Re: Conlangs in History

On Fri, 18 Aug 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> >Any of y'all writing/submitting sf?  =^)
>
> Four submitted.  Four rejected.  Only one story I've written included any of
> conlanging -- the very first version of Telek, though back then it had a
> different name and was ergative instead of active.  In fact, the other thing
> that has remained the same are the words _lajhosa_ 'life' and _jedoren_ 'fire
> (uncontrolled)'.  In fact, in rereading the story a couple weeks ago, I was
> unable to determine what anything meant except a phrase meaning "Life Mother".
<rueful g>  I remember my first conlang with deep embarrassment.  It
wasn't much of a conlang, and it was pretty much cloned lots of elements
from English/French (I was learning the latter at the time).
Theoretically I'd like to learn 4-5 languages from different families
just so I don't get stuck in a rut.

I wrote a (bad) poem in that conlang.  I can remember the last line, and
due to the cloned grammar I can almost even remember what it meant.

Good luck with your future stories.  :-)

YHL