Re: Uber newbie-conlanger conlang

Sai Emrys wrote:

>One of the people in my class is doing a conlang that, in the
>conculture, is meant to be a somewhat kludgy conlang.
>
>If you think of this a bit, what this means is essentially one of the
>goals is to be as much like a newbie's conlanger as possible... but
>more so. Almost, one could say, a parody thereof?
>
>So: Advice? What would you want to do to not grow out of, but *build
>upon* all those newbie's mistakes you've made?
- English orthography! Use <a e i o u> for /ei/ /i/ /ai/ /ou/ /ju/...
SOMEtimes. Don't explain when <e> would be /E/ and when /i/; it's obvious
anyway, right?.
- Use c and x in your orthography but don't say what for.
- Forbid certain clusters in the introductory section but keep using them in
the vocab lists etc.
- Use your "object marker" after the verb "be".
- Completely calquing English is one idea, but the job's not done unless you
insist the result "is simple because it has no grammar".
- make your plural marker the raspberry. Do not use this sound anywhere else.
- apostrophes anywhere with no function -- just for looks.

Mistakes I've made:

- come up with your Roman orthography before you know which characters can
be displayed properly on computers. Keep the language on paper only for a
few years so the orthography becomes ingrained enough that you can't change
it and are forced to make a noncanonical one using apostrophes.
- attach all inflections to a word other than the one to which their
function applies (some of this survives).
- calque Japanese (may that conlang never see the light of day again!)

>(This is presumably somewhat different than merely the opposite of the
>"naturalism" goal, though that's a good starting point.)
I think it's a great starting point! The only parody-langs I've seen so far
are short sketches of fake Euroclones and hypersimplified IALs.


Sally Caves wrote:

> 7)  Having picked up a book like Comrie's, decide that you're going to make
> it ergative, and that you're going to get rid of the verb at the same time.
> :)  This will take some planning, so it's a clean erase, and back to the
> blackboard.
Hey, that's Omurax!

M