>
> 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).