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Well, so far in the plan I've been focusing almost entirely on the language's ability to express. I wanted a language that worked heavily with metaphor and was easily suited to the kind of poetry I like to write. It should, if I make it right, work in the same sort of way dreams do, where anything can link into anything.
To this end I've set up a few rules in its etymology. All words have to start as a noun. So there would be words for a run, a sleep, a digest, a eat etc etc. But each of those words could be turned into a verb by the addition of a modifying suffix.
eg. Awu (means dog, I like onomatopeia) is a noun. Awuna is the verb "dog", meaning to "to be a dog" or "to be as a dog". Verbs are assumed to be in the present tense. To modify tense another suffix is added. Awunanol would mean "dogged" whereas Awunani would be the same but in the future tense.
What, btw, is the proper term for "future tense", because it can't be that, surely?
My plan is that by introducing such fluidity between nouns and verbs I might get a language that was more open to strange contrasts, similies and metaphors.
The senstence structure will have changed too. I wanted the sentences to be ful of kennings and poetic understandings of the things the where talking about. Almost like having footnotes embedded in the text. In English I suppose you could do something like
"Love, which is like the universe or the deep sea or a maze, has behaved like a tame dog before fear. It has behaved mist, which moves like cowards, before reality"
but I don't like that. It feels like an overly long sentence. Also, the parenthesis works in some way to lessen the blow of the similies. I don't know how to explain it, but it does.
I worked through a couple of alternatives last night and settled on this. The language has a working name of Parrot, so this, amusingly, is Parrot Pidgin.
"Love. universe. deep sea. maze
Awunanol. tame/slave
before Fear. real. brick wall..
col Mist(anol). movement of cowards
before Reality..
Capitalisation is key to understanding this. If a word is capitalised it means that the following kennings are related to it. After each set of kennings a new line starts just to maintain clarity.
If you wanted to strip the text of poetry you could write it like:
"Love awunanol before Fear.. col Mistanol before reality.."
Double full stops indicate a sentence ending. "Col" means "the thing I was just reffering too", a bit like "it" can be used. Mistanol isn't a word that will be lasting into finished Parrot, but would mean here "to have done as mist does".
Does that all make sense? |
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