[conlang_learners] Thoughts on Jim Henry's gjâ-zym-byn

[David E]

gjâ-zym-byn has me very much intrigued. It's rather eccentric, and very
cool-looking. Jim Henry describes it as "a whimsical, idiosyncratic
engelang, or a highly schematic, unnaturalistic artlang." It was designed
predominantly for Jim's own personal use and is therefore independent from
any kind of fictional setting, which grants it an advantage for those
seeking to use it in everyday speech. Jim has used it to keep a personal
journal off and on for several years now, which is a testament to its
versatility and usability.

I was rather daunted by gjâ-zym-byn's phonology/orthography: as a rough
count (I may be neglecting some distinctions), 35 pulmonic consonants, 5
clicks/ejectives, and 16 or so vowels. Not as many as some languages, but
certainly more than I'm used to--it would take me some time to be able to
pronounce all the phonemes in the inventory, and some time longer to be able
to fluidly read gjâ-zym-byn texts aloud. However, the phonology seems (in my
less-than-educated opinion) quite well documented, so the more technical
among us would have plenty to sate their curiosity.

In terms of learning materials, Jim has a great supply of grammar reference
on the website. There's a good deal of information provided (pasted into a
word processor, the Grammar and Semantics sections combined came to a little
over 100 pages), though those of us with less technical backgrounds (like
me!) may need some help sifting through it. There are a few lessons provided
- the first was a touch difficult to get through, but the others were clear
and simple enough. However, the body of lessons barely scratches the surface
of gjâ-zym-byn mechanics, so unless Jim publishes more, we would be doing
most of our study out of the technical grammar reference.

Jim has several good translated texts on the website--a few biblical
passages, a fable or two, and a number of texts from past Relays. Several of
them are laced with links from each word or morpheme to a corresponding
lexicon entry, which is handy. The website contains a gjâ-zym-byn -> English
alphabetical lexicon and a categorical lexicon, along with a database file
of lexical materials.

On a more specific note, I noticed a number of features of gjâ-zym-byn which
seemed rather cool to me. It's (typically) OVS syntax and system of
"case-like postpositions" set it apart from any language I've looked at
before. The poet in me also found it nifty that gjâ-zym-byn features a
suffix used to mark metaphorical usages of words.

My general reaction is that, while gjâ-zym-byn would take some effort to get
into, it looks to be quite the stimulating and brain-bending project and
offers a very different and cool way of thinking about things.
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