Re: How do diacronic conlangers work?

Hallo!

On Tue, 8 May 2007 21:38:29 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

> It is good to learn that there are other ways, but this raises
> two questions for me:
>
> - Is this way of working a result of any conscious decision, or
>    is it what comes spontaneously to you?
It is something of both.  The first thing I did after deciding that
my "Elvish" languages (the name "Albic" came later) would be independent
from Tolkien's, was to sketch out the protolanguage.  Later, I decided that

1) there would be a "classical" language distinct from the protolanguage;

2) some of the features I originally intended to have in the protolanguage
   would be innovations of the classical language instead;

3) the classical language, being attested in writing in my conworld, would
   be considerably better "known" than the protolanguage, which is not,
   but is (within the conworld) a reconstructed language, like PIE.

So I split Proto-Q ("Q" was my provisional designation for the family,
which originally was a shorthand for "Quendian" before I parted from
Tolkien's languages) into Proto-Q and Classical Q, and concentrated on
the latter.  (Shortly after this event I came up with the family name
"Albic".)

> - Have you ever changed, or been tempted to change, a higher
> node
>    language to get or avoid some feature(s) in a lower node
> language?
Yes, but not to a large degree.  Most things I want, I could so far achieve
without having to make such detours.

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