I love languages. First of all, I love English. Did you know that English has the largest vocabulary of any languages on earth? That means that subtleties can often be expressed better in English than in any other language. Of course, I want to be a writer and work in publishing.
I also love Spanish, which is the language I'm taking in school. A lot of my friends are also in Spanish (the only other langues my HS offers are French and Latin) so we can talk to each other in Spanish, or more often, Spanglish. Me encanta español, también. Muchos de mis amigos están en la clase de español (las otras idiomas que mi escuela ofrece son frances y latín), así podemos a decir en español, o más veces, en spanglish.
Well, I was reading my new book, What Are the Seven Wonders of the World by Peter D'Epiro and Mary Desmond Pinkowish, and one of the questions they answer is, "What are the twelve main branches of the Indo-European language tree?" Some of you, I'm sure, have heard of the the Indo-European language thing. From similarities noted in European languages (brother, bhratar, brathair, broeder, Bruder, frater, brat are all "brother" in English, Sanskrit, Irish, Dutch, German, Latin and Russian), linguists now know that almost all the current languages of Europe and many of India and Iran have one source, the proto-Indo-European language. (By the way, I've quoted some of this directly from the book, just thought I'd mention that.)
I've also been thinking a lot about Tolkein lately (Dec 18, people!). Tolkein was a professor languages, particularly old English tongues. He wrote the language Elvish before he wrote the Lord of the Rings books. Elvish functions like a real language, because Tolkein knew all the ins and outs of language, including how they change over time. In fact, Sindarin and Quenya are two different dialects of Elvish. If you've never heard Elvish spoken or seen it written, you're really missing out. It's beautiful.
I tried writing a language once before, but it didn't work out very well--it wasn't at all realistic. I've memorized the alphabet though, so if I want to write something no one else can read, I write it out in my alphabet. And it's not a code alphabet either, because it's based on phonetics, not English. But anyway.
So I was looking around the net for dictionaries of the proto-Indo-European roots of words (found one here) and I found a page about How to Make Your Own Language. So I'm working on a new language. It's fun! I'm on the alphabet right now, and I got ideas for letter shapes from here, from languages such as Hindi, Burmen, Greek, Semitic, Russian, Tibetan, Teluga, Sanskrit, Coptic, Amazigh, Ethiopian, Syriac, Cherokee, Serbo-Croatian, Georgian, Bengali and Mongol. For the vocabulary, I think I'll just adapt the proto-Indo-European roots. I know, I know... Get a life, Ash! The language is going to be called Ghova (I think). For those who are interested, it's pronounced kind of like "jova" would be prounounced in Spanish. But of course, the alphabet won't look like that.
Come join me in language-inventing bliss! Make your own!
