June 2004 Weblog

June 2004 Weblog	Advanced
This Month's Posts: 100th Neography Posted · Affix Fixation · First Contact · Pottier · The Glamour of Grammar · Belay the Malay Tribute · Sound Files · Heteroclite from the Paraclete · Klaatu Barada Necto · From the Bee's Knees to the Elephant's Adenoids Next Month's Entries 100th Neography Posted - 6/29/04 - 10:04 am David J. Peterson's post of Megdevi Script brings the total number of neographies indexed to 100. It's an interesting coincidence that the 100th is his, since he has posted only four neographies yet had the inaugural post with the first entry, Zhüþey Veskay. (His other two posts were #57, T'ékánta en Mazú, and #59, Petersonian English Alphabet.) Meanwhile, Mattias Persson has posted 73 of these first 100 neographies! Affix Fixation - 6/27/04 - 11:13 pm GoldDust53kt writes, "In creating my own conlang, I've run into a problem. I'm not sure how to do prefixes and suffixes. I'm confused on how they would translate or how they would change. If you have any advice or examples, I would be grateful if you would send them to me. Do you know how Tolkien addressed this? Did he even have prefixes and suffixes?" You wouldn't translate affixes directly into your language. For instance, English -ful has four different but related meanings. Your conlang might use one, two, three or four different affixes to convey these senses. For a systematic approach to the meanings you would want to represent in your language, check out Word-Building with Esperanto Affixes. As a language designed to have a small vocabulary, Esperanto uses affixes for derivation more than most natural languages do. And, yes, Tolkien used affixes. Check out affixes in Quenya and the five basic affixes in Sindarin. First Contact - 6/26/04 - 9:44 pm Overall I love CuteSite Builder (née Trellix, by Dan Bricklin), which I use to manage all the static content on this website (all the content in the root directory, as opposed to the submitted content in the /db/ directory). Unfortunately, the built-in CuteSite form handler truncates long comment entries, so Ive finally replaced the first contact form with a Contact Me form created by some web-survey software. So now you can type away to your hearts content and Ill get the entire text of your comments. Pottier - 6/21/04 - 4:02 pm Mdelamar sent in this interesting story. What about weird connections in languages? During a period when I was studying French in my spare time the toilet broke. When I finally talked myself into repairing it (yuk), this just popped into my head: 'Bubble Bubble Toil et trouble.' Et being the French word for 'and'. It was very strange. The Glamour of Grammar - 6/20/04 - 3:42 pm Sengokujidaisj writes, "I have been working on my own language and am a bit stumped on the grammar. The problem I am having is with sentence structure; when making sentences am I just going to create a cipher for English if I use words in the same order as we say them? And is there any general way to explain to learners how to, for example, ask a question in the proper grammar of my language? Finally, is there any place that may have examples of sentence structure from other languages? Thank you very much. Signed, a confused amateur linguist!" You never hear anyone write about the glamour of grammar, in part because English teachers have made it more difficult than it needed to be, enforcing Latin paradigms in English settings. But you do need a unique grammar for your conlang, to avoid having your language just be a cipher for English. Grammar does not have to be difficult. Check out Kalaba-X to see how little you need to have a grammar. For a more advanced yet still basic grammar, check out Don Harlow's annotations to the Sixteen Rules of Esperanto Grammar, which come across as oversimplifications without Harlow's excellent commentary. For a comparison of natural-language approaches to syntax (word order, and just one part of grammar), check out Rick Morneau's essay on syntax. For two completely different takes on how I've handled grammar in my constructed languages, check out Kali-sise and Fith. For two completely different takes on how natural languages can handle grammar, I recommend getting a book on Latin and a book on Chinese and skimming them. Fascinating contrasts. We're still waiting for the definitive "how to create a grammar" for conlangs, restoring the glamour to grammar. Belay the Malay Tribute - 6/15/04 - 8:17 am In my post on the 300th Babel Text (a Malay translation), I wrote "I love the first sentence, Maka seluruh dunia mempunyai satu bahasa dan pertuturan yang sama, as two conlangs take their names from Malay words used there: Dunia and Bahasan." Mattias Persson wrote in to correct me. "I would like to tell you that neither dunia nor bahasan are originally Malay words. Dunia is probably Arabic and means "world". Bahasan is Hindi (or Sanskrit) and means "language". Both words are frequently borrowed into other languages: Turkish has dunya with the same meaning as dunia, for example, and Thai has phasa as a reflex of the Indic b(a)hasa, from which bahasan is derived." Thanks for the correction, Mattias! Sound Files - 6/14/04 - 8:35 am Draco06 wrote, "Hello, I not so recently have started creating a language. However such a daunting task has often discouraged me. I have attacked this by different means yet still not penetrating further. My last attempt was to cut to the chase so to speak and create an alphabet. This I have done (twenty characters). I am now assigning various phonetic sounds to each letter. I have read online a bit about basic phonetics and understand how the consonant and vowel sounds are made but I am still unsure as to how I can create consonants. An example would be I see that English has no 'stop - dentals' but how am I supposed to know what that sounds like (lol)? Same story with the vowels: what does a 'closed - central' vowel sound like? If you could help I would be most appreciative. Thanks!" The best place to find sounds is the UCLA Phonetic Labs Archive. Once you have your phonology set, check out our index of tutorials for resources on other topics pertaining to building your first language. Heteroclite from the Paraclete - 6/13/04 - 9:21 am If you haven't subscribed to A Word A Day yet, may I humbly suggest you sign up for some daily inspiration? Here's the May 11th word to tempt you: heteroclite. Klaatu Barada Necto - 6/12/04 - 9:29 pm Watched The Day The Earth Stood Still tonight with the kids. After some initial groaning about it being black and white ("why didn't you rent us a real movie?") they quickly got lost in the suspensefulness of the movie. Great fun and still an enjoyable movie 53 years after it was filmed. Go check out Klaatu's Language and then rent the movie. From the Bee's Knees to the Elephant's Adenoids - 6/09/04 - 10:18 am Ratborg writes, "You got to read this. Right up your alley." How the bee got his knees Prior Month's Entries

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