Hey folks! I thought I'd come in and give a little bit of my 2c when it comes to languages. I might be considered a polyglot by some, so I have a bit to say.

What I have to say for this thread, is that each language's vocabulary varies. And I don't just mean the actual words, but there are different words. What I mean is, depending on the culture, certain words might exist in one language that don't in another.

For example, in Uzbek, there's only one word for all negative emotions; 'hafa.' This word means everything from sad to mad. And that's because of their culture. The negative emotions don't count, really, except for the fact that they're all bad, and should be avoided.

However, that culture places a huge emphasis on family. There are two words for brother, 'aka' and 'uka,' meaning big brother and little brother respectively. So they accomplish in 3 letters what takes us 3 or 4 syllables. Same with sister: 'opa' and 'singl.' And it goes on... there are different words for maternal and paternal aunts and uncles and cousins, maternal and paternal grandparents, your in-laws, your great-grandparents, and so on. It's not like we don't have a way to determine these in English, but it's much more efficient, and all in one word, in Uzbek. In English, if I say someone is my uncle, I could mean my Father's sister's husband. Or I could mean my mother's brother. In Uzbek, those are two different words, and whoever hears them automatically knows who you're talking about.

So. Remember to let your cultures affect the lexicology. If the vocabulary of your language matches English pretty much exactly, then either your culture is just really close to ours, or your language could use a little more polishing.

Just some advice. (: Take it or leave it.

Insightful thoughts, Caleb.

Also keep in mind that one word can have a variety of meanings, and the meanings grouped under one word can be very different from language to language. So in English you can use "write" to mean constructing a novel, or physically writing letters on paper, or taking an exam ("writing" an exam, you know?). In my language Egeldish, "write" can mean physically writing letters on paper, and it can also mean "scratch."

You can have loads of fun with this. When I make up a new word in one of my languages, I try to think about all the various places that people will use it (and abuse it!) and how those meanings might morph and change slightly, and all the different senses and connected semantic fields that the word has. And also, when you're going to make up a new word, check your dictionary first to see if you might already have a word that could have what you want as an additional meaning. I've gotten lots of great ideas this way.

This document is quite useful for finding different senses that common words can have, and how words can be related to each other: http://lingweenie.org/conlang/ConlangersThesaurus.pdf

Interesting thing about this example.... The Indians (East Indians) are also very big on family, but their language takes it the opposite direction. They call almost everybody the same thing, near relations, far relations, even friends who aren't relations. Uncle, aunt, and cousin. If you're like, brothers and sisters you might call each other brother and sister, and you'd call your father and mother father and mother, but everyone else is a cousin or an aunt or an uncle, mostly. (We were told we should call an Indian friend of ours at church uncle Ashiq. )

So yeah. You can get very creative about how the culture affects the language. It can go a lot of ways.

I like the ideas in this thread. When you start thinking about language, I think it actually helps give more nuance to the culture too, because you start thinking of all the different ways people could say something, and why they would say it that way. It helps you create a mindset for the people.

Yes, sometimes I play a 'game' where I take different meanings of the same word and try to work out how they were etymologically connected before looking up the etymology. It's amazing the connections there are. It gives a different idea of the way people thought when our language was younger.