Monta Tevedis, Everyone!

I know I've been super inactive (last time I posted anything was in December!), but I had a quick thought I wanted to bounce off of y'all.

What do you think a language would be like if it was built almost entirely off of roots? What I mean is a language where root words are combined to give a description of that item. Birds could be "feathered ones," shoes could be "foot protectors," and fish could be "swimming scaled ones."

A race that uses this system could also send theological messages to how they perceive something, so humans could be "from the dirt," or perhaps "breath-filled."

I'm going to be doing a complete overhaul and standardization of my elvish language this summer (learning Koine Greek this past semester taught me a lot about how language works), and I'm considering doing this to replace my current vocabulary...

What do you think? I'd love to hear your feedback! (And I'll try to get on more often so I can help others, too!)

The problem with the idea of a language built entirely from "roots" (or "metaphorical explanations," since "roots" in lingustics usually means the "ancestor" word in a precursor language, whether the meaning of the "root" actually has any real relationship to the way the word is now used) is that the language has to include the words you are calling "roots." If the word for "birds" is "feathered ones," then what are the words for "feathered" and "ones"? Basically, there has to be true "roots" in the language that are not themselves derived from other words in the language; it can't be (as the saying goes) "turtles all the way down."

I think you can have one that is more obviously done this way than English is, though. Even English words are built from other words, put together to make a new meaning, but English is such a mash of languages, French, Saxon, Greek, Latin, and so on, that most of the beginning words aren't ones we know, since we don't know Greek, Latin, etcetera. Kindergarten is a word from German, that is put together from 'child' and 'garden' and means a school for young children. 'Protagonist' is a word from Greek, and it is put together from 'first in importance' and 'actor', and means (unless otherwise defined by someone trying to expound writing theory) the most important person in a story.

From what I know (though I am by no means knowledgeable in German or any other language), German is more along the lines you're talking about than English appears to be, and I'm fairly certain that Saxon is as well. And from what I know of the huffy scientific names for everything, they often just mean things like 'night wanderer' and 'striped storer' as well as various other more boring descriptors. So it's not an un-do-able idea. Though I agree with Kingjon that you can't have every word put together this way, as you have to have the roots to build from.

Personally, I love language along these lines. It appeals to my taste for metaphors.

I've studied linguistics fairly extensively, also constructed quite a few languages...though they're rather bad ...and here are a few problems I thought of that you might run into. Keep in mind that I'm coming from the perspective of a naturalistic conlanger, so to speak, which means that I try to construct languages like the ones on Earth.

-The resulting words might be too long. You could have really short roots, but then you have a limited number of roots, depending on what sounds you have in your language. (And BTW in most languages "bird" is a more basic word, and so more likely to be a root, than "feathered"...but who knows, maybe you could have a language based almost entirely on adjectives. Now that would be quite cool, actually!)

-Especially if the words are long, they'll wear down over time. Sounds will change, syllables will blend together...and soon the original roots won't really be distinguishable. Why doesn't this happen with scientific terms, etc. in English? I think it's probably because they're used so rarely, and also because I'd guess that they're written more than they're spoken.

-The meanings of words changes a lot over time. The word "nice" once meant "clumsy," for instance. (see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nice&allowed_in_frame=0) Granted, that was in the 1100s...but the point is that even if your language started out with a lovely perfect roots system, in a few hundred years the meanings of many words and their original roots would seem to have very little to do with each other. In the end, what roots are associated with what meanings would be rather random.

-Speaking of your language starting out...how would it start out with such a system? It's too neat and perfect to develop slowly and naturally, so perhaps someone created it...? This isn't so much a problem as an interesting question to think about.

In the end, I think it would be most realistic for a language to have some words built in this way, like the examples others gave below. To have all words, even most words, be derived this way is kind of pushing it in terms of realism. However, this is fantasy! If you can come up for an explanation for how your language got to be so neat and tidy and how it doesn't change and mess up all the neatness, go for it! I would love to see a good explanation for this sort of language, because I think it is a secret desire in every language creator's heart to construct a wonderful, metaphorical, simple, straightforward roots-based language like this.