"Southeast Asia Conlang" Revisited

[Bob]

"Southeast Asia Conlang" Revisited
by Bob, "The MIB Twins", "The Tornado", "My Number One Guy"

CONTENTS

why i am writing this post

my own ideas about conlanging

other beggings for patience and tolerance

previous posts about sea conlang to zompist bboard website

new text translation addition: from dante's "inferno", on money

description of the sea conlang and my associated abilities

the practical ends of this project

a quick grammar sketch

i may in a few months put free online all my works on the sea conlang


WHY I AM WRITING THIS POST
( Post sections are capitalized for distinction. )

I'm going to post about this quickly here because the last few months I've been focusing on conlanging, which is very rare for me. I've been conlanging 15 years now, since 2006. But on and off, I don't conlang or study conlangs most of the time, I study natural languages.

MY OWN IDEAS ABOUT CONLANGING

I post this to better establish my presence as a conlanger of great accomplishment (though apparently very rare ideas about what conlanging should be and what makes conlangers and conlangers great). So bear with me.

In general, my conlangs focus on scientific experimentation and scholarly exploration with special reference to my scholarly specializations. The most notable of which is the comparative study of all 50 known logographic writing systems using (and expanding!) modern language science (my prefered term for "linguistics"). My conlangs are sometimes very quick things which focus on very specific things from my recent research or things which I wanted to do a bit of reading on. The last few years, sometimes my conlangs even jettison the concept of having words be sufficiently distinct from eachother in writing, in imitation of tonal languages when written without tones or the many languages which are not such good fits for the Roman Alphabet though better matches for the Georgian Alphabet.

I also approach conlanging like I approach language science, in that I have a specialization in the study and application of it. Namely, I specialize in the decipherment and study of conlangs from famous books, television, and movies.

However, I am very tolerant of other approaches to conlanging and conlanger mastery.

OTHER BEGGINGS FOR PATIENCE AND TOLERANCE

Also, I have some weeks ago read the standards for this forum and try to keep them in mind. Keep in mind, however, that most of my conlang work is either hand-written or cannot be shared online until some months have its creation, due to technology and circumstances. So a lot of my more recent posts have been descriptions of my work, mostly refering to recent posts on the Zompist Bboard.

...

PREVIOUS POSTS ABOUT SEA CONLANG TO ZOMPIST BBOARD WEBSITE

I did at least one post about this conlang on Zompist Bboard of which this is a continuation:

https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?t=544

...

NEW TEXT TRANSLATION ADDITION: FROM DANTE'S "INFERNO", ON MONEY

Over the weekend, because I've been studying the Ferengi Peoples of "Star Trek" American television, who are associated with unethical merchants, I translated two short texts from Dante's Inferno (c 1400s, Middle Italian) into this Southeast Asia Conlang, SEA Conlang. They're about the use of money. I chose "avaricious and spendthrifts [greedy and money-wasters]" and "barrators [corrupt officials]" of the money-related sections of "Inferno" because they had interesting vocabulary. The part on thieves was not so interesting for vocabulary.

But the core of this addition was that I made a quick gloss of that text from my own vast knowledge of Romance languages. I can read all Romance (and Germanic) languages at a very advanced level, from all eras of time, mainly due to extensive study of Latin, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Indo-European. I am a scholar of logographic writing systems and mostly ancient languages, which is most of that for which I use these abilities. ( I can also read Ancient Greek, Classical Chinese, Modern Chinese, and Japanese to varying notable degrees beyond what is really basic. But the focus of my scholarship is not being able to read a ton of different languages and I could only ever speak intermediate German and French, if I can at all now. I almost never get the chance to practice speaking it anymore. )

But most of this project was done over a week or so around 2 11 2020, earlier this year.

...

DESCRIPTION OF THE SEA CONLANG AND MY ASSOCIATED ABILITIES

SEA Conlang is like a poor man's version of Old Thai, Old Vietnamese, and Old Khmer (Old Cambodian).

I have actually studied Old Khmer extensively though its corpus lacks for genre and grammatical variety. I am probably one of about 10 living experts worldwide on the Old Khmer language and its associated Old Khmer and Sanskrit inscriptions, though I am an amateur or independent scholar with only a BA Linguistics and decades of intense independent research and reference to cutting-edge publications. I think I have studied Old Mon a bit, too, though just the words.

I am also intermediate listening fluent in Hiligaynon, a major Austronesian language of central western Philippines and have studied its much smaller neighbor and related language, Kinaray-a. Philippines is from Southeast Asia.

I have a variety of short grammars and primers for these languages to which I add Pali English and English Pali dictionaries that I have, and also "ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese" which includes many references to the various languages of China and Southeast Asia.

THE PRACTICAL ENDS OF THIS PROJECT

The practical end of the project is creating and exploring indexes for the Pali English dictionaries and for gigantic Middle Thai classic "The Three Worlds of King Ruang" which I have in monolingual English translation. I find interesting and regular words in the Pali English dictionary, write out their English translation and page number, and use these to derive some of the invented words of the conlang.

It also has allowed and can allow me and others to explore texts which I own related to Southeast Asia and also China and different Buddhism religions. "The Three Worlds of King Ruang" (which has parts much like Dante's Inferno, etc), but also "The Lotus Sutra", its new bilingual Classical Chinese and English translation, and then "The Questions of King Milinda" from Bactria, and "In the Buddha's Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon" which is not bilingual in English prose translation.

And then the other words are from or derived from those modern Southeast Asian languages, though in such a way reflecting my own vast experience studying etymologies from all over the world.

So for yesterday's addition, I merely added to the Pali English dictionary index work by about 5 pages, then pulled some words from Modern Khmer, and made up the rest based on my own quick study of Modern Vietnamese phonology and syllable composition.

A QUICK GRAMMAR SKETCH

Grammar: The grammar that I have prepared for this conlang or group of similar conlangs is based on what little grammar is in the primers of these languages which I have. The phonology is also the same as these languages, though I uses words from all of them so it's like word borrowings but without the usual sound changes. These languages are analytical morphology type. The last few years, I do this a lot with my conlangs, I just borrow the phonology of a language or languages and then simplify the grammar to make it easier to compose in.

I do try to add some conlang elements to the grammar, though, to make it more interesting.

The focus of the language has been described before this section, however. The point of the language, so far, is to make quick, even somewhat relex-like, translations of texts from works like "The Three Worlds of King Ruang" and "The Lotus Sutra" while exploring words in Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, and Pali, among others. The grammar exists in case I wanted to re-arrange the words of the translations in a more native way.

But they're only relex-like, while not making an idiomatic re-write of the text, I combine and replace certain words in such a way reflecting my own experience with many and such languages.

I MAY IN A FEW MONTHS PUT FREE ONLINE ALL MY WORKS ON THE SEA CONLANG

I hope, perhaps, in a month or so when I scan and put online my recent work on Atlantean and other Okrand Languages and Star Trek Languages (Klingon, Vulcan, Mutsun, Ferengi, etc), to also include this one so people can see what it's actually like. Sulu is not my own favorite but I hear he is very popular.

Otherwise, until at least Thursday, I'm focusing on work expanding and translating into the Ferengi Languages of Star Trek, one of which is notably a 1995 (very early) major known imitation of Klingon.

...

To follow my other linguistics research and other conlang work, visit my homepage and search through all the links for what you're interested in. It's arranged topologically but only incidentally topologically:

Guide to "Any Language at All" Encyclopedic Website and Other Websites by Me
https://anylanguageatall411.blogspot.co ... w=flipcard

[Bob]

Image:

Here's a detailed map of the languages of Southeast Asia.
http://www.muturzikin.com/carteasiesudest.htm




Here's a song to go along with the post:

Hell, Squirrel Nut Zippers, 1996 (Retro Swing Genre)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFw5japDG2U

Trust, Prince, from "Batman" the movie, 1988
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsw0Sht66BA