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Re: Language-generating software (was Re: Replies to my Introduction)

From:Roberto Suarez Soto <ask4it@...>
Date:Saturday, January 11, 2003, 23:28
On Jan/11/2003, Jeffrey Henning wrote:

> 1. Do you regularly use language-gen software? > [ ] Yes [ ] No {place an X in the appropriate box}
"Yes" (writing into already quoted text is a no-no for me :-))
> 2. If yes, which one?
My own, "wordpuker". It's a Perl program based in morphological syllabic constraints. Or something alike, at least :-)
> 3. What do you like about the language-gen software you've looked at?
I must confess that I didn't look into any other O:-) I did wordpuker for fun, just to see if I could do something that emulated something that Zompist wrote in his tutorial.
> 4. What do you dislike?
I haven't yet found an easy way to "code" good-sounding languages. Or to say it clearly: the words generated are still a bit "too random". Anyway, the problem is not in the program itself (well, not *all* the problem, I mean :-)), but also in finding a good "schema", a good "formula" for a language.
> 5. What would you all like to see in such software?
Everything that other (or was it you? :-m) poster wrote :-) Wordpuker currently can use Lingua::SoundChange to simulate "sibiling languages", generating first words in a language and then applying sound changes to them. But anyway, it's not very intuitive yet. In fact, I'll qualify it as very geeky :-) -- Roberto Suarez Soto