Re: basic vocab

On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 08:26:09AM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
> I remember trying the dictionary approach with my first quasi-conlang (in
> middle school, basically an English/French clone), Eivaredd.  Didn't
> work.  I'm sure it could for others, but with a dictionary I'd have to
> sort through all the modern terminology that wouldn't appear in a society
> with Renaissance-ish technology, Western culture terms, technical jargon,
> etc.
[snip]

Yep. I'm going to avoid using the dictionary at all, if possible, for
creating words in my conlang. One of the problems is, like you said,
sorting through modern terminology, technical jargon, etc.; the *other*
problem, which IMHO is a more significant problem, is that generating
words from an English dictionary causes the vocabulary of your conlang to
be English-like, with English-like semantics and English-like
idiosyncrasies.

I much prefer to generate words by writing native texts, because that way,
the words created will be idiosyncratic according to the conculture, and
will give the conlang a more unique "feel". Translating existing texts
from other langs sometimes also suffer from this dictionary problem,
though not as much.

(Of course, if you're creating a pidgin, then all this doesn't quite apply
:-)


T