Re: OT: What makes a good conlang? (was Re: Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT)

From: "And Rosta" <a.rosta@...>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 1:37 AM
Subject: Re: [CONLANG] Re:       Re: What makes a good conlang? (was Re:
Super OT: Re: CHAT: JRRT)


[cutting lots of stuff]

> (I believe I practise what I preach here, and I delight in
> discovering congruences between English and my conlang. I also
> rely heavily on my English intuitions during the design process.)
>
> --And.
>
I also want to give my two cents. I still consider me as beginner, although
having learnt quite a deal about linguistics during the last year thanks to
conlanging and participating at (on?) this list.

I'm very much spoilt by the languages I am taught: German/English/French.
The same problems as And thus. I could not think of any situation I was not
thinking "now this is too English-like". Just following my nose and write
down "what feels right" is difficult if you've learnt too much already,
thats sad but true.
Nevertheless, I work through the chapters of the grammar rather running
straight ahead through them than planning everything carefully. A first
draft of possible concepts and phonology etc.
What I feel uncomfortable about is that I have no conculture. I'd like to
create a conworld, too, because that exactly does what someone of you said:
adding a kind of magic to the language, it's the salt in the soup so to say.
Lacking a conculture, it's really difficult to think of idioms, phrases etc.
Thus, I have a big problem with inventing words, but I agree that generating
words (although if fitting to the phonology) is the most boring thing you
can do for conlanging. I use Chris Pound's word generator nevertheless,
because sometimes it returns interesting words that are possible but of
whose sound I haven't thought of before, because I like some consonant/vowel
combinations more than other, so there are already many words beginning with
<a> and <e>, but no words beginning with <c>, although possible.

Regarding conworlding problems, someone already suggested me to simply
begin with the world I live in - but
that would be pretty boring I think. As I said, I'd really like to create a
conworld/conculture, but then always the bare size of what you can think of
and what is necessary to think hard about phonetically* overwhelms me, and
everything in a culture works hand-in-hand, language is just one little
part. At least I've already taken the step to think of a *not* earth related
calendar (that means different lengths of year/day/...) and have a map of a
conworld saved on my HD somewhere. Actually I've got two maps, but on the
first one, the continents do not fit together as e.g. South America's east
coast does fit to Africa's west coast. I know I can simply say "it is as it
is", but that was not what I wanted. I wanted to have the continents just
floating around like on earth.

Btw, H.S. Teoh, what *is* your first name? I'm sorry if this question has
already been answered, but I receive the all the mails of one day in
digests, usually at 6 in the morning (that's when you have midnight in
America I think: MET is GMT+1). In my opinion as a beginner, Ebisédian *is*
great because it's different than the everyday languages I'm used to
(German and English).

What I'm also often feel bad about is inventing (hopefully) new concepts,
like e.g. the Ebisédi case system. It feels eays and normal, but I couldn't
think of something like that before I read about it, with my mind being
imprisoned in concepts of accusative languages. To be honest, I could not
think of something that works different than even the accusative, ergative,
Ebisédian and trigger. Understanding other concepts of how languages work is
also hard. I haven't understood split-ergativity or other split stuff up to
now. I wanted to have Ayeri to be a trigger lang because I wanted to
familiarize (sp.??) myself with that other concept of triggering.

*) I've always loved the word "overwhelming", because in my opinion, the
sound of it fits very well to a giant monster, bowing down to you with its
ugly head and threatening to kill you by eating you ROOOOOOOOAAAAAR!!!

I hope you understood my confusing and partly overlong sentences and be
tolerant with a learner of English ... although learning for 6 years already
...

-- Carsten

=========================

Class test: Si on pouvait apprendre le français en dormant, ...
I wrote:    ... des générations d'élèves ne se revailleraient plus.

My website:   http://www.beckerscarsten.de/
My portfolio: http://gitarrenklampfer.deviantart.com/gallery/