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Re: Heyas all!

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Thursday, March 25, 1999, 19:54
Trace Erin Kern wrote:
> As for what I mean by 'creating'...One author gave me the advice to use > the species culture as a language base. A militaristic species will > likely have alot of harsh gutteral <sp?> phonetics, where a more relaxed > or perhaps reptillian species will have alot of soft and sibilant sounds.
Well, those are more like prejudices than good advice. A pacifistic society could have a language with tons of gutturals, and a warlike people could have lots of /l/'s and /s/'s. Actually, that might create some interesting phrases, say, the gentle-sounding [lasaja masina] means "prepare to die, Earth-scum", while the harsh-sounding [qaQt'a?aGH Gqa?] means "we wish to help your world".
> Sort of. I've had the 'alien' words floating around in my head for a > while, then decided to give temporary meaning to them. This translation > isn't part of a full language unfortunately.
Cool. It could be the beginning of a conlang. I assume you have a pronunciation for that? If so, start with those sounds, and expand on it, to give you your phonology, and then break down the words in some way into morphemes, and assign meanings, so for Hah'Rooqh Tah'Khrine, Eayl Noh'Tahl May you go in peace, all your journey you could have: Hah'-Rooqh Tah'-Khri-ne, Eay-l Noh'-Tahl In-Peace May-go-you, you-possessive all-journey Thus, by this break-down, it appears that this language inflects verbs for person, and either has some sort of case system, or simply attaches prepositions to words (decide, for instance, how adjectives would be dealt with, in-red house or red in-house or in-red in-house, to figure if it's a case or a preposition). It also has a prefix for blessings. Most likely, it would have prefixes for things like imperatives (perhaps VanKhrine = go!). Is the apostrophe a sound, like glottal stop, or does it separate prefixes from their stem, as Steg Belsky has done with Rokbeigalki (sp?)? Or perhaps h' is a single unit. These are just a few ideas, you could do whatever you want with it, of course. Actually, I rather like Noh'Tahl for journey. Maybe I'll adapt it as _pinuta'l_ (pi- = gender 7) for Watya'i'sa. -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-name: NikTailor