cubish n. (kyoo'-bish) a language designed for text chat in multiplayer Minecraft.
By request of my son, I have begun designing a conlang for a very specific context, but one more frequently encountered than the contexts of my other planned languages. Minecraft, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a sandbox-style building and adventure game. In strict point of fact, it's more of an environment with game elements to spur invention and creation. It has a couple of ways to include multiple players in simultaneous use of a given Minecraft world, but unlike high-cost, combat-intensive games like World of Warcraft, the players often do not have mic/headset verbal contact with each other, instead relying on text. The trouble with text is the slowness of it (which is why coordination in combat games is best done verbally). Many common topics of communication in Minecraft are rather cumbersome when spelled out in English, even when abbreviated somewhat, and abbreviations often generate miscommunications.
The resulting request looks to be one that will get me back into language design pretty smoothly. One of the main requirements is that it be fairly easy for local players to learn - or else it won't be learned - so basing parts of the vocabulary on English is not only an acceptable shortcut, to a certain extent it might be a good idea. This lets me focus more on the structure of the language.
I'll get into specifics of the grammar and the reasons for my choices another time, but the short version is that in order to reduce the number of keystrokes needed, Cubish will be highly inflected. That is, words can be adjusted in such a way as to convey different information without adding verbiage. At the same time, precision will be easy to come by, both in specifying things like tense, mood, etc, and also in specialized vocabulary that reduces commonly needed concepts which use multiple words in English to a single Cubish word.
Should be fun.
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