Aspies For Freedom

I recently came up with the idea of a new language where, instead of single words representing things, if had an alphabet of letters and concepts such as "big" or "spirutual" that would be represented by small groups of sounds like "cha" or "oub" etc. and the person speaking it would have to make up a word using those groups of sounds to say to the other person (the meaning of the made-up word would be denoted by the sounds it made up).

So if I were to say "tall", i would use sounds such as "ab" (which could mean "more than average", i haven't thought up the whole concept alphabet yet) and "ki" for "vertical extent".

There would be no dictionarys or "what does that mean"? because the meaning is expressed in thw word, and no-one would have trouble spelling or saying a word because the letters used would only represent one sound so everything would be phonetic.

It's revolutionary, it's simple and all you have to learn are the alphabets, from there all you need is your creativity.

What do you all think?  :grin:

Would it work like this -

Eat would be mun and dem, and then if I wanted to say that I wanted to eat I would  say 'Amy mun'?

So wait, are you saying each sound represents a concept- like "tall" is made up of the sounds for big and vertical- or something else?

Because that certainly would not be simple.

I like the idea.  I am working on two languages of my own- I take it this is not an unusual hobby amongst aspies.

Mii ega kiiome zozu!
(I like your idea!)

I like this idea.

The trouble would be determining what constitutes a particle.

And then there's how to make value assignments logic.

Also trying to figure out how practicle it is.

If you assume an inventory of 24 consonants (a bit fewer than in English) and six vowels (more than most languages though less than English) you get 144.

If you add dipthongs, you get many more potential vowels, let's do it simply and say you get ten more (remove one for iy and uw), which gives us 384.

The nest issue is figuring out consonantal arrangement on the sonority scale.

Considering that Basic English has less than 100 words, I think that a logical particle language could probably work.

I'd like to try this.

Know some people who might be interested on working on this with me, I'll ask.

Love the idea dragon.  with our "odd" linguistic skills  a few of us could probobly create a language in a short amount of time.  The biggest problem would be getting together, and being able to stop.

Just a quistion...

dose anyone have the ability to understand things in a fake language without looking at a glosary.  In a fiction trilogy i read, there are about 3 or 4 imaginatory languages, with a glosary at the back as to what words and phrases mean.  I have never had to use the glosory, I just know what it is. has anyone else experianced this or am I a complete anomaly?

Not sure what you mean.

In logical constructed languages you can learn componants fairly quickly.

If you mean from context, that's fairly common, I'd always thought it was an NT thing because I used to be unable to do it, I find I can do it a lot in Spanish though through logical processes, so I'm not sure.

Would it be at all,  like the Ham-language that is featured in the Anime Hamtaro?

Ain't got a cue what that is.

Could you describe it?

Most fictional languages are based on existing languages, and usually relatively straightforward Romance languages or something. (I'm thinking Tad Williams here.) Also, most fictional languages are a lot less complicated than real ones.

I'm making a fictional language at the moment, and I'm trying to include a realistic level of complexity, redundancy, etc. The structure is based on Chinese, but the vocab. is original (except it'll have some English loan-words for modern things, and Latin loan-words for the intellectual stuff). In order to do this, I'm going to explore why and how languages change from inflected to analytical--this language, Eshi Zhab Athi, used to be inflected but has lost almost all of its cases and tenses--like English, but to a greater extent, although still a little more inflections than Chinese.

None of my fictional languages are based on existing languages.

My first Conlnag I wanted to mix off of a mixture of Basque and Georgian, but I know little about those languages now, and nothing about them then.

Actually the Ham-language is much more extensive then that. http://www.hamtaro.com/ham-ham_words.html

Here's a site with some of the terms they use in their language. The language is so involved, that the video games are based mostly on walking around and learning the language, to advance, by talking to other Ham-Hams and helping them out.

How many fictional languages have you made? Are you making any now? I'd like to hear about them... The language I'm doing right now is my second.

And when I said "fictional language" before, I mostly meant those in fantasy novels which include them only for flavor, not to explore the way languages work.

I don't know how many I've started.

I've made progress on three that I can think of, plus an auxlang.

I've revised the one I mentioned above so drastically and so often that it probably counts as several though.

Which is why I never get to vocabulary.

I basically get partway into mophology, decide I don't large my phonology or orthnography, scrap almost the entire thing, and start over.

Do you use IRC?

I'm usually on #conlang on esper.net around midnight if you want.
I refuse to use instant messengers though.  They had to drag me kicking and screaming onto IRC at another forum I was on.

Or you could start a topic here to talk about conlangs, since there are at least three of us interested.

Auxlang is an auxillary language.

It can be one of three things:
1. A partial language created to facilitate communication between native speakers of two or more languages.
2. A pre-existing language with phonological, orthnographic, and/or grammatical features to make it easier for non native speakers to learn.
My auxlang is English based.
3. A set of common vocabulary intended to fall back on when communication in an foreign language fails one.  Or that's why people call Esperanto an auxlang anywhen.

Modern Hebrew is not an auxlang as far as I'm aware though, so I think the language has to be living.

Conlang (I thought you knew, but I'll explain), is a constructed language.
The Wikipedia articles more detailed than I could be, but Wikipedia can be annoying.
Any rate, conlangs are created for a number of reasons.

I create them for fun.

Loglangs (like Loglan in theory, I'd dispute this), logically constructed languages are generally linguistic experiments.

Esperanto was created to facilitate international communication.
Zamenhof used an irregular phonology, confusing orthnography, irregular grammatical system in such cases as pronouns and genders, and words of a primarily Latinate/Germanic/Hellenic origin.
I don't like Esperanto, but because there's so much availiable on it it's useful to get an idea of how conlangs are constructed.

Anywhen, and yeah, IRC is internet relay chat.
If you don't know, don't bother.
I'll start a topic in the special interests forum.

Ahh, 'K.