Re: HELP: Adding irregularities to conlangs?

Carsten Becker wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> Daléian and Ayeri, my only serious conlangs up to now, both suffer of
> too much regularity I think. The problem is, how can I add a *sensible*
> amount of irregularity to my conlangs to add a little spice? How do
> irregularities evolve naturally, anyway?
One way is to figure out the proto-language, particularly phonemes that
may have merged.  For example, in Uatakassi, /@/ in some contexts was
deleted, and in other contexts merged with /a/.  Thus, for example,
there are verbs beginning with Ca- that, when you add a prefix ending in
a vowel (e.g., fa- "past tense") drop the /a/ (if the consonant is a
stop, it becomes a fricative, /k/ and /g/ lengthening the previous vowel
(thus, fa- "past tense" + katal "fall asleep" -> faatal "fell asleep),
and other verbs that retain the /a/.  Sound changes in the
proto-langauge can lead to a lot of irregularities.  Also, if the
proto-language had several different inflections that fell together
(e.g., a perfect and a past tense both become past), there might be some
verbs whose form in a given inflection (in this case, past) that come
from one inflection (perfect) and some that come from the other (past).
IIRC, this is the reason for the variations in the perfect in Latin.