Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

>
> That is so interesting!  I have thought for a while that my perception of
> English may be "non-standard but fully functional."  Perhaps we should ask a
> new "lefthand/righthand/goatee/hair color/sexual orientation" question: What
> is your personal writing style like in your native language?  Does it ever
> get you into trouble, i.e., do pedantic proofreaders ever give you grief
> about perfectly grammatical sentences that run to five clauses or more?
> Obviously, as a group we must be very "verbal" people, independent of
> "right-brain/left-brain dominance".  So I guess we should ask: Do you
> consistently and spontaneously do quirky things with your native lang? Did
> you do this before you were consciously a conlanger?
Well, for example, I say the plural of 'box' is 'boxen', because 'ox' ->
'oxen', which I am going to try and expand that any noun that ends in a
's' sound (x or s, basically), the plural is formed -en instead of -es,
so 'princess' -> 'princessen', 'prince' -> 'princen', etc..as well, I am
also trying to say 'will'nt' instead of 'won't' more often :P I also
have gotten into fights with my English teacher because
I say punctuation goes after quotes (unless it is directly part of the
quote). <-- example right there :P Also, before I even knew about
conlanging, I thought about forming a group along the lines of the
reformation of english group. Cuz I think English is screwey, and needs
to be like, standardized so that it is logical. But now that I'm
creating my own language, I can leave english alone and focus on di^me'l
:) I can do anything I want to it. And on the note of shortening words
like 'through', and stuff, I do it a lot in writting and typping because
it's quicker. Tho usually I use the full forms, at times it's much
easier to type 'u' 'r' '4' '2' 'dc' 'bc' 'dl', and so on, to save time.
It's easier :P Anyways, it's generally the way most of the people I
associate w/ write and type, so I pick it up from them. Tho usually I
like using the full words, but time is fun to save :) Personal writing
style, I get greif because I use 'sentance fragments' a lot. Like I say
a bunch of stuff, then say "Ergo, foobar", which is not a full sentance
(because I don't have a verb...english needs a phrase like "c'est"!) But
I generally write the way I talk, since that seems natural (except when
my thoughts turn french, then I don't know how to spell anything :P)
Although a lot of people tend to get annoyed quand je utilise la
fraincais....je ne comprends pas porquoi...personnes cingle'! :P

And I did this a lot before I learned about actual conlanging. There was
a time, like, 7th grade or so, that I started inventing my own language,
but didn't put any effort into it (considering I had no idea how
language worked). But now, I can actively learn about things that the
grammar books never really explain--I think--or at least I can get a
better idea of how the world works through knowing about languages...or
something...yah...methinks I've been not getting enough sleep
recently...damn chickens..always crossing the road when I want to sleep
</lame inside joke that no one'll probably get>


>
> On a related but far-fetched subject: At a very early stage of deveplopment
> of Asiteya, I had created a verb "yasan" - to dwell. Months later, having
> forgotten about its existence, I needed a word for house. Rolling sounds
> around on my tongue for a while, I found "yasi" tasted just right.
> Unrelated events of creation, related words. It makes me think, perhaps
> these languages are already fully formed, deep in the subconscious, waiting
> for the intellect to discover them.  Has anyone else had expereinces like
> this?
Not offhand--though I think the human psyche has kind of, ingrained in
it, different sounds conjure different images. Note the word love..it is
not a hard word, it is a soft word..methinks it got that way because of
association. Kill, maim, destroy, all are kind of 'harsh' sounding,
which is the type of things they do :P Of course, I'm sure one could
cite counterexamples, but it's an interesting trend. Human psyche.
Definately. Ummm...methinks that's about it for this ramble on and on...

Ciao.

-Axiem
-axiem@swbell.net
-AIM: Axiem
"Ki ki^be kim" "Ne! Ne! Ne! Te' ki^tobe te'm!" "Ki ki^be?"
 - off of the top of my head. Anyone going to try and wager a guess as
to what I said? :P Pretty soon I'll get around to posting a small
lexicon of di^me'l...as soon as I figure out what all the possible verb
forms *mean*...yah.....

Finis.