I think I might have mentioned it before, but I have been somewhat dissatisfied with my Elefdar language. Specifically, I just didn't like the way that some words sounded. While I have played with it off and on for the past couple of years, I had not made any serious changes until this week. Over the weekend, I started revising many of the words in my (currently rather small) lexicon.
At this point I basically have a spreadsheet listing all the "Common" (i.e. English) words that need an Elefdar equivalent, along with a column for my current Elefdar words, and three additional columns for variant ideas to replace them. By the time I'm done, i will have settled on different versions of probably 50% of the words in the lexicon. I'm mostly happy with the other half of the words, so there's no need to change them.
Part of the exercise in creating new words is to take the ideas and use them in the story itself, where Elefdar passages are already in use. Just drop in the new words and see how they look, sound and feel. It really is much more of an art than a science, as the aesthetic is at least as important as the technical aspects of grammar and syntax.
Anyway, hope y'all have a great Independence Day here in the US, and elsewhere... happy Friday and good weekend!
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