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Learning your own language | ||
Tags: Conlang | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| berabero89 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4642 days ago 101 posts - 137 votes  Speaks: English, Amharic* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 1 of 8 10 December 2012 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
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As I am currently in the middle of creating the background world for a mythopoetic work
of fiction I will create, I have decided to create a language (or maybe several, in the future). My main problem is not creating the language's grammar and words, but rather retaining them. This seems especially difficult when the language has a) no native speakers and b)no form of media such as books, magazines, television or radio (except for a messy grammar explanation written by a 15-year-old). I was thinking of fully translating one of the two Assimil courses I own (New French with Ease and Spanish with Ease) into my artificial language and create missing vocabulary as I go along, but then I realized that Assimil courses are structured specifically to explain the grammar of that particular language, which would make learning another language with a different grammar this way somewhat difficult. Does anyone know a better way I can go about doing this? I know that JRR Tolkien, genius that he was, wrote poetry in his languages, so does anyone know how he retained the languages after creating them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MarcusOdim Groupie Brazil Joined 4847 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes | Message 2 of 8 10 December 2012 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, choose the best features of your favorite languages and create your own, it's just a beginning.
I don't know how Esperanto or Klingon were created, but possibly not at first try. Afterwards you can create something entirely new :) If you like cases, you can create one that uses all of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grammatical_cases hehehee Otherwise make something straightforward and learnable, just don't let it sound like Dutch or Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 8 10 December 2012 at 1:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Actually, I seem to recall that Klingon was invented as a few random sentences at first, without any real internal logic, and then someone reverse-engineered the language from them. To the OP, do you really need to learn the language? If you're just using it for a fictional world, it would seem you could get by with a strict "puzzle-making" knowledge, no need for fluency. If you do want to get fluent, I'm guessing writing and self-talk will be important, also having kids and raising them as native speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 10 December 2012 at 1:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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You need to write a dictionary and a grammar, otherwise you will get your own inventions mixed up or forget them. Edited by Iversen on 10 December 2012 at 5:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 8 10 December 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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André Müller (vortarulo), Zeibura Kathau, others and I have written detailed answers to
this question at http://www.quora.com/Languages/How-do-you-create-a-complete- new-language Oh and I recommend that all HTLAL people should join Quora; it's awesome. Edited by Sprachprofi on 10 December 2012 at 2:00pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 8 10 December 2012 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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To use Quora you must be on either Facebook or Twitter, and that's too high a price to pay.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4929 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 7 of 8 10 December 2012 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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For my conlang I have to constantly straighten out my grammar definitions and
vocabulary, but currently I have to say I don't actually speak my own conlang (of course, neither does the creator of Klingon. Dothraki is another story...). Anyway, to help keep vocabulary and examples straight, I use a program called Linguist's Toolbox, which was created with field linguists in mind, so they could record and work with languages they were trying to describe for the first time. Unfortunately it's a little bit clunky to use, but so far it's my best answer to the problem of vocabulary and parts of speech, etc. As for grammar, the way I've done it is sort of write courses, which I rewrite every now and again, to clarify and add and modify. I start with the very basics of the language: sounds, basic syntax, things like that, and get more complicated as I go along, like how you handle verbs (or are nouns the more complicated things?). Basically I have to pretend like I'm explaining it to someone else and do my best to make them understand. Sometimes I even manage to find someone patient enough to read/listen. It's a never-ending battle, keeping things straight. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6470 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 8 of 8 10 December 2012 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | ||
Not true, or not anymore. On the sign-up page (https://www.quora.com/signup) there's a link "I don't have a Facebook or Twitter account" which lets you sign up without one. The quality of discussion on Quora is so much higher than on Facebook or Twitter, guess they didn't want to be limited by those sites. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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