Latest ConLang War Crimes
Dec. 5th, 2004 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kent_allard_jrI have something great conlang masters like J.R.R. Tolkien and M.A.R. Barker didn't have: A computer. On the other hand, they, unlike I, actually knew what the fuck they were doing. So they spent years finely crafting their exquisite, intricate language systems, with the vocabulary, the grammar and the script worked out in minute detail. Me? I churn out about a dozen languages a week. Each one is nothing but a sack of words. I couldn't write them down, and I wouldn't know how to make a sentence out of them, but I can use them to create names of places and characters, which is all I need 98% of the time.
By now I've worked out a routine that speeds up the process. I start out with the parent language; then I flip through George Campbell's Compendium of the World's Languages, looking for another language that uses a similar group of consonants. Then I come up with rules to change the sounds and syllable structure in the parent tongue to fit the language that's derived from it.
So this weekend I started with my aboriginal language, Proto-Human, which is a lot like Latin. I had to create a child tongue called Proto-Monteric (look here for the family diagrams, which I have to do myself from time to time). I didn't care what Proto-Monteric looked like, since no one speaks it anymore, and no one wrote it down. So I used a few simple rules to make Proto-Human look like Spanish, and I declared the result was Proto-Monteric. Easy.
Proto-Monteric broke down into three different branches, Mesoz, Lyonian and West Monteric. I could've patterned these after other Romance languages, like French, Portuguese and Italian, but that would've been boring. Instead, I decided to use three that were heavily influenced by Spanish without being genetically related: Basque, Quechua and Guarani. It wasn't hard, I found, to make pseudo-Spanish words sound like they came from Basque or ancient Inca languages. Nor was it hard to make my pseudo-Guarani words (for "West Monteric") sound like Finnish ("Old Bemalic"), or make my pseudo-Finnish words sound like Greek ("Syanese"). Everything was easy with a computer, and it kept me occupied on an otherwise deadly dull weekend. I won't win any awards but it's satisfying none the less.
By now I've worked out a routine that speeds up the process. I start out with the parent language; then I flip through George Campbell's Compendium of the World's Languages, looking for another language that uses a similar group of consonants. Then I come up with rules to change the sounds and syllable structure in the parent tongue to fit the language that's derived from it.
So this weekend I started with my aboriginal language, Proto-Human, which is a lot like Latin. I had to create a child tongue called Proto-Monteric (look here for the family diagrams, which I have to do myself from time to time). I didn't care what Proto-Monteric looked like, since no one speaks it anymore, and no one wrote it down. So I used a few simple rules to make Proto-Human look like Spanish, and I declared the result was Proto-Monteric. Easy.
Proto-Monteric broke down into three different branches, Mesoz, Lyonian and West Monteric. I could've patterned these after other Romance languages, like French, Portuguese and Italian, but that would've been boring. Instead, I decided to use three that were heavily influenced by Spanish without being genetically related: Basque, Quechua and Guarani. It wasn't hard, I found, to make pseudo-Spanish words sound like they came from Basque or ancient Inca languages. Nor was it hard to make my pseudo-Guarani words (for "West Monteric") sound like Finnish ("Old Bemalic"), or make my pseudo-Finnish words sound like Greek ("Syanese"). Everything was easy with a computer, and it kept me occupied on an otherwise deadly dull weekend. I won't win any awards but it's satisfying none the less.
