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

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. I could develop, say, a daughter language to Tairezazh now, but
that would require advancing the "present" of the relevant coniverse centuries
into the future - a task for I'm fairly certain I'm not going to find the time
this side of retirement (I'm 21).

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.

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! :)

                                                        Andreas

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