Re: vocab #2.2 - KuJomu

Roger Mills wrote:

> >Was I supposed to have done a formal introduction, or somesuch?
>
> That would be nice.  But we're glad to hear from you anyway. Welcome!!
Many thanks :)

Never really knew how to do the intro thing so I just kinda jumped in.  I'm from
DC (small city on the eastern coast of the US) and my linguistic background is
primarily spanish (my first but not best language) and english.  My language is
called KuJomu (which means "True Language").  I started it around 1986/1987,
making the writing first for a culture I was writing stories about, and then
toying with the language.  I like to call it more of a "melting pot language"
than a conlang, because I've borrowed from just about every language I could
find.  Some of it is pretty much pulled out of thin air, but much of it has
definite roots somewhere in the current and ancient world.

So yes, you did notice some Bahasa Indonesia there :) At least half the language
is "borrowed" from here and there rather than completely made up; I think of it
as being a lot like English.  I'm trying to avoid too much of a european
sound/feel, though there are some remnants I haven't been able to get rid of and
still feel right about it.  I'd really like it to sound more Africanish, but I
don't want to do away with too many different sounds.  Does that make sense?

> Looks like an interesting and well-developed language.
Thank you!

> More, more!!
Oh dear - where to start?  I've worked out a constantly-changing "textbook" but
it's in .xls (MS Excel spreadsheet) form and it's kind of big (747kb).  I've
also scanned a sample of the writing I developed, if anybody wants to see it
(having scanner problems so it's actually an image embedded in a .doc, about 50k
or so).  The writing is something I'm very proud of; it's completely phonetic,
and should work so that if one reads it out loud they should even be able to
hear the writer's accent/how they would say it if they were speaking aloud.
I've used it instead of the roman alphabet for writing just about everything for
the last decade+, so I'm pretty comfortable with it.

I would love to share, if anybody's interested - in 15 years I haven't really
shared with anybody and've had very little feedback, especially from linguist
types.