Re: Conlang game idea

From: "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
Subject: Conlang game idea


> The recent disappointments with relays that never move on have inspired me
> to come up with an idea less prone to timeliness-challenged conlangers.
> ;-)
>
> Basically, it's for two conlangers to carry out a conversation in their
> respective conlangs. The first person sends a greeting or something to
> that effect, in the conlang, of course, together with the appropriate
> lexical/grammatical aids as in the relays. The second person then replies
> in his/her own conlang, and the conversation continues this way.
>
> When the conversation is over (say, maybe after 6-8 roundtrips), both
> participants post their parts of the conversation in English.
> (Alternatively, they could post the *other* person's part in English,
> translated as they understand it. That could be more fun. :-P)
This could be a fun one to try, though perhaps without all the aids from the
conlang.  Adding on another idea mentioned (I think on this list), we could
create a new language with something like this.  An initial message might go
something like this:

Me - (I walk up to you and smile.)
[pava' to vis]

In such a way I could indicate what I'm doing and what I say while doing it.
Much of it could be guessed at by context, so you might assume that [pava'
to vis] is some sort of greeting.  A later message might be:

Me - (I pick up the apple and hold it out to you.)
[te vEstu meSta]

You might be trying to guess at what I'm saying and do this:

You - (I point at the apple and look confused.)
[meSta]

However, your guess that "meshta" means apple might be incorrect, in which
case I'd say "vestu" instead.  Between the two of us, we could form a simple
pidgin for communicating and talking about some basic concepts we might want
to discuss.  As the pidgin comes to a common form, we might agree on an
orthography, then having no need for an IPA-type phonetic notation.  It
would be fun, and it would require little to make it work.

Anyone interested?

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