#gobahay

[gobahai]

It would probably be annoying, but using [y] as my Gobahay romanization of /i/ is really throwing me off. I may just finish following the convention I’ve been using for every other vowel and switch [i] → [ì] and [y] → [i]... Is there enough visual distinction? I just can’t keep using y because it’s driving me crazy trying to remember it every time!

UPDATE: I’m just doing it. Screw it. I guess that means it’ll be Gobahai instead of Gobahay now. Gotta go back and change that tag...

[gobahai]

Gobahay Patterns

I wanted to share some of my patterns that I’ve been using while building the Gobahay dictionary. I’ve been using certain parts of the phonology to represent different emotions since I started working on 'Oayhàoù. For example, /a/ and /y/ at the end of a word are generally positive while /o/ is more negative and /u/ is sadder. In addition, consonants lend themselves to various emotions based on their sounds: /r/ and /k/ are more violent sounds while /s/ and /h/ are more easygoing and refreshing. These phonological emotions have played a big part in how I’ve built the lexicon.

There are a couple dozen true root words in Gobahay, and most of the rest are just bastardized amalgams of root words (usually with prepositions). Take the word hùsuga (/hʌ-su-ga/ : adj. “refreshed”) as an example: it’s a mashup of go (prep. “through, from”) and husù (n. “refreshment”), which is itself a word wreck of sù (n. “water”) and hosu (v. “sigh (positive)”). Go changed to  ga in hùsuga because of the positive connotation of being refreshed. Another one of my favorite pairs of words is alu and aluty. Alu means “small” while aluty is “tiny”. I don’t know what it is, but to me, the ending /i/ sound makes the word feel cuter.

At any rate, that’s kind of my thought process behind creating new words other than straight onomatopoeia (which is another whole collection of words).

[gobahai]

A Lexiconga dictionary by Robbie Antenesse

Whew! I just finished splitting the words in the Gobahay dictionary apart and there are only 260 words! I took it from the 'Oayhàoù dictionary, which had words that expressed ideas rather than any actual word diversity, and expanded it into what it is now—each idea has its own word, thought the separated words are closely rooted to the original word.

I still have a long way to go, but I just wanted to share what I’ve got so far. The link also has all of the grammar rules so far, so if you’re interested in seeing what Gobahay is looking like so far, be my guest! I’m not going to be finishing the alphasyllabary any time soon, but at least the lexicon is coming together. It’s nice to finally have a large enough collection of words to start putting together sentences!

One thing I’m not sure about yet is whether I should also include common phrases or ideas that express specific words that there’s no single word for in the dictionary... For example “tornado” would be something like arokomyb lefeshu,”the wind’s destruction”. Do I make a separate entry for arokomyb lefeshu, or do I add it as a footnote in feshu (wind) or arokom (destruction) or something? What do you think?

[gobahai]

Alright! I finished the vowels and adjusted some of the previous ones I posted to look a little bit better. I need to re-do the Bs so they look more like these and then move along to the rest. This is going to take forever...

[gobahai]

I’ve been working on Gobahay vowel syllables today, but I’m sick of working on it and I wanted to post how far I’ve gotten even though I’m not done yet. I like the way a lot of these are turning out! You can see the special vowel rules for /i/ and /u/ reflected here, too.

[gobahai]

So I'm almost done converting the 'Oayhàoù dictionary to its new form (which I'm calling Gobahay, pronounced /go-ba-hai/), and it's going really well! I've got a sort of strategy that works to create some nice sounding words, namely if there are too many vowels in a row to make the word flow easily, add a consonant. For example, the word for "word", aua in 'Oayhàoù, became gabu, and the word for "bird", fuy, became fuly. I also made some fun rules for pluralizing nouns (stick "-yl", "-l", or "ly" on there) and how to pronounce the letter "u" at the beginning of a word (hint, it's /w/). Along with making a conlang for humans comes abstractions, and after I've finished converting the dictionary, I need to work on disentangling words that have many meanings and giving each meaning its own word before moving on to unique words that don't have direct translations, a.k.a. the fun stuff.

One thing I'm having trouble conceptualizing is how to handle the new language's grammar. 'Oayhàoù's grammar, word order in particular, is really loose, so I'm not sure how to approach it with Gobahay... I'm also not sure if I should get into verb conjugation at all. Any ideas would be much appreciated!