Re: CHAT: query: where to start?

On Wed, 9 Aug 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > Anyway--I've been working on an ancestor language for a language in a
> > story (how's that for too many prepositional phrases?).  I read an
> > article on Arabic morphological structure, and thought, What a neat
> > idea!  So I've been using three-consonant morphemes, with affixes to form
> > root verbs, adjectives, etc.
> >
> > However, I *don't* know any Arabic except "salaam."  :-/  My question
> > was, should I hold off on this until I can learn some Arabic in the
> > nebulous future, and stick to the languages I know something about?
>
> Not necessarily.  Although it would help to learn more about the language
> (more info can always help), what's really important is that you understand
> patterns that occur across languages more than one language's patterns.  What I
> personally find interesting is mixing and matching.  Phaleran, for example,
> has a phonology looks kinda like Hindi and Georgian smashed together,
> while its syntax and morphology have hints of Quechua and Basque.
> (to see what I mean, go here: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/phaleran/>)
I've queried one of my Jewish friends; I'm *told* the consonantal
morpheme thing holds across the Semitic languages, and from what said
friend told me about Hebrew, it sounds at least true for Arabic and Hebrew.

I stole some aspects from who-knows-were, and the probable mood from
Japanese; conjugations do look vaguely Japanese/Korean from my
standpoint, anyway.  I'm borrowing elements from Latin where they fit.

I'm trying for an Oriental-ish culture, so probably I'll lean more toward
Semitic/Japanese-Korean influences (wish I could tackle Chinese or
Indonesian or some *other* Asiatic languages, but those are the only two
I know anything about).

> Rick Morneau has written some pretty good essays on the subject of
> language construction:
>
> <http://www.srv.net/~ram/essays.html>
That's where I got the Arabic morphology, actually.  :-p  I've been using
that and the Language Construction Kit as my main guides; there's another
one by a Pablo Flores? that says it's based on the LCK that I've also
found helpful.

> > Sorry if this is a dumb question.  :-/
>
> There are no dumb questions here, Yoon!
On ne sait jamais...<rueful g>

Cheers,
YHL