> From: David Stokes
>
> Amensazhus liel !
> (Greeting in Diom.)
> ("May the day be beautiful.")
>
> My name is David Stokes. I've been reading the list for a couple of
> weeks now, but this is my first official post.

cuennaen govamme, elivas an derrin erdulmiraen i horndirron, i veldonan!
Greetings, welcome to the list, David

> I've been conlanging for years, but not with much sustained effort.
> About a year ago I discovered some of the sites on the web and was
> inspired to drag out my old attempts and work on the again.
>
> You can see my main project, Diom, on the web at:
>
> http://www.bloomington.in.us/~dstokes/diom_intro.html
>
> Diom is an inflectional language, with a free word order, sort of like
> Latin or Greek. It was made for a fantasy game world. It is not meant to
> be related to any RW languages, although French speakers (and I am not a
> member of that group, by the way) might recognize some of the
> vocabulary. One of the early source of vocabulary was heraldry terms,
> many of which are from Old French.
> It is not finished, but then it sounds like conlangs are never finished.

Finished?  No, these things are never finished.  I once thought that I was
finally finished with amman iar after about 30 years, but I still keep
tinkering with it.

> Please take a look and let me know what you think of it.

I took a quick look at your page, but will have to look closer when I have
more time.

> One thing I found when working on Diom is that I was too close to it. I
> repeatedly found myself paralyzed when I'd come up with something, then
> say "No, thats not right." and erase it. I was making it up so it would
> seem like I could do anything I wanted. But it felt like there was an
> already existing correct language out there and I was just trying to
> find out what it was. Does this happen to the rest of you ?

You'll find that this is a quite common reaction around here.  Its almost as
if we were the discoverers of these languages rather than their creators.  I
think this is because conlangs very quickly take on their own peculiar form.
After that, things either fit or they don't.

> So now I have decided to set Diom aside for a while and work on some
> other projects. These will give me chance to try out some other ideas.
> Then maybe when I go back to Diom I can progress a little more easily. I
> will discuss these other projects in future posts.

Good luck.  I have tried this ploy myself, twice.  Once with forendar which
nowhere and now with nathya which is progressing a little further but still
competes with its big brother amman iar for my time and creativity.

> A short biographical note -- I was born and raised in Austin, Texas. I
> currently live in Bloomington, Indiana. I studied astronomy as an
> undergrad, philosophy as a grad student, then ran out of money and now
> work as unix sys admin/digital map maker. I speak Russian, German, and
> have just started teaching myself Japanese (haven't gotten very far with
> that yet). I had one intro linguistics class as an undergrad, and so may
> be a bit naive about some points of linguistic theory.

OT: Aha, a fellow astronomer!  Are you still active?  Check out my astronomy
pages at http://www.graywizard.net/Astronomy/astronomy.htm

Again, welcome.

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
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"Wisdom begins in wonder." - Socrates