Obscure vs Transparent Derivations/Etymologies

[Davush]

Hello,

One problem I often run into when conlanging is creating words, in that I don't know whether to create new roots, or to derive words from existing roots. I find when I derive words, the language ends up looking very 'mechanical' as it is very easy to derive plenty of words this way.

Is English an outlier in that a lot of the derivations are now non-productive or obscure? I mean things like 'to think - a thought' 'to proceed - a procedure', or words from a Latin root. When creating words like ' to argue', 'to consider', etc. I often find myself wondering what strategy to take.

How does everyone deal with this?

Thanks.

[Creyeditor]

One way to get a feeling for this is to look at other languages either through the etymologies at Wiktionary or by looking at the incredibly useful A Conlanger’s Thesaurus.

[elemtilas]

Hello,

One problem I often run into when conlanging is creating words, in that I don't know whether to create new roots, or to derive words from existing roots. I find when I derive words, the language ends up looking very 'mechanical' as it is very easy to derive plenty of words this way.

Is English an outlier in that a lot of the derivations are now non-productive or obscure? I mean things like 'to think - a thought' 'to proceed - a procedure', or words from a Latin root. When creating words like ' to argue', 'to consider', etc. I often find myself wondering what strategy to take.

How does everyone deal with this?

Thanks.

Couple random points to consider. First (and perhaps most obvious) is that if you think you have too many obvious derivations from roots, like if you notice dozens of "-ate" or "-tionalise" type words then you might try to mix in different strategies. Alongside some of those workhorse derivations, try also using some native formations more freely. Or derivation types from other languages. Second is to consider philosophy. English borrows a lot from French, Latin & Greek because those were highly learned tongues in their day and as philosophy & the sciences get passed from one culture to another, the vocabulary tends to go with. And it tends to remain even after the recipient culture grows up and develops its own sciences. This is why Latin, Greek and French are still important in law, medicine and science.

So, if the culture you're working with ìs the source of science & philosophy, then don't worry if you have scores of "Latiny" or "Greeky" words, because they will have invented those words to go along with the sciences they devised. If this culture is a second or third hand recipient of foreign science, then it also makes sense for there to be many such borrowings (like in English). You might then consider devising a couple or small handful of philosophically antecedent languages from which this present conlang can borrow. And in the middle of all that, never fear to throw in a few well placed native words. Along the lines of "soul" in English, which philosophically rubs shoulders with spirit (Latin) and pneuma (Greek); or Kohlenstoff & Quecksilber (German) in chemistry.

Lastly, consider the cultural perspective on borrowing. Some languages are puritanical, seeking to strike out all borrowings in favor of "native" words. French and Spanish and Icelandic all fall victim to this to some degree (consider that they all have some kind of National Institute that is in charge of managing the official shape of the language); while a language like English promiscuously seduces a/o rapes every other language it comes in contact with in order to borrow/steal words.

As far as think/thought and proceed/procedure go, you'll also want to consider time depth when deriving words. Think/thought are very ancient English words, going back in time through Germanic and on to IE, whereas proceed comes to us (from IE) via Latin borrowing.

When I work on Avantimannish, I get to consider all these things, because it is both a language that is relatively new (in time and place) and thus a second (& third & fourth) hand recipient of older philosophy and is also growing its own science. So like English, it has borrowings from older languages and also sends out words to other languages. But when I work on Queranaran, I'm looking at a language that predates all of modern human culture -- it certainly predates Avantimannish, but also ancient Heladian, Aryan (IE), Puntish (Pre-IE) and Sumerian.

[Curlyjimsam]

I suspect English is somewhat unusual - it's borrowed a lot of words from other languages to describe all sorts of technical concepts, whereas an isolated Amazon tribe probably hasn't done that. And English contrasts with something like German which has tended to coin new compounds rather than borrowing to a greater extent.

One way to get a feeling for this is to look at other languages either through the etymologies at Wiktionary or by looking at the incredibly useful A Conlanger’s Thesaurus.

Thanks for the Thesaurus link - I've not seen it before and it does indeed look incredibly useful. I've often wanted a resource like this but not come across one (or had time to put one together myself). Mark Rosenfelder has a book which is similar but, unfortunately, only covers a quite limited range of languages.

[Creyeditor]

I suspect English is somewhat unusual - it's borrowed a lot of words from other languages to describe all sorts of technical concepts, whereas an isolated Amazon tribe probably hasn't done that. And English contrasts with something like German which has tended to coin new compounds rather than borrowing to a greater extent.

I heard some people argue that 'isolated tribes' in Papua have borrowed so many words from other languages (even stuff like pronouns), that it is almost impossible to discover the real genetic relations.

Also, concerning the C's T.: you're welcome

[Foolster41]

This is a problem I feel like I'm running into for Karathnai (Salthan), though I'm currently working on a mind map of all the words and how they relate to kind of see how much this is a factor (About 1/6th of the way done. :P).

The thing is, he language was developed by an extremely isolated people (they and other races didn't know the others existed until fairly recently in their histories) so borrow isn't going to happen much (though there are some borrowed words)

I'm definitely going to look into these other resources mentioned here too.

Edit: Here's the mindmap.. I forgot to link it.

[HoskhMatriarch]

I suspect English is somewhat unusual - it's borrowed a lot of words from other languages to describe all sorts of technical concepts, whereas an isolated Amazon tribe probably hasn't done that. And English contrasts with something like German which has tended to coin new compounds rather than borrowing to a greater extent.

German borrows less than English but it still borrows a lot. Just scan a German newspaper for Romance roots sometime. Purist languages are like French and Icelandic.

[Omzinesý]

I suppose English borrows little nowadays. Loans come from English.