If you could make your own language, describe how would it be like!

[jeancrowley]

Be creative! 

[Latch33570]

ESPERANTO

[Abreo]

Probably like some bastardized version of English with a somewhat different alphabet since that's all I currently know how to speak.

[CD]

Depends what it's for.  If it's a common tongue for all the worlds people to use, like a new lingua franca, it would need to have none of the pitfalls of cultural imperialism (like English seemingly being a lingua franca in trade and internet) and the benefits of each language existing.  But also none of the ambiguity.  Clear communication is difficult even amongst people fluent in the same language.  Phonetic spelling tends to help.  Good structural logic does too, but it can't be so abstract as to confuse people.

Latch, does Esperanto have that benefit?

As for creative context, like inventing Elvish or Orcish for LOTR,  I supposed it depends on what I'm writing. I was inventing a language some years back.  I began with a concept of the culture and then structured a basic alphabet from that.  I haven't finished the project. Maybe I should.

[Latch33570]

I think esperanto does butI don't speak it. It is a made up language designed to be a world language. It was intentionally made to be easy to learn.  I think it interesting to note that in south africa there is a large mine that has a language sort of like esperanto. The workers come from all over Africa and speak lots of languages. It isn'tesperanto but I remember reading that it sort of developed.n I can't remember where I read that though. It was years ago maybe decades.

[CD]

Oh cool.  Yeah there are heaps of dialects in the world like that. That is quite the way new languages form.  I don't think it's Afrikaans though because that's not just a miner's language.

[Hutch Hogan]

1. No conjugation of verbs (there goes years of learning french). 

2. Tenses: Past, Near Past, Present, Near Future, Future

3. Spelling convention (a,o,u, are similar vowels and i,e are similar vowels. Only similar vowels are separated by consonants: i.e.  Similear (Similar), Vowals (Vowels). It sounds confusing at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly). 

Basically this is Scottish Gaelic without lenition or the genitive case. 

[CD]

Oh gud you're one of those dudes that actually speak linguist.  I can never get my head around that stuff, and I try to teach myself languages regularly and even make up my own.  What the heck is conjugation of verbs and a lenition and a genitive case?

Also the linguists have these symbols for pronunciation that make no sense. I've seen tables for it but it's in more words that I don't know.  So I'm never sure if I'm anunciating the word properly.

[Hutch Hogan]

Australia is blessed with only one national language, isn't it? 

In Canada we have two, and in elementary school french was compulsory (I spite those classes and refuse to give it the respect of capitalizing). 

Conjugation is the changing of a verb pending the subject.  In core french classes, you do this a lot.  It looks like this:

je suis

tu es

il est 

nous sommes

vous êtes

ils sont

Basically the English equivalent would be doing this:

I am

you are

he is

we are

you (group) are

they are

Whereas without conjugation, it would be something like this:

I be

you be

he be

we be

you be

they be

Lenition is a change of pronunciation pending on the setting.  For Gaelic, when greeting a male, you lenite their name:  "Feasgar math a Calum" would actually be: "Feagar math a Chalum" which makes the C sound a bit more gut sound-y.   Either way, completely unnecessary, difficult to explain and better off without it. 

The genitive case is a bit nasty in Gaelic, but not that bad in English.  It refers to the case where one noun has possession over another noun.  i.e. the tree's leaves. 

I don't actually speak linguist, but I've taken 7 french courses and 3 Gaelic courses in school. 

[Ashtar]

I would just take a child from every country and put them on an island. After some generations I would come back and try to talk to them ^_^