Re: vocabulary

# 1 wrote:

> How did you make to create a complete vocabulary?....(snip)....How do you
> create a whole lexicon? Particulary if you want it to not be as
> another.
Quick and dirty method: pull words out of the air. You should have at least
some idea of what constitutes a permissible "word" in your language, so
you're allowed e.g. /bik/ and /brik/ but not /bnik, bzik/ etc.
Make an alphabetical list of these, with the associated meaning.

Vastly better: create the phonology and rules of syllable structure.  Then
generate a big list of possible words-- there are said to be ways of doing
this with computer programs, and I hope others will suggest some-- otherwise
you can do it by hand.  I recently hand-created a list of all ±40,000 forms
for a CVCV ~CVCVC language; it didn't take that long. Of course if you're
creating Neo-Georgian with a complicated phonology it might be a little more
difficult.
Then you can assign meanings at random and as the spirit moves you.

There are also vocabulary lists, usually grouped together in some logical
way (Carsten Becker recently posted one; there are others-- IIRC the
Langmaker site links to the "Universal Language Dictionary"); but it's just
as simple to think of, say, colors, kin terms, verbs of motion, or household
items, and just start free-associating. One thing leads to another. It's
basically how I created the Kash vocabulary, now approaching 5000 words or
so.

There's really no need to create a vast number of words right off, just
enough to work with-- you may have derivational mechanisms that will enable
to you create multiple words from a single base.
..
> Would you conseil me to translate each esperanto words(wich vocabulary is
> already logicly divised)?
Probably not; your language should have _its own_ logic.

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