SV: Re: Replies to my Introduction

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Sarah Marie Parker-Allen [mailto:lloannna@SURFSIDE.NET]
Skickat:        lö 2003-01-11 00:41
Till:   CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
Kopia:	
Ämne:      Re: Replies to my Introduction

In an effort to remember that you have a 100post/day limit around here, I'm
condensing my reply.


First, I don't know what phonology is.  So I don't know if I've done it or
not.  ^_^

Second, my languages are very primitive -- that is, they're unformed.  But
at the very bottom of this message, you can find a description of two of
them.

Third, I was born in Azusa (seriously, at the now-demolished Center for
Gentle Birth), and I too grew up surrounded by Spanish.  I spent many a
weekend afternoon next door at an apartment one of my friends lived in, with
her grandmother.  We watched a lot of soap operas on Univision.  My mom and
my paternal uncle both taught/teach ESL students (her in Watts, him in Watts
and then Fresno) for years; my mom actually taught ENGLISH to ESL students
(my uncle teaches history).  That's why I know a lot of Spanish intuitively.
After I get my Russian language pin at Disneyland, I may try for the Spanish
one.

Fourth, as you'll see from the descriptions below, my languages are in
various states of disarray.  They're young and all that.  I just want them
to become more speakable; I want to be able to write a "501 Verbs in Sarah1"
(and I want better names for them!) PDF file.  Once I get settled into
school and work I'm probably going to go and come up with declension tables
for Sarah1.

Fifth, Sally Caves: Come visit Disneyland during the less crowded periods of
time.  Best bets are Sundays, the week AFTER the new year, and more than
three weeks before Christmas (if you need to come during the winter).  Also,
there's usually a quiet period before Halloween.  If you go to
MousePlanet.Com or LaughingPlace.Com, you can find a lot of good guidelines.
Also, and I think this was a fluke this year, July 4th was DEAD until after
4pm.  I walked down Main Street alone.  I got onto Indiana Jones without
waiting at all (and didn't have to use the Single Rider Pass).  The ironic
thing about theme parks is that they charge you more when it's busy, and you
get to do less.  They are TRYING to get you to come when it's less busy;
you'll be happier if you accomodate them.  I also think it's a good hint
that they give us Cast Members -- the DLR Cast trips to Paris and Orlando
are scheduled in March and April.  I have to assume that both OUR park and
THEIR parks must be less than crowded at those times.

Sixth, to clarify, I'm not a UCLA girl.  I grew up hoping to go to USC (I
wore a USC sweater at our sixth grade "wear a college shirt or your DARE
shirt" photo day), and it took a lot of swallowing and deep breathing to
accept doing UCLA Extension's Russian class.  ^_^  I have nothing against
UCLA, it's just that I'm on the other side of that particular rivalry.  It's
nothing like all the bad things I could say about University of Michigan.
^_^

Seventh, just a random thought; my mother majored in Music (she flipped a
coin between that and Math, and I got treated to 15 years of "Sarah,
whatEVER you do, don't flip a coin" lectures).  I've been surrounded by
women in "unusual" occupations (my stepmother is a materials engineer)  As
you can probably guess by my last name, I grew up in a somewhat "liberated"
household; my grandparents were Communists (Grandpa fought the fascists in
Spain!) and all of that.  At one stage in my life I was even a Unitarian
Universalist.  Even though I'm not anymore (I'm a libertarian Mormon girl
^_^), I wonder if that sort of upbringing helped make it easier to decide to
do this sort of thing.  I must say I am highly amused though, at the
overabundance of men on this list; my other major *public* creative pursuits
involve fanfiction, which is populated with an overwhelmingly female crowd.


Now, for stuff about my languages (don't say I didn't say they were
primitive)

Unnamed Language is only on paper, because I started real work on it while I
was on vacation.  The theory behind it is that a group of people who speak
modern English have, for a variety of reasons, a need for a secret/code
language.  With no speakers of Navajo available, (and no radios, anyway),
they resort to creating a simple code to start out with, focusing on
"strategic" words (north, south, big group of enemies, small group of
enemies, rendezvous point, etc.)  Over time, as the group becomes an
independent and cohesive society on its own, and as they begin teaching this
code to their children, the code morphs into a sort of language.  With
addition of certain outside pressures, they decide to wholly abandon the
culture/society from which they sprang, and go full-out and create a whole
new society, complete with a fully functional language (based in large part
on that code & its rules).  And just to make things fun, I'm doing
everything numerical in base 8 math.

The most developed language, Sarah1, is still too basic and underdeveloped
to tell you anything.  Especially since I'm about to change all the words
around.  Here's what I have at present (well, a sample); it was designed to
be spoken by elves and snooty humans.  This list also illustrates a problem
I have, in that by using LangMaker, my words have a lot of meaningless
roots.

spring                  zhoshra
seagull                 zhoskei
universe, cosmos                zhoslka
library                 zhosllei

See?  All start with the same root, "zhos," but aren't connected to each
other.  I think I'm going to scrap the vocabulary and start over.  And, no,
I don't quite have a good way of explaining how to pronounce to "l"s side by
side, like in zhosllei.  Technically, my elves shouldn't have a word for
library, anyway; they eschew writing.  You can tell I've studied Russian
lately by looking at some of the grammar, but oh well.  These are the sorts
of notes I have in the grammar section of this document:

Plurals:
if it ends in a single vowel: “n”
if it ends in a dipthong: “ln”
if it ends in a consnant: “eia” (ay-yah)


And I'm pretty sure I was short on sleep the day I came up with this list of
grammatical genders:

adult male
adult female
child/youth
infant/animals
inanimate (general)
diminutive/informal familiar
formal-superior
formal-inferior
spirit/ephemeral
formal-superior-plural
inanimate-plural
child/youth/infant/animal-plural
adult-plural
collective personages-plural

That was before I came up with the plural formation thing, I haven't decided
where I'm going with this.  There's something really endearing about the
idea of making children and animals have the same grammatical gender in the
plural, for me.  Don't know why.  Oh, and here's the WIP list of nouns that
will be (once I've decided what words they are!) irregular.

mother, father, sister, brother, man, woman, wife, husband, home, drink,
food, love, life, hope

Constructed Language C is quite short at this point, and I can't find the
other paragraph (which means I'll have to rewrite it, sigh):

"Concept: An ancient human language once common in certain realms (not
necessarily Earth), now used exclusively by scholars, priests and mages (and
in select standard semi-religious situations)"

See?  The fictive universes with which these languages are associated are
rather more developed.


Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://lloannna.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo

"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even
though the end may be dark."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

-----------------------

Hi Sarah!

There is something that you've forgotten. That is the phonology of the languages.
The first thing one should do before getting into grammatics and words, is to
decide what sounds that should be in the language. If you create it entirely
from scratch, you could do as I do. I take the IPA-chart and go from there. =)
Not that I've made any language yet, but I'm getting there. If you want it to
be based on another language, real or created, you could study sound changes
and apply them.

Just some friendly advice from a person. There are many many people here that know
far more than I do about these things.


/Micke

* Anyone who digs a pit for another, often falls into it himself. *
 - Swedish proverb

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