Re: Word Construction for a New Conlang

On Wed, 7 Jul 1999 22:20:21 -0600 Ed Heil <edheil@...> writes:
>It's the phenomenon of making words and making phonologies.  Think
>back, if you can, to when you first started on your conlangs (or first
>started on a new project)...  How did you go about making a phonology
>and then making words?
>Ed Heil ------------------------------- edheil@postmark.net
>"Facts are meaningless! You can use facts to prove anything
>   that's even _remotely_ true!"           -- Homer Simpson

Well, i very much doubt that this is the usual way, but both of my
a-priori conlangs (Rokbeigalmki and the aborted ool-Nuziiferoi)'s
phonologies got their inspiration from a code that my brother made based
on the phonology of English.  Each vowel, diphthong, and consonant
(including affricates) had an individual symbol.

When we started to make ool-Nuziiferoi, we took that list of sounds,
added sounds from Hebrew, and created an alphabet where once again, each
vowel, diphthong, consonant and affricate had it's own letter.  Each root
in ool-Nuziiferoi was a pattern of CVCVC, where diphthongs count as
normal vowels and affricates as normal consonants.  The triconsonantal
idea came from Hebrew, with vowels thrown in to make more possible roots.
 A few roots were:  z-ii-f-e-r, b-o-b-uh-t, j-e-kh-i-f.  Affixes were
attached to the beginnings and ends of roots, including what i called at
that time "pure sounds", syllabics.

A few years after ool-Nuziiferoi died, i started making Rokbeigalmki.
After the first few words & names were made, and i realized that i was
conlanging again, i just adopted the entire ool-Nuziiferoi alphabet, with
orthography changes.  Later on i threw out one vowel and added another
consonant or two.  in Rokbeigalmki, i just throw sounds together to make
words that sound right, so i guess that's not really that helpful for
you.


-Stephen (Steg)

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