YEAH Sound Change

[bloodyrosemccoy]

The problem with having a phenomenally boring hobby is that you can't really explain how darn much fun you're having to anyone. "Dude! I just changed a language from the OGYAFE into two daughter languages with the power of SOUND CHANGE! Now I'm going to work on semantic shift!" Yeah, nobody cares.

So, uh, just take my word for it: I am having a pretty good time conlanging over here. That's all you need to know.

Comments

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

In a nutshell: the proto language (which at this point I've been calling Protogyafe because hee) uses consonantal roots. Nouns come in thirteen classes that are loose lexical categories (abstract, person, place, food, etc.), and each category has a sort of word template you plug the root consonants into. So for the root STB you get ustób "book" (in the "manmade tools" category), sótabé "library" (in "places"), and ísátbé "scholar" ("people"). Verbs use different forms syntactically to denote aspect and tense. Which, you know, I think is fun.

Then I ran all these forms through two differet sound change templates and got two totally different languages. WOO GOOD TIMES.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Woah! That is clever and sounds like something that would drive me to maddened tears if I were trying to learn it in a class. (Let me tell you some time about my frustration in trying to distinguish "clear" and "wise" in Greek...) That is awesome.

...you're really making me want to go restart my old conlang with the elegant (in my opinion!) verb affixes that could be slapped onto nouns to give them copula-esque weight.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... That sounds cool! One of the daughter languages in this family has dragged the copula over to the nouns--a construction shamelessly stolen from English, where "he is" becomes "he's" and "that guy is a jerk" becomes "that guy's a jerk"--only they don't mark it as a contraction any more. Is it like that?

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

*hand-wiggles* It's more that verbs take affixes (prefixes for future, suffixes for past) to mark tense; if you slap them onto nouns, then they're the copula in that tense instead. Present tense just doesn't bother marking the copula at all. It means they can also attach a sort of participle-style weight to a lot of nouns and adjectives...

...god, I wish I hadn't lost my notes. I had way too much fun with that language, and wrote quite bad poetry within it. The phonology was dreadful--all Japanese-plus-Latin with a very restrictive CVC syllable setup and no nod to euphony beyond my own preferences--and the whole thing never quite gelled because I couldn't figure out how to handle relative clauses without just copying Latin, but by god, I liked my verbs.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, I LIKE it! That's a great idea.

I'm the same way--some of my early languages have really great stuff along with some totally embarrassing bits (including awful teenage poetry set to my favorite songs). My own ear for euphony is rather eclectic, too--and I'm keeping that in the sprite language I'm overhauling. (It also doesn't help that part of my aesthetic sense comes from my synesthesia, which isn't something most people can really benefit from, but by god I like it.)

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I figure "Hey, what if this language was spoken by my brain chemistry and tastes?" is a reasonable enough premise for one's choices in conlangs!

Mm. Maybe I should actually noodle around with that some more again. I sort of fell out of conlanging because I flung myself into the community and then found it was a standard Internet Community with the usual issues, but I could do it just for my own pleasure now.

[glaikery.livejournal.com]

Glanced again at the comments because curiosity, so just dropping another note by to say that this is freaking awesome; I like those categories a lot and that result is badass. Nice! :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hah! Thanks!

I'm going to try to expand on this a little, but given my track record with attempts like this, I can make no promises. :p

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

Cool! So STB is the consonantal root for things to do with learning, I guess. Do the categories have consistent and regular vowel bases, or is there variation?