rwg 0.1.1 released

rwg 0.1.1 is released, with these improvements:

• interactive mode
• null option
• improved error messages

Releasing a new version every few days is cool!

The link is here.

I intend to work on compilation next.

rwg 0.1.0 released

I'm happy to announce the release of rwg 0.1.0, a random word generator for conlangers.

You can download it here, or read the (short) manual here.

On my todo list:

• better error messages
• interactive UI
• improved disallow directive
• optional choices
• rulefile compilation

Happy conlanging!

Type safety + auto = win!

A while back, playing around with functional programming, I started trying to implement interesting functions in Lisp. It all went well until permute, a function which isn't that complicated but involves lists, lists of lists, and lists of lists of lists. This was so confusing and complicated that I gave up.

More recently, I tried it again in Haskell. It took less than twenty minutes! The reason was Haskell's type declarations, which made it so much easier to think about what was going in and out.

The type system can often get annoying, and become a pain (e.g. Java), hence the popularity of dynamic typing (Python/Ruby/Ecmascript). But when thinking about complicated algorithms and systems, they are a great structuring force. Which is part of why I love D: "auto" and "Variant" lets you forget about a lot of it, but you can still be explicit when it is important.

gloss2lang

Check out this new software: gloss2lang. It merely translates interlinear glosses into specific languages. You have to create a G2LF file.

English-to-Latin-to-English-to-Latin-and-so-on

This shows you how bad even the best computer translators are.

Taking the Babel text, I translated it into Latin, back to English, back to Latin, and so on. But as that would just eventually put out gibberish, every time it was in English, I tried to make sense of the translation. Here's my favorite:

The whole world had only one voice, and they used the same words for the same things. A certain people found a plain in the in the east, the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

And they said to eachother: "Come, let us make brick, and bake with fire." And they had brick for stone, and slime for mortar. Then they heard a voice: "Come, let us make ourselves a city, so that we may make ourselves a name, and everyone else will be scattered across the face of the earth." It came from a tower in heaven.

The people spoke with the same voice, like one man uses the same tongue. The voice began to be seen. Put no trust in it. Then the people said: "Come, let us go down, and there confound the language so every man's voice will be unique.

The people stopped building the city. They no longer trusted Babel, because he had caused them to scatter everyone across the face of the earth.

By chance, the Lord saw the tower, and he finished building the city of the people. That place is all places all over the world.

This is kind of confusing, so here is a "retelling:"

Long ago, when everyone spoke the same language, a certain people lived in an eastern plain called Shinar. They were technologically advanced, and could make bricks and fire.

One day, they heard a voice that came from a tower in heaven: "make a city for yourself! Make yourself famous! Everyone will scatter away from you." They obeyed it.

Eventually, the Shinarites began to understand that the voice was evil. They stopped building the city, and mended their ways by giving everyone in the world their own unique voice. They no longer trust Babel (the united tongue).

Later, when the Lord saw what had happened, he finished building the Shinarite city. That city is Earth.

 May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white!

Alloscythian update

It is now on http://personak.weebly.com/alloscythian.html.

Alloscythian

Okay. I give up on Sundays. Let's just go randomly.

The Alloscythian (other Scythes) language is a conlang that I did a while ago. It is a descendant of PIE, a relatively conservative Satem language, with most changes having affected vowel features (nasals and tone).

Here are some example words:

θὲσσου (thèssõ, dirt, uncleanliness). It derives from PIE *dʰéǵʰōm and is related to Latin humus and Greek χθών.

φὲρω (phèrō, I make, create). It derives from PIE *bʰérō, and is related to Latin ferō, Greek φέρω, and English bear. With its difference from Greek only in the diacritic, it must have made the ancients wonder...

Last but not least, the family. Archaically, they were:

• φετήρ, phetḗr, father;
• μάτηρ, mā́tēr, mother;
• φράτηρ, phrā́tēr, brother;
• συέσωρ, suésōr, sister;
• θυχετήρ, thukhetḗr, daughter;
• συσ, sũs, son;
• and specially, σνυὅς, snuhos, new member (bride/groom/baby/prodigal son);

The -τηρ -tēr ending on everything except sister and son changed those two into συέτηρ suétēr and σύτηρ sṹter. Now that -tēr basically meant family, the -tēr wore off as phetḗr became phe, and tēr became a word of its own meaning: a near relative or close friend.

Ignoring length and stress, that puts the Alloscythian word for siste the same as the greek word for luck. I'll need luck if I ever get a sister.

That's all for now, τήρε.