Re: Starting Big and Working In

[Padraic Brown <agricola@WAM.UMD.EDU>]

On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Sally Caves wrote:

> Other questions:  how many of you conlangers have labored at a language for
> at least ten years?  I see that some of you have more than one language.

Yes, but I got more interested in the exoanthropology, sociology and
physiology.  I ended up with a 10 page wordlist and a one page grammar
sketch.  Not much to go on, but enough for a new start.  I've also been
bitten by the Brithenig bug; and consequently much of my conlanging energy
has brooded there.

> How do you compile your dictionaries?  What electronic databases do you

WordPerfect.  It's laborious, but the finished product looks very good.

> have whereby you can take a newly invented word and press a button and it
> goes into both your conlang-English and English-conlang glossaries?  I was
> doing this by hand in the late seventies.  It's still laborious on a
> computer.  I'd love to have a program that does what I've described above.
> And print it out, to boot.

I'm sure more than one of us would wish for that!

>
> Can you pun in your languages? I mean, are you aware of having given second
> or third meanings to a word?  even accidentally?

Although many words have two or three meanings, I don't think there are
any Kernu words that have any double meanings in your sense of the word.
Except perhaps 'Zawzu' which in "babytalk" is a word for penis; but for
everyone else it means English person.

All depends ont the accent.  Zaw'zu (u stem fem.) is the former; Zawzu' (n
stem masc.) is the latter.

>
> Do you write poems? songs?  sing them? chant them, click them?  ;-)

As a matter of fact, the first thing I wrote in Kernu was two verses from
an old song.  I have yet to figure out the notes, though.

>
> What brought you to this bizarre occupation?  The invention of the people
> first?  Or the sheer joy of reiterating the logic of the world through new
> words?

With my own projects it has generally been working out the people first.
With Brithenig, it was simply falling in love with something I had tried
to do unsuccessfully in the past - making a Celto-Romance language.  Some
of the previous stuff has ended up in Kernu, so it was certainly not in
vain.  There's also the conculturing that has proven to be necessary to
the language.  It's also a blast working on it with others - that's a new
thing for me anyway!

>
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Sally Caves          scaves@frontiernet.net
>
> "What absorbs me, that I am, rather than my
> own self."                   Meister Ekhart
> +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
Padraic.