[HN Gopher] The Language Construction Kit (1996, 2012)
___________________________________________________________________
The Language Construction Kit (1996, 2012)
Author : pzrsa
Score : 110 points
Date : 2025-02-03 12:31 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.zompist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.zompist.com)
| bradrn wrote:
| How nice to see this here! When I first got interested in
| language creation, the _LCK_ was one of the first books I read
| (followed shortly by Mark /zompist's other books on linguistics
| and worldbuilding). It is an excellent introduction to conlanging
| -- as well as to the whole field of linguistics, in fact. I
| recommend it without hesitation to anyone who is interested in
| making their own language.
| kisonecat wrote:
| This document was _hugely_ influential to me. It got me
| interested in linguistics (one of the "immaterial sciences"
| alongside math, comp sci). My username includes "kisone" which is
| from the conlang I made as a kid. It is wonderful to see it again
| and I hope folks still enjoy it!
| schoen wrote:
| Any connection to Finnish "kissa" 'cat'?
|
| (apparently from an onomatopoeia for calling a cat)
| aomurphy wrote:
| Zompist is a bit unusual these days: one guy working on one
| project (his Constructed World Almea) for over 40 years now, with
| 30 of those on the web. It's a beautiful relic of the early web.
| Most of the sites from my old "conlang" bookmark folder are dead
| now, but not zompist.com
| joshdavham wrote:
| Gotta love zompist!
| summermusic wrote:
| This was my introduction to conlanging, a hobby that has been
| incredibly rewarding for me over the years. I still haven't found
| a better introduction to the scene.
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _The Language Construction Kit_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124388 - July 2022 (5
| comments)
|
| _The Language Construction Kit_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8019118 - July 2014 (6
| comments)
| never_inline wrote:
| I thought this was related to compilers, probably ocaml lisp or
| something.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Me too, the possibly of another resource like the excellent
| series "Let's Build a Compiler" by Jack Crenshaw[1] would be
| nice.
|
| [1] https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/
| Timwi wrote:
| One of my favorite single pages on the web is this author's take
| on what it would look like if English were spelled with
| characters inspired by (but not copied from) Chinese hanzi. He
| calls it yingzi ("English writing" in Chinese) but it's designed
| entirely for English. The point of the page is not to create a
| new writing system (it doesn't go nearly that far) but simply to
| give an impression of what Chinese writing is actually like and
| what effect it has had on its speakers' perception of their own
| language. Give it a read, it's super fascinating.
|
| https://zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Cockney rhyming slang as one of the pillars for an English
| writing system. This is fascinating in so many ways.
| tempodox wrote:
| Fascinating! Could this be used to create something like Klingon
| or Belter Creole?
| mikelevins wrote:
| You bet.
| culi wrote:
| Zompist is great. I also tried making an auxlang at one point.
| This is actually what got me into programming. I was saddened by
| Esperanto's Euro-centric phonetic inventory so I wanted to take a
| data-centric approach using Glottolog's incredible collection of
| phonetic inventories of all languages and try to come up with an
| inventory that is accessible to as much of the world's population
| as possible
|
| Ultimately I think I decided Toki Pona was "good enough" and I
| still use the orthography that came out of it to write in my
| private diaries but the exercises it got me doing is what got me
| into programming (and linguistics!).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-06 23:01 UTC)