Re: Question about starting

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008, Peter Collier asked:
> In your novels, does this language exist as a
> natural spoken language or is it meant to be
> some kind of constructed auxiliary language
> (a la Esperanto)?
In the novels, this language (and a more formal variant) are both
natural languages for that planet's population (and another planet's,
but that comes much later). In addition, there is a third language
mentioned, but never actually shown (Trekalan) that may or may not be
based on some variant of English, but that isn't a concern at the
moment, since no words are actually mentioned, unlike the main
language I'm working on.

Gary Shannon asked on the same day,
> The first question you need to ask yourself is
> are you more interested in MAKING a language,
> or are you more interested in HAVING a language.
> To make a convincing language you have to take
> all kinds of factors into considerations such as
> phonology, morphology, syntax, grammar, and so
> on. This can be a daunting project, and unless it is
> really the process of language creation you are
> interested in, might be overwhelming.
So I have discovered (to my chagrin). The language's alphabet is
mostly set; it uses a-z plus ä, ü, and perhaps one or two other of
that set of vowels, but even that has thrown me. My initial idea was
to make the language look totally alien, yet on careful thought,
readable by English speakers. I think now that the idea may have been
more than a tad arrogant on my part.

The reason I said "superlanguage" is simply the fact that during their
encounters with Terrans, they kept discovering that words (and
concepts) were identical in numerous Terran languages to their
language, so they themselves believe that their language may be older
than many Terran languages. The formal version of the language,
however, I decided to represent by using Latin, as it looks very
formal.

Michael Poxon asked,
Is there a history behind the lang? If there is, I'd
say, just make it consistent with that.

Good point. Just not sure exactly how to manage that. I'd like to work
up at least a 900-1200 word lexicon (with proper grammar, etc.) to
permit conversations to be written in it. Perhaps a tad over-ambitious
on my part.

Lars Finsen asked,
>>  Some folks who saw that initial word accused me
>>  of using Norwegian as my language's base, but
>>  that is not the case at all.
> I have to ask: You don't happen to be Norwegian yourself, do you?
No, afraid not, although my mom and I plan on a trip (perhaps to
Norway) in 2010 to see the Northern Lights (but that's rather
off-topic, isn't it?). The word cited simply came up one day in 1997,
and I used it in a writing exercise.

> Anyway, welcome to the list. It's a fun place, and
> an enormous, sometimes overwhelming, storehouse
> of knowledge. Do you plan to keep your anonymity for long?
Actually, I didn't intend to make that bit of mistake. I use this
address strictly for novel-related stuff, so I haven't done a sig-file
for it yet. (Since I wasn't using it that much, didn't see the need.)
However, will make one ASAP. (and yes, I keep it short and very
simple)

Carl Banks inscribed,
> [L]ooking into my crystal ball, I see that your
> series of novels is about a small group of
> survivors from every continent who climbed
> into a spaceship and escaped Terra just before
> the Cataclism.  The language they'd end up all
> speaking would be an unbalanced creole
> (that borrows heavily from a few and lightly
> from the rest) and creoles seem to retain only
> the simplest parts of the original language's
> grammar and reinnovate the more complex parts.
Actually, you're both right (one race did escape a cataclysmic event
that destroyed their original home system) and wrong in that only
after encountering the federation that contains Terra did they begin
to suspect that things were a little more interesting than they'd
realized. (yes, trying hard /not/ to do any real clues here.)

To everyone: I don't normally do a massive reply like this, but felt I
needed to this once. Please forgive the length. (My sigfile is the
first line after the "-- " construct only; the others are explanation
and won't be repeated unless someone requests.)
--
Raymond Danner III
(author of the series "Flight of the Raven" (currently at 3 volumes)
and the book "Trouble in Paradise" (set in the same universe, only
thousands of years prior))

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