Word lists

[masako]

Potentially helpful word lists: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/wordlist/

[masako]

http://us.dk.com/nf/Search/AdvSearchPro ... 28,00.html

I highly recommend acquiring one of these as it helps with lexical categorization, organization and vocab building.

[cartweel]

I've used this as a basic resource:

http://www.coptic.org/language/coptvocabexx.pdf

[Durakken]

I just learned of this...

http://ogden.basic-english.org/words.html

[masako]

I just learned of this...

http://ogden.basic-english.org/words.html

If you are just learning of Ogden, then I feel as though we need to have a noob intervention. Do not use it as a base for your conlang's vocab. Do. Not.

There is nothing worse for a conlanger than to spend months using a resource only to realize they have made an English cypher.

[Durakken]

Its not the first time I've heard of it, but in relation to the subject it is.
I am only presenting it as a world list here simply because it helps figure the concepts you need to represent at some base level.

On side note, i accidentally came across this cracked article which explains information about 5 ways language changes how you think, and thus something to consider if you are thinking about the culture of your language as well
http://www.cracked.com/article_18823_5- ... -mind.html

and in my look at color as a language i came across this
http://www.starchamber.com/colors/color ... guage.html
basically it tells if your language has a name for x color then it will likely have a color for y color

[masako]

I am only presenting it as a world list here simply because it helps figure the concepts you need to represent at some base level.

No.

Ogden made his list with teaching English in mind, so it helps to figure out English concepts.

[Durakken]

I am only presenting it as a world list here simply because it helps figure the concepts you need to represent at some base level.

No.

Ogden made his list with teaching English in mind, so it helps to figure out English concepts.

A word list. Not the only one.
The language was formed with what you said in mind.
The word selection has been critiqued as not that great, but that is not to say it shouldn't be looked at all together, just most things, multiple and as many should be looked at.

[masako]

A word list. Not the only one.
The language was formed with what you said in mind.
The word selection has been critiqued as not that great, but that is not to say it shouldn't be looked at all together, just most things, multiple and as many should be looked at.

I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, but no, Ogden's list is not a good word list to use for conlanging. Unless you WANT to make an Englishy cypherlang.

[Durakken]

A word list. Not the only one.
The language was formed with what you said in mind.
The word selection has been critiqued as not that great, but that is not to say it shouldn't be looked at all together, just most things, multiple and as many should be looked at.

I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, but no, Ogden's list is not a good word list to use for conlanging. Unless you WANT to make an Englishy cypherlang.

It's a list of words.
Every list of words, especially lists that are constrained to small amounts, contains a number of concepts that will be in every language. This is because common experience and common needs to communicate a set of given ideas.
It doesn't matter what this language's purpose is because of this. As long as it is a language it will contain these concepts. So using Ogden as a word list to start would simply allow you to make sure you hit on these concepts before expanding.
You can use Toki Pona for the same purposes, but Toki Pona tends to mix commonly mixed concepts so if you use Toki Pona you have to parse it out a bit more than if you use a word list that uses a list of english words.

I'm not saying it's better, or to base a language on just what you find, but it is a good starting point.

[masako]

It's a list of words.

Actually, it's a primer for the controlled language Ogden was trying to use to teach English.

Every list of words, especially lists that are constrained to small amounts, contains a number of concepts that will be in every language.

Yes, but there are much better ones than Ogden's.

It doesn't matter what this language's purpose is because of this.

Actually, it does.

Toki Pona tends to mix commonly mixed concepts

You're daft. I'll leave you to it. Cheers.

[Vuvuzela]

I think the boardlord did a good job of explaining this in the LCK
http://zompist.com/kitlong.html#lexicon

The unfortunate truth is that Ogden and Richards cheated. They were able to reduce the vocabulary of Basic English so much by taking advantage of idioms like make good for succeed. That may save a word, but it’s still a lexical entry that must be learned as a unit, with no help from its component pieces. Plus, the whole process was highly irregular. (Make bad doesn’t mean fail.)

If Ogden and Richards spoke, and were trying to teach Mandarin, their word list would have looked a lot different, and both word lists would look a lot different than if they had been trying to teach Hawaiian, or Italian, or Nahuatl.
Also, if you're into the whole "few roots, highly productive derivational morphology" concept, Ithkhuil is a good example of that (To draw from, not to imitate):
http://www.ithkuil.net/10_lexico-semantics.html
http://www.ithkuil.net/lexicon.htm
Although it has over 900 roots at this point, another language with it's expressive power would probably have way more.

[Melteor]

I would suggest FrameNet, it's like TVTropes for English predicates and ideas, but it tries to group them under the least number of entries. These are literally the basic blocks for ideas. There's a Spanish and Japanese version (I think Arka author might have used this.) There's also wordNET for THINGS, it kind of works like a thesaurus. I think YMMV.
https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

[Rin]

I would suggest FrameNet, it's like TVTropes for English predicates and ideas, but it tries to group them under the least number of entries. These are literally the basic blocks for ideas. There's a Spanish and Japanese version (I think Arka author might have used this.) There's also wordNET for THINGS, it kind of works like a thesaurus. I think YMMV.
https://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/fndrupal/
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/

I am drooling over the FrameNet site. Mmm . . . FrameNet . . .

[Corundum]

Simplified Technical English is now free of charge, so it might be of interest.