Posted by Glenn Kempf on 00:22 6/19/02
In reply to: Mandin Kálru posted by Green Dragon on 17:06 5/25/02
Dear Dragon,
A few long-overdue comments on your conlang, Mandin Kálru:
If you want some ideas for how to present a language, there are some valuable examples right from this site--more elaborate descriptions from Mark's Virtual Verduria and Pablo Flores' parallel Earth (accessible via the Language Construction Kit), more compact ones from Jonathan's Tigere and Julius' Kanaran pages (accessible via this bulletin board).
I took a look at your Mandin Kálru page; I can see that you set the information up in table form (a good idea, by the way), but it comes out all crunched together. This is something you'd probably want to correct, although I'm not sure how this can be done. Once you have more vocabulary, giving examples to illustrate the various forms would also help a lot.
One of the neat things about any language (con or non-con--would that be "pro"?) is the existence of patterns, and a history. I noticed that in Mandin Kálru, the "simple" sentence order is SOV, while the "polite form" is VOS (thus creating a huge difference between the two forms). One possible explanation is that the VOS order is the older one, and people use the more archaic form of the language in order to be formal (as the language of the King James Bible has a formal ring to modern ears, for example). The SOV structure would be more modern, possible influenced by another language.
On the other hand, maybe the VOS form was introduced by the new upper class after a conquest, on the basis of the conqueror's language...Just a few thoughts... (I'm a former history major, which may be part of the reason I tend to come up with these things :-) ; they may not have anything to do with your own ideas.)
No matter what, don't criticize yourself or sell yourself short; if you like the idea of conlanging, keep at it! Good luck!
Nende quralain,
Glenn