Re: CHAT: Hello
| From: | Heather Fleming <hfleming@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, September 16, 2003, 16:40 |
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Testing, testing... Let's see if I've actually figured out how to POST to this list...
Anyway, hi, my name is Heather and I'm new to the list. I'm an aspiring fantasy author
who ended up majoring in linguistics, with inevitable results...
I guess my first "conlang" was for a linguistic typology class I took at the U
of A (A for Alberta) two years ago. Our final assignment was to write up a
sketch of the most typologically unlikely language we could come up with. I had
far too much fun with it. I'll dig it up at some point, but among its features
that I can remember off the top of my head were a consonant inventory
consisting entirely of fricatives and something like 27 grammatical genders. I
think I did away with at least one of the major parts of speech as well, but I
can't remember which one(s).
Has anyone else done something like that for a lark - coming up with the most
unrealistic (at least for humans) language possible? Not fully formed of
course, but in sketch form anyway?
Now I'm working on coming up with languages for some fiction I've been working on
ever since I was a kid and finally worked the juvenile plot holes out of. The
really fun part is that there is a gap of about 1300 years between one volume
and the next, so I get to come up with Old and Modern versions. I have some
vague ideas about them, but they're still very much in the air yet.
I'm also helping my friend and co-author develop her conlang for her conspecies,
whose language is completely pitch-based (they have incredible hearing and
their vocal tracts can produce up to I think 6 tones at a time. Their planet is
kind of isolationist because although their civilization and technology are
very advanced, their culture is completely oral so they have no written form,
and no one offworld can learn to understand or produce it because they lack the
physical capacity, and it's bloody hard for them to get the hang of phonetic
languages).
Out of curiosity, anyone else have a non-phonetically-based conlang?
Heather
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