Re: The Melting

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nik Taylor" <yonjuuni@...>


> Sally Caves wrote:
> > That's so familiar!  Much of my early Teonaht was pulling the words out
of
> > the air.
>
> Same here.  My first conlang had probably a couple thousand words, I
> would just come up with a word and that would be the word.  It was also
> easy to make the grammar.  I decided "They say X this way" and that was
> official.  Now, I often struggle with figuring out a construction or
> word for hours, sometimes days.
Sounds familiar.  I've spent a good amount of time "remaking" old Teonaht
words that were just too long.  One word that I won't get rid of, though, is
tatilynnako:se /'tatIli'nakuse/ --"disgusting."  I have no idea how it
breaks down, since that was what came into my head back when I was fifteen
or so.  It's obviously some kind of compound, but who knows what the parts
mean?

I liked your descriptions of the Kalpanian Empire.

> > Ah ha ha ha !!!   I think there's a reason why we come to conlanging and
> > conworlding at the age of twelve.  Language awakening, sexual awakening,
an
> > awakening to reason and politics and structures, and sexy peoples.  My
major
> > change at age twelve, after two years of making baby Teonean for my
heaven
> > cats, was to put the heaven cats in heaven and turn the Teonim into
young
> > men I could fantasize about, all in tight-fitting very audacious
clothing:
> > earrings in their ears, their long hair braided with silver and copper
> > thread.
>
> Hmm ... my people have always been aliens, who were discovered by humans
> in early incarnations (the Kassii are now completely separate from
> Earth).  There's never been any sexual undertones to them.
I've thought of inventing an alien language for an alien people, and an
alien sexuality, but never got around to it.  Sylvia's language has always
impressed me as a neat thought experiment.  I should look into Uatakassi
more deeply (chagrin); in what ways do you express the alien quality of your
people through their language, Nik?  I should know this, because in the
years I've been on CONLANG you've talked about it enough.  And you filled
out my survey.  I'll look at that again.  It will be of use to me in the
future, but at the time I was mining it for the Celtic conlangs.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."

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