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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, November 14, 2003, 8:52
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

Replies

Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>Consistency in naming (was Re: creating words (was Re: "Language Creation" in your conlang))
JS Bangs <jaspax@...>
Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>