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Re: A Conlang Pidgin Game

From:Joe Mondello <joemond@...>
Date:Friday, December 13, 2002, 4:32
Amanda Babcock skibe:


> On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 11:44:49AM -0500, Joe Mondello wrote: > > > I've already been contacted privately by lblissett > > (blissett@optonline.net) about a Conlang game, and I think playing with
four
> > or five people would be ideal, > > That sounds like fun! I'm in. > > > I like Amanda's idea of making this a *REAL* pidgin game, for
example,
> > assuming a situation and then creating utterances with english
translations
> > of things which could be easily communicated in a real situation, and > > leaving fine points of grammar unspoken, e.g. > > > > Joe has 100 logs of timber that he wants to sell to Amanda. he wants to > > know how much wood she wants to buy. > > Joe: mi na sento abozi ko. tu ki kesa abozi? ku leya ideya tu ko kesa?
mi
> > ta-uru kesa abozi? > > > > The major problem with this setup, I think, is that it would be > > difficult to tell when a word has entered the lexicon of the pidgin.
but
> > this would do away with the need for a base vocab. > > Well, I wasn't really thinking of doing away with the base vocab. And I > think it's probably more fun to figure out the utterance if a translation > is not supplied with it (plus, gives the opportunity for realistic and > amusing misunderstandings! :) I vote we keep the vocab, receive
utterances
> to figure out in pidgin only (no translation except for new words), and > act out the realistic pidgin situation as closely as possible...
I like it. Upon further inspection, the dublex list seems to have a lot of concepts on it that I don't find too essential (why include 'disparagement' when one could say 'say bad things about'), and seems in general better suited to creating a full fledged language than a pidgin.
> (In a real pidgin situation we might not get translations with our new > words, but we'd have objects to point to. For other concepts like
"interest",
> for fun we could try explaining it in roundabout pidgin instead of
supplying
> a translation... we should probably try to do that wherever possible, I > guess.) > > Also, if anybody sends me anything as long as that wood-buying thing on > the first round, keep in mind that "no comprende" is valid pidgin too :) > I imagine a pidgin situation would start out with shorter sentences :)
Well, it was just an example. I was trying to picture a frustrated merchant saying "I have wood! Do you want wood? wood, tree-stuff! you buy my wood, no?
> > Amanda
Joe

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Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>