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Game: First Contact

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 1:03 pm
by Hyolobrika
Hey language nerds, I've thought of a great game we can play:

First someone PMs me a link to a description of a conlang that they haven't told anyone about yet.
Next, they post images and sound files and talk about them in that conlang.
Everyone else tries to figure out the rules and vocabulary of that language, asking as many questions as necessary.
When someone thinks they've figured it out they PM me and I tell them by how much they got it right.
After a set period of time, say, one week, I post everyone's guesses and how much they got it right by for everyone's edification.

Good idea to you?

Re: Game: First Contact

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 1:53 pm
by sangi39
My only issue with it so far is, well, why PM you? Either, as a first round, you post something of your own creation or someone just comes along and posts something of their own, i.e. the person who worked on the "language" should be the only one with access to the rules behind it. Takes out the middle man and means you have the chance to participate in some guess work.

Re: Game: First Contact

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 1:54 pm
by JT the Ninja
Reminds me of something we used to do on #almea in IRC...we'd just start making up a language on the spot, and would have to try to understand each other, gradually building up some known vocabulary.

Re: Game: First Contact

Posted: Fri Oct 12, 2018 5:59 pm
by Salmoneus
Yes, we've played this before.

Generally, the rule is that your questions are only in the form of giving something to be translated, and the answer is the translation. Although of course you can use shortcut questions (like, finding out a bunch of words, and then asking if any of the rest of the sentence would be different if you changed the subject, rather than having to ask about every single subject one by one).

It's a great idea, although it's difficult in practice, because few people's languages are actually up to the challenge.