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Dublex Compound Interest: 4861 ideas for words for your language

From:Jeffrey Henning <jeffrey@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 24, 2002, 4:14
/delurking...

Want to generate lots of ideas for words for your language?

1. Download this spreadsheet (about 524KB):
http://www.langmaker.com/db/dublexcompoundinterest.xls
2. Fill in cells A7 through A13 to indicate which suffixes (if any) indicate
part of speech in your language (e.g., "u" for verb in Dublex). (Or copy B7
through B13 over to use the Dublex suffixes.)
3. Then fill in cells A16 through A415 translating each of the 400 roots of
Dublex into your language.
4. The spreadsheet will automatically generate 4861 compound words from
these roots.  Use as many or as few of them as you like in your language.

To quickly test it, type in cell A16 the word for "alphabet" in your
language.  Type in cell A17 the word for "bovine (cow/bull)".  Then check
cell 418.  For instance, if I type in "glyph" and "moo", row 418 says:

mooglyph  bacarbac  n.  bovine+alphabet  boustrophedon -- a writing system
in which the direction of lines is alternated, usually compared to the
movement of an ox plough  JEFL

I tested this with Excel 2000 on Windows 2000.  Let me know (at
jeffrey@henning.com) if it works for you using different versions of either.
If it doesn't work for you, let me know your OS and spreadsheet, and try
copying column A and pasting it over itself using Edit / Paste Special /
Formulas.

Though the file has an XLS extension (so that Windows will treat it as an
Excel spreadsheet), it is actually just a tab-delimited text file.  You may
be able to use it in your favorite other spreadsheet as is or with minor
tweaking.

Over 50 people have contributed definitions to this spreadsheet, by playing
the Dublex Game. (Their initials are given after their definitions.)  You
can play the Dublex Game here:
http://www.langmaker.com/addnewdublex.htm

Best regards,

Jeffrey

/resuming lurking...