Re: THEORY: questions

nd003k wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I was wondering if those of you who have made up your own
> language would be willing to answer some questions:
> -how did you go about creating your language?
I think I was unusual when I started Ok because I created the Ok words
first. Ok isn't an artlang and I wasn't interested in making nice
looking words. (Look at some of the monsters in my latest posts about
translation exercises)

I started out with a goal in mind for the language. I wanted it to be
compact. I wanted it to be able to express complete thoughts in one
word. But I also wanted to control the length of what came out. So, I
created a bunch of vowel-consonant combinations which, would later have
the meaning of one English word asigned to each. Before I did this I had
already decided which sounds would be allowed in the language.

Then keeping the same goal of compactness, I tried to construct some
sentences. This would show me what I needed to do for a grammar.

Because the language got bigger and bigger there came a need to address
syntax. Once again I went back to my overiding guidline for the
language; compactness.

I found, as the language got bigger, that my options became fewer and
fewer. This was because I also wanted it to be as unambiguous as
possible so every feature had to be distinct from all of it's other
features.  But also because the new feature just had *to work with what
was already there*. So, in effect the language itself just started
dictate how it would be.


> pesiku (thanks,)
My pleasure

-Duke
> nicole