Let me be clear I'm noodling with relexing for recreation, not like the lojban/loglan relex which was all about splitting the community from a creator that didn't get along with the fans.
I was thinking about if it was possible to "make a better relex" or if relex's deserve the bad reputation they have. I think in some cases, a relex might be useful. For example, if I was going to write a poem in toki pona for consumption by people who don't understand it anyhow, I might want to relex it to a more suitable phonotactic structure. I have in mind trying out Latin first-- it has a prestigious feel to it.
Here's my design options
- Transliterate toki pona into Latin (add consonant clusters, suitable vowels at the end of words, etc) soweli --> soverius
- Replace each toki pona word with a suitable Latin one-- either one that sounds like it or one that is in the same semantic range. meli --> puella
- A priori random words that fit Latin's phonotactics, soweli --> omnibius
- Or same as above, but replace "Latin" with any other language soweli --> "zver" or "dyr" or "bet"
The particles would still need to be short particles, the Latin words would have to lose their variety in endings either through picking a bare stem or a bare stem plus a suitable ending-- this would still be an isolating language after all.