Re: New Conlanger

In response to your response to Patrick's response to your first post:

> >Friendly advice -- for a logical language, go phonetic.  What, really, is
> the difference between ck and k?  Or is there one that you forgot to
> explain?
>
> Well there really isn't a difference but I might as well make one since you
> mention it. CK has more of a UH sound at the end than K which has a AUH sound.
I don't get it.  How can the consonants have particular vowel sounds -- is this
a syllabary of sorts (letters represent a whole syllable rather than just
a basic sound)?


> >I like that you can call an animal by what it eats.  But is it very
> logical?  Perhaps you're going for an artlang instead?
>
> What is the difference in conlangs and artlangs? I thought it was logical
> because you can describe the animal's size and eating habits.
Er, no.  That's just semantic descriptiveness, e.g. saying "pig-meat" instead of
"pork", "baked-rock" instead of "brick", etc.  The names of your semantic
elements are unimportant logically.  If you say decide to call "pork"
"what-my-grandmother-served-us-last-night" and "brick" "something-I-feel-like
throwing-at-my-neighbor" this does not change the logic of your statement as
each word has its own definition -- there is no way to "logically" name all
the semantic words you need without producing ridiculously long words.
Please give me the logical name for a pizza.  You might think of one, for
instance "round-piece-of-food-with-cheese" but this isn't really satisfactory
as chances are whatever shortish name you choose will describe a number of
other things just as well (in this case, er... a cheesecake, among other things
I'm sure).  Logical languages are about unambiguity in the *interrelation*
of things, and of course your definitions must be clear as well.

Josh