Re: new to conlanging

>Well, this is my first stab at it.  I'm trying to write a book, and being
>influenced heavily by Tolkien, really wanted a language and culture for my
>characters, not just a bunch of Americans play-acting in costumes.
Ah, a Motive.  I have one almost exactly like it.  (As for culture, you know
about the conculture list on yahoogroups, right?)

>The first word I found was for a planet: Decanul /d2"kAnl/, which means
>"king's hall" (hope I'm getting the SAMPA spelling right!)  Next came the
>song.  I wrote it in English first, then started to use it to develop the
>language.
>
>lili aema /li:li: eimQ/, lit. "dear-little-one mine" or "my dear"
>
>on dethond'aema /on d2"Tond%eimQ/, lit. "in heart-mine" or "in my heart."
>
>dethonde /d2"Tond@/ means "heart" and loses the -e when followed by /ei/, at
>least in poetic use.
>
>corgotaeni /"korGoTeinE/ means "echoes," the plural noun.  I wanted
>something that sounded like a rock falling into other rocks.  I came up with
>corgq.
These are nice-sounding words..

>So!  What I would really like to know is: am I on the right track in making
>my conlang?  Is this how any of you started: kind of unstructured?  How can
>I know what to do next?
It's entirely up to you.  I have taken to building words as I need them (like
you seem to be doing here) which is more encouraging than sitting down with a
list and translating "abbot abating abet abdicating abashed and abased and
abreast..."

(Sometimes start with a system or pattern of how they expect their language to
work and build to that pattern; or sometimes start with a general idea of how
the language works, build as you go along, and discover structures and
tendencies afterwards. In my language the lexicon appears to work the first
way, and the grammar the second--this probably because I don't know so much
about 'grammar' as to plan one out.)



     *Muke!