Re: Changes of conlangs and their speakers (was Re: Skerre Play Online)

It is actually quite instructive also to read what you used to write
in the past about your own conworld, and realise 1) how much you still
looked at things from a human-on-Earth perspective, and 2) how your
language differed from your design goal (e.g. an SOV language but
which still betrayed characteristics of SVO).

Eugene

On 7/22/06, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> David J. Peterson wrote:
>
> > I still have these documents.  Gejdr was the largest, but all of
> > these had one thing in common: they were terrible.  Some time
> > after Zidaan I created Kamakawi, which was what I considered
> > my first real language (it still had a lot of problems, but they're
> > very slowly being ironed out).  Everything I created after Kamakawi
> > counts as a real language; everything before...not so much.
> >
> > Because my languages were expanding in number, and not in
> > girth, I decided one day not to start anymore languages, and
> > just to work on the languages I'd already started.  The loophole
> > here is that if I totally rework a language I've already started,
> > it doesn't count as a new language...
>
> Sometimes it's hard to know what to count as a language and what not to
> count. I had a lot of sketchlangs in the years after I started on
> Olaetian, and most of those weren't very good. Somehow I lucked out with
> Olaetian, which ended up getting a lot more use than the others. But I
> think it's like an artist learning how to draw -- I learned things from
> the experience of doing these sketches that helped me with future
> language ideas.
>
> Some of these sketches were developed enough to actually use for writing
> brief paragraphs. I'd usually write something about the language or the
> world where the language is spoken, like this early Keluathi example:
>
> Keluat de Kėrishka-Kelėthai Oziria Gisathi azėlinsa kelėtha. Än de
> kėlevado naeė idileė käro Kelidėthė dileėin. Än de kovitho beridaė
> idethė ash kothilė ahiraėin.
>
> "Keluat is a planet near the edge of the Elliptical Galaxy of
> Krżschė-Kéleta. It is inhabited by many intelligent beings called
> Kelidėthė. It is covered by strange blue-green and orange-red liquids."
>
> But the vocabulary and grammar of most of these early languages was
> pretty limited. Still, the idea of using the language to write about the
> world (even something as pointless as the world being covered in strange
> multicolored liquids) is something that might be nice to get back in the
> habit of doing.
>