Re: creating words (was Re: "Language Creation" in your conlang)

Andreas Johansson sikyal:

> Quoting JS Bangs <jaspax@...>:
>
> > I did my first language backwards: Yivrian existed long before
> > Proto-Yivril, and I mangled the language backwards to find the
> > proto-language. Doing it forwards (as I will with future languages) leads
> > to more consistency, but can be more time-consuming.
>
> I've several times attempted to do language families the right way around, but
> it has always failed because it requires making the proto-language
> vaguely "complete" first, whereas my real interest is always in the daughter
> languages.
Emoi de topw. Working "forwards" is rather more boring and less fun that
doing things "horizontally" or backwards as you mentioned. Even when I
work forwards, however, I don't feel the need to make the protolang
particularly complete. All I have for PY is a list of roots, a vague idea
of morphology and the barest hint of syntax. Having so *little* material
actually helps make the daughter languages interesting--in order to have
anything remotely complete, I have to elaborate a lot, and I can always be
sure to elaborate in a different direction than the other existing langs.

> What I have pulled off is "horizontal expansion" - from Tairezazh I've figured
> out the basics of the ancestral language, Classical Klaish, and from that
> derived Tairezazh's sisters; Steienzh, Telendlest and Searixina, in order of
> increasing sketchiness.
As I have developed Tzingrizhil, Praci, and Keluril in increasing order of
sketchiness.

> I can still, BTW, not decide whether I ought to refer to these with their
> native terms (like above), or with the Tairezazh terms; Steianzh, Telenzh and
> Tsárizh. I guess the former makes the more sense, but I tend to think of them
> under the Tairezazh names, for the perfectly bad reason that I invented them
> first, and figured out the native terms only later. Perhaps I should simply
> anglicize; Steienean, Telenian and Searikhan? Then I, for consistency's sake,
> ought to speak of Tairezazh as Tairezan too.
>
> Or should I call Telendlest _Telinzha_, since Searixina is the official
> language of Searixa? Decisions, decisions! :)
Heh. I actually am fairly consistent in using native terms--except,
ironically, for Yivrian, my original conlang! That's because the native
term is Yivrindil, which no one could ever spell correctly, and I got
tired of correcting it. I suppose Anglicized versions of my other langs
would be Tingrisian, Pracish or Pracian, and Kelurish/Kelurian. But I'm
sticking w/ native terms for those, for now at least.

--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://blog.glossopoesis.org

"We're counting on our virtues,
Cause it's too hard to count the dead."
 - Jason Webley

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