Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Thursday, October 15, 1998, 0:47
Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> In my teens, as I've said, I churned out one IAL after another. > I didn't discover them - I invented them. Quite the wrong approach IMO to > true conlanging.
Amen. Tarni'f was entirely "invented". It was heavily influenced by English, but it wasn't an English relex. I'd taken Latin earlier, and I was taking Spanish at the time, so some of it was influenced by Spanish and Latin. For example, I had two prepositions for "for", modelled on _por_ and _para_, but I later made them a little different, but I *invented* the rules for their use, so that I merely had to look at what I'd written to know which one to use. But, over my past few conlangs, I've discovered that each one developed more slowly. Why? I think it's because I am "discovering" it. For W., I did'nt set out saying "circumlocative is used for such-and-such situation", I've *discovered* when it's used. My earlier discussion of la'u/kapati' is the same way. Originally, I intended it to simply cover eating and drinking, but I 've since discovered that it's really more like "introducing a substance thru the mouth". -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files ICQ: 18656696 AOL: NikTailor