Those of you that having been reading my recent posts will probably not be surprised that I am now actively working on producing a set of Neo-Eldarin vocabulary, both Neo-Quenya and Neo-Sindarin. The end goal is to produce two vocabulary lists, the rough drafts of which are here:
I have three additional lists for each language, one for Neologisms, a second for “deprecated words” (more on this below) and a third “full word list” with everything together: recommended words, deprecated words and neologisms.
Right now my main focus is on the “deprecated words”. I think everyone agrees that we can’t simply use every word Tolkien ever created and expect to have a coherent language, but I don’t think there is any consensus on which subset of Tolkien’s words we should accept. The “deprecated words” project is my attempt to produce such a subset by throwing out the stuff I think shouldn’t be used.
What I am doing right now is slowly working through the attested primitive roots and trying figure out which roots and derivatives can be put into an internally consistent framework. For the most part I am favoring later roots and words over early roots and words, but not universally. For an example of why not, see this post on BER vs BES vs BED:
I am evaluating both early and late roots. I consider adapting an early root and (some of) its derivatives if it (a) expresses a concept that does not appear at all in Tolkien’s later languages and (b) is not contradicted by a later identical root with a different meaning. In cases where I can’t adapt and early word, I am attempting to coin neologism replacements: most of the neologisms I am coining right now are for early words that I am being forced to reject. Note that not all late words are mutually compatible, so I am rejecting some of those as well.
I am only in the earliest stages of this project and am still refining my techniques. I consider everything I’ve done so far as preliminary, and will likely shuffle things around as I proceed. I am trying to make it very clear that this is simply my conception of Neo-Eldarin. I have no way of knowing in advance how much (if any) of my ideas will gain general acceptance.
Up until now I’ve mostly worked on Eldamo by myself because it was just a big data-entry project and I couldn’t figure out any effective way to allow others to collaborate on it. For the Neo-Eldarin stage of the project, however, I would very much appreciate and welcome both feedback and collaboration. I think the end result will be much better if it is the product of multiple minds rather than just my own. I don’t know what kind of interest there will be, however, so I am committed to moving forward on my own regardless.
It may also be that people will be more interested in collaborating later once I am past the “deprecated words” phase and into the “crafting neologisms” phase. I fully intend once I reach that point to first survey the existing lists of neologisms and use those where appropriate (I’ve already added some). But I want to finish narrowing down the subset of Tolkien’s vocabulary that I will be using before I start adding a lot of neologisms for new concepts, because it would be problematic if I crafted neologisms based on attested words that I ultimately ended up rejecting.
Paul Strack Apr 07, 2018 (05:32)
https://plus.google.com/101464290458691045803/posts/NChiFKWfuPp
Those of you that having been reading my recent posts will probably not be surprised that I am now actively working on producing a set of Neo-Eldarin vocabulary, both Neo-Quenya and Neo-Sindarin. The end goal is to produce two vocabulary lists, the rough drafts of which are here:
Neo-Quenya: http://eldamo.org/content/vocabulary-indexes/vocabulary-words-nq.html?neo
Neo-Sindarin: http://eldamo.org/content/vocabulary-indexes/vocabulary-words-ns.html?neo
I have three additional lists for each language, one for Neologisms, a second for “deprecated words” (more on this below) and a third “full word list” with everything together: recommended words, deprecated words and neologisms.
Right now my main focus is on the “deprecated words”. I think everyone agrees that we can’t simply use every word Tolkien ever created and expect to have a coherent language, but I don’t think there is any consensus on which subset of Tolkien’s words we should accept. The “deprecated words” project is my attempt to produce such a subset by throwing out the stuff I think shouldn’t be used.
What I am doing right now is slowly working through the attested primitive roots and trying figure out which roots and derivatives can be put into an internally consistent framework. For the most part I am favoring later roots and words over early roots and words, but not universally. For an example of why not, see this post on BER vs BES vs BED:
https://plus.google.com/101464290458691045803/posts/VHHEgbTiJMN
I am evaluating both early and late roots. I consider adapting an early root and (some of) its derivatives if it (a) expresses a concept that does not appear at all in Tolkien’s later languages and (b) is not contradicted by a later identical root with a different meaning. In cases where I can’t adapt and early word, I am attempting to coin neologism replacements: most of the neologisms I am coining right now are for early words that I am being forced to reject. Note that not all late words are mutually compatible, so I am rejecting some of those as well.
I am only in the earliest stages of this project and am still refining my techniques. I consider everything I’ve done so far as preliminary, and will likely shuffle things around as I proceed. I am trying to make it very clear that this is simply my conception of Neo-Eldarin. I have no way of knowing in advance how much (if any) of my ideas will gain general acceptance.
Up until now I’ve mostly worked on Eldamo by myself because it was just a big data-entry project and I couldn’t figure out any effective way to allow others to collaborate on it. For the Neo-Eldarin stage of the project, however, I would very much appreciate and welcome both feedback and collaboration. I think the end result will be much better if it is the product of multiple minds rather than just my own. I don’t know what kind of interest there will be, however, so I am committed to moving forward on my own regardless.
It may also be that people will be more interested in collaborating later once I am past the “deprecated words” phase and into the “crafting neologisms” phase. I fully intend once I reach that point to first survey the existing lists of neologisms and use those where appropriate (I’ve already added some). But I want to finish narrowing down the subset of Tolkien’s vocabulary that I will be using before I start adding a lot of neologisms for new concepts, because it would be problematic if I crafted neologisms based on attested words that I ultimately ended up rejecting.
As mentioned in my other post, my general approach to Neo-Eldarin is discussed here: http://localhost:8080/eldamo/pub/general/motivations-and-methodology.html