Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: word choice process (was: Announcement Follow-up)

From:Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>
Date:Saturday, August 4, 2001, 22:38
On Saturday, August 4, 2001, at 10:12 AM, Henrik Theiling wrote:

> "Wade, Guy" <Guy.Wade@...> writes: >> How did you come to choose those words? For that matter, >> how does anyone choose their words? > > I usually write a small program that knows about the phonotactics of > the language and can be invoked with some parameters (e.g. length of > the word (sometimes in morae, sometimes in syllables)). Then it > produces 100 examples and I choose one that I like most. >
Lucky person. :-) It's been way, way too long since I did programming. I tried the LangMaker.com program but it always crashed on Win98, so I gave up on it. Which was a pity; when it did work it looked quite interesting.
> With Fukhian, though, I also used to borrow from natlangs, but without > general (sound shifting) rules: > > mes < fr. maison -- house > ihmin < fi. ihminen -- human being >
(fi = Fijian? meep?) What natlangs do you tend to borrow from--is there any system or do you borrow as it suits your fancy? :-) For Czevraqis, some of the words are derived freeform-style from Korean: sa [sa] < Kor. sam -- 3 na [na] < Kor. na -- first person pronoun (though it does decline rather differently) ako [ako] < Kor. hago -- also, too aju [adZu] < Kor. achu -- quite, very maroni [ma*oni] < Kor. manhi -- lots, many For the bulk of words (using triconsonantal morphology) I just pick a likely-sounding trio of consonants. For other, "irregular" words (i.e. those that I made up for the "language" before I actually systematized anything), I picked (more) likely-sounding, um, sounds: jenar [dZena*] = shortsword, dagger jenaczen [dZenatSen] = from jenar aczen or "sword game"; the Game of Blades tiraczen [ti*atSen] = from tiro aczen or "general game"; the Game of Generals, a chess-analogue (borrowing elements from Burmese, Japanese and Chinese chess--the rules, alas, are not quite finalized since Joe never did get to put the thing entirely through its paces) vaesaczen [veIsatSen] = from vaes aczen or "blood game"; the Game of Blood, or war; also known as aczericzen aczericzen [atSe*itSen] = from aczen ri aczen or "game not game"; the Game That Is Not a Game, or war (again) vaezenar (veISena*] = from vaes jenar or "blood blade"; a sword of execution, specifically referred to that carried by magistrates These early inventions are sort of contrived, but what the heck, I like irregularities. :-) YHL

Reply

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>