Welcome

Welcome to Konstspraik. In this blog I will be covering news about the constructed languages that I am working on. Plus any ideas or opinions I have about other constructed language projects. Plus anything else about which I have an opinion which I think is profound.

I have been trying out constructed languages since I was a teenager. Some of these have been serious languages, some experimental, some have just been fictitious languages for fiction and fantasy. I take a keen interest in other constructed languages and have learned Interlingua.

At the moment I am working on:

Frenkisch

A Germanic auxiliary language. It is concerned with aesthetic and naturalistic considerations as well as usability and ease of learning, which makes it somewhat of an art-lang. It is an a posteriori constructed language, based on 6 Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). Outside of the Germanic language group, it also refers to French and Russian as source languages. This language now has a dictionary of over 6000 words.

Folksprak

This is another pan-Germanic auxiliary language. It is intended as a co-operative project with other contributors and participants. This project began in 1995. I joined the Folksprak effort in 2004 and the language has gone through much debate and evolution over time.  Much of the effort in this language has been adapted and applied to my other constructed language projects. Folksprak has a tighter focus on pan-Germanic commonality, regularity and ease of learning.

SinPlatt

SinPlatt is short for Synthetic Platt. This is a Low German-like art-lang, it is a posteriori and refers to English, Dutch and German as its source languages. In fact it doesn't refer directly to actual Platt/Low-German -- hence the Synthetic part of the name. It has features common to 2+ out of 3 of English, Dutch and German. I've made little effort to make it easy or regular - instead it's intended to have a naturalistic typically West Germanic flavor. The prominent linguistic feature of this language that I think makes it interesting, is it makes use of phonemic consonant length as a regular part of phonology - otherwise known as the phenomenon of "stretching" vowels. This isn't a major feature of any of it's source languages, but it exists in a subtle latent form in all 3, it was a feature of the common ancestral language and understanding it unlocks some of the mysterious features of the Germanic languages. SinPlatt, currently has a pronunciation/orthography guide, a bare grammatical overview, and a vocabulary of about 300 words. This is my first attempt at a constructed language where the definition language is other than English: I am simultaneously creating Sinplatt - English and SinPlatt - French dictionaries.

Samskandinavisk

This is the beginning of a pan-Scandinavian aux-lang. It is intended to give speakers of Scandinavian North-Germanic languages a common standardized language. These languages are semi mutually intelligible. Samskandinavisk is intended to offer a "neutral" alternative to the current status quo: where Scandinavians either muddle-through just about understanding each other's speech, at time deliberately pretending not to understand each other's speech and at times using English. It is a naturalistic a posteriori language based on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. It follows a similar methodology to that of Interlingua, basing the form of Samskandinavisk words on the etymological prototypes of words common to at least 2 out of 3 of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Currently it's in an embryonic state with no grammar and a demonstrator vocabulary of 400 words.

As my time allows, I will be posting more detail about these languages and the principles used in developing them.