Back in September 2005, after Hurricane Katrina hit faraway New Orleans, I decided to do something creative but admittedly frivolous -- to create words.
For years, I had been fooling with guidelines for spelling words phonetically, so that if you could spell a word you could pronounce it, and visa versa. This was never intended to be a way to standardize English spelling; this was always a framework for a fantasy language.
So two years ago I started to build words in this fantasy language, I began practicing J.R.R. Tolkien's not-so-secret vice. I thought that I knew enough to define a language, but I merely had a starting point. I hadn't truly considered the various consonant combinations, let alone the complexities of grammar.
With Lhaesine, I'm attempting to rename the world with words that resonate with me. The look of the word is every bit as important as the pronunciation. To say that I'm seeking the true names of things sounds really weird, but that's sort of what I'm trying to do. If a word doesn't feel right, I revise it or redo it, which may help to explain my numerous changes.
This month will be adding some new words to Lhaesine once again, as well as doing more revisions. I'm still crafting Lhaesine.
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