Hallo conlangers!

On Wednesday 24 August 2011 09:24:28, R A Brown wrote:

> On 23/08/2011 23:54, Padraic Brown wrote:
> > --- On Tue, 8/23/11, R A Brown<[log in to unmask]>
> > 
> > wrote:
> >> Ah - found it.  It dates from January, 1953! I find I
> >> still have a copy of the pronunciation, an outline
> >> grammar and a few vocabulary items including, of
> >> course, numbers 1-10, as well 1K and 1M.
> >> 
> >> Despite the obviously Volapük influenced name, it
> >> appears to be essentially mutilated Esperanto -
> >> including parts-of-speech marks (more or less the
> >> same), accusative case, adjectival agreement etc. The
> >> horrible circumflexed consonants are there as well as
> >> þ and ð (I had, however, got rid of ĥ)!
> >> 
> >> Ach-y-fi!  The language is not worth preserving. It's
> >> a horrid piece of juvenalia.
> > 
> > Nonsense! These early, and very frequently lost, conlang
> > sketches are well worth preserving. If for no other
> > reason than that they serve as a testimony to how one
> > has progressed in one's art.
> 
> It would be a far better testimony if it could have been put
> in context with later and, indeed, earlier conlangs.  Some
> of my teenage efforts were much more interesting. There
> was one - still an auxlang - called Ejl that was influenced
> by Tamil (the natlang I was studying at the time), and there
> was an artlang, Venusian, that was heavily influenced by
> Hungarian and Turkish.  But these are both lost - almost
> certainly for ever - but they would have been a good deal
> more interesting than a mutilated Esperanto.

Those two lost conlangs would indeed have been more "interesting"
than Voldapeko, apparently.  I can understand that you deplore
their loss.
 
> > Can also get a chuckle at the way one used to look at
> > the world of language -- early influences, assumptions
> > about language, etc.
> 
> I would love to be able to recover examples of early
> influence.  The only discernible influence in the one I
> found was Esperanto - not very exciting.

Indeed.
 
> > I mean, if you found a kindergarten fingerpaint project
> > done by Picasso, would you throw it away saying it was
> > just a horrid piece of juvenalia?
> 
> I would put it on eBay.

It would probably sell well, and for a good price ;)
 
> > I wish I still had some of the early alphabets I used to
> > draw. Mostly fancified Greek and not terribly inspiring
> > perhaps, but certainly some of the first sparks that
> > would eventually conflagrate into this odd passtime of
> > ours.
> 
> Ah - now I _do_ have several examples of early con-alphabets
> and of English spelling reforms     :)
> 
> It's the actual conlangs which are now, alas, lost.  It's
> frustrating that the only one I've recovered is so
> uninventive.     :(
> 
> But it did have one use - after explaining to Janko that
> Eteocretan was not a conlang,

A few months ago, we discussed conlangs mistaken for obscure
natlangs - so it also works the other way; not as much
surprising as amusing.

>        he kept asking for numbers
> from my conlangs, and Veldopeko came to the rescue.  But IMO
> it has little other merit.
>  
> > We should create a "my first conlang" category at Frath
> > so that we can all poke fun at our horrid bits of
> > juvenalia!
> 
> My first conlang is well and truly lost. It predates my
> discovery of Esperanto.  Essentially, it was the grammar of
> French which I discovered in one of my mother's old school
> text books and a vocabulary gleaned from the excellent
> etymologies given in a dictionary my grandparents had   :)

My first attempt at conlanging was an auxlang (yuck!)
which I was to make together with my brother.  (Yes, my
*brother*, the same guy who now so vitriolically rejects
any kind of conlanging!)  All I remember was that we had
a noun gender system based on natural genders, with the
gender endings _-o_ (male), _-a_ (female) and _-u_
(neutral).  AFAIK, we planned to use Latin roots, so we'd
get something like

_homu_ 'human being of either sex'
_homo_ 'male human being'
_homa_ 'female human being'

It never went beyond this.

My first actual conlang was when I was about 16 or so, that
was in the mid-80s.  It was named "Serindian", and meant
for a corny space-opera science fiction conworld involving
ancient astronauts (yecch!).  The language was pretty much
modelled on German and Latin, with a NGDA case system and
a have-perfect and all that.  And a gender system similar
to that of the auxlang mentioned above.

The language had a daughter meant to be spoken about
12,000 years later, but it was as similar to its ancestor
as French is to Latin, and working in the same way: still
a NGDA case system, a have-perfect and all that.  I had
no idea of regular sound change back then, so I haphazardly
altered the words, usually keeping the consonants intact
and reshuffling the vowels.  It was named "Ardenorian".
At least, I had the idea of what I didn't know then that
it was called Suffixaufnahme, and used it either in Serindian
or in Ardenorian, don't remember.

All that went to the cleaners when I tossed the Dänikenesque
premise, but I think I still have an old notebook which
contains some Ardenorian words and I think also some noun
paradigms, I no longer know of which language.

--
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