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Re: Words

From:The RipperDoc <ripperdoc@...>
Date:Saturday, February 2, 2002, 14:42
Hi!
I've already come up with another question ;-)
Now it's about words, and the creating of words for conlangs.
As i understand it, words in natural languages are constructed either of
borrowing of words and deriving words from other. Sound change and semantic
change then does the job of making the borrowings and derivations harder to
recognize.
But Varon is supposed to be a constructed language, constructed by the gods.
In our world, all languages have a mother language (is that the correct word
for it?). But Varon doesn't have any ancestor, it's really the first
language. That makes the process of creating words rather odd, because some
words, the roots, can have no etymology at all. They were just "invented"
right out of the minds of the gods.
One could imagine that the first created words in our world were
onomateopoethic (correct term?), i.e. sound imitating. Do you have any
suggestions on how making more words? I'm quite tired of just deriving words
from a few, "invented-out-of-the-air" roots (but still, I now have about 520
words). How do you construct words for a theoretical language with no mother
tongue?

/Martin

Reply

Padraic Brown <agricola@...>