Lexember

[ysabetwordsmith]

silvercat17 tipped me to Lexember. I tried looking it up on Dreamwidth, but got no hits; apparently nobody's doing it here. So I'll just toss it out here, since it's a good fit for our activities. This event will run December 1-31.


The basic concept of Lexember is word-a-day. You can coin (at least) a new word in an constructed language, or learn a new word in a natural language, then post it. Making slang terms or other variations on English for a fictional setting also counts. You don't have to stick with the same language; you can mix and match. If you miss day, no big deal, you can catch up later if you want. Or not. This is high-inspiration, low-pressure as usual.

However, these are supposed to be NEW words, not just posting stuff from your files. It's okay to make several in one sitting and post them on individual days, though.

Ideas for playing here:

-- Print out a December 2021 calendar page (in color or black/white) and use it as your "bingo card" for this event. Fill 7 days in a row and that counts as a bingo. You can go for blackout if you want but you don't have to.

-- Make a regular bingo card using the Bingo Card Generator. A 5x5 card will give you most of the month. Smaller cards will make easier targets if you don't want to overload yourself during the holidays. A 6x6 card will give you a month's worth of inspiration plus some extras. Here are some lists suited to this event:
* Robert Plutchik's 1980 list of emotions
* Untranslatable words
* Color words
* Gardening words
* Art media
* Emotions
* Food
* The Negative Trait Thesaurus
* The Positive Trait Thesaurus
* Swadesh Basic List
* Types of family

-- Make a set of smaller cards so you can use a different theme each week.

-- Go through the whole alphabet of your target language and make or learn one word for each letter or equivalent.

-- Create linguistic rules instead of words. These can be for pronunciation, letter combinations, grammar, or whatever else you need.

-- Play other people's Lexember posts. Pick up a word someone else has posted and try to use it, or make a matching word in your conlang.

Comments

[silvercat17]

For folks that need some more inspiration, here's some useful links

https://cbbforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7629&p=313428#p313428 - The CBB's (Conlang Board) thread for this year's Lexember, with links to previous years. There's generally a theme for each week.

Don't know where to start?

https://www.vulgarlang.com/ - will generate some basic stuff. I'd suggest using it for phonology (sounds) and then make the words yourself.

http://zompist.com/kit.html - the online version of the Languague Construction Kit. A how-to of the basics.

http://www.fridaynightlinguistics.org/languagecreation/ - Sheri Wells-Jensen's guide to creating languages

[silvercat17]

Might I also suggest some things for those that don't want to create a language? Lexember is fairly low pressure since all you have to do is coin one word (possible with etymology or a translation, but those are optional).

An approximately similar level of effort would be making something every week - a short story, drawing, playlist, craft, etc - that relates to language or speaking in some way, or plays off someone's Lexember post.

Some possible prompts:

story, oral tradition, writing, verb, noun, pronoun, preposition, article, conjunction, interjection, numeral, determiner, classifier, particle, adjective, adverb, gerund, copula, sign language, symbol, emoticon or emoji, speech, poem, tone, syntax, lexicon, vocabulary, record, conlang, translation, mother tongue, foreign language, English as a second language, inflection, grammar, contraction, morphology, sounds, phonology, phoneme, lexeme, affix, morpheme, tense, case, voice, mood, aspect, person, gender, animacy, definiteness, conjugation, declension, dead languages, agreement, contrast, singular, plural, paucal, accent, umlaut, idiolect, sound change, vowel, consonant, semi-vowel, fricative, schwa, rhotic, Klingon, Na'vi, Esperanto, Dothraki, language revival, Newspeak, language instinct, Ido, Laadan, Sapir-Whorf, Toki Pona, Quenya, Sindarin, Trigedasleng, Volapuk, Interlingua, language academy

[siberian_skys]

This sounds like fun.

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith]

I really hope that some other folks want to play too. I've already printed out a December calendar page.

Re: Yay!

[siberian_skys]

I need to work on that. I just posted November's bingo and have to get ready to run a couple of errands and then I need to get that worked out when I get home. I also need to get ready for hosting tomorrow's fests. I will not procrastinate.

Re: Yay!

[silvercat17]

I've boosted it where I can!