The problem of "finding the right word"?

[Jonlang]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right? I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc. Maybe I get too hung up on words sounding "right". For example, the word ipsen came to my mind and I instantly knew that it means 'know' somehow, and that's how it stayed. I cannot, however, think of a word, or even a root, which I can apply to 'speak/speech' - which is annoying because I could then give at least one of my conlangs a name.

[Creyeditor]

All the time. I decided to just ignore the feeling and pick words from an autogenerated list.

[xxx]

in 3SDL I build on the fly using semantic primes,
and every moment I have to choose between a long, precise definition or a quick one,
and sometimes, not often, I get an elegant formulation
which, if it differs a lot from that of my mother tongue, delights me...

[WeepingElf]

I know this all too well, which is a reason why I prefer doing a posteriori conlangs. Of course, the a-posteriori-ness has to make sense within the fictional setting: a language of Bronze Age Britain, for instance, may be (indeed, is IMHO likely to be) Indo-European, but an exolang is not.

[zompist]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right? I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc.

Sure... there are words that resonate with the meanings and those that don't. I generally use my word generator program gen, showing a hundred or so possibilities at a time, so I can pick the 'best' ones.

Now, you (and I) don't have any mystical insight into sounds; we are probably reproducing sound-symbolism correlations we get from our own languages.

My go-to example is mohtab. For me as an English speaker it sounds a little ugly and clumsy, especially if you pronounce the [h]. It certainly doesn't sound like a girl's name. But it is; it's the Persian for 'moonlight.'

[xxx]

as for sound, in 3SDeductiveLanguage(1Sense=1Sign=1Sound)
the absence of double articulation means I have no latitude...
It's more a matter of discovering the language,
that builds itself up before me than choosing how it sounds...

[Jonlang]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right? I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc.

Sure... there are words that resonate with the meanings and those that don't. I generally use my word generator program gen, showing a hundred or so possibilities at a time, so I can pick the 'best' ones.

Now, you (and I) don't have any mystical insight into sounds; we are probably reproducing sound-symbolism correlations we get from our own languages.

My go-to example is mohtab. For me as an English speaker it sounds a little ugly and clumsy, especially if you pronounce the [h]. It certainly doesn't sound like a girl's name. But it is; it's the Persian for 'moonlight.'

Quite possibly, but I try to avoid English (and Welsh) sounding things for the same meaning, so I'd probably avoid using /f/ and /s/ for 'face' and I'd probably avoid /ɡ w l b/ for the same reason (Welsh gwlyb) - at least in the same order. I mention 'face' because that's what the word mohtab conjured up in my mind (at least in the way I pronounced it - [ˈmox.tab]) - a word I am (or was until I read this) unfamiliar with.

I've wasted a good amount of time at work abstracted by these sorts of things, only to forget any ideas I had when I get home. I did manage to remember one - anhenthes - a word which came to me along with the meaning "conversation". It's strange because it could actually be broken up into an- henth -es without any work needing to be done. An- already has a similar function to English 'co-, con-' but is probably closer to the Welsh 'cy-, cyf-, cyn-'; henth could (or should) mean something like 'utter' and -es is a abstract noun suffix, usually a dissimilated version of -eth when <th> /θ/ is the previous consonant.

[Ahzoh]

My issue is like that but also compounded when they look good in certain places (e.g. declined in a certain way) and ugly in others (declined in another way)

E.g. aḫḫ-um "DEM-FEM.NOM.SG" looks nice but aḫḫ-uḫ "DEM.FEM.GEN.SG" looks ugly but there is no way to fix it, so I'm forced to accept it.

[Travis B.]

My issue is like that but also compounded when they look good in certain places (e.g. declined in a certain way) and ugly in others (declined in another way)

E.g. aḫḫ-um "DEM-FEM.NOM.SG" looks nice but aḫḫ-uḫ "DEM.FEM.GEN.SG" looks ugly but there is no way to fix it, so I'm forced to accept it.

You could introduce dissimilation in the case where a word contains just too many ḫs...

[Ares Land]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right? I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc. Maybe I get too hung up on words sounding "right". For example, the word ipsen came to my mind and I instantly knew that it means 'know' somehow, and that's how it stayed. I cannot, however, think of a word, or even a root, which I can apply to 'speak/speech' - which is annoying because I could then give at least one of my conlangs a name.

Oh, yes. It's a great way to spend years reworking a language, I can tell you!

Now, you (and I) don't have any mystical insight into sounds; we are probably reproducing sound-symbolism correlations we get from our own languages.

That's very likely.

For many of my languages, I use a randomly generated vocab list for the proto-language (I had it for ages). I like to work diachronically, so I derive the word from that list. Then if the result sounds ugly, I either come up with some semantic drift so I can use another root or decide it's a borrowing. I suppose it adds verisimilitude anyway.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right? I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc. Maybe I get too hung up on words sounding "right". For example, the word ipsen came to my mind and I instantly knew that it means 'know' somehow, and that's how it stayed. I cannot, however, think of a word, or even a root, which I can apply to 'speak/speech' - which is annoying because I could then give at least one of my conlangs a name.

Sometimes. I mostly work a posteriori from protolanguages reconstructed from real ones, so I do have some of my work cut out for me there, but one thing I find helpful is to have periods in history when interdialectal borrowings were common, and then generate several dialect forms at that point that would be likely developments for the word (some nonces, some a part of a set of dialectal vocabulary for which there are established changes — for example the standard word for "bird" in my current project is [t̪ʱʷò̞ᵝ.é̞l̪] as a standalone in the most widespread dialect, but has combining forms (some of them near cranberry-morphemes) [t̪ʱø̂ᵝːl̪~ⁿd̪ø̂ᵝːl̪] (as [^ŋgɐ̞̀.nd̪ø̂ᵝːl̪] "cardinal",[t̪ʱi̯él̪.t̪ʱø̂ᵝːl̪] "songbird"), [t̪ʱi̯ø̂ᵝːl̪] (as [mʲì,t̪ʱi̯ø̂ᵝːl̪] "kingfisher"), [t̪ʱêːl̪] (as in [s̪ʷò̞ᵝː.t̪ʱêːl̪] "bluebird"), and [s̪ɐ̞̀ː.t̪ʱi̯êːl̪] "azure jay".

Also, there's no reason a language has to be named after its own word for "speech".

[quinterbeck]

Yup, this was a big problem for me for ages (now it's more of a little problem). Had so many phonology and grammar ideas but couldn't make the two marry up with morphology that felt right.

Somehow I've learned to moderate, by working so much on Leima, which deliberately has a somewhat unnaturalistic minimal phonology with several constraints, reducing the amount of choices I had. That fostered an environment where it was ok to just 'pick something weird', because I wasn't trying to live up to my real-world-formed aesthetic ideas. I used random generators plenty and just accepted the forms. Eventually I got feel for Leima's own aesthetic and after some years working on it I feel more equipped to tackle something where I care more about the phonological aesthetics. Still a challenge but I haven't yet felt "ugh just throw it out and start again"

[keenir]

Does anyone else struggle with coming up with a word for something which sounds right?

I don't; my problem is I can't remember what words I came up with.

I know we can simply come up with roots and derivations and apply them arbitrarily and build a lexicon fairly quickly; but for me, I too often think "but that doesn't sound like 'grass' to me"; or "that sounds more like 'carry' than 'bring'", etc.

Worst comes to worst, just use placeholder words for grass (for example), or, instead of a placeholder, its a synonym - or a loanword or an archaic word that was eventually replaced by the word that presently means grass.

[Travis B.]

Also, there's no reason a language has to be named after its own word for "speech".

There is also "people-ish".

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Also, there's no reason a language has to be named after its own word for "speech".

There is also "people-ish".

I usually just go with whatever the people who speak it would call themselves.

[Travis B.]

Also, there's no reason a language has to be named after its own word for "speech".

There is also "people-ish".

I usually just go with whatever the people who speak it would call themselves.

And half of the time doesn't that translate to "the people" or just "people"?

[Ahzoh]

Also, there's no reason a language has to be named after its own word for "speech".

There is also "people-ish".

Vrkhazhian follows the Ancient Egyptian route of "mouth of (country/land/nation)"

Relatedly, the Hittites called their language Nešumnili, which I personally interpret as being composed of "Neša-people-ADV", if I am correct to assume -umn- is related to human/homines and -ili related to the -ly adverb suffix.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

There is also "people-ish".

I usually just go with whatever the people who speak it would call themselves.

And half of the time doesn't that translate to "the people" or just "people"?

Not sure how often that happens, but a word for "people" does seem to evolve with some frequency into a word meaning "our group of people", though I've never made a language that did that.

[Travis B.]

Relatedly, the Hittites called their language Nešumnili, which I personally interpret as being composed of "Neša-people-ADV", if I am correct to assume -umn- is related to human/homines and -ili related to the -ly adverb suffix.

Sorry to burst your bubble but English -ly is a Germanic innovation, related to the English words like and lich (seriously) and to StG gleich and -lich along with Standard Dutch gelijk and -lijk.