Re: Teliya Nevashi Grammar beginnings

On 7/23/07, Amanda Babcock Furrow <langs@...> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 18, 2007 at 01:13:50PM -0400, Mia Soderquist wrote:
>
> > The beginnings of the grammar are at
> > http://nevashi.blogspot.com/2007/07/introductionoverview-this-language-is.html.
>
> Wonderful!  I'm glad this is why the Ianea blog disappeared, and not some
> other reason! :)
>
> I love the concept.  I've been wanting to make a conlang where the sense
> of the verb depended on two separable pieces ever since dipping into
> Navajo.  Your auxiliaries look very nice and would be fun to learn to
> wield properly.
I am glad that you liked the ideas.

I am looking forward to taking it out for a test drive on some longer
or more complicated translations in the near future, to get a chance
to "learn and wield" the language as it currently is. (I am definitely
a "learn-by-doing" kinda gal. ) I am really lacking vocabulary right
now, and much of what I did have is in my notebook that has gone
missing, along with my copy of _Describing Morphosyntax_. I guess I
will be making up new words to replace what I have lost and can't
remember.


> Curiously, my oldest language started out being known as Ea (the verb
> "to be", shamelessly stolen from Eru Illuvatar's world-creating
> utterance in The Silmarillion), but I ended up deciding that was the
> name of the universe and inventing an ethnonym for the language
> (mërèchi - soon maybe to be known as mirexu, I keep waffling on the
> sound change, but really, all those derived nouns in -ia are way way
> too Greek).  So maybe this is a pattern?
>
Old language names never die. They just expand to take up the whole universe.

> Finally, I totally second the importance of a native writing system.
> Now that I've decided mërèchi is to be a lostlang, and its embarrassing
> orthography an accident of the missionary-philolgist (T.E. Hastely) who
> discovered it's (<- clitic abuse!) ignorance, I really really want to
> see it in the "original abugida", and I have created one, but it has
> problems, and I have a toddler.
>
I also have a toddler. It's a miracle anyone with preschoolers ever
has time to bathe, much less invent languages and their writing
systems.

I am starting to develop a little something in the way of a writing
system. I am trying to avoid recycling the same symbols I've used in
other writing systems, so I am having a look at the doodles I have
everywhere and finding things I can use. I figure it will take at
least another 6 months of incubation before anything useful comes out
of that.

> But there will be a dictionary, oh yes, someday there will, and it will
> be in abugida order.  With alternate spellings flagged, as so: "et-i-al:
> see e-ti-al".  Or vice versa.
>

I can't wait to see what it looks like. I am always astounded at the
beautiful writing systems other conlangers create. I don't feel like I
really have a talent for that sort of thing, but I hope that things
will turn around if I don't feel like I have to come up with the whole
thing at once.

On a mostly unrealated note, I've been thinking that when I have an
alphabet that I like, I want to create a few artifacts with the
language on them-- something conculturally appropriate. Quite a long
time ago, I came across Propping Up The Mythos
(http://www.miskatonic.net/pickman/mythos/) and I've been dying ever
since to create artifacts from my own universe. Maybe I have just
spent too much time wandering around the museums at The Smithsonian...


Mia.