Trying to think up new words is really hard I've discovered. Finished Uni exams so I finally have time to think about it and I'm stuck. Problem is that every time I work out enough words for a sentence (which sound like ones written by 3 year olds ie. 'I love you' etc) they sound stupid and I can't work out why.
I've listened to some other Conlang projects online and they sound quite good. I don't get why mine sounds so....I'm not sure. Forced? Stumbling? Just plain weird! My word length is varied, I've gotten some words which have the right letters to have the softer sounds but it still sound dumb.
Part of the problem is I can't get the inflection. When we speak our voices rise and fall naturally. English has more variation than some languages and Italian has even more than English. I need that but I can't find it. I can't find the rhythm.
My mother, who thankfully doesn't want to have me committed for doing this and is even willing to talk about it, said a sentence the other day. I'd told her the words of course and she said them as if she were speaking English. She got it! I'm TOTALLY jealous! How come she could say it and I couldn't? The only good thing was that when she said the sentence it sounded quite decent. Not perfect but decent.
I'm trying to get a softness, a thoughtfulness to this language. The idea behind the language came about because I write for fun. I have dozens of stories now and probably thousand of pages. I created a culture and I thought it would be fun to create a language for that culture. I wanted the language to match the culture however and this culture is quite thoughtful, doing things carefully and deliberately rather than quickly. At some point I hope the language will match however for now I'm quite enjoying this project. I keep thinking how totally cool it would be to walk down the street somewhere and hear someone say something in your language!
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