Re: conlan/natlang coincidences
| From: | Herman Miller <hmiller@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 18, 2003, 3:38 |
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On Tue, 17 Jun 2003 13:26:12 -0400, James W <JWorlton@...> wrote:
>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]
I borrowed a number of Tirelat words from Tilya, which were all randomly
generated words to begin with. I ended up not keeping many of the random
words, but I still tended to avoid natlang resemblances, even replacing the
few borrowings like "piica" (pizza) with native Tirelat forms like
"fazlizimi" (flatpie). Occasional accidental resemblances (Tirelat _moli_
"grain" vs. Spanish _molino_ "mill") were kept.
Lindiga has quite a range from direct borrowings (kangúrru "kangaroo",
perlína "jelly doughnut", pinki "pink (color)", trrêma "dieresis") to
distorted borrowings (miti "three", mrryöni "maroon", nglusu "tongue",
mapta "raccoon"), including borrowings from my other langs (jalicha "eagle"
from Jarda "yalhka"). But most Lindiga words (chalem "burrow", muong
"nose", nöki "many", rnangvi "sour", wesetl "side") are designed to avoid
resembling any other language I'm familiar with.
In the case of my new Zireen languages (none of which has really got off
the ground yet), I'm deliberately trying to avoid resemblances to natlangs,
since there'd be no reason (except unlikely coincidence) for words spoken
by non-humans on a distant planet to sound familiar to humans. But
coincidences do happen (Mbabaram "dog" = English "dog"), so I might sneak
in a few "accidental" resemblances here and there.
--
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