Re: Data and Musings...

On Sat, 29 Sep 2001 14:45:32 -0500, Alfred Wallace
<alfredhw@...> wrote:

>Anyway, ob-conlang: I hadn't thought of it before, but now I'm wondering what my
>language-learning choices have to do with my conlanging. (Thanks again to Tom
>for this seed of contemplation.) There's only one non-IE language on there
>(Japanese, so as to aid in learning Go); most of my "serious" conlangs beg,
>borrow and steal liberally from IE languages. (I actually feel sort of guilty
>about it.) Do most Conlangers borrow freely from the languages they know, or
>try mightily to separate them?
Looking back at my old languages, it's obvious that the languages I was
studying had a big influence. When I started Olaetian, all I knew (outside
of English) was a little Spanish and French. Not surprisingly, Olaetian
grammar from that time looked a lot like a Romance language. One group of
Elvish languages (including Rynnan and Çythin) appears to be related to the
Slavic languages, and the ancient Galtani language has features in common
with Finnish. Siralla has a system of two-consonant roots that must have
been inspired by Semitic three-consonant roots (probably Arabic).

In the last decade or so (starting around the time I was creating the
Mizarian languages), it's less easy to figure out where my influences are
from (with a few conspicuous exceptions -- Tilya, for instance, is clearly
inspired by Lojban, and there's even some early Lojban influence in Jaghri;
Ludireo and its predecessor Eklektu deliberately borrow from languages all
across the map).

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