Re: Conlanging as a personal thing

On 12 March, Dan Jones wrote:

>  I even have
> the reprehensible habit of using Arvorec words in Welsh and vice versa
> without realising.

    In my home, the mixing of langs would probably go unnoticed!
My English usually contains quite a bit of Hebrew (the same goes
for the wife and kids!). And there's no need to put any more English
words into the mouths of Hebrew speakers ---  there's quite enough
of that as it is! I even catch myself, from time to time, using words
drawn from one lang with the grammar of the other one!
On rare occasions, I might even throw in a short phrase from
my conlang, rtemmu. (which also goes unremarked on by my family!)
    The main obstacle to my speaking rtemmu is that the sentences
tend to be rather long, not to mention having to make decisions about
the rate-of-change marker before every "content" word ( ie every word
excepting those with purely grammatical functions).
    For example, consider the sentence:  "The man drives a car".
In rtemmu, this would involve 4 content-words:

    mtuku = the process of being a man
    tikuh  = the process of being the amount of one
                (necessary for the definite/indefinite articles)
    nduga = the process of driving a vehicle
    kfrur` = the process of being a car  (r` = [R] )

    Before each content word comes a compound word containing at least
3 items:
    a.) who can know about it (the speaker, some people, all people)
    b.) the rate of change of the "knower/s"
    c.) the rate of change of the process mentioned in the content-word.

    The rates of change go from "too slow to notice" to "to fast to notice"
with 7 stages for objective change and 7 stages for subjective change.
This is not to mention accelerated, decelerated, and differentially changing
rates of change; plus a term for a rate a change which is unknown (or
not admitted to being known).
    To give a small taste of what's involved, consider the word nduga,
"the process of driving a vehicle" (It also means "the process of
committing murder".  Drive on the roads around here
and the connection becomes obvious! :-(       )
    Anyhow:

        ne nduga = subjectively fast driving (ie, thinking about or
                           remembering fast driving)

        na-ne nduga = I'm not bothered by thinking about fast driving.

        fis-ne nduga = Just thinking about fast driving has my heart
                               pounding!

        kehs-ne nduga = I'm objectively "cool as a cucumber" as I
                                  contemplate fast driving.

        fis-vuz nduga = I'm visibly upset about not being able to
                                pass the snail in the road ahead of me!

        fistis-zuv nduga = I'm ready to violently explode at the
                                   "careful" driver who just stopped dead
                                    in front of me on the on-ramp
                                    to the superhighway!

    And so on.  All of this must be decided for each content-word
(including numbers --- they must be included if one wishes to express
definiteness or indefiniteness because the articles, in rtemmu, are suffixed
to numbers associated with content words.)
    Of course, redundant info can be dropped in the interest of brevity
(which, in rtemmu, is a highly relative idea!  :-)   ). But where to drop
and what to emphasize by retaining are also decisions which must be
made for every content word. It can get quite involved quite quickly!
    To speak in rtemmu, I'd have to have worked out what the forms would be
for commonly encountered situations and keep in mind what could be
expressed by all the variations.
    It's fun to play with, but to speak it fluently,  I'm afraid, would be
beyond the ability of my poor brain!


Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.