<!>On Early Conlang Development (2019-02-01 19:16:52)
On Early Conlang Development
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Miscellaneria / On Early Conlang Development / <!>On Early Conlang Development (2019-02-01 19:16:52)

? Izambri Left of the middle
posts: 969
, Duke, the Findible League
message
If what you want is to figure out how archaic words or roots evolve into vocabulary that's fine, this is a thing most people do to some extent. But you ask for the ways we take when developing our conlangs in the early stages and, well, in my case it really depends on what I want to do with the language in question. Most of my conlangs are artlangs, and the main purpose concerning vocabulary is to create words with a certain, specific aesthetics that make up the language's flavour, or soul if you prefer.
    I use to start with an idea for the language's flavour (how I want it to sound and to look), and then I create some words; sometimes the process is the opposite, since from some words that have a common flavour I may derive a language (or the primitive form of what will become a language). At some point I may create some basic roots and figure out how they evolved. This step may take weeks or months, and it's always a bidirectional process, like a conversation between the small, growing vocabulary, and the set of roots and protowords. It's a calibration process, like tuning a musical instrument, until I reach the flavour I want. After that step the vocabulary and the list of proto-roots have both increased notably.

In that tuning there's always discordant notes. Words that don't fit at all, not-so-suitable roots, word endings that looked good in the beginning but don't work at all now, misalignments with the phonology... It's part of the process, but instead of throwing these notes to the litterbin I make use of them when it's possible. They're a gift because with them I can work loanwords or rare words with obscure origins and substratum, adstratum, superstratum words. This makes sense to me because all my conlangs belong to a conworld, and there's contact between them.

I've used word generators as well, but I find them to be quite boring after playing a little with them. Some results, though, can be really good. A thing I like to do when starting a new vocabulary or set of proto-roots is to take a not very long list of words from whatever origin and rework the words and their meanings to fit my purposes. I derived the first roots of Bernic (one of my protolanguages) from a short list of Polari words (this one as well) I found in internet. So, for example, from medzer "half" I created mitsi "small", and from palone "woman", PALON– "female", and so on. Other Bernic words and roots, though, have been created from zero (for some reason I feel that kērtetso is a good Bernic word for "elm tree").

Edit: oh, I forgot to say that I find grammatical endings very important to work the desired language flavour. How endings look and sound are as important to me as how the words' cores and roots are worked. Not to mention how you choose to present the language's romanization, which is also very important aesthetically, in my opinion.