Lately I've been toying with the idea of creating a naturalistic conlang based on Faliscan, which would be my very first conlang. Savvinic made me think it could be a plausible and awesome idea, but after some research, now I realize that it's going to be a difficult task.
Faliscan attestations aren't that scarce and comprise sepulchral inscriptions, signatures, owner's signs, decorations, dedications and inscriptions on public works. Bakkum counts c. 355 inscriptions, some of which have more significant linguistical value, but none of them are lengthy. Having something like a literary work would be so much helpful, but that's not the case here. As things stand, I've thought of two main concerns:
- I should standardize Faliscan orthography, but I don't know how to do it or what should I consider. There are instances where the spelling of a word varies, e.g. the first person singular pronoun eqo is also spelled eco, and eko.
- For the unattested and obscure words, I may have to go back to Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Italic reconstructions to make up for the lack of lexicon and compare with Latin and Sabellic cognates, but how will I be sure that I made a good work? Even cognates have different meanings between close languages.
What do you guys think? Any advice or comment will be much appreciated!