Re: basic vocab

Roger Mills and Dirk wrote about the advantages or disadvantages of creating
a Conlang vocabulary either by using a Langmaker type program or "creating
words on the fly".

The method I used for Druni, although admittedly time consuming and in ways
tedious, was to allow Druni words to come to me spontaneously when I needed a
word for an English or French concept that I was thinking of.

Not being in any way trained in linguistics I could not even consciously
create a phonology to guide me.  I simply knew the sounds I liked and the
ones I didn't.  So yes, Druni is heavily biased as to sounds that I find
pleasing and enjoy and that others may not like or find pleasing.  This is
after all a question of taste.

After a certain core vocabulary was created in this way and the agglutinative
character of Druni was established new concepts were expressed wherever
possible by internal word-construction (i.e. without creating new roots).

I constructed the grammatical structure of Druni in a similar way.  I
collected all the grammatical structures that I liked from all of the
languages that I either spoke or had studied (Russian, Latin, Greek,
Esperanto, Italian, French, Spanish) and worked them into the grammar of
Druni until they were woven seamlessly into its fabric.  Needless to say this
did give the language a decidedly Indo-European feel but as I say I was going
after what I liked in both sound and structure.  Very amateur to be sure and
perhaps naive but I had fun and ended up with a "final product" that I
thoroughly love and enjoy.  For me this is a fun hobby and was motivated by
my likes and dislikes in language.

At present, I keep lists of what I consider to be Druni sounding words that
come to me spontaneously and then assign what seem to me to be "appropriate"
meanings to them as I need them.  It's all very intuitive.

Idá onyára reshkín tá Drúnit sholóva halán giuryáru.
(That is why I enjoy the Druni language so much.)
Jim H