance.

The general order will likely be phonology, then orthography, then morphology, then syntax, then semantics; however, the leaders may need to adapt the schedule based on previous votes, so it is not quite possible to say what the exact order of all the votes will be on a week-by-week basis.

What do #OfficialDemlang and #UnofficialDýmlanh mean?
Any Facebook post with the hashtag #OfficialDemlang is an official message by the Demlang Leadership. Any post with the hashtag that was not authorized will be deleted to avoid the spread of misinformation.

The hashtag #UnofficialDýmlanh comes from an inside joke about the phonology and orthography of the demlang. The hashtag may be used by leaders to let people know that they are expressing their own personal opinion or a joke instead of an official statement from the Demlang Leadership.

Is this an artlang or an auxlang or what?
None of the above, and all of the above. The demlang is its own breed, the result of pluralistic visions.

The demlang has no set aim for the language's ultimate purpose. Whether the language turns out to be more of an artlang or more of an auxlang will depend on whether voters select more artlang-conducive proposals or more auxlang-conducive proposals. You decide what the language will be with your vote.

Can I make a political party?
Voting factions are discouraged, but they are not forbidden. Your faction will not be formally recognized by the Demlang Leadership, but you will not be penalized for engaging in strategic voting. Most members of the community do not support these tactics and prefer that we work more cohesively on the project.

Does this democracy have freedom of speech?
The Constitution as it stands does not currently have a bill of rights that protects free speech on the demlang group; however, the leaders hold very positive attitudes toward free speech and civil debate.

As with all freedom of speech, there are reasonable limits. The Leadership may delete text if they feel that it is spamming, harassing individual users, or demonstrating severe racism, sexism, or other prejudice.

What are the demographics of your group?
Since surveys of our members are optional and rely on self-reporting, it is hard to tell exactly what the demographics of our group is, but there seems to be a large diversity of national and language backgrounds. From a timezone survey, we can estimate that our members' locations are roughly 55% Europe/Africa, 32% Americas, 5% Central Asia, and 8% Oceania. The racial makeup is primarily white, and the group is largely skewed male (with an estimated 8:1 ratio of men:women). The main two religious backgrounds of our group seem to be Christianity and "None", with some minority faiths as well. Members who identify as LGBT also exist, but the exact proportion is hard to determine. A good proportion of demlangers claim to speak Esperanto (at least 25 members) or toki pona (at least 15), but other conlang-speaking communities are represented as well (including Ido, Interlingua, Lojban, and Quenya). As members join and leave the group, we can expect demographics might shift, so some of these estimates might be out of date.

What is to stop tyranny of the majority?
Unfortunately, tyranny of the majority is always a possibility in a democracy. The Demlang Leadership has put together a minority commission in an attempt to elevate the voices of minority, especially in situations where we feel their voices should be heard. For instance, when voting on grammatical gender, we may ask women or transgender people (both of whom minority groups according to estimates of our demographics) what their opinion is on the proposals provided and make an official statement so that the group is well-informed.

In the end, though, it will be votes that determine the winning proposal. Should you wish that we do more, you can lobby for an amendment to the Constitution that would hard-code more protections into our process.

What is to stop the spoiler effect or sampling error?
The multiple proposals are first subject to approval voting, which is more resistant to the spoiler effect than standard first-past-the-post voting is. If the margin between the top two proposals is small, a second round of voting is employed with just the top two proposals to reduce the effect of sampling error.

How do you break any ties?
Ties in the first round go to a revote. Ties in the second round go to a Glass Conclave.