Here is another peice up for feed back. It is a peice on lycanthropy but I swear on my children's lives I had the synopsis for this one worked out a year before I even heard of 'Twilight'. What I have here is just the prologue. Essentially the main character has no idea what she is and went through quite a lot as a child because her parents didn't have much of a clue either.

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Last night I had a dream. It was like a movie; detached third-person perspective, none of the characters were meant to represent me or anyone I know, etc. That's not unusual for me. What was unusual was that the dream was in Japanese with English subtitles. No really, there was white writing on the lower area of the visual part of the experience. I'm just curious to see if anything even remotely like that has ever happened to any of my fellow language-obsessed.

Someone reading the old Babel Text translation into Nuirn to an accompaniment of industrial noise. The pronunciation goes quite astray. Part of the difficulty was occasioned by the langmaker site itself where this was preserved; that site's code would not display 'þ' properly ten years ago when the text was submitted, so both it and muted 't' appear as 'th'.

http://ia301530.us.archive.org/2/items/GlebMaltsevBabelo_1/PICHISMOBabelo23_Nuirn.mp3

Slightly corrected source text, a rendition of Genesis 11:1-9:

Annúr hædde an viheilen véird le haonur tál yn ath upsanna uôrda. Yn dym fáranai deffrá'n oeste, quammanai a'r an lándu na Sìnar, yn þider stodanai. Yn aidden le haonur a'r upsannam, "Dá vineath. Gceirem na'r teglene, yn viheilenne brenne lem. Yn haddanai tegle æpt stéinn, yn stickem æpt meuerbrycke. Yn aidden, "Dá vineath. Byggem óss stadan, yn teuer le'h an stáng-sa i himri, yn gceirem namn æptensi, ne øfver an viheiles veirdes flattana sæmenest'ui. Quam an Drottan an, forat seen stadan ga'n teuern, som byggde 'n manlungar. Yn aidde 'n Drottan, Sé pá seónan haonur folc, yn hannai haonur tál; yn sy þæt nur an børghenn n'alle som gceirennei; inget som hugainnei sca blian ungceirsem le'm. Vinnem'ui; stithe vóss an, yn tuiflemui an tálar-sa, ne forstáhannai le haonur an tál n'elleres. Dá, sæmed an Drottan dom øfver yn frá dem þeirc an héla na véirde, yn stinteney at byggen an stad. Dá hetistet Babel, for thonna som tuiflede 'n Drottan an tála na héla véirdes, yn deffrá þider sæmed an Drottan dom øfver yn frá dem þeirc an héla na véirde.

For those who care, the first sentence should sound more like:

əˈnuːɹ hæɖ ən vɪˈheːlən vɛɪɾd lə hønˠɹ̩ tɔl ɪnə ˈtʊpsanə wuːrdə

So, I'm working on another conlang (trying this one from a different "angle" so to speak) and (in brief) I have a noun class reserved for [1] Proper nouns (for inflection purposes), [2] Specialized terminology (for science and medicine and such) and import / loan words.

Well I got to thinking, how often do import words appear in constructed languages? What would be good to constitute a loan word? As it's already synthetic, I get to bypass the actual process by which a word is "adopted" into a language. Thus far I have dubbed miracle whip (dictionary building for me involves me just expressing whatever I happen to be doing) a loan word. Although Sandwich Spread can of course be properly expressed I don't think product names really translate well (and how else do you describe that stuff?).

Anyway, do you (guys / gals / beings) use loan or import words in your conlangs? Do you take them from natural languages? Any other thoughts on them?

Alotica! (that is, 'Hello')


Hello everyone. I've been developing and perfecting my conlang for four to five years now. After all this time I'm finally ready to share it, but as I've never shared this with anyone, I'm looking for a place and community to post it on. Does anyone know of a place to host it? To share it? Would anyone want to look at it? I'm glad to find a community about my passion ^o^.

Okay, let me just say a few things.  Although this is not my first attempt at a conlang of any sort (far from it), it is my first time with a polysynthetic language.  I'd, first of all, like to know if everything seems...right and/or makes sense.  Second, and I know this seems out of the blue, but something of key importance is that I need to be able to say, for instance, 'inanimate object-turned-human' or 'human being-turned-abstract concept' with relative ease.

Without further ado, here is what I have so far.  Phonology I will work out soon, after I know that the grammar makes sense.  I have a system of sound symbolism worked out in chart forms, but not an actual inventory of phonemes for the language.

( Lots more under the cut... )

The following is a youtube link which looks at the Na'vi language:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZZbTYdPBk#watch-main-area

He knew the relationship was doomed the moment she got out of bed and began praying loudly. She was in fact louder than she had been throughout their hour long bout of love making. Well, he thought it had been love making. But as he listened to her at the foot of the bed with her hands clasped together so tightly that her knuckles were white and her eyes clamped shut as she swayed back and forth slowly in her nakedness, he learned that he was wrong.

"Oh dear Lord," she called out so loudly that ne nearly fell out of the bed, "please take us into your loving bosom and forgive us the wanton carnality of our acts in your divine presence. Know, oh mighty God, that it was not my wish to transgress so egriously. I did not wish to indulge in drink and flesh..."

And that's how it went for ten minutes; her espousing to an appearantly angry and bitter god how terribly wicked and evil they both were but oh golly gee, Mr Jesus, I sure hope you'll forgive us. Meanwhile, he slowly crawled deeper into the relative safety and comfort the down comforter his grandmother had made for him and wondered what she'd say about him now.

"...and I certainly did not expect or grant him permission to stick his finger in my ass, Jesus," she said. "And while the sex was fantastic, for that alone you may smite him however you see fit."

"So, you won't be staying for pancakes then?" he said with a sigh.

This is a piece of flashfic - roughly 500 words long. It addresses vaguely the idea of being gender queer, transitioning, coming of age, and generally being a miserable young adult. The subject's name is Kyle.

( skinny hands, bony wrists, spindly fingers )

Another Poem.

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I don't know what's going on with the links I just posted -- they worked yesterday, but today they return only 404s. However, if you go to Google and type -- "Some highlights of Na'vi" Language Log -- in the search box you can get to the article.

Paul Frommer, the prof who constructed the Na'vi language for Avatar, has done a guest post about Na'vi at Language Log. Quite a bit of information, especially about the phonology. The post is at
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/p=1977#more_1977 .

“Weren’t you trained never to point a gun at your partner?”

 

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I've just thought when asked to look through something for someone that beyond the basic point of grammar and spelling/plot (eg something doesn't make sense or continuity) mistakes what else should people be looking for?

I'm probably going to be looking through stories/film scripts in the future but it just occured to me that there could be more I should be looking for. And I don't quite know what it is.

Any suggestions?

And another poem! :)

( Wicked )

Hello. I'd really love some feedback and have been disappointed with the lack of feedback from Facebook. Haha. So I figured this would be the best place to go!

Here's to a long and fruitful relationship! I think this poem is one of my best.

( Anthem )

One of my conlangs (which is as of yet unnamed) is intended to be a special-purpose pidgin which makes use of only a limited array of sounds. Originally it was spelled with only 15 letters (a, e, f, i, j, k, l, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w). More recently I have considered the use of another 4 with limited frequency (b, c, h, y) for a bit more variety, though some or all may not make the cut. [I also considered, early on, using "h" as a sigh-like pseudovowel, but that might be problematic for some people and violates the semi-Germanic tone I was going for.]

Anyway, I have noticed that all of the words which I have experimented with using fit into just a few fairly complex but very restricted patterns; for example, 'jept' (which I have been using to mean 'gossip') fits perfectly within the "three-consonant" pattern whereas 'apolp' violates it in 3 different ways (the word starts with a vowel, L's never follow vowels, and P is used twice). Note that each pattern does not follow the same set of "rules". And that I didn't create any of those patterns on purpose, or at least not consciously - probably just an overzealous drive to give it a particular flavor.

( Read the other 5/8ths of this )

So, I'm finally getting around to ripping my copy of Harvest Season: Second Cutting to my computer and I have not been able to find the track list online anywhere (the titles did not come up when I put the CD in, so I have to enter them manually and I wanted to do it from an online list since it's just a loose CD so I couldn't read them while the CD was in my drive), so I thought I'd type it up here for those who are interested:

1. Cat & The Fiddle
2. The Whistling Gypsy Rover
3. Pour Your Brother
4. Stable Boy
5. Laydies Bryng Your Flowers Faire
6. The Hexhamshire Lass
7. March of Cambreadth
8. Stolen Child
9. Heather on the Moor
10. Harvest Season: Second Cutting
11. Dance of the Hoof and Horn

I don't know if they are still selling the CDs right now (I picked it up at the Lucky Lab Wintertide show and they also had them at Orycon) because this is just a temporary semi-finished version and my understanding is that they're coming out with the "real" version next year.

(If the track list is supposed to be secret since the album isn't "really" finished, let me know and I'll delete the post. I figured it'd be ok since it's not like I'm posting the actual music or anything.)