Re: Conlang game idea

On Sunday 23 February 2003 8:03 am, Joseph Fatula wrote:
> 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?
I'm interested in that too.  I'll take part in both, if you want...

but why does it have to be a pidgin?  I'd like a fully fledged language...

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