Part 4: Growing roots

In Part 3, we came up with an initial core of vocabulary words for solid objects, then let it be for a few days.  Now go back to your lists and read what you came up with.  Make any changes you like, or revise your rules.  Add any of those new words that have been bouncing around your head.  Double and triple-check that ALL your words follow ALL your rules.  This consistency will make your language seem more natural and give it a distinct sound-flavor.

Now we will start to establish some patterns.

You don't have lots of words yet, so there may not be many patterns, but never you fear!  In this post I will guide you through how to create meaningful patterns and themes in your language that will make your word-smithing explode with life!

A popular element in many conlangs is to assign a meaning or feeling to a certain sound.  In my Palşa, for example, the voiceless dental fricative (TH in think) is associated with all things negative.  I assigned the sound the character ø, because it's easier to type than the Greek letter theta. So øi means "no";  paøa means "bad"; sianøe means "unwanted change", and so on.  This gives me words that are easy to identify as negative, and a pattern to follow when creating new words.

To take this a step further, you may assign a meaning or feeling to a whole syllable. Examine the English words cosign, coordinate, collaborate and correspond.  What do all these have in common?  That's right!  They all begin with co-, which means "together".  This is called a "root".  Roots are bits of sound that carry a meaning, that are used to create other words, even if they aren't whole words themselves.  In linguistic terminology, these tiny, idea-bearing sound bits are called "morphemes".

Roots can be made up of one or several syllables, and even combined with other roots to form complex words.  Take anthropo (human), for example, from which we get anthropology, anthropomorphism, misanthropic and philanthropy.  These few examples contain many other roots, such as morpho, mis, ology and philo.

Since you don't often find a ton of potential root words in simple nouns like "tree" or "cat", we're going to take a few minutes now to make a list of words.  This time, include some adjectives, like colors, feelings and .

Take a few moments and go back to your list, again looking for these patterns.  Those could be the seeds of morphemes, giving you a pattern for future words!  Try creating a new root, and then make up some words that contain that root.  This can lead you down the path to MORE roots, which will create MORE new words, giving you EVEN MORE new roots, and so on.  I find that my new languages really take off at this stage, and I can sit for hours making up words!  (Just be careful not to jeopardize the wellbeing of your pets or social relationships.  It's a slippery slope.)

If you are looking for inspiration, find a dictionary or website that lists word roots and origins (known as "etymology"), and examine how the words in question are put together.  You don't need to copy their particular structure (though it is temping), but perhaps this will give you a deeper understanding of linguistics and the nature of language in general.

STOP right now and make a list of possible word roots.  Use simple words and very general ideas, such as "no/not", "together", "above", "more than", "below", "less than", "large", "small" etc.

Coming Up Next...

So far we've been focusing primarily on word-production.  This is something that you will be doing for the rest of your project.  The tools I have described above are only a few of the many many different ways to construct words.  Creating new words is always the most fun part for me!  In the next section we will work just a little bit more on word-level stuff before moving into grammar.

Grammar?  *GROAN!*  Wait, not so fast!  Grammar can actually be really fun and interesting, and once you lay down a few ground rules, you will be able to start USING your new language to write sentences!  Having a basic grasp of general grammar concepts in English or another language will certainly make constructing a NEW grammar a lot easier, but it is not entirely necessary.  Besides, just by embarking on this linguistic journey you are sure to deepen your understanding of grammar, syntax and semantics.  So keep wordsmithing while I put the next section together!  :)