Talk:Sanomi

An imaginary language or a constructed language?
In the lead, "imaginary language" was changed to "constructed language" in 2011 while I wasn't looking. I am inclined to think that this is wrong.

A constructed language (or "conlang") is a language that has been devised by a person or group of people, and which has a defined vocabulary and defined rules. For example, Esperanto, Lojban or Klingon.

On the other hand, an imaginary language may be not an actual language at all, but could be meaningless utterances designed to sound like a language.

I've just looked through the comments on this YouTube video of the song, and there seem to be people arguing both ways.

Admittedly, a constructed language could be either established or ad hoc. In the latter instance, maybe it qualifies as an "imaginary language", but it depends on how you define your terms. Really, there are at least three possibilities: Everybody seems to be sure it isn't 1. But we don't seem to have any evidence of whether it's 2 or 3. Still, maybe calling it an "ad hoc language" might be the best we can do.
 * 1) an established conlang
 * 2) a conlang devised by the songwriter
 * 3) meaningless utterances

In the section "The song", it's described as "the first occasion that a song in a constructed language had been performed at the Contest". The intended meaning is presumably that never before has any of 1, 2 or 3 been used in a Eurovision entry, but it could be taken to mean merely that 1 or 2 is being done for the first time, leaving open the question of whether 3 has been done once upon a time. On this basis, I'm thinking of changing it to "a song not in a natural language". Does this sound good? — Smjg (talk) 16:36, 3 April 2016 (UTC)