Formatting

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masako
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Formatting

Post by masako »

http://www.frathwiki.com/Kala/affixes

So I finally got around to listing all of the affixes used in Kala ("alphabetically"), but should I also list them by usage?
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Frislander
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Re: Formatting

Post by Frislander »

Nah, the grammar page should be enough (when you've written it up); how you have it now is just fine afaic, and I wish more people would arrange their lexica primarily by te word in the language first more often.
masako
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Re: Formatting

Post by masako »

Frislander wrote: 12 Dec 2017 16:45 I wish more people would arrange their lexica primarily by the word in the language first more often.
Yeah, me too. It's something that Radius Solis from the ZBB recommended to me long ago and I've stuck with it since.
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Iyionaku
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Re: Formatting

Post by Iyionaku »

Frislander wrote: 12 Dec 2017 16:45 Nah, the grammar page should be enough (when you've written it up); how you have it now is just fine afaic, and I wish more people would arrange their lexica primarily by te word in the language first more often.
Could you elaborate what the advantage of doing so is? I store my vocabulary in a database which allows me to order it back and forth, but what lets you refrain from an English -> Conlang dictionary?
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Frislander
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Re: Formatting

Post by Frislander »

Iyionaku wrote: 15 Dec 2017 11:24
Frislander wrote: 12 Dec 2017 16:45 Nah, the grammar page should be enough (when you've written it up); how you have it now is just fine afaic, and I wish more people would arrange their lexica primarily by te word in the language first more often.
Could you elaborate what the advantage of doing so is? I store my vocabulary in a database which allows me to order it back and forth, but what lets you refrain from an English -> Conlang dictionary?
Basically it's kind of a matter of mindset. If you write the dictionary primarily English -> Conlang, it's harder to avoid relexing, because you have to think about what senses you want to incorporate together, whereas when you start with the conlang word it's more easy to start with "I have this word and I can use it for this" and later realise "Oh, I can also use it to signify this". Furthermore when it comes to adding that new sense to the dictionary it makes it much easier because you're adding it under the same conlang headword, instead of having to create a new entry for every sense that has a different English word.

The same goes for words which are more specific than their English counterparts. For example if your language has a large amount of highly specific technical vocabulary where English doesn't (e.g. Sámi reindeer vocabulary) then you run into a problem with English-first lexical entries because you have to either have to put them in separate entries with very cumbersome phrasal headwords, or you have to group them together in some way, which might lead to a single massive entry. With Conlang-first entries otoh this makes things much easier because they suddenly become normal entries with single headwords and reasonable descriptions.

Now that's not to say an English -> Conlang dictionary isn't useful, just that I think it really should be secondary and that Conlang -> English is the better way to start out.
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Sequor
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Re: Formatting

Post by Sequor »

Maybe I've been hanging out with a different crowd all these years, but I've never seen an English -> artlang dictionary except for like a couple. All of Zompist's dictionaries are artlang -> English except for the (out-of-date) English -> Verdurian one, and the same goes for all the ones on Anthologica and Conworkshop (although admittedly forcibly so because of the platform design).
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masako
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Re: Formatting

Post by masako »

Iyionaku wrote: 15 Dec 2017 11:24 I store my vocabulary in a database which allows me to order it back and forth, but what lets you refrain from an English -> Conlang dictionary?
I use Excel for the same reason, but the left column is Kala for the very reason Frislander mentions.
Serafín wrote: 15 Dec 2017 18:58 Maybe I've been hanging out with a different crowd all these years, but I've never seen an English -> artlang dictionary except for like a couple. All of Zompist's dictionaries are artlang -> English except for the (out-of-date) English -> Verdurian one, and the same goes for all the ones on Anthologica and Conworkshop (although admittedly forcibly so because of the platform design).
Yeah, but it's good to remind people occasionally.
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alynnidalar
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Re: Formatting

Post by alynnidalar »

Resurrecting this a bit for my personal view on the topic...

I use ConWorkShop for my lexicon storage. CWS is ultimately just a fancy interface for a database, so as with Iyionaku, it's not inherently ordered either English -> conlang or conlang -> English. When I search the database, I don't consistently choose to order by either English or Tirina. I haven't really thought about it before, but it does seem that when I order by English, it's because I'm looking for a very specific sense, while when I order by Tirina, I'm more interested in seeing a broad variety (and am more likely to go "eh that's close enough" and adapt a pre-existing word to encompass a new meaning too).

In addition, when I first started inputting words, I frequently would add the same word multiple times, with multiple English equivalents. But over time, I've evolved to adding a single entry with a sort of "umbrella" English equivalent for the primary meaning, then write up notes that get into the specifics and nuances of the definition. In other words, I went from a "what specific English words does this conlang word lump together/split apart?" approach to a "here's a conlang word with a particular meaning that doesn't directly translate into English at all" approach.

(for example, in the past, when creating the word malen, I might put in separate entries for "kind", "friendly", "helpful", etc., but now I just put in "kind" as the primary definition and throw the rest in the notes. It's less about "this is exactly what this word means in English" and more about "here's some examples to give you an impression of what this word is all about".)

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that despite using a database where the order is flexible, my experience has still been the same as you guys--focusing on conlang words first, precise English equivalents second, leads to more interesting conlang words. In my case, I think this was just something I figured out myself over time as I did more and more conlanging--it's just more natural for me to think of Tirina first, now.
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