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This Month's Posts: Not Diacritical ·
Update on Lack of Updates ·
Rooting around for Word Ideas ·
Less on Lessons ·
Saving Privacy, Ryan ·
No Kamakawi Kamikaze Script ·
Nanu-Nanu, NaNoWriMo ·
Shout Out to Scouts
Next Month's Entries Not Diacritical - 11/28/04 - 2:04 pmSteve writes, "I am inventing a language that has yet to be named, and I have two scripts for it, but I prefer to write in the Latin alphabet for obvious reasons. The thing is that I use the accented letters á (the /o/ in 'lot'), é (the /e/ in 'pet') and ú (the /oo/ in 'loot'). These characters were chosen simply because I am left-handed and these are easier to write. However, I am not sure if these characters have an assigned sound, or if the sound change they create varies from language to language. Do I need to majorly re-spell my entire language? (If so, I am fortunate because it is in its infancy.)"
Far be it from me to be diacritical of your efforts. I haven't done a survey of the use of diacritics, but for natural languages they have been specifically used to expand the Latin alphabet's small number of vowels to the needs of the language at hand. You are acting in that grand tradition as you design your own orthography, and I see no need for you to change your use of those marks.
Update on Lack of Updates - 11/26/04 - 5:30 pmThis site is maintained by a Dell Windows system that regularly pushes static web pages to a Solaris server. Unfortunately, last Wednesday the hard drive died, leaving me unable to update the site. The good news is that we're back; the bad news is that we're further behind than ever in publishing updates. Bear with me.
Rooting around for Word Ideas - 11/16/04 - 11:45 pm
Proud2BPagan writes, "I am in the process of trying to create a naming language as per your article. I have reached a stumbling block. I have already formed a list of pieced-together sounds, but at this point they have no meaning. I know that I'd like the words of my language to be built of very simple concepts pieced together. The best example I have of what I'd like is this sentence: Turkhirhamnartus., from rhamni meaning "metal", turkha meaning "eat", and nartus being the future tense/singular/neuter marker, yielding the sentence, "It will rust." My problem is deciding what words to use as the basic concepts each root will convey. I'd like to note that though a naming language will fit my immediate needs I intend on using its offspring as conversational languages for the fantasy world I am creating. As for my experience with conlangs, this is my first creative venture for something with meaning. I have however taught myself a little Klingon and Sindarin."
I take it this means that you like a compound such as "metal eater" for the word "rust"? My collaborative conlang Dublex was specifically conceived of for seeing how many words could be compounded from minimal roots. Check out this 5000-compound spreadsheet, which generates those words from 400 roots. For a language with more roots and more compounds, check out Lojban, which was one of the inspirations for Dublex.
Less on Lessons - 11/15/04 - 11:01 pmAaron Morse asks, "I was wondering if you know of any good resources (online) or instructions for how to write lessons for conlangs. I personally have great fun creating languages, but while trying to write lessons for a primer I always get stuck. What's the best way to teach this? How to teach vocabulary, etc.? So I was wondering if there were any tutorials or instruction stuff about that sort of thing (pertaining particularly to conlangs)."
Not that I'm aware of; there's not much in comparison to other conlang tutorials (we need a meta-tutorial!). You probably want to search for resources for teaching natlangs. For conlangs, here are the 140+ conlangs that have primers: they may provide some inspiration. My own Kali-sise primer takes the approach of mini-lessons; each of the 16 lessons introduces just six roots to memorize, some compounds from the roots to give the learner ideas, and then teaches one primary grammatical principle (using the six roots or earlier vocabulary). I'd also check out Lernu, which embodies some great ideas for teaching a conlang (in this case, Esperanto).
Saving Privacy, Ryan - 11/14/04 - 11:34 pmNB asks, "Could you send to me the e-mail address of an author of a conlang?"
Unfortunately that would violate our privacy policy (published for the first time, but representing our longstanding process). But tell me the conlang, and I will contact the author and let them know how to get in touch with you.
No Kamakawi Kamikaze Script - 11/11/04 - 9:08 pmDavid J. Peterson writes:I recently had a breakthrough with the Kamakawi orthography. I've never really known what to do with it. Originally I had the idea of giving it a script based on one of my other alphabets (that one being Zhyler's Zhüðey Veskay), but I really wanted the language to have its own unique neography as well. I toyed with the idea of having a script like Egyptian's, but never got any further than the toying stage. Then I came across this, when its "language maker" transliteration image was posted in the top right corner of the homepage:
I followed the link to the Hiberaar Roda site, and was totally blown away by the developmental stages that led to the end result. It really got me reenergized, and I've now created (or am in the process of creating--this one'll take awhile) an orthography I really like, which combines a Chinese-like system with a syllabary, and borrows some elements from Egyptian hieroglyphs. Here's a sample:
That says E Kalaka Kamakawi, "The Kamakawi Language". I just wanted this opportunity to thank Jan Havlis for the inspiration, and congratulate him on creating a neat, well-thought-out neography.
P.S.: I'd also like to cite the Hangraphy project as the inspiration for how I dealt with bound morphemes.
Nanu-Nanu, NaNoWriMo - 11/10/04 - 9:32 pmIf you've submitted anything to the site besides a neologism this month, I haven't gotten to it yet and won't for a little bit. After two years of watching NaNoWriMo go by, I decided this year I simply had to participate, though I'm cheating by writing a novelette instead of the 50,000-word novel the contest shoots for, since -- with everything going on in Real Life -- I can only spare about a half hour a day right now (about 550 words a day, compared to the 1,667 needed by NaNoWriMo).
I am taking a unique approach: I'm writing the novella backwards, a scene at a time, as I knew how the story ended but wasn't entirely sure how it got there. In the past, I've tended to ramble forward without an outline, ending up with a lot of dreck that had to be cut. This approach seems much more efficient, and it certainly makes foreshadowing a lot easier!
The novella, tentatively entitled "The Life of Yesel", does use a new conlang, of course, a naming language, but I'm just making up names for now, and I'll clean them all up in a revision.
Shout Out to Scouts - 11/09/04 - 10:44 pmDavid J. Peterson has done such a great job these past three months as editor of Neologisms, that I've decided to look for more volunteer editors. If you are interested in editing all new submissions to one of the site's other directories every two weeks, then please contact me. The submissions will be e-mailed to you, and you will mail me back a delimited text file of all the submissions you want to add.
I've also decided to formally describe the previously informal role of Scout. The site benefits from quite a few Scouts who keep an eye out for new items that are worth submitting to the directories: special thanks to Robert Jung (Resources), Matthias Persson (Neographies), Felix Wan (Babel Texts) and David Solly (Books). Since a directory can benefit from having more than one Scout, contact me if you are interested in trying to follow some of Langmaker's existing links for new resources (for instance, checking conlangs to see if they have new unique scripts that aren't yet indexed here).
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