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 Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:13 pm
-how long does it take one usually to make a conlang, excluding all the lil glitches and bumps that come up you have to iron out as you begin to use it?
-i have a whole notebook dedicated to a conlang I plan to make. All i have is a few notes on what i need to get done, and a few sounds and dialect ideas, but i'm not sure if thats a good way to start, any suggestions?
-i know french, english and hte basic structure and sounds for japanese, is this a good start for making a conlang (cause more then likely i'll take ideas from those languages).
-words lists?
-who can i brainstorm w/? I like having someone i can babble to to get my ideas out, it helps me sort my brain out and a lil feed back never killed anyone.
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:38 pm
I'll help! I'll help! blaugh *raises and waves hand enthusiastically from the back of the class*
I love hearing about people's ideas, and I have similar language background too. (I'm fluent in English, I'm just starting French this year, and I have three years of German under my belt, too. I also know what I call "fan-girl" japanese. sweatdrop whee ) My conlang started with a single notebook too, but it's evolved since then. I'm still not done with it, actually, so I don't know how long it really takes, that sounds like a question for Eccentric Iconoclast. I think your background in language is sufficiant for creating one, because you've been exposed to how a language is taught. 3nodding
If you're looking for a place to start, or finish, I guess sweatdrop wink , I suggest www.zompist.com
Look on the sidebar and there's a link for a language construction kit, along with the number systems of over 1000 languages, and much, much more on linguistics in general. It's a pretty cool site. cool
I also recommend transferring any words you have already created to excel or a similar program, because then you can alphabetize it and boom, you have a dictionary. razz
Good luck! whee
(I'm usually snooping around the guild, so I'll see it if you keep posting. wink )
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:54 pm
*huggles you* yay *gives you a cookie* anyhow, so i basically have written little snippets of sounds I like.... to use in words. A lot of them have two consonants together. Kinda like column< the 'mn'. Lots of 'ly' things. 'lyr' 'lyn' or backwards.... 'nyl' (y is replaceable with i, i ahve one with two i). Thats sort of thing. I was also of thinking of ways to represent plural... But thats about as far as I am.
*goes to look at webby* i was looking at it earlier actaully.... the big words are scary >.> i wonder if the library would have anything to help me out...
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Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 6:41 pm
That's kinda like my combinations of a consonant + h + another consonant. I like your idea for sounds. 3nodding I usually don't blend sounds either, so "phf" is really pronounced "p+f" (like the german word "Pfennig") Also, I form plural by adding "milo" in front of the word being modified. Perhaps you could try that. wink
What about tenses for verbs? (Like past, present, future stuff?) I try to come up with that early on. Oh, what's your sentence order? (Mine's Verb, Subject, Object.)
note- *accepts cookie with glee* blaugh YAY! COOKIE!!!
whee fun stuff.
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 4:58 am
Hehe, plurals for Ædri Ky are shown through the case system... each case particle has a plural form. Also, something I liked the idea of was a query particle, like in Japanese. After all, what better way to form a question? No messing with word order, no bothering with tone, just add a single, short word to the beginning or end of the sentence.
VSO sentence order is fairly common, I've heard. It's easy for a beginning conlanger to use because the verb is right there at the beginning, which makes the whole thing fall into place a bit easier.
Personally, I started working on Ædri Ky's grammar and working that out as much as I could first, then started working on vocab. It took me a few weeks to get the general structure worked out, and now all the work I do on Ædri Ky is either vocab building or working out the finer details in grammar.
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 2:17 pm
Ah, yes, I love using particles. XD (I have a question word too. It's "Niya" and placed at the beginning of the sentence. But it's only for yes-no questions, I have other words placed at the beginning that mean how, what, who, ect. and in that case, "niya" isn't needed.)
And for the record, I just happen to LIKE the VSO order, I didn't really do it for simplicity. 3nodding
What about case changes?(I actually don't have any, its all depicted in sentence order. Verb, Subject, Object, Indirect Object.)Or what about possesion? (I add "-si" to the one possesing and "-sa" to the one being possesed. This works for subject pronouns too. My dog = Isi dogsa. or "lasi ukasa". For multiple possesion, ie: my father's dog, I just add another si and sa, so it looks like "Isi fathersasi dogsa" or "lasi vatisasi ukasa".)
mrgreen
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 3:42 pm
case system? query particle? sentence order? the only one i kinda understand is sentence order... the others i'm not sure what they are. Okay, well, I wanted to make a few words so I could string sentences together and see how it sounds.
Okay, I have a lot more done now. I have all the vowel pronunciations fixed up, and i'm sure as more words come up, I'll be adding more. But so far this is how it is:
y - ih (is)
u - uh
a - eh
o - oh
y+r - eer
a+i - eye
i - eye
e - ee (xcept for at the end of a word, where its silent)
u+h - uh
e+w - oo
add k for plural, if the word has a k on the end already, just add another and stress the k, making a 'kay' sound.
what do you think? its really straight forward, but thats it for now. All my color names start with ki. the only number i have is 10, which i'm planning to build the rest around. Also, if in english you say 'it is dark' in my language you would say 'dark is it' which is still somewhat correct, but a little uncommon to say. So my adjective comes before the subject.
As for making words, is it right just to just write a whole bunch of random meaningless words and decide which ones you like, then give them meanings based on how you feel about them?
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 5:02 pm
Ah, you have an SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) word order 3nodding
As for case, I'm still trying to learn it, and I even included it in Ædri Ky! xd It's not used all that much in English, to tell the truth, which is why native English-speakers (like me) have such a hard time comprehending it.
See, at least you have a background in knowing other languages - I only know bits and pieces of other languages, and I've never taken any kind of language class. Yet, here I am, making my own conlangs! xp
Note: If the 'e' is silent at the end of a word, I might suggest dropping it altogether, unless you're deliberately leaving it there as a remnant of an archaic pronunciation, like what we have in English. Seriously - words like light, note, and comb used to be pronounced pretty much like they're spelled, but the pronunciation changed while the written language didn't.
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Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 5:31 pm
lol sounds good. ahah. *uses your provided excuse* It makes the word look prettier... >.> which won't really matter in the end because it will have its own alphabet.
I'm finding my conlang being influenced a lot by Japanese, even its thats the language i speak the least stare but I guess English too lol. I may use some of what i know of French for the verb system. *gets a headach just thinking about it* Verbs kill me, especially when in French. *pulls out her French verb dictionary*
my conlang isn't sounding very exotic stare it just sounds like... random sounds...
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 3:10 pm
Ah, but alas, random sounds ARE exotic! whee
I like you're ideas, erm... but I agree with the whole drop the e thing. (I don't really like french because you don't pronounce anything, it's a pet peve of mine. XD) Hmm... what's your alphabet/syllablry gonna look like? (like, squiggly, squarish, loopy, ect.) I like pictograms personally. 3nodding
What's your number 10? I could help you with numbers, I like them. whee And which verbs from french are you using as a basis? (ir, er, or re?)
And if you're having trouble with grammar stuff, you could type linguistics or grammar into google for some help. wink
mrgreen
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 5:24 pm
Homurakitsune Ah, but alas, random sounds ARE exotic! whee I like you're ideas, erm... but I agree with the whole drop the e thing. (I don't really like french because you don't pronounce anything, it's a pet peve of mine. XD) Hmm... what's your alphabet/syllablry gonna look like? (like, squiggly, squarish, loopy, ect.) I like pictograms personally. 3nodding What's your number 10? I could help you with numbers, I like them. whee And which verbs from french are you using as a basis? (ir, er, or re?) And if you're having trouble with grammar stuff, you could type linguistics or grammar into google for some help. wink mrgreen ok well my idea for ten is ako. I'ma make the alphabet now. but I'm thinking either lines (something that looks like it could be engraved using a chisel), or rounded and sorta squiggley. I'm not sure about the verb system, I dunno where to start with that, i really don't. crying
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Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 7:50 pm
Well, if ten is ako, you should relate that to the "teen" numbers and also the "ty" numbers. In Niora, the number ten is "moki", so therefore the number 11 is "moki-one", 12 is "moki-ute", 20 is "ute-moki" and so on. If you're basing your numbers on ten, then you should find some words for 1-9 before going on. (If you have problems with that, you could even make the word for 5 ten/2 or the number 9 ten-1, that way, everything revolves around your first created number. There's also a numbers in 1000 languages thread on www.zompist.com in the sidebar, that may help also.)
About the script, it depends on the background of the language. What kind of people speak it? Elves? Normal Humans? What concepts are important to them? Will it look somewhat roman? Or like pictograms? You'll have to decide that when you figure out what the community stresses in their writing. For example, people who are perfectionists or like to take their time when writing would probably have pictograms or a syllablry. On the other hand, in a culture where time is of the essence, people will no doubt write quickly, blending letters to make the overall text look scribbly. An Elf might have a very elegant looking style, full of loops and an overall flowing look to it. So that just...kinda...depends... sweatdrop whee
About the verbs, I try not to make my languages to hard, so I usually have only regular verbs, because I find irregulars to be a tax on memory. I've also found that if you start with creating the infinitive ending of the verbs, conjugating ideas come more quickly, so try to come up with something that sounds good to go on the end of all your verbs, then try to come up with how they conjugate. 3nodding
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Eccentric Iconoclast Captain
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:12 am
The phonology needs work; it looks very Englishy for now. Drop the diphthong /aI/ and try to make the pronunciation of letters a bit more standard; it's very Englishy to use for the schwa, for instance. It's also very Englishy to use to represent /u:/. Same with representing .
And that's just a few of them. Why don't you head over to the Language Construction Kit and start over? surprised
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:52 pm
Eccentric Iconoclast The phonology needs work; it looks very Englishy for now. Drop the diphthong /aI/ and try to make the pronunciation of letters a bit more standard; it's very Englishy to use for the schwa, for instance. It's also very Englishy to use to represent /u:/. Same with representing .
And that's just a few of them. Why don't you head over to the Language Construction Kit and start over? surprised You're right... ahaha, thanks for the honest input. The problem is I find the way the Construction Kit is worded to be very confusing. For alot of it, I find myself reading the same paragraph a few times over and that just gives me a head ache. >.> I didn't understand the whole phonology section very well at all. diphthong? schwa. OMG i know that word.... one sec........ ARG can't remember. anyhow. I'm just not sure what i can do about the phonology and how far i can warp the one letter's sound before its just... I dunno. I'm confused now. Hahah. And now I'm making myself look not that intelligent. stare *can't wait for next few years of school* More... Knowledge.... now... domokun
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:59 pm
Yeah, zompist is a good source, but it is kinda... wordy...
You could try looking up the international alphabet for help with the representation of sound. 3nodding
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