Great! I found someone as obsessed as I am with conlangs (although clearly more skilled at it)!
Could you post the link for your 16 page post about it? I would love to read it.
I'm an absolute amateur, and to be honest I never heard of the term 'conlang' before this post
Please share one of you languages with us!
To assist me on creating languages, I wrote a small piece of software that devises word-formation rules from a set of pre-established words, and then using those rules it gives me a list of original words. For example, I just fed the program with the following list:
compass, cartographer, guild, map, draw, conlang, language, example, banana, bowel, barnacle, garnish, negative, nile, novel, gorilla, love, amiable, intrusive, meridian, bent, bongo, cilatro, positive, inclination, movable.
And then asked for 30 words that follow the same basic set of rules, and it gave me the following:
gamono, morine, nivaborn, govenile, barn, powegove, banamele, bowern, merone, ilivaw, blovern, minto, coname, meldrua, bernge, cilelass, gasshele, nisillel, nion, gruaw, ivelero, erapan, gativap, gasshe, cowertia, guilapos, banit, garusshe, lerampo, bome
That way I avoid being biased by the languages that I do speak and helps to make sure that all the words follow somewhat the same pattern.
I'll show a conlang that I'm currently working on, Humir:
Men of humir (Humiren):
I used a list of 50 thousand words in norwegian (25%), swedish(25%), danish(25%), german (10%), english (10%) and spanish (5%) to generate all my words, I also adapted the final rules a bit by hand. To make it plausible I first start with a basic set of words then I form others deriving from those: Alüne (hard, strong) + Inäk (soil) = Alüniak (stone)
Then I made a few decisions about grammar. Regarding declension, I decided that Humir, being quite primitive, would not inflect by gender, number nor case:
Declension - gender: Change nouns, adjectives and etc to show gender:
English (not inflected):
The ugly frient (male)
The pretty frient (female)
Portuguese (inflected):
O amigo feio (male)
A amiga bonita (female)
Humir (not inflected):
Malor igep
Rikmalor igep
Declension - number: Show quantity:
English (inflected):
One rock. Two rocks
Humir (not inflected):
Ige aluniak. Tje aluniak.
By having so little inflection, the word order becomes crucial for the understanding of the phrase, as is the case with most ancient languages (i think). Take this phrase from the Brazilian national anthem: "The quiet margins of the ipiranga heard the echoing yell of an heroic people", in a more inflected language, such as portuguese, It could be written as:
Ouviram do ipiranga as margens plácidas, de um povo heróico um brado retumbante -> Heard of the Ipiranga quiet margins of an heroic people an echoing yell"
Also regarding inflection of verbs (conjugation) we have tense, mood, voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case. Likewise i decided that Humir verbs will not be inflected at all, and if the phrase is ambiguous the person, number, tense etc is explicitly declared before the verb, for example:
John is loved by Mary -> John *he one passive love* Mary (This is just for argument sake, the number and person you can extract from the phrase, and it would be written just as *passive love* )
The alphabet I created in the same manner as you guys do. Unlike another language I created, that derived the alphabet from their drawing habbits, the humir developed a necessity for quick and simple writing based on straight lines, since they were not very big on drawing. Here is an example:
English:
Here lies Lord Khoven, protector of the Green Lake Village, son of Swol-Overu, grandson of Iderak-Demku, born in 321 and murdered in 357 of the second age.
Humir:
Gdak figör ige askjuetese ral (Khoven) foski oda (Halikje Some Tagra), igefüp oda (Swol Overu) ge tjefüp oda (Iderak Demku). Figör ige üllve timitüs pjo 321 ge figör ige üllve kedetri pjo 357 pjo pravet tje.
The ovals around some words shows that it is a proper noun, since most names have clear meaning (Strong Bear, Fast Horse...)
I'll stop here because this post is already longer than I wanted!
Reply With Quote