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

On the subject of how conlang ideas change, I thought I'd retell the
origin story of my conlangs.  I tend to ramble, so feel free to skip
this message if you're not interested in the boring details.  I wont'
be offended. :)

Once upon a time!

<Sondheim flare>

Sorry, "Into the Woods" on the brain.  Ahem.

Once upon a time, there was a jacket....

Specifically, a green denim jacket.  Given as a gift to a boy for his
7th birthday, by an aunt who was well aware that green was his
favorite color.  Said boy decided that the green jacket would make a
cool "trademark" costume feature for a superhero.  Thus was born . .
<dramatic music> The Emerald!

Ok, so it's a lame codename.  What do you want from a 7-year-old?

Now, to be super, this Emerald guy needed some whatchacallit, powers.
Yeah!   Well, *obviously* he could fly.  I mean, duh; no superhero
worth his salt couldn't (unless he had no powers at all, like Batman.
That was OK.)  Energy blasts and forcefields would round out the
ensemble nicely.

OK, but why would a guy who could fly, shoot energy blasts, and put up
force fields call himself The Emerald?  "Beause he likes green"
doesn't really cut it.  OK, sure, the energy blasts and force fields
*are* green (visible "energy" is a staple of the genre, you know).
But how come?  Solution: he gets his powers from a green jewel!
Cool!  (Of course, one might wonder why he chooses to advertise that
fact.  It's like a big note that says "Bad Guys: Take Away The Gem!".
But leave us not quibble.)

Now, said power source is not really a genuine beryl emerald, because
then it would have to be magic, and the 7-year-old auteur - a true
child of the Silver Age - was a firm believer that superheroic powers
should have a scientific basis.  So instead of a mystic emerald, it's
... an alien material!  (Hey, substituting "alien" for "magic" gets
you most of the way to a Silver Age revamp of any given magic-based
comic book character from the Golden Age...)

How did our hero come across this alien material?  Meteorite? No,  no
good.  The whole "green alien rock" idea is already treading a tad too
closely on a certain other superhero's capetails; having it fall out
of the sky would go too far.  (Although a guy getting green-tinged
powers from a meteorite would actually impinge more closely on the
golden age Green Lantern [speaking of lame codenames] than Superman,
"Smallville" notwithstanding.  But our child-creator had not yet
encountered Alan Scott in his young-though-comic-book-full life; that
meeting was still three years away.)

No meterorites.  So he or someone else must have actually travelled to
the rock's place of origin.  An astronaut?  Positing an Earth where
people were visiting other planets - a mere 6 years after they'd first
stepped onto their own moon - seemed too far-out even for a comic
book.  No, the solution was obvious: the Emerald would be an alien
himself! (Uhm, what happened to the whole not-ripping-off-Superman
idea?)

Originally, The Emerald's alienness was barely a plot point; just a
handwavy explanation of his fantastic abilities.  But later, our young
writer would realize the implications: a whole other planet, with its
own culture - and, most especially, its own LANGUAGE!

Or languages.  But, you know.  At least one.

It was time to flesh out the backstory.

The planet acquired a name: Dankar.  The Emerald acquired an extra
name - a native Dankaran one, in addition to his (thoroughly Anglo)
human secret identity of "Michael Alanson": Zan Tysor.  His archenemy
M'kei, originally nothing more than a blatant ripoff of Rodak from
Space Giants, also acquired an additional name - a first one, "Ral" -
as well as a backstory as a tyrant usurper who had led a successful
coup against Dankar's (unified, of course) government, turning the
planet's awesome resources to satisfy his desire for the conquest of
other worlds.

Eventually including Earth, and therefore bringing him back into
contact and conflict  with Zan.

A full decade after the Emerald's conception, his origin story was
finally written down in prose form.  It answered questions like: why
is Zan on Earth?  (That government M'kei overthrew?  It was a
monarchy, and Zan is heir to the throne.  He's hiding in exile until
he can come back in force to reclaim his right.  With the superpowers
it's a little too "Powers of Matthew Star", but heck, nobody remembers
that show anyway)  How'd he get here? (While fleeing M'kei's forces,
he inadvertently tapped into an ancient connection between his
family's DNA and the "hypercrystals" that powered his starship,
instantly propelling him much farther away than was possible with the
technology alone... guess what the Emerald's "emerald" turns out to
be...)  His powers changed, too; no energy blasts, and no generic
force fields; just control of one very specific force: gravity.  The
idea is that the hypercrystals allow more or less arbitrary
modifications to the curvature of spacetime, allowing the big warp
across space to Earth, as well as the mandatory flying superhero.

The story didn't explain why, exactly, Zan went the "superhero" route.
 I guess it seemed obvious.  Maybe he steeped himself in the culture
for a while after he got here and was inspired by the media...

Anyway, for all the clichés and tropes in that little tale, give me
credit for one thing: the character's native language is not
"Dankaran".  His ignorant superhero teammates may call it that, but it
has a proper name wholly independent of the planet's  What that name
is has changed over time, from Mephaehi to Mephali to Mefali to
Methkaeki to Okaikiar., but it's never been envisioned as the sole
language of the planet.  Though it's probably a global lingua franca,
and might even be a conlang in-story...

The language was originally a calque of English, but from the time I
made it a real language instead of a cipher, the basic structure
hasn't really changed: heavily inflected, with lots of cases - my
original idea was "one case per journalism question", i.e. who
(nominative), what (accusative), why (dative), where (locative), when
(temporal), how (instrumental), but that list of questions quickly
grew to include whether, whence, wherefore, and whose, as well as
"what" in combination with a variety of prepositions.  I've scaled
back since then, but it's still pretty caseful.

That's about all that hasn't changed.  The phonology has been all over
the map, from gutteral through Elvishish and everywhere in between.
The number of phonemes started out as "same as English", then shrunk
down to "one per letter in the Roman alphabet" and beyond; it hit a
low of 8 consonants and 5 vowels before starting to creep back up
again.

Which makes it really hard to get anything substantial written in the
thing.  At some point you have to stop tinkering and start using...

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