Re: Survey (a new one!)

Pharamond Curtis wrote:

>When I first make a language, I make a vocabulary of about five to ten
>words; so that I can work out the grammar.  These words, of course,
>include translations of _be_ and personal pronouns.  One of the first
>nouns I invent is the translation of _dog_.  I'm not sure why this is.
>Perhaps when I was inventing one of my earliest conlangs, one of the
>first words was the word for _dog_, and that has become stuck in my
>subconscious.
Yes, those things happen. My first words (I mean non-formal words)
in this new conlang of mine were "tree" and "apple". They were among the
first ones in Draseleq too. "Tree" and also "star" especially are
practically the first words of all my languages. This is probably
subconscious from my conlanging background -- Tolkien's works.

>In Yibrisitoj, I have moved beyond this phase and now have begun
>(barely) translating the Babel text, simply because it has become a
>favorite text to translate for comparison purposes, and Act 1 of
>_Macbeth_.  After I translate enough texts to get a large enough
>vocabulary, I plan on writing short stories of various genres (science
>fiction, erotica, etc.) to expand my vocabulary even more.
I haven't read Macbeth -- not surprising. I'd like to read the
original version, and you can imagine what's like for a Spanish
speaker to read archaic English.

I must confess I'm not good at writing directly in any of my conlangs.
I don't remember my own vocabulary, for that matter, except for a core lexicon
of a few dozen words. On the other hand, I have no trouble remembering
inflections and particles!

>There was one major exception to my method of developing a vocabulary,
>and that was with my first major conlanging effort.  When I look back, I
>can't imagine that I could have come up with a method like this if I had
>tried--it seems that the best ideas aren't intended.
The story about your "cult" is so deliciously twisted you should write it
down in Dystopian (?) and add it the quasi-religious corpus you have! :)

My first major conlanging effort was/is Draseleq, BTW, and it started a
bit like this. I was writing a short story about a universe mixup --
some conlangers and amateur linguists form a secret club and share their
stuff. One of them (presumably *me*) creates a language called Draseleq
and some conculture legends. Then one day he and the guys find a man in
the street, dressed very strangely and speaking an unknown language. They
take him with them, and feed him and try to speak to him. Of course they're
fascinated at the idea of studying a new language. Then my character
realizes the guy is speaking Draseleq, he goes and searches for his old
paper files and there it is, the whole language... Apparently the real
and the invented universe have become mixed.

Well, I'll spare you the details. The group gets in trouble with the
government (a dictatorial one at that time) and my character destroys
his papers -- and presumably both the invented and the *real* universe.


--Pablo Flores

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