Re: Lexicons and Langauge Borrowing

At 05:03 AM 3/16/99 GMT, Herman Miller wrote:
>On Mon, 15 Mar 1999 12:14:10 -0500, Michael Mouatt <arcangel@...>
>wrote:
>
>>Also, is it considered bad form to borrow too much from real languages?
>>I'm creating some conlangs based on the Scandanavian and Germanic
>>branches. So far I've borrowed heavily from Icelandic phonology.
>
>I think borrowing phonology is perfectly fine. Even borrowing words within
>limits is okay with me. Tolkien borrowed "nar" from Arabic and "velike"
>(velikii) from Russian, for a couple of examples. But unless you have a
>specific fictional reason for the similarity (e.g., is your fiction set in
>an alternate-history Scandinavia?), it might be better to create your own
>words if you want a realistic fictional language.
>
On the other hand, my conlang Vogu borrowed heavily from (if memory
serves) Russian, Chinese and Swahili, but has no connection to any of
them.  It exists in a parallel universe, and my explanation was that
the "remarkable similarities" in vocabulary was a powerful argument
for the existence of language universals. 8+)

-- Terry Donnelly

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/2711