create a language

I’ve been giving this some thought.

There have been a few people who were into the idea of this…send me a private message if you would like to join a mailing list and create ourselves a language. That way, we would have people to speak it with! (Over the ‘net, granted, but that’s something…)

I could certainly create one…but there isn’t much point in doing so unless you can speak it with someone.

I’m forcing myself to rethink this goal. Obviously one way to perform this would be to just create a language as an artistic exercise, but the point of a language is, of course, to speak it, and that means someone will have to listen to it. There are a couple of languages I’d like to actually learn which I don’t have to create as well.

I guess I’m wondering about that question in the title of this post. Who would listen? Would the point be an altruistic one: to break down barriers that separate different mutually unintelligible communities? Or would it just be for the pure fun of it?

Recently discovered that Enya’s latest album Amarantine is partly written in a new language, Loxian. There’s a book on it entitled Water Shows the Hidden Heart, which doesn’t seem to be available in North America, darn it…nice to know someone has made one into a real artistic statement.

I figured this was as good a place as any to write down some of the features of my language.

1. The sounds are similar to those of Italian or English, though there’s no /th/, soft or hard. Vowels have a single pronunciation; more complex vowel sounds are accomplished by means of diphthongs – plus there are some nasalized vowels to end some words, as in French.

2. The phonology is very simple and similar to Japanese: syllables usually consist of a consonant and a vowel. Some are C+V+C, but the final consonant is constrained (for one, it can’t be a stop, like /b/ or /k/). Stress tends to be on the next to last syllable.

3. The pronoun system is rather complex, and tends to incorporate honorifics, again, similar to Japanese.

4. Tenses and case are still being worked out, but it looks like they will be marked by a “marker” or series of markers. Thus, while “bala” might be a verb, its past tense could “nu bala”, its negative “ka bala”, and so forth. I’ve termed these “particles” for now, and am trying to make them less complex to use.

4. Here’s a tricky part which I’m still working on: parts of speech are fluid. Verbs can be used as nouns, nouns as verbs, or as adjectives, and so forth. This is done colloquially in English (“Hold on, I’ll Google it up…”) but I wanted a formal system for it in my language. I’m seeing whether I need more particles for that, or if I can do it with word order. (The order for Simafira, btw, is subject-object-verb.)

There are some other bits, but I’ll write them down later.

Comments? Look like something worth speaking?

Had a language called Simafira which I created as part of a role-playing game; the natives of a particular country spoke it. Went well, but I kind of abandoned it. Really, the thing to creating a language is to work with a group to do so; that way, you can all speak it to each other and develop the language together.