Learning Elkaril

[tombom]

As a first conlang leaning experience, I'm thinking of trying Elkaril. Has anybody else tried this? What's the easiest way of doing it?

[Aszev]

Hm..Elkar?l seems hard to master, but still very interesting!

[Death of Ophelia]

If you want a language to learn first, I'd try Verdurian (which is what I am trying to do now). Then try something like Kebreni, then Elkaril.

[Glenn]

Tombom: I would agree that Elkaril is definitely a challenge as "first conlang learning experience", but I won't try to stop you.

I haven't tried to learn Elkaril myself, but I did participate in translating some sentences in the original Elkaril grammar thread (which still exists here in the Almea forum). I'd say that one of the best ways of acclimating yourself to the language and its structure would be to do the same: take sentences in English and try translating them into Elkaril, using the grammar and lexicon as guides. Think about how each fits into Elkaril's unusual syntactic case structure and other features: what is the physical action here? what is the mental action or motivation? how do the experiencer, causer, and intender (in Elkaril terms) fit in? This won't teach you the language all by itself, but it will certainly help to deepen your understanding of how it works.

p@,
Glenn

[Rory]

I'll echo Glenn's sentiments - try to fix your mind into the Elcar mindset. If you think like them, you will speak like them. Elkaril is very different from your "average" european languages, much like many native American polysynthetic languages. Our polysynthetic expert JSBurke has told us that you really do need to have a different perspective on the world to be able to speak those languages accurately - it's the same with Elkaril. Free your mind from the constraints of conventional language, with the limited structure, and let your imagination and semantic being run free.

Sorry, that was very vague.