A Course in Rawàng Ata: Introduction

This is probably a bad idea.

As you may know, I create languages. The one I’ve spent an unprecedented time on is Rawàng Ata. I’ve posted on it a fair few times – and most of those posts have contradicted each other. I don’t work progressively, you see, I keeping re-doing things. It’s like pruning a plant: you’ve got a vague control over how it looks, but at some times it’s been cut back too heavily, at other times it’s grown too far beyond where you want it. So every year you have another go at it, and hopefully the overall shape takes form over time, through trial and error.

My current error is a series of lessons in the language. The idea is that they should be less boring, and more understandable, than a simple grammar – and I’ve never found a grammar that simple, anyway. In all fair warning: these will probably not be repetitive enough, slow enough, to be real ‘lessons’ in the sense of allowing anyone to learn to speak it. For a start, I’m not going to concentrate on vocabulary. What they should do is present some features of the structure of the language, with examples, in what is hopefully a coherent format.

These lessons are likely to contradict everything I’ve previously said about Rawàng Ata. Never mind.

Finally: the idea is to have discrete ‘lessons’, clumped together into ‘units’, each unit ending with a little exercise. Each lesson will give some grammatical information, and a few words of vocabulary, with cultural explanations. Unfortunately, the lessons vary widely in how much information they contain.

I’ve currently written twelve lessons, which should be three units, though I’ve only written the exercise for the first. I think I’ll post a lesson a day until the end of a unit, and then wait until I’ve got a buffer before moving on to the next. So, this may take quite some time to finish. And I’m going to violate that format today, because the first lesson is so small and worthless. So, two up today.

Hope somebody finds it intriguing – or useful for their own projects.

One thought on “A Course in Rawàng Ata: Introduction

  1. Lex Mosgrove says:

    Heh, this sounds much like the way I build stuff (i.e., languages and worlds). I like the idea with the lessons, gonna take a closer look at those. Probably gonna steal a few ideas on how to describe conlangs as well.

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