Wasabi - Conlang Profile	Advanced
Language Name Wasabi Language Author Mari Bandoma, Deise Benítez, Allison Buckley, Pablo Cabrera, Marc Callado, Patrick Chan, Charles Chang, Sarah Choi, Lizzy Ghedi-Ehrlich, Julie Gutiérrez, Norma Guzmán, Helen Khlystova, Jason Lin, Tom Nosewicz, Miriam Ochoa, David J. Peterson, Chris Ramiro, Michael Rivera, Adam Simpson, Amy Soong Year Began 2002 Site Wasabi Broken Link No Site Language English Site Author David J. Peterson Language Type jargon Uniqueness In 2002, I ran an experiment at UC Berkeley, in which I got about 20 people together (their names are listed above), and gave them a list of about 300 basic words with a made-up phonology and no grammar, and instructed them to speak using only those words. The result, I hoped, would be some sort of pidgin, which might resemble what a real-life pidgin in its earliest stages might look like. As far as I know, this hasn't been done before. If anyone's heard of a similar experiment, I'd love to hear about it. Language Sources The phonology was minimalist, and based on what I thought would provide the least phonological ambiguity. (The phonology was: a, i, u, p, t, k, m, n, l, s). I based the word-forms themselves on: (a) my wordlist from an earlier experiment of this nature; (b) a few words from a couple of my languages; (c) Hawaiian, or other natural languages I thought no one would know; and (d) whatever I felt like. As I said before, there was no grammar I imposed, so the only influence was the language knowledge each student brought to the experiment (mostly English, and L2 knowledge of various Indo-European languages, with one or two L1 Spanish, Tagalog, Korean and Chinese speakers). Design Principles Again, no design principles. Interest Of Others I intended to make this class into a senior thesis, and to get that thesis published in a linguistics journal. Unfortunately, the experiment didn't go as planned, and a uniform spoken language didn't evolve. I'm to blame for this, as I assigned too many at-home, individual writing assignments, and didn't emphasize speaking enough. Dictionary No Etymologies No Grammar No Sample Texts No Unique Script No Primer No Babel Text Yes Lexicon Size 300 Submitted By David J. Peterson Date Submitted Sunday, January 25, 2004 Updated By David J. Peterson Date Edited Wednesday, February 18, 2004 Description Of Update Changed the site author (more changes forthcoming). Date To Headline Sunday, January 25, 2004 < Wapadja  Wasabi  Watakassí >
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