WOW! So I just find out that I have Asperger's, and I now discover here that I'm not the only person on Earth who experimented with their own languages and writing systems!
! I composed an alphabet that was a synthesis of Persian, Cyrillic and a few of my own touches. I've tackled over a dozen languages 'for fun'
including such grammo-masochistic nightmares as Irish Gaelic and Welsh! I can't post my alphabet system since it's only hand-written, but if you're really interested in it (it writes from right to left!) I can try to do it in MS Paint I guess... tech savvy help? You can write secret notes to yourself and watch as people amaze at you writing 'backwards'.
Absolutely fascinating!
I love languages, can read German fairly well and can make a fool out of myself in Spanish or French, could once upon a time make small talk in Japanese, am intrigued by Irish Gaelic, etc, but never tried to invent my own language.
You have all inspired me to try to make my own language.
JRR Tolkien was a master at this also. I have often wondered if he were as Aspie.
It wasn't hard to figure out that the language of the Rohirrim is Anglo-Saxon, but the others escape me.
Just for you purists, I once saw this in an ancient Ripley book:
D.V.Pike flung J.Q.Schwartz my box.--a rather contrived sentence which uses each letter of the alphabet but only once.
Hey there Old Grouch! Cool! Very true - Tolkien must have had a heavy dose of this Aspie 'linguist' talent - his elvish languages have very heavy Welsh influences - a fact which enraptured my then 11-year old Celtophile mind! Here's a quote on his linguistics for his elvish languages based on Welsh influences, and a website where you will literally be lost for weeks learning, if this is your calling! Apologies to your partner/special other person in your life from me! You will be lost for a while
Quote: John Morris-Jones, A Welsh Grammar: Historical and Comparative. Oxford, 1913.
In Welsh Tolkien found "an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction", which profoundly influenced the phonology and grammar of his Gnomish and Noldorin/Sindarin languages. In a fascinating and revealing essay titled "English and Welsh", Tolkien relates how he first encountered Welsh as a youth, in names seen on coal-trucks and station-signs, "a flash of strange spelling and a hint of a language old and yet alive; ... it pierced my linguistic heart". And he bemoans that as a youth he had found it "easier to find books to instruct one in any far alien tongue of Africa or India than in the language that still clung to the western mountains and the shores that look out to Iwerddon <<that's, Ywerddon, Tolkien- Tisk Tisk!>>". Thus he was unable to learn Welsh until he matriculated at Oxford, where, upon winning the Skeat Prize for English at Exeter College, he shocked his college by spending it on Welsh. This was the Welsh grammar that Tolkien bought with his prize money, in 1914. His heavily annotated copy is in the English Faculty Library of Oxford University."
And here's where you'll have TONS of fun reading, Old Grouch! http://www.elvish.org/resources.html
Years ago I dabbled in thinking up my own language but eventually lost interest and wouldn't worry about doing it now.
JRR Tolkien was a master at this also. I have often wondered if he were as Aspie.
It wasn't hard to figure out that the language of the Rohirrim is Anglo-Saxon, but the others escape me.
In the movie "Two Towers" extended edition, Miranda Otto (Eowyn) sings a funeral song in Anglo-Saxon, which is actually one of my favourite bits of that movie.
Fascinating how different even Middle English (From the medieval period) actually sounds from modern English. Let alone Old English or Anglo-Saxon.
Cool stuff! On the modern linguistic scene, when i was tossed into a tiny village in Southern Germany where Schwabisch (very odd German dialect) and the mooing of cows is omniprescent and English non-existent (and I having only 8 years of HS SPANISH haha), I had so much trouble acquiring the language until I met a nice neighbor lady from the far NORTH of Germany - even though she spoke no English, I COULD understand and start learning German from her - I asked her how it was that it seemed I could understand her right away. She reminded me that the people of her dialect and my 'anglo-saxon predecessors' were family.... neat stuff!
"O khor ost, wan tun du sahe? et ist al' no ruz, ain no asman, ain no khur. ammâ du sahe. ih vol tand du mi hane', ammâ du must sahe. akhiriyeh du nand."
"Oh sad bird, why to you weep? it is the new day, a new sky, a new sun. yet you weep. I will give you my feathers, but you mustn't weep. at last you smile."
I am somewhat uncreative , I think I havent ever invented anything
So far I know Kawaii means something like cute or sweet in Japanese and it is used like when theres a cute manga figure or so.
At
langmaker.com they typically use the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel - appropriate subject matter, especially since it involves several different modes of communication (storytelling, variant sentence structures, dialogue, and other lingual nuances I'm too tired to further describe).
Here's one from my first "real" artificial language (artlang), Sulekhï:
1 geb reï golth segelï a leï bamog lothï yel leï hoïng kolï.
(Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.)
2 geb zul threï ïlo govu kathï, geb skuvravu leï shet fel shinar, yel blugyavu mesharï.
(As the men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.)
3 geb hoïvavu bel thleï inqyeno-bin, "stil mukavu thleï akhuro yel stil vekhavu yamï ba."
(They said to each other, "Let's make bricks and bake them well.")
4 krel geb hoïvavu, "stil bahïvu leï vizhul mel threï inqyeno-nin, sel leï lïrzh zil shrilu bel reï zhestïyan. zil mob ïsavu threï inqyeno-nin, yel hab mavu kalïshe rel threï tergo."
(Then they said, "Let's build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches toward Heaven, so we can make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the Earth.")
5 kal geb agerah oru ïltï mel zhu reï vizhul yel reï lïrzh, vïr mavu bahe suel threï ïlo.
(But God came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.)
6 yel geb agerah hoïvu, "ob zhavauvu rïzh suel hoïvh kel leï bamog lothï, krel mob zoth zhe suel ba tazhu."
(And God said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan cannot be done.)
7 "stil maravu ïltï, yel gelyavu reï bamog-bin, shel hab razhdavu threï inqyeno-bin.
("Let's go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other.")
8 geb shel agerah kalïshu ba rel threï tergo, yel threï ïlo geb khulgorvu reï vizhul-bin.
(So God scattered them all over the Earth, and they abandoned the city.)
9 rïzh mu nem ïsu beïbl - mel geb agerah gelyu mesharï reï bamog golthï, yel geb agerah kalïshu ba rel threï tergo.
(Which is why it is called Babel - because there God confused the language of the whole world. From there God scattered them over the face of the Earth.)
Hey everybody, I like inventing languages, I'm an Aspie that just can't stop learning languages:
I have my own fantasy world: Munde Àyn (Pronounced: Meunde ' Eye - n)
Languages atm: Kanùsskan
Sample Text:
What is your name? My name is LoftyD!
Anò càhèhì hwìnò? Mìla càhèhì hwìnò LoftyD!
I have it as a forum text based RPG.
http://loftyd.freehostia.com/phpBB2, make sure you join the usergroup "Munde Àyn RPG Center". You can then fill out profile fields exclusive to that group.
go to
http://www.langmaker.com, and sign up (its wikipedia based).
IF you are a member already, tell me ya username!
Mines TSK_Ben
I've always done this but I have never been successful. One time I got to 500 words that I memorised and grammar that I knew.
I wonder why Autistics seem to enjoy doing this? Maybe we should brainstorm some important characteristics of artificial languages devised by and for Autistics so that we can create them more easily.
For a start I say they should be more literal and have strict grammar rules (for example: you can't rearrange words in a sentence and have them still make sense) and remove unnecessary words in sentences.
What about lojban, anyone? I haven't really looked at it.
I invented a whistling language a while ago - it probably doesn't qualify 100% as its own language, as it uses english phonemes...