Re: conlan/natlang coincidences

En réponse à James W :


>Magge - Maggio. Quinto mese dell'anno...
>
>I could not help but think of Christophe's Maggel. Who knows, maybe his
>language is an unconscious (or conscious :)) ) reference to a dialect of
>Italian referring to the month of May... ;)
LOL. Well, AFAIK, I just pulled the name "Maggel" out of nowhere. But since
"nowhere" in psychology usually means "the whole bag of memories you carry
with you without actually noticing it" ;))))) , one can just guess where it
really comes from ;))) . Anyway, It's pronounced [m@'gE:l], so I'm still
far enough from ['madZe 'madZo] ;))) .

>This got me wondering about how we all approach the specific creation of
>words in conlangs, and how closely we try to relate them (or not!) to
>natlangs. Obviously, for languages like Wenedyk and others the
>similarities are conscious. But for others, like Orêlynna (my current
>conlang), I wonder how consciously we try to *avoid* any forms that
>resemble natlangs.[2]
In Maggel, I sometimes try to *provoke* forms that resemble natlangs, in a
kind of joking way ;)) . For instance, take the word for "8000" (Maggel is
base 20): |iuemahl|. The written form doesn't seem to relate to anything,
but the spoken form ['yImIL\] does connect to some words of some language
(I let you guess which ones). I even make such joke forms, and then create
pseudo-derivations to make even more joke forms ;)) . For instance, the
word for "million", which is in Maggel a borrowing, is |muorhiadf|:
['mIr\_j&d], from English "myriad". But Maggel has also |bmuorhiadf|:
['bIr\_j&d], meaning "billion" (European sense, i.e. a million million),
which is obviously formed according to the "million-billion" example, but
using "myriad" as base here :)) .

>[2] I'm not talking about things like |zxpcvmzxzdswfwtre| which are not
>(to me at least) pronounceable, but rather that we come up with word forms
>which are unlike any natlangs which we know, for instance
>þeyholanayte(which is the passive form of 'to scatter' for 1PL, future
>tense: 'we will be scattered').
Somehow, I first read that word as "psychoanalyse" ;)))) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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