Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Yitzik and Basilius met in Kiev

From:Herman Miller <hmiller@...>
Date:Thursday, March 1, 2007, 4:34
Isaac Penzev wrote:

> I would appreciate if you ppl can share your ideas wrt creating a_priori > vocabulary without using software (that I usually feel inadequate to satisfy > my creativity). > > -- Yitzik
I had some success in the early days of Tirelat with my "eight words a day" project -- think of eight related ideas (names of trees, vehicles, parts of the body, or some such thing) and assign names to them. Trying to create more vocabulary than that at once is just too much of a strain on the creative processes -- and even that many words at once might be stretching it -- but having a daily goal seemed to be helpful. I always like to keep a supply of "spare roots" handy -- I come up with a bunch of roots that fit the idea I have for the sound of the language, and when I need a word, I look through the list to see if any of the spare roots might fit, or at least give me ideas. I'll occasionally look through a dictionary to find a word I like the sound of, and use it to mean something totally different. But many of those kinds of words are too recognizable as resembling one language or another. Another thing if you have lots of derivational morphology would be to go through from time to time and look for new derivations that might be useful -- pick one affix and try it with lots of different roots.

Replies

Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>Creating vocabulary (was: Yitzik and Basilius met in Kiev)