Newbie's vocabulary building
Quetz
Hi all,
I just joined a few days ago and have a bare sketch of grammer for my
very first (er ... almost) conlang on the web. <passes out cigars>
http://www.crisscross.com/users/quetz/Language/iaPil.htm I need to
updates some of the stuff like the Behind the Scenes section, but it's
more or less there.
Anyway, now that I know some of the grammer, I need more words. My
question is what are some ways people go about building a vocabulary?
Do you make sounds that you like/fit the language and peg arbitrary
meanings to them? Do you make a list of the possible CV combinations,
then plug in sounds? Do you go in themes (nature, household items,
clothes, etc.)? Have epiphanies ("Existential" _must_ be
"kolthaxie"!)? I imagine it's some combination of all the above, plus a
few others like borrowing from natural languages. My first impression of
vocabulary building is that it's tedious and fun at the same time. And
pretty daunting, looking at an unabridged English dictionary by my
desk. Maybe I'm just lazy. :)
Any comments are welcome. Thanks!
--
"Wow! This is just like the stuff you'd see
in an Asian grocery store in the States!" Peter Garza
"Duh, Peter, you're in Japan." qu...@crisscross.com
- talking to myself in the Summit grocery store
BRAD COON
>question is what are some ways people go about building a vocabulary?
>Do you make sounds that you like/fit the language and peg arbitrary
>meanings to them? Do you make a list of the possible CV combinations,
>then plug in sounds? Do you go in themes (nature, household items,
>clothes, etc.)? Have epiphanies ("Existential" _must_ be
>"kolthaxie"!)? I imagine it's some combination of all the above, plus a
As you guessed, all of the above. I have
often made up a very limited vocabulary for
use in experimenting with the grammar and
morphology. Some words are based on
common natlang phonesthemes. I do use
a lot of themed lists appropriate to the
speakers of my languages and their cultures.
I have used things like the vocabularies of
BASIC English and Essential World English but
for the kind of languages I do, they are not
particularly satisfactory. FWIW, I do have
a web page with a combined BASIC adn Essential
World English word list at this URL;
http://www.ipfw.indiana.edu/east1/coon/web/combine.htm
In the long run, what has worked best for me
is to build up a brief basic list, ca. 500
words, and then add to it as need and inspiration
require. I find it easier to keep to the
spirit of the language that way.
Just my 2 cents,
*******************************************************
Brad Coon
CO...@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
http://www.ipfw.indiana.edu/east1/coon/web/index.htm
"Do'netyokit su do'sa'na'kit." (Live boldly but wisely.)
Nowan proverb
********************************************************
Christopher Reid Palmer
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Quetz wrote:
> Anyway, now that I know some of the grammer, I need more words. My
> question is what are some ways people go about building a vocabulary?
Like Peter, I am using a computer program, but unlike Peter, I prefer that
method. My language (pala-kalloejna,
<http://www.pconline.com/~reid/pk.html>) has a different morphology than
most languages. There are essentially two parts of speech that I need to
generate roots for, and the rest can be taken care of by derivational
morphology. With a small list of words I can generate a pretty usable
vocabulary, just because my language is morphologically 'efficient', if
you will.
After the initial generation (which I haven't actually done yet), the
remaining words will be made up on-the-fly in translation.
___________________________________________________________________________
Christopher Reid Palmer : re...@pconline.com : www.pconline.com/~reid/
lie softly, sweet ghost, long shallow breathing
awaken nevermore, dead but dreaming
Pytr Klark
> Anyway, now that I know some of the grammer, I need more words. My
> question is what are some ways people go about building a vocabulary?
> meanings to them? Do you make a list of the possible CV combinations,
> then plug in sounds? Do you go in themes (nature, household items,
> clothes, etc.)? Have epiphanies ("Existential" _must_ be
> "kolthaxie"!)? I imagine it's some combination of all the above, plus a
> vocabulary building is that it's tedious and fun at the same time. And
> pretty daunting, looking at an unabridged English dictionary by my
> desk. Maybe I'm just lazy. :)
computer program to generate the words based on the phonological structure
of the language. I don't like to use the computer too much, however,
because it tends to make retention more difficult (since the words are
essentially random) and there is no connection between the words. I am
planning on generating about 500 root words by computer, then do the
rest in my head. My second method is a little more original: I sing.
Seriously, this works. All it takes is a fairly good understanding
of your language's phonology (not too difficult, since you are the one who
is making it up) and a quiet room. I'm a classical music fan, so when I
have a chance, I sit down, pop in a Beethoven CD (the 7th and the 9th
create some really trippy words), and spontaneously sing. This also works
well when you are stuck in a boring lecture. This morning, while the
professor was babbling on about Jane Austin, I started singing (silently)
to myself and came up with the following in about a minute or so:
Kir shtarosta mer paleynya chustruraya mos veynu bok belleyn.
Then it was a simple matter of going back and weeding out what didn't
work. For example, Enamin does not allow two vowels to be palatized when
they are so close as in the word "paleynya", so I changed this to
"palenya". I don't like the word "bok", so that's gone. "chusturaya" is a
little long, so I decided to break that up into two words: "chustu" and
"raya". I didn't like the "ll" in "belleyn", so I changed that to
"beleyn". Thus, it becomes:
Kir shtarosta mer palenya chustu raya mos veynu beleyn.
Now all that is left to do is assign meaning.
That is the part I've been dreading, to tell the truth. I think
the best way is to just start translating. Once you have a grammar, you
can say: "Hmm...I need a word for red. "Veynu" sounds red. Ok, it needs to
be an adjective. Maybe I can make "-oen" an adjectival ending. Ok, that
gives me "veynoen". I like that!" Ok, that also includes morphology
construction, something I've been dreading more than vocabulary, since
Enamin is a highly inflected language.
:Peter
_____ _______________________________________________________
| \ O) Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we )
_|__/ | tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we |
/ |eter | long to make music that will melt the stars. |
| | | - Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary" |
\___lark (_______________________________________________________(O
Danny Wier
Quetz wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I just joined a few days ago and have a bare sketch of grammer for my
>very first (er ... almost) conlang on the web. <passes out cigars>
>http://www.crisscross.com/users/quetz/Language/iaPil.htm I need to
>updates some of the stuff like the Behind the Scenes section, but it's
>more or less there.
Loved the page! Nice to meet a fellow Texan music lover with an
opinion. Keep it up!
Danny Wier
Nacogdoches, Texas
http://www.inu.net/dawier (original MIDI compositions, the Tech
language, and my own version of football)
Q: If you put two Texans in a room, what comes out?
A: Three opinions.
Jack Durst
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Quetz wrote:
> Hi all,
>=20
> I just joined a few days ago and have a bare sketch of grammer for my
> very first (er ... almost) conlang on the web. <passes out cigars>
> http://www.crisscross.com/users/quetz/Language/iaPil.htm I need to
> updates some of the stuff like the Behind the Scenes section, but it's
> more or less there.
Congradulations! It looks pretty good.
>=20
> Anyway, now that I know some of the grammer, I need more words. My
> question is what are some ways people go about building a vocabulary?
> Do you make sounds that you like/fit the language and peg arbitrary
> meanings to them? Do you make a list of the possible CV combinations,
> then plug in sounds? Do you go in themes (nature, household items,
> clothes, etc.)? Have epiphanies ("Existential" _must_ be
> "kolthaxie"!)? I imagine it's some combination of all the above, plus a
> few others like borrowing from natural languages. My first impression of
> vocabulary building is that it's tedious and fun at the same time. And
> pretty daunting, looking at an unabridged English dictionary by my
> desk. Maybe I'm just lazy. :)
I think your impression is absolutely correct. It's great fun to make
some words, and incredible tedium to do other parts.
As for how one makes the vocabulary, it's entirely up to how you want to
build the language and what you want it to look like. There's a paper up
on the subject at the CONLANG FAQ
<http://personalweb.sierra.net/~spynx/FAQ/103.html> but I think for now
I'll describe how I did it for each of my languages.
For Caszo, I basicly just made the words up off the top of my head. I
picked things which sounded cool and like the rest of the language and I
give them meanings. For Alpha Smart, I created a phonology fand some
spelling rules first, then made up a number of words and derivations which
suited the way I thought the concepts should sound. I did a lot more
derivation in Alpha Smart, but more because it was a very derivational
language.
For my two latest languages, Tu=E9 and NGL, I'm doing things a little
differently. I used derivation to form proto-words for Tu=E9, which I then
ran through sound changes and more derivation via computer. NGL is a
group auxlang (well, sort of read alt.language.artificial.ngl for more
info) project, so each word will be derived by compounding smaller,
simpler but less specific words (kind of like the words in Basic English)
and derivational morphemes which will make a semi-regular vocabulary.
Sincerely,
=09Jack Durst
Sp...@sierra.net
[this posting written in Net English]
Quetz
Danny Wier wrote:
>
> Quetz wrote:
> >restriction. I'm also thinking about adding a restriction with regards
> >to voicing. To my ear, 'ts' and 'tz' sound very similar, and it takes
> >effort to turn on my voice in the middle of the cluster. Of course,
> I'm
> >not a native speaker. :)
>
> My question: in consonant sequences, is there any sort of
> assimilation -- like, if you had a word "adka" would it be pronounced as
> "atka", "adga", or just plaing "ad-ga"? If there is assimilation, does
> it extend across word boundaries?
I'm not sure. I'd like to say no, there's none. But some sound
combinations to me just cry out for assimilation. Nasals, for example,
seem hard to keep separate. Like keeping 'eNta' (N is a velar nasal)
from becoming 'enta'. What I had thought about is having no
assimilation now, just to get a usable number of words regardless of
actual pronunciability (Is that a word? Heh, spell checker says no).
Then go back later and apply a few changes to the whole vocabulary. So
for now, "adka" would be "adka" and I practice saying 'tz'.
> Also, in inherited words (your language does seem to have a lot of
> borrowed words), what do you do when the native word has two stops in
> sequence? Do you assimilate them, as in Italian (Latin _octo_ "eight" >
> Italian _otto_), make a new consonant (Latin _octo_ > Spanish _ocho_),
> or make the first consonant a fricative, like I do for Tech: _septembr_
> /seftembr/ "September", _oktobr_ /oxtobr/ "October"?
Close! Actually, I'd change the second consonant a fricative. And
there are way too many borrowed words for my liking right now. I took
most of those just to play with the grammar. Now I need some real iaPil
words. I'll keep some borrowings ("tlakuatSe" stays), but I have to
make a lot more on my own.
> >clusters by combining words. I'm still thinking of different ways to
> >control that (e.g. all words end in vowels)
>
> I see the Spanish influence there ;) .
Yeah, part of me wants to keep it easy to pronounce, and part of me
says, "Shut up and deal with it." Ease of pronunciation is winning,
right now.
> Is _tl_ a lateral affricate as in Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and Navajo? And
> the nasal + stop initial combos conjure up thoughts of Bantu...
Yes and yes. And I was originally going to put clicks in iaPil, but
that will wait for a related language.
> still changing the rules.) I have been "caught" on some occasions; I
> used to be sort of a Pentecostal so they thought I was speaking in
> tongues!
I'm teaching English here in Tokyo, and I sometimes wonder what people
think as they walk by my desk, see strange writing on a sheet of paper,
and hear me mumbling sounds under my breath. "Wait! They never taught
us THAT English!"