How do you stick with one conlang?

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xBlackHeartx
How do you stick with one conlang?

Postby xBlackHeartx » 2017-03-04, 14:47

I've been trying to make a conlang of my own for 10 years now. And even now, I have NOTHING to show for it. Literally, nothing.

I can't decide what I want. My problem isn't 'oh, I learned about a new feature in some weird natlang, I need to add that!'. Problem is, nothing is perfect to me. Isolating languages lack information, agglutinating languages are too long, inflecting languages are too complicated. I can't get an vso order to work, svo is too cliche, sov is annoying to me. I want free word order, I don't want grammatical case. All I've managed to narrow down is I prefer simpler phoneme inventories. That's it.

I did make some progress in one conlang. I abandoned it for the time being though, because well I made it a limited language like Toki Pona. And no, mine isn't complete, for now I want to work on a more complete conlang. I did write down all I planned for the first conlang at least. I haven't done that in a while, record a conlang because I didn't want to even start writing until I knew what I wanted.

How do you stay with one conlang for any length of time? For me, my relentless perfectionism is what's always getting in the way. Nothing is good enough, and nothing can be good enough, but I can't accept anything less than perfection even knowing full well its futile.

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Dormouse559
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Re: How do you stick with one conlang?

Postby Dormouse559 » 2017-03-04, 21:48

A lot of the time, I don't stick with one conlang. There's a particular conlang/conworld aesthetic that's been floating around in my head for a while now, and I've made a pile of language sketches based on that over time. None of them has lasted longer than a few months. EDIT: I don't think of this as a problem, just an aspect of how I conlang. I have no strong urge to change this part of my behavior.

The only conlang I've stuck with for a long time is Silvish. I suppose I'm able to because I don't expect it to ever be perfect, but instead get satisfaction from always working on making it better.

A lot of the specific problems you listed in your second paragraph might have solutions. No (natural) language is as simple as any of the labels you mentioned, so I'd say study how languages combine some of these tendencies. As for free word order with no case, I immediately thought about polypersonal agreement, where the verb agrees with more than one of its arguments. With robust polypersonal agreement (and maybe a gender system), nouns wouldn't have to mark case and yet could be moved around freely.
N'hésite pas à corriger mes erreurs.

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Aquila Ex Machina
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Re: How do you stick with one conlang?

Postby Aquila Ex Machina » 2017-03-08, 13:10

Whether it's for my conlangs or my conworld in general, I have never allowed myself to change anything that's been decided at any moment. I can add things, modify them a little bit, but I never removed or drastically changed anything since the beginning of their creation.
Deyryck (mt main conlang) is about 9 years old now, and more than trying to make it be the way I wanted it to be, I made it the way "it" wanted to be somehow. I like and enjoy it the way it is now and tend to see it as an entity on its own which I have no right to alter, it's more like I discover it.
This is fairly nothing but a way of feeling conlanging, but I've never wished to have another main conlang. I can't see a future where I don't stick with it and I think it's because of the way I see things. Hope this will somehow be of any help for you. ~
Lag ta lag é kén ta kén é i tay lag é


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