Re: Delurking...

John Vertical wrote:

>Hi all! I've been on-and-off-lurking for a while now, but I guess I should
>eventually start participating, too. Maybe now's the time...
>
>I'm a 20-year-old chemistry student from Finland. My language interest took
>off about a year ago, probably initiated by a long-winded email
>correspondence with a friend with a conlang - during which I learned much
>new, eg the existence of /I O v/... I've gone a long way since then, but
>during the journey I have only realized how little I yet know :)
>
>As for my conlang(s)? I believe I come from a background different from
>many
>of you;
Actually, when I read the following I tought you were telling my childhood!
;-P

>I have no linguistic background at all (everything I know I've
>learned online), nor concultures or other works of fiction to go alongside.
I also learned everything online and created no conculture nor fictions.

>So. You all have probably created various "secret alphabets" as kids? You
>know, thinking up replacement symbols for the Latin letters and punctuation
>(and using them to write secret messages.)  I've in the past created lots
>of
>them, too.
Lol I have dozens of them! for French but the purpose's the same

>Then, back in 9th grade, I created one which was not just an
>one-to-one replacement. I threw away a bunch of redundant or unwanted
>letters (eg. b c x) and put in some I deemed more useful (eg. /D N S/). It
>kind of took off from there... I added more "weird" sounds, my own variety
>of redundant letters (eg. pl, kw, oa, ie) and the like. Eventually I
>started
>to clean the system up a little, and like I said, about a year ago, I
>though
>that I might as well make a language to go with it.
>
I never removed letters but I did created symbols for digraphes

I also used to give more than one symbol to the letters that appear more
often like "e, a, i ,o u, t, s" and I was giving independant symbols for
some words such as articles, pronouns, prepositions...

This is also by ciphering that I got interested in languages, I once got the
idea that it would get more confusing and hard to decipher if I used some
particular languages for only little parts of the messages like, "Before
applying the code, translate the greetings in Abenaki, the numbers in
Swahili, the pronounce in an asian language I don't remember of". This Is
how I first got interested in languages...

(Thank you because... In fact I did not remember how I got interested in
languages before you talked of this)

>This language has, strictly speaking, no name so far, but its project
>handle
>(which doesn't yet mean anything...) is "uwjge". (/u\UM\gE/) I've got
>shape-vise estabilished letters, a phonology under constant tinkering,
>various grammatical ideas, and almost no vocabulary at all - but as I see
>it, I'm only starting out, and I'm trying to do this "right" the first
>time.
>:)
>Uwjge is also intended to be my introduction to language creation. I've got
>a few artlang ideas in the queue - one is an entirely non-pulmonic
>language,
>the other an entirely unvoiced one... I can "fluently babble" both of them,
>but I'd certainly like to make them into languages some day.
>
>I *do* have a load of questions, too, but I'm not going to pour them on you
>right now...
>
>Any replies are welcome!
>
>John Vertical
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>3 vrk:n sääennuste http://www.msn.fi/uutiset/saa/
- Max