Re: juvenalia (was: Fictional auxlangs as artlangs)

As long as others are telling of their youthful attempts
at a conlang, I'll tell of mine.

When I was fourteen, I was looking through a book
of Latin quotations during the Christmas break. I was
struck with an epiphany to create my own language.
I already had an imaginary country, so it made sense.
I got my best friend at the time to learn it, and we
did have some conversations in it.

I had not yet heard of Esperanto or Tolkien, but I
was taking Spanish, so I was familiar with person
and number marking on verbs. Other than that, it
was mostly a relex of English. I remember the verbs
were conjugated this way:

esto  - I am           estos  - we are
esta  - you are       estas  - you are
este  - he/she/it is   estes  - they are

estado  - I was         estados  - we were
estada  - you were    estadas  - you were
estade  - he/she was  estades  - they were

estiro  - I will be          estiros  - we will be
estira  - you will be      estiras  - you will be
estire  - he/she will be  estires  - they will be

My original plan called for postpositions, but my
friend talked me out of it. After all, we both
agreed that such a thing couldn't possibly work
in a real language.  :-)

--Ph. D.

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