New CBB

I have a new idea about a conlang, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it. I want to mix Biblical Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic into a new language. But how? Should I base the phonology on one language and the lexicon based mainly on the other two languages or is it possible to completely mix them all in every aspect and still have a somewhat natural looking language?

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor

Randomly jumbling the pieces won't net you a naturalistic language, no. Especially if you jumble in vocabulary from the different sources. What you *can* do though is use inspiration rather than direct copies: E.g., make a case system that combines elements of the case systems of the three languages, while still being a consistent system in and of itself. Taking natlangs and ripping off the parts that you like and pasting them together is actually quite standard practice in conlanging.

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As long as you use your own or one systems inflections, it should be alright. For semitic languages and verbs though, I can see it getting difficult quick, so I'd advise using one and like you say, basing newly created verbs off another.

Also, Nouns between the abovementioned languages should be pretty easy to incorporate if you want to use suffixes for your language. I've done something similar to this before. It's fun but can get weird.

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Know phrases in more languages than can fit in this signature.
Speaks English and Spanish.
Reads Sumerian.
There is more.

So for nouns I could make, say, a case system with a nominative, accusative, status construct, and a dative case with common noun endings from all 3?

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor

You could try to make a creole.

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CrazyEttin's Lair

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How do you make a creole?

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor

You may want to read Bastard Tongues.

Wikipedia, google and the library are your friends.

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CrazyEttin's Lair

That's a pretty broad topic—it'll be more efficient if you start doing some initial research yourself and then ask questions about what you find.

The Wikipedia article on "Creole language" is a good starting point. But in general, you may want to follow the natural progression: first form a pidgin of the two languages, then augment it with more naturalistic complexity.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

This may be a stupid question, but would a creole language retain the beauty and prestige of the parent languages? Seeing a book about creoles with the title Bastard Tongues makes me worry that making a creole of the two may be degrading to the original languages, especially when they're Classical languages.

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor

o_ô

er...no? You're talking about "beauty" as though it were a linear thing, which doesn't really make sense. I mean, it's not going to retain the particular beauty of the parent languages because it's a separate language distinct from either of them (did Italian "retain the beauty" of Latin, or is it beautiful in its own right?). And I'm not really sure how prestige would fit into this at all—that's a sociolinguistic issue. Do the people who speak the creole assign it the same prestige as speaking one of its Classical parents? That's a question for the conculture (if you have one), not the conlang itself.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

The title was a reference to how creoles have long been percieved, not to what they actually are.

And I second the comparison of Italian (or any other Romance language) retaining the beauty and prestige of Latin.

If anything, creoles have beauty and innovation not found in their parents.

If you make a creole, keep in mind that it will probably end up as SVO, isolating, and analytic no matter the parent languages. For instance, Chinuk Wawa's parents were the highly polysynthetic languages of the Pacific Northwest, but they gave birth to an isolating language.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

But does it have to be SVO, isolating, and analytic?

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor

it could have serial verbs.

I'm sure that's only if the superstrate ancestor is the language of one of the European imperial powers of 1500-2000.

Imagine a creole descended from a pidgin whose superstrate was a Celtic verb-initial language. It might indeed be isolating and/or analytic, but would it not probably be verb-initial?

Is Unserdeutsch (Rabaul Creole German) verb-medial or verb-final? Is it isolating? Is it analytic? Namibian Black German appears to be verb-final. I don't know about Belgranodeutsch.

You might also consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michif_language, which is a counter-example to more than one majority trend among creoles. For example, it had obviation, not a feature of French.

Creoles don't always simplify away any feature of one parent that's not shared by the other parent. For instance most English-based creoles in the SouthWest Pacific seem to have a dual number in addition to singular and plural, and to have an inclusive-vs-exclusive opposition in the nonsingular first-person pronouns. Some of them even have a trial number in their pronouns.

I bet that, if both the superstrate and the substrate parents of a creole were verb-final, it would usually be verb-final; and if both the superstrate and the substrate were verb-initial, the creole would probably also be verb-initial.

But, lingua francas don't always retain features shared by their parents. If both parents are tonal the lingua franca may not be. If both parents have large noun-class systems (say both parents are Bantu languages) the lingua franca may have a much-simplified noun-class system.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

Perhaps if you tell us what you would like in your creole, we might be better able to help you?

I'd like the creole to maintain lots of grammatical features of both languages and not stray too far from them. But I would want it not to be mixed in a way that looks completely artificial. I'd want it to maitain the case system with maybe status construct instead of the genitive, a middle voice, etc.

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Magnae clunes mihi placent, nec possum de hac re mentiri. -Multomixtor