Re: vocabulary

I've tried several ways. I tend not to like the
results of drawing words out of the blue, because they
lack a sense of connection.

My most developed conlang has a world to live in so I
didn't want it to sound too artificial or be a clone
of an existing language. I created a list of CV roots,
assigned meanings fairly randomly to them, and made
some words from those. Then I sound-changed them a few
times to get to a sound I liked so that the original
is a bit like a sketchy proto-language. I may use it
to create related languages at some point. I have
affixes for various things to create new words, and by
this point I have enough "related" words that I don't
mind creating some new ones from scratch.

I can't just sit down and create a bunch of vocabulary
at a go or I'd go nuts, so words get created as I need
them. Sometimes I'll create some related words all at
once. I've translated a few things I've written into
it, and some sentences from various places.

Something else I've done is combine roots in odd ways
-- I don't have my list with me, but I think I
combined lizard and star to get garden or something
like that. Presto, a legend :-) I just need to write
it sometime.

One thing I like about the sound change process is
that previously unrelated words end up sounding the
same, which I think adds a more natural feel to the
language. There are also a few things that look like
cognates to real languages but were completely
unexpected consequences of the changes. koisal is
council, for example, from koi=leader-root and
-sal=collective. koi started out something different,
don't recall what right off-hand.

JC