Re: Double minimal pairs

On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 7:00 AM, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:

> Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
>> "Don't let this happen to you.  Order your Phonomatic(TM) Random
>> Syllable Generator today, and keep your posteriori out of your a
>> priori languages."
>>
>
>
> ;-) one method I've used successfully to avoid English bias (or
> anti-English bias for that matter) is to manually create a bunch of words
> without meanings, then randomly assign meanings to them. A few of the
> Tirelat words were assigned this way, including "kiv" meaning "cave" and
> "ret" meaning "reptile". I never would have chosen words so similar to
> English, but that sort of coincidence isn't entirely unexpected.
>
> Tirelat has fewer randomly-assigned words than some of my other langs, but
> some of them have become well-established, e.g.
>
> ċakni "rich, wealthy"
> drambi "sand" (later expanded to include "(ground) pepper")
> kezyl "plant" (n.)
> kinež "cup"
> kwëna "to hear"
> luġi "holy, sacred"
> maraat "basket"
> miłwi "soon"
> mizu "onion"
> nirik "cheese"
> nusu "silent"
> sënt "bone"
> šmaj "always"
> šuuru "door"
> tadru "much"
> taka "there"
> tipa "to enter"
> turma "hammer"
> vaasa "lid, cover"
> xiłki "planet"
> zaaxĕn "cellar"
>
Do you accept all of the random pairings, or will you reject ones that
strike you as really off? Personally, I haven't used any random methods, and
wouldn't, except perhaps in very small doses (Mark's catchy advert
notwithstanding!). It kind of takes the con- out of conlanging for me. If I
want randomness, I'll look at a natlang :-)

Josh Roth

Reply