Thanks for the confidence, unless anyone disagrees I accept. :)
So for now I suggest you get a working phonology and an idea of how isolating/fusional/polysynthetic/derivational/suffixing etc the lang will be.
Whether it's going to be an isolated language depends on the language family, so I have two proposals here: if we create our own language family, I'd say quite a bit isolated (but with some words borrowed from other languages, even Korean has some foreign words). If we choose to go with an existing language family, I'd say pick one main language, e.g. French for Romance, Norwegian for Germanic, Welsh for Celtic, and create a related (but not too similar, I assume we don't want a dialect. Unless we do, of course
) language. A demonstration of what that could look like: laptop = laptopp, house = haus, music = muzik. Semitic and creating our own language family both have two votes. We could do both. Is a language with a Semitic pronunciation and vocabulary, but with a completely unique grammar (let's say Japanese), still a Semitic language?
I'm afraid I have no clue what fusional languages are, and both Wikipedia and Google are being cryptic, but am I correct in assuming that in fusional languages, the suffix is unique to a combination of features (genitive + feminine + singular)? And if one were to change one of those features, it would change (genitive + masculine + singular)? In that case it would probably be more realistic to do so. Since cases might be related: I personally don't care about cases, but if we use them, we shouldn't make them ridiculously difficult (hahaha shouldn't become ahahehia, but hahahe should be fine).
Preferably not polysynthetic, 'Aliikusersuillammassuaanerartassagaluarpaalli.' is a little too long for my taste. :P Derivation sounds good and logical. We should definitely use suffixes, it'd make the language a lot easier to learn.
As for articles, I don't think they are necessary. Even without them a language can look good.
I also have a few questions:
- We need a name. Does anyone have any ideas?
- Do we want cases?
-- How many cases?
-- Which cases?
- Do we want a country? If so, on Earth or on a human colony?
-- What continent should our country be on?
-- How big should our country be?
-- Do we want regions, provinces, states, counties, or ...?
-- Should the territory of our country cover existing countries (as in create a country out of Bavaria, Bohemia, northern Austria, whatever)?
-- What's the country going to be called?