Life of a poet

Language Barrier

Ever try to make your own language? Recommendation, don't. It is more involved than you even want to consider! Trust me I know, why do I know? Well I'm making one, unfortunately it's kinda important for the Journeys project I'm working on with kev. But if you insanely decide that making your own language sounds like fun, well just read the sad saga I've endured! Obviously you need an alphabet (keep in mind it doesn't have to be 26 characters, mine's actually 36, I recommend going lower than me, it's a pain--you can just as easy use the English alphabet and make your own words), and numbers help, totally recommend going with the arabic numeral system 0-9 digits that can be arranged to form larger numbers, like 1978742. Roman numerals can be something of a hassal I, II, III, IV, ... MMCXIV, etc. Ah yes, now for words...oye. Keep some things in mind, structure! If you don't try and make it a real language it's just gonna sound like gibberish. Rememeber to have verb tenses (and endings to go with them), a suffix for plurals and possessives ('s) as well as stuff like -an (American, or Italian). Words have etymology, so for some there may be a story behind them (but hold off on that until you can at least say, hey, how are you?). Words stem from other words. Oh and don't just pull out a dictionary and start going word for word. One thing to consider is, do the people who speak this language even have cows or automobiles? Maybe not! Also, start simple, all languages developed that way! Find a list of common words online (um, I searched for the 1000 most common, might take awhile just to do those, but it'll give me a solid foundation). And be careful to ignore words that you won't need (like maybe cars don't exist or oceans even). You see how much of a pain it is? Thanks for the sympathy, lol. Well, that's what I've been spending time doing lately, in addition to scripting here and there...ah to be a writer, grr! Ciao for now.


Darká Degerön - the poet Darká