One of my interests since childhood has been languages. One of my favorite articles from the 1972 edition of Collier’s Encyclopedia that we had when I was a kid was the one on Latin. The best part of that article was its good description of the phonetic development of Latin from Proto-Indo-European.
The languages that I have been interested in over the years have included the following: Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Avestan, Gothic, Old English, Old Saxon, Old High German, Gaulish, Welsh, (Old) Irish, Sumerian, Akkadian, Ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, Arabic, Ojibway, Cree. I have acquired many reference works on all of these languages (many of which I no longer have). Unfortunately, I’ve never studied any of these languages enough to gain any kind of fluency.
Along with my interest in actual historical or current languages, I’ve worked on a few artificial, or constructed, languages (i.e. conlangs). The first one, called Reshish, was created entirely from scratch. The few words I remember from this language are him ‘earth’, har ‘sky’ and tom’lael ‘cut’ (actually, this last word was “influenced” by Greek a-tomos ‘uncut’).
After I discovered the Gaulish language (mostly due to a website that Christopher Gwinn used to have), I decided to try to recreate Gaulish, or at least something like it. This “reconstruction” was called Danuvjâcon (i.e. Danubian): the reasoning for this name was the idea that the Proto-Celtic language had developed somewhere in the area of southern Germany/Austria/Hungary and that Gaulish was a direct continuation of Proto-Celtic. Although I still believe that Proto-Celtic originated somewhere in Central Europe, others prefer to think that it developed in the Atlantic regions (where the Celtoid languages remain to this day).
I posted a wordlist and grammatical material for Danuvjâcon on a website that I once had (I think it was an Angelfire website). That website hasn’t existed for a long time but an Ancient Celtic conlang Yahoo! Group that I once belonged to might still have that information. Interestingly, I recently found a reference to Danuvjâcon on a Neo-Druidic website. In hindsight, I have to admit that Danuvjâcon was much more a product of what I thought Ancient Celtic should be, rather than what it probably was.
I have worked on two other conlangs in the past few years (off and on). One of them is an attempt at deriving a distinct Indo-European language directly from reconstructed Proto-Indo-European. It would essentially constitute its own branch of Indo-European and be a cousin of Sanskrit, Ancient Greek and Latin, if you will.
The big problem with this project is that there are often things and concepts for which no common word can clearly be reconstructed to Proto-Indo-European. Words for ‘father’ (pater), for ‘horse’ (ekwos) and for ‘carry/bear’ (ber-) are easy enough, but there are no common Proto-Indo-European words that can clearly mean ‘leg’ or ‘wall’ or ‘itch’.
Working on a Germanic conlang is much easier because the Germanic language family is much more homogenous than most other language families. For this simple reason, the conlang that I’ve been most successful with has been my West Germanic conlang.
The motivation to create a West Germanic conlang came largely from my discovery of the Old Saxon language through James E. Cathey’s Hêliand: Text and Commentary. After the text selections and the commentary on these is a section with a fairly complete description of Old Saxon grammar as well as a wordlist from the text. Along with Cathey’s Old Saxon resource, I’ve consulted reference works on Old English and Old High German as well as Gothic (Joseph Wright’s works for the last two), and Vladimir Orel’s A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. I’ve also consulted dictionaries of Modern German and Dutch, and I’ve made much use of the etymologies on Wiktionary.
I decided to call my West Germanic conlang “Frankish” but with the following caveat: it would be something like the Old Low Frankish which developed into Dutch rather than the West Central German (i.e. Franconian) dialect that the Carolingians apparently used (no High German consonant shift). Also, my version of “Frankish” is phonetically more conservative than Old Low Frankish probably was (especially in that the diphthongs ai and au are retained rather than becoming long e and long o). Still, I like to call my West Germanic conlang “Frankish” – sa Frenkish spraaka.
Here is a small sample of this “Frankish” language (for nouns and adjectives, the second and third columns are singular and plural; for verbs, the second column is the infinitive, the third column is the present third person singular, and the fourth column is the past third person singular):
apple appel apla
and and
beautiful shoen shoena
big mikel mikla
bigger, more maira mairen
bird fogel fogla
black swart swarta
bone bain baina
bread braud
break breken breketh brak
bring bringen bringeth braahta
brother broodar broodra
cloud wolken wolkena
daughter dohtar dohtra
day dag daga
dog hund hunda
drink drinken drinketh drank
ear aura auren
earth ertha
east aust
eat eten eteth aat
eye auga augen
father fadar fadra
food met
foot foot foeta
from fan
go gaan gaath ida
goose gans gensa
green groen groena
hand hand henda
have haven haveth haveda
head hauvid hauvda
hear heuren heureth heureda
heart herta herten
house huus huuza
know witen wait wissa
language spraaka spraaken
light leoht
light liiht liihta
make maken maketh makeda
month maanoth maandha
moon maana
mother moodar moodra
mouse muus myysa
mouth munth mundha
new neo newa
night naht nehta
north north
one ain
or oth
say sagen sageth sagda
see seen seeth sah
sister swestar swestra
sky himil himla
son sun suna
south sunth
speak spreken spreketh sprak
star sterra sterren
sun sunna
take nimen nimeth nam
the sa dha
this/these dhis dheza
three thrii
tongue tunga tungen
tree treo trewa
two twai
water watar
west west
white hwiit hwiita
with mid
wolf wulf wulva
word word worda
world werold werolda
year jaar jaara
young jung junga
Vellaunos 