Re: Desiring good English to Greek / Greek to English and English to Latin / Latin to English books

David:

I second Roger's comments on http://zompist.com/kit.html; you might check it
out. If you're really into the paper and ink, many of us around here really
like Thomas Payne's *Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists*,
(DM) but it's not really for beginners. But Payne has also recently
published a textbook with about the same coverage as DM called *Exploring
Language Structure: A Student's Guide*. It's a gentler introduction to the
same material contained in DM and includes exercises at the ends of
chapters.

The only drawback to either text IMO is the lack of discussion of
phonological matters, but that's mostly personal bias (I'm a phonologist
IRL); phonology is outside the scope of both of these books. Just keep in
mind that neither book was intended as a guidebook for constructing
languages, but rather as textbooks in linguistic analysis. Still, you could
get some good ideas from them and better acquaintance with the range of
possibilities.

You might also want to check the archives of the list; we had a short
discussion of "conlanging libraries" (something like that) a while back, and
you might find some other useful hints.

Good Luck!

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 10:07 PM, Nomad of Norad -- David C Hall <
nomad-conlang@...> wrote:

> ROGER MILLS wrote:
>
>> Nomad wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Oh yeah, and what's the best beginners book on learning the art of
>>> conlanging?  :-D
>>>
>>
>> Just today there was a post on Conculture about this (the Holly Lisle
>> Create Clinic series): <quote> These books are not available on Amazon,
>> Powells, nor any other used
>> book store.
>> They are only available through Lulu.
>> These books are Holly Lisle's Create a Plot Clinic; Holly Lisle's
>> Create a Character Clinic; Holly Lisle's Create a Culture Clinic; and
>> Holly Lisle's Create a Language Clinic.</quote>
>>
>> One comment about the last was that it might just be about creating bits
>> and pieces that would "look" like a language, but wouldn't be complete. The
>> problem, apparently, with Lulu is that you can't see any samples of the
>> books, just have to send in your money and hope. That could be
>> disappointing.........
>>
>> Isn't there something on Zompist, How to Create a Language sort of thing??
>> Ah yes: http://zompist.com/kit.html   I also remember Pablo Flores'
>> similar and very good pages on the same subject, but I'm not sure they're
>> still available.
>>
>
> Actually, what I meant was... is there a layman's book about the mechanics
> of languages?  Understanding the terminology, understanding the
> pronunciation-codes, and stuff... from the perspective of someone wanting to
> get a basic grasp of linguistics and of comparing different langauges...
>
> I /thought/ I remembered someone saying "This is a good book to get for
> beginners" over on the freenode.net #conlang channel, and I bookmarked
> some books based on recommendations and stuff, but now I can't remember
> which one of those it was, or if it WAS one of those...  :-|
>
>
>> As to Greek and Latin dictionaries, I can't help. Liddell and Scott IIRC
>> is standard for one of them; have you tried googling? _Perseus_  rings a
>> bell............
>>
>
>
>
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