Huge list of books about constructing and learning conlangs: https://www.amazon.com/shop/languagecrawler/list/2RCRY55I9UL8M

exactly like the title! so, i have a whopping 2 words (a noun and its plural, BUT THEY COUNT) in my conlang so far, and i am quite confused. i spent a solid hour on vulgarlang.com trying to build it up more, but i got really frustrated by the paywalls and gave up entirely on that site. and as for the ‘organization methods’, i figured it doesn’t have to be a website at all. with a good way to organize, i could just do it in the IOS Notes app. but of course, i have no idea what im doing, so any and all help is appreciated :)

(im making a conlang for worldbuilding purposes, it’s gonna be really similar to Romance languages— namely english and spanish bc i speak those— because 1. i am lazy and 2. the people who speak my conlang are exposed to sailors a lot, so the languages are similar. i say this bc i don’t plan on it being some serious, hardcore language kinda thing, but it’d be nice to be abl to expand it how i want :] )

https://reddit.com/link/1gh3w9v/video/nrw7qkyj5ayd1/player

PDF: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nd9wz3zg82i1wru8lvs7k/Slavansk-Translations.pdf?rlkey=eylia9e2takigwvjfp4vtuw1n&st=32099r2i&dl=0

Here's some things I learned while making picto-han. If you want a script language that works similar to hanzi, then these things I've learned might help you. Obviously, mine is more limited, as I simply set out to make my own hanzi, not my own logography. So I'm broadening the tips a little here.

First off...It's NOT an easy endeavor. ESPECIALLY if you want to digitize it to a font like I did. It takes a long, long time to make. This isn't just making a script of like 60 characters that maybe combine. This is an entire language. You are making MORPHEMES...Basically words. Please remember that. If your spoken language uses logographs, then its essentially like you're making two languages at once until you get to making compounds.

-Create a style.

1: When you do this, keep your medium of writing in mind. Is it carved on trees or stones? is it for scrolls/paper with a brush? Is it done with an ink pen? This will typically influence what is or isn't feasible.

2: Are you going to use a systemic limited set of strokes and compound strokes like hanzi has? Limiting certain things from being possible, or having them be rare, will create a certain style. For example, circles, hectagons, or full triangles aren't really a thing in hanzi. What kind of shapes are possible and which are more common? Many types of curves aren't there. Think about print vs written letters, typically if written on paper of sorts, a cursive style with connected strokes is likely to emerge.

3: Add some common touches that make your style recognizable. Maybe yours uses a lot of loops. Maybe it's very angular. Maybe it has a lot of tails. Whatever

-What stage is your pictolang in?
It seems like typically (I'm not a huge expert) it starts with some relatively isolated pictographs on objects and the like. Then they get used to write a language thats basically made of simplified drawings. You'll then see it get abstracted into lines to make it easier to write to varying degrees, where at some point they won't resemble what they depicted at all anymore. Then you'll see sound elements get introduced. Until eventually it tends to turn into a sound script, or a proper mixed script. And maye ba standerdized reform or two happens.

-How does your mixed script fit in if there? You'll often run into an issue of trying to represent overly specific words or loans, and especially: Proper nouns. And if your language has inflections you want to represent then yeah...You should probably have a mixed script like Japanese. Try to figure out how your mixed script will work.

-What is the scope of your language and how ambiguous will it be? 1: Will your conlang be used for a fully fledged modern language where we can write anything we want? Or will it only account for a limited set of words they needed to write back in the day? If so, think of what kind of words would be important to that specific culture. You won't need to make your chars as future proof either.

2: Does it really write everything you need to know or is it highly context sensitive?

-Is there some kind of gimmick? for mine, I had to limit myself to not use sound components. Maybe yours has components fuse/change form like an abiguda? I made up a system of diacritics and connectors.

-Will you use it with a particular spoken language? I didn't, but it should reflect that language. A logography will suit isolating/analytic, tonal, monosyllabic languages very well. But hey, Japanese has made it work for them somehow.

-How will you organize characters into units? Are they put into blocks? How tall and wide are these blocks? Are they circular? Are they not on a grid but they have dividing marks? Does direction or position within the block or circle change meaning? Can you make compositional/modular single unit characteds a-la hangul?

- Choose your components wisely.

1: If yours works like hanzi, then there will be a base set of ''components''. These are the ''roots'' of sorts of your isolated characters, and then your character will form a root within the language its vocabulary itself. Then you can combine these roots into multi-blocks for more specific compound words. I recommend about 3000 to 6000 main vocab roots, and around 1000+ character component roots if we also count variants and distinguishing marked ones. Then for more specific stuff, you can make specific terminologies. Like maybe in the context of math a character will mean something different.

2: Your main earliest set of components should relate to common everyday tangible objects or situations your culture interacts with, or whatever was culturally important, as well as easy to convey super basic abstract concepts like up or down. For hanzi, you can see a lot of characters that were various vessels they used. Animals or types of animals they commonly interacted with or were important. A lot that had to do with harvesting and farming. Some things depicted cultural rituals. Ofcourse, some new components may be introduced later. Plus, you don't need to depict the entire thing. Sometimes depicting a part of the overall image is enough. That also goes for combinations. For ''consoling'', I have a ''caring hand'' and ''tears'' to depict a hand wiping tears away..No cheek or face involved, but it gets the job done.

On a more pragmatic level, here's some things to watch out for:

3:Components that are broadly used, shouldn't take too many strokes or too much space. At the very least create shortened versions. Your primary means of making characters is combining them, but there's only so many kinds of stroke combos you can make, especially if you want them related to the pictographs in some way.

4: As they are short/simple, make sure there's enough that will look distinct somehow.

-Make variants of components. Make 2 different components coming from depicting the same kind of object. Use the same component, but add a ''distinguishing mark'' (a dot, a line, or some tiny symbol).

-Give components a large range of related/derived meanings, but make sure they don't overlap in ways that make it hard to make combinations for several of those meanings. You'll have to do this because depending on the style there's only so many components you can feasibly make. Once a 1 component + 1 component combination is made, its used. Unless maybe you can change the position or direction. And while you can make 3 or 4 component combinations, at some point they'll get too big. Unless you want your language to be written in huge blocks, but then, if you have a character with only 1 component, it's a huge waste of space if all chars use the same amount of space (which is the easiest to read).

-Make components you can use for each major type of physical descriptor or action. Again think broadly about potential associated meanings. For example:

-An axe can be used for chopping, cutting, sharpness, etc.

-Water or juice can be used for drinking.

-A foot could be used for running.

2:Make sure each broad thing is represented. Things that have to do with exploding? I made a bomb for it. But it could have been a stick of dynamite. Hiding things? I have a box I can use as well as a curtain. Basic descriptors like big, small, wide, wet, etc should be represented, as they make it easy to make new characters.

-Assign some ''Systemic Main'' components. Hanzi has a base set of broad meaning components that are used over and over. These will be very useful. Typically you want your character to have 1 broad character, and 1 specific character. The broader ones there are typically fewer of and so they can be shorter than the specific ones. Or you use 2 smaller sized regular ones.

Hanzi for example uses shellfish for anything to do with money, trading, value, etc. Trees for trees, plants, wooden, etc. Fish for sea creatures. ''Saying/speech'' for social interactions and language. Clothing for well, clothes. The ancestral tablet for religious stuff. You get the picture. You're allowed to stray off this path sometimes, it's unnatural for it to be 100% systemic unless you want to go that route. But people will likely come up with easy ways to make new characters.

-Assign characters or components that can be used functionally. In Chinese its often sound based or other chars loaned arbitrarily, but for example, I used the existing hanzi component of 2 peoples backs turned as ''but, however'''.

-Now try to apply these physical things and basic ideographs in the abstract through association. For example, fire could be used to represent anger, or maybe passion. I represented ''regret'' by having an old man character look into a mirror. Complimenting has saying/peech+Beauty+Up. If you already have a sizable set of components, Only make new components when you feel like it's hard to convey otherwise, as people are more likely to use something old than to make something new.

-Think about parts of speech. Your base roots will likely become most of the ''nouns'' of your characters so to speak, because physical objects are easier to depict. Occasionally you'll find some actions and adjectives too. But typically it starts with like, a scroll, a spear, a pot. Then we can add something to turn these into verbs and adjectives. It is common for the same character to be able to represent multiple parts of speech

==Techniques to make characters once you have components:

-Variants. Change a line or two, or, have 2 components rooted in depicting the same thing.
-Distinguishing Marks. Add systemic dots, lines, symbols that are purely there to distinguish it. Its how hanzi distinguishes water from ice.
-Form components. Try to depict a larger image. For example my emergency character is lightning on a roof with fire below it. or Maybe knife+Rope = a knife cutting a rope = cutting.
-Meaning Components. Use a component as the meaning is associated with whatever you're trying to make. You can go as wild as you want. I for example represent ''slow'' with a turtle shell + the character for movement.
-Sound components. Use a component that is associated with the sound of a word in that language. In manderin, 马 ,吗, 妈 only share that second component because it is associated with the overall sound of ''ma'' (with different tones). Do keep in mind languages change sounds and meanings over time, so your etymologies may stop making sense at some point.
-Subtractions/Eliminations. Take a part of another character or component away.

-Give multiple meanings to your characters for easy and expressive compounding (and naturalism).

In my language this is not a thing. Each char only has 1 main meaning which gets extended to the abstract and the like. It is also not naturalistic, as its intended to be a prescriptive standardized reform for international use. But typically this would be important.

As they get used in different situations (like a sign or whatever), words or phrases, people will associate them with new meanings by default, just like words. You can use this to your advantage if you want to rely on a lot of compounds like mandarin, which, if you have a bunch of synonyms with different nuances, will really spice up the expression of various synonymous compounds. Manderin even has some systemic differences in how it does compounds.

-2 chars of the opposite meaning typically form an umbrella. Light+Dark = Brightness, light level.
-Some chars like 子 or 头 are used to distinguish things that now sound like homophones.
-Typically 1 char is the ''head'' and the other the ''modifier'' just like most compounds, but some may be co-ordinate
-Some chars serve as affixes like 院 turning a noun into a building/space to be.
-Some chars are used for sound in particular words. Like various loanwords like chocolate 巧克力(qiao3 ke4 li4).

Words and characters may not always overlap! 1 char may represent 2 words. 1 word may have some meanings that the character doesn't inherently have by itself.
Think of overlapping areas of meanings. 1 char might have a figurative derived meaning that is the main meaning of another char, but then they also have some different meanings unique to either related to their other meanings.

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I hope that helps for anyone either curious as to what goes into making one or wants to make one themselves! Obviously mine's a bit..''Unoriginal'' but I think the principles should help with any pictographic language I think!

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1. Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2. Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3. Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

Kaesci̇̇m by /u/creepmachine

tuuscaz /ˈtuːskæz/ n. skeleton, internal scaffold

Yi˙i̇̇f nȯ nȯja˙aa˙u̇rnȯja˙aatuuscazel ji̇̇githm ru̇.

/ˈjiʔɪf nʌ ˈnʌʒæʔɔʔʊɾˌnʌʒæʔɔtuːˈskæzɛl ʒɪgˈiðm ɾʊ/

The time of spooky scary skeletons has arrived.

Lit. The when of fearyish feary skeletons has arrived.

yi  -˙i̇̇f        nȯ nȯja-˙aa -˙u̇r-nȯja-˙aa -tuuscaz -el         ji̇̇g   -ithm    ru̇
when-DEF.SG.SUB of fear-ADJZ-DIM-FEAR-ADJZ-skeleton-DEF.PL.SUB arrive-3PL.PRS PERF

That example is a bit of a tongue twister.

Segments is still accepting articles! And check out all the awesome Halloween 100k extravaganza activities! I’ll be catching up on those this weekend :)

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

I’m thinking of an animated series created by Genndy Tartakovsky and myself, with some conlang(s) created by David J. Peterson and myself. The series would include dialogue spoken in both English and the conlang(s) while including scenes without dialogue, as per, while being realistic in a sense, a utilization of old school cartoon aesthetics, a priority on visual storytelling, long-enough shot timing for building tension, anticipation, and other feelings for the audience, and the clarity of action poses easing the discernibility of the animation.

The first season would involve an indigenous people learning new things like the discovery of fire and other first inventions, and some random gibberish that would actually be root words leading to the emergence of a proto-language. Over the course, years would go by, as the culture would evolve, new tools and whatnot would be invented, and the language would diverge via a few sets of sound and grammar changes.

The second season would take place generations later, in the present day, with a group of westerners finding themselves in this area, building housing for themselves and each other, and maybe others as well. They come across a number of the modern descendants of the original indigenous inhabitants, leading to both sides learning each other’s languages and cultures. Some new and interesting chemistries and bonds start to emerge in the process. A new creole might emerge in the long run, similar to the many English creoles all over the world.

For the cast, I’m thinking of it comprising myself, Carlos Alazraqui, Rylee Alazraqui, Lilah Tartakovsky, Kimberly Brooks, Phil LaMarr, maybe Sean Giambrone, maybe Haley Tju, possibly Cree Summer, possibly Tara Strong, among others, like maybe Sean Astin and Sumalee Montano. I’m also considering Brianne Tju, maybe Breanna Yde, Izabella Alvarez, and Karen Fukuhara.

I have some ideas for the protolanguage, though still need to lay down the foundations.

I’ve was wondering if there was a pre-existing auxiliary language for the Balkan Peninsula? When I search for it online I only see results for Pan-European or Pan-Slavic languages but I’m looking for something more like an Esperanto for people of the Balkan nations, an unifying auxiliary language based specifically on Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Albanian and Greek (and Turkish is fine) and was wondering if anyone has made one. If it doesn’t exist I guess I’ll just have to start working on it myself lol

For my current project Avarílla, I wanted to come up with a more interesting etymology for the definite article than the classic Demonstrative Adjective -> Definite Article single-step process that happened in English, Ancient Greek, or the Romance Languages. While reading the Wikipedia page for Aramaic, I stumbled on this passage (emphasis mine):

"The emphatic or determined state is an extended form of the noun that functions similarly to the definite article. It is marked with a suffix (for example, כתבתא kṯāḇtâ, "the handwriting"). Although its original grammatical function seems to have been to mark definiteness, it is used already in Imperial Aramaic to mark all important nouns, even if they should be considered technically indefinite."

This got me thinking that there's a connection between culturally important nouns and definiteness/determinedness in grammar. For example, in English we say "go to school," not "*go to the school" (cf. "go to the bank," "go to the store," "go to the doctor," etc.), because 'school' is important/unique enough to be treated as a proper noun. 'Church,' 'bed,' 'therapy,' 'war' and 'hospital' (in British English) are treated similarly, as far as I can tell.

Japanese does something similar to Aramaic א with the prefix 御 (go-/o(n)-), which is used to mark culturally significant nouns like food and drink (e.g. お湯 o-yu 'hot water,' お茶 o-cha 'tea,' お弁当 o-bentou 'bento lunchbox'), important places (e.g. 御社 on-sha 'your company,' お寺 o-tera 'shrine,' お店 o-mise 'store'); family members (e.g. お母さん o-kaa-san 'someone else's mother,' お兄さん o-nii-san 'someone else's brother'), etc.

Verbs can be nominalized and have 御 attached to make them more polite, e.g. お待ちください (o-machi kudasai) 'please wait,' lit. "give (me) waiting." You might be familiar with the set phrases お願いします (o-negai shimasu) 'please,' lit. "(I) am making a request" or ありがとう御座います (arigatou go-zaimasu) 'thank you very much." Both have this 御 in them.

I am thinking of using a similar development as in Aramaic, but backwards, i.e. the definite article was originally a derivational prefix, *ar(a)-, used to mark verbs as socially or spiritually significant, sort of like 御. For example, the verb *ácana 'to bind, to tie up' could become *ar-ácana 'to exorcise (an evil spirit).'

Since names and social titles are mostly derived from verbs, this prefix would end up on many important nouns as well. For example, from the verb *máchta, 'to pull, to tug (a rope, reins),' we can derive *ara-máchta 'to rule, to dominate,' which gives us the agent noun *ara-máchta-s 'warlord, ruler' > armáchtas 'master, instructor' in Avarílla. Some other examples:

aristídas 'father' < *ara + *ístida 'to cause, to produce'

arcóuva /aɾkûːvɔ/ 'Death, the underworld' < *ara + *cótho 'to be dark'

arcamáron 'the world, the horizon' < *ara + *cámaro 'to form a circle'

aroetóssa /ɛɾɔːtɔ́sːɔ/ 'humility, virtue' < *ara + *érto 'to be low'

armuíra /aɾmwíɾɔ/ 'memory, history' < *ara + *móiro 'to float, to rise to the surface'

Eventually, this prefix *ar(a)- would be reanalyzed as an honorific, similar to Japanese 御 or Aramaic א, used to mark any culturally important noun, not just those derived from verbs. Then, after running the honorific treadmill for a bit, *ar(a)- > Avarílla a(n)' /ɛ(n)/ would be expanded in usage to mark any unique noun, whether definite or proper.

One quirk of this special etymology is that nouns already prefixed with *ar(a)- would not take a definite article, like how 'school' is treated specially in English. So you'd say arcamáron óuro 'the world is round,' not *an'arcamáron óuro 'the the world is round.'

What do you guys think? Does this development seem naturalistic or plausible? Do you have any weird pragmatics-motivated etymologies like this in your conlangs?

First of all, I'd like to thank the moderators the Halloween Extravaganza Event, and I hope that y'all had a great Halloween!

Secondly, I brought a post-halloween activity: Word-chain

How to play?

You write a top-level comment, only with the name of your conlang at first. Then, other conlangers comment (reply) a word in English to your top-level comment (you cannot reply to yourself). If you can translate the commented English word into your named conlang, you shal edit your top-level comment and add the translation. You cannot create new words for this game, only can use the already existing ones. If you cannot translate the give word, you out an X in your top-level comment. 3consecutive Xs mean that the chain is broken and the game is over for your given top-level comment.

Of course, in this final hour, our witching hour to our 100k Halloween Extravaganza, how could we not end with the quintessential trick-or-treating? Of course, there are 3 steps to this activity, just like in the real thing: ringing the doorbell, tricking the ringer, or giving them a treat.

Ringing

You can ring the doorbell by sharing some of a conlang of yours below in a top-level comment. This could be a translation passage or a link to a write-up about your conlang like an introductory reddit post or feature deep dive, or a Segments article you’re proud of, or some art you made using your conlang, whatever. You could even branch out and share some stuff adjacent to your conlangs like some wordbuilding, or you could just provide the spark notes for any of these in the comment itself.

Once you’ve shared, other users will then reply with a trick or a treat.

Tricking

To give a trick to someone, you’ll have to take a look at what they shared and then roast something about it. These roasts should be made in good-faith, we’re not here to hate on anyone’s work.

Treating

To give a treat to someone, you’ll have to take a look at what they shared and then compliment something about it. This could be the aesthetic, or a certain construction you like, or certain semantics, or whatever else have you!

Creativity

For both tricking and treating, we encourage you to be creative! If you see a trick or a treat someone else has already made that you would’ve made, give it an updoot and move on to another ring, or think of some other trick or treat.

The holiday fun continues with bobbing for apples! Kinda tricky to bob for apples on the internet, but here’s how this seasonal classic is gonna work. The apples we’ll be bobbing for are fun facts about everyone’s conlangs, and there are 2 ways to play: you can set up a bobbing station as a top-level comment, or you can try bobbing for apples on other people’s comments. In your top-level comment, you present a range of 1 to a number of your choice, and state how many numbers in that range will win a prize. Other users may then guess a number in that range, and if they guess one of the winning numbers, you provide them with a fun fact about your conlang. Hopefully this makes sense, and hopefully we all learn some interesting things about each others’ conlangs!

To round of the night, we’ll be engaging in some classic holiday activities; first up, decorating cookies! The cookies we’ll be decorating this hour will, of course, be your conlangs. You can give us a plain cookie for us to decorate by providing us with a passage in your conlang, but only as an IPA transcription! You’re of course welcome to provide gloss and translation, but it’ll be up to everyone else to decorate your cookie, that is, develop an orthography for your passage. Feel free to get tricksy with super narrow transcriptions, or treat us with a few morphophonemic insights.

I've tried lexonomy, but honestly I don't really get it. I've also tried it with a libreoffice spreadsheet, but everything is a bit chaotic for me.

I'd like to hear your ideas and see if any of 'em can help me, at least to discover what is / can be my way of making a dictionary. Please, feel free to share any information, idea, or experience with it.

The things I'd like to include are: word, etymology, meaning, notes, related words (not with links necessarily), and stuff like that. I'd obviously like it to be well organized and accessible.

Thanks in advance.

Before we get to some holiday classics at the end of the night, here’s your chance to ask the sub anything you like! This work a little something like an open AMA to the entire sub, but don’t ask anything too serious: you can ask all the questions in bad faith and poor taste as you like (though we will still be enforcing civility and NCNC), but we will not be taking anything seriously. Let your cringe takes fly, and misinterpret everything; it’s time for some smol dibussions!

In Agma Schwa’s Cursed Conlang Circus, there is a joke language which uses binary patterns to communicate ideas. This conlangis needlessly complicated, so I have an idea for making a simpler and more human-learnable conlang similar to it. Hexdump would be a mostly analytical language with VSO word order.

In Hexdump, sentences are separated by a null byte, 00, and paragraphs by two null bytes.

Here is how I would organise the vocabulary of Hexdump:

01-0F: pronouns 12-1F: inflectional endings 20-2F: conjunctions 30-3F: numerals (base 16) 40-4F: prepositions 50-5F: demonstratives and quantifiers 60-7E: semantic primes 80-FF: other content words (two bytes each)

To quote text, put it between a 10 byte and a 11 byte.

Proper nouns are written encoded (ASCII or UTF-8), between two 7F bytes. To quote text in another language, use 7F 10 (text here, also encoded) 11.

Content words starting with FF are special.

For example, FF 80 to FF FE are “nonce” words. They are defined only for the sake of brevity. For example, if you have to mention “a person who shaves less than once a week” a lot of times, simply save the phrase into FF 80. But if FF 80 already means something, save it into FF 81.

FF FF is an all-purpose word used for something you don’t know the exact term for. For placeholder names like John Doe, or someone who you don’t know the name of, use 7F FF 01 7F, 7F FF 02 7F, and so on.

For “meaningless” song lyrics (or “vocables” as some people call them), uses FF 10 (encoded lyrics) 11.

What do you think of this conlang idea?

Our sleepover fun ends this hour with some classic spooky storytelling. To keep things both simple, and on theme, we’ll have you write short horror stories in your conlangs that are two sentences long. The concept of a sentence is a little nebulous, so this open to interpretation: if you want to be ambitious, and your syntax is highly developed, you can string as many subclauses and adjuncts onto or within your 2 main clauses as you like, or you can simply stick to 2 predicates, however simple. We’ll be impressed either way, promise.

Make sure to include IPA transcriptions (or equivalents) and point out what sounds the spookiest to you, and include a gloss (or equivalent) and translation, and maybe even discuss what makes your story spooky if it’s not self-evident.

If you want a different flavour of fun, you can try u/Cawlo’s Four Morpheme Horror: 1 to 4 words that tell a less than pleasant story that comprise exactly 4 morphemes. For example: “The Earth too hot” or “Big goose attack-s”. Make sure to gloss these ones so we know you aren’t cheating!

The fun continues this hour as we break out the Ouija board, which will work like on r/AskOuija. If you’re not familiar with r/AskOuija, the gist is that replies to questions, and replies to those replies, can only consist of a single character (letter, emoji, etc.) until someone stops the chain with “Goodbye”. In theory, the masses uprooting different letters should create an answer to the question in the top chain of replies.

To keep things on theme for the sub, the questions you ask as top-level comments could be seeking advice about a conlang of yours, whether seriously or in jest, or they could be a would-be speaker of your conlang asking the oracle that is reddit ouija. As ever, passages in your conlang are encouraged together with pronunciation, grammar, and translation.

Conlangs’ sleepover continues with two truths and a lie! Again, very simple: you’ll have to share two truths and a lie either about yourself or about a would-be speaker of your conlang, written out in your conlang of course. Other folks will then have to guess which is the lie. Feel free to give out your conlang’s version of brownie points to whoever guesses right, or to share the story of either of the truths once the lie’s been spotted!

Hour two of our conlangs’ sleepover, and we’re moving on to truth or dare. This one’s simple: you write a top-level comment asking for a truth or a dare. You’re welcome to specify if the truth/dare is for yourself, or if it’s for a would-be speaker of your conlang. Folks will have to get creative for what kinds of dares will work over the internet, though don’t be afraid to roleplay if the dare is for a would-be speaker of your conlang! You personally might not be able to do a handstand, but maybe a hypothetical speaker of your conlang can do one for about 5 seconds, better than you, but not quite the 10 seconds stipulated in the dare.

We’ve had some fun so far, but this hour begins our night of classic sleepover fun! To start, we’ll be playing Would You Rather. In short, you can ask would-you-rathers in top-level comments, and you can reply to them. Of course, to keep the game on theme for r/conlangs, there’s a few ways to play: you can either ask conlanging related would-you-rathers to the creators (Would rather always have /ɹ/ in your conlangs or never have /ð/?), or you can ask would be speakers of conlangs would-you-rathers in character. Of course, for the latter, we highly encourage both the asker and the responder to write in their conlangs, complete with translation.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Monkey’s Paw, it’s a little like a genie’s lamp, but with a usually even more horrific twist. The holder of the Monkey’s Paw can ask for three wishes, but they each come at a terrible, terrible cost. Not dissimilar to how you have to be very careful with your genie wishes, or word your faerie deals very carefully, you should be careful what you wish for from the Monkey’s Paw, because you might get exactly that.

How this is gonna work here on the internet is that you can all make a wish as a top-level comment, and each response will grant your wish, but also bestow a curse upon you at the same time that befits the wish. For example, in the original story, the main character asks for 200 pounds to make the final payment on his mortgage, but the next day he finds his son dead and the insurance policy on his life pays out 200 pounds.

To keep things on theme here at r/conlangs, you can wish for something for yourself related to your conlanging endeavours, your conlang itself, or something about this community; alternatively, you can write out your wish in your conlang as a would-be speaker. Be mindful, though, that all our usual rules on civility and NCNC still apply.

This hour is a bit of a creative writing translation challenge. In your conlangs we’ll have you all write a little description or story about a monster of your choosing in your conlang. It could be about a classic halloween monster from the titular song, or it could be about a monster from your favourite piece of folklore, or it could be a monster from your conworld, if you have one. In any case, detail what this monster looks like, or write a little story about an encounter with this monster in your conlangs. Don’t forget to include IPA (or equivalent), gloss (or equivalent), and English translation! Hopefully we’ll have a graveyard smash by the next hour!

For this activity, we challenge you to find the following elements somewhere in the subreddit. Unless otherwise stated, these won’t be in posts or comments created by users, including us mods. The wiki, the sidebar, AutoMod posts, and everywhere else is all fair game. Documents off of Reddit, such as Segments articles, do not count. The things you’re looking for are all things that were already there; we haven’t added anything.

1. The word “incendiary”
2. The community theme option
3. A link to Overleaf
4. The date r/conlangs was created
5. The Small Discussions post announcing that Small Discussions will be weekly instead of biweekly (we later changed this back)
6. Our guidelines for post titles (quote one DO NOT / DO pair to show us)
7. Our rules on collaboration posts (tell us the last requirement)
8. An explanation in a post by AutoMod of what the cyan flair’s supposed to be for
9. Any non-AutoMod comment from a moderator that’s “distinguished” with the lettering above it that says MOD
10. A link to the Language Creation Society website

Let us know in the comments below if you could find all the items in under an hour!

It’s kinda tricky to build a corn maze on the internet, so instead we’ll have you all do it for us! How this activity is going to work is that each of you will comment with a fork in the path in your conlangs. One path leads to another path, and the other path leads to a humorous way to die written out in your conlangs. Both these options must be spoilered. Other users will then click on either option at random. If they find another fork, then they write another fork in the path and continue the chain; if they instead find death, they must reply how they died in their own conlang, careful to not spoil which option leads to death.

Be sure to include a translation of what you write, and we encourage you to include IPA transcriptions and glosses (or equivalents)!

Time to play with dress-up with your conlangs! But how are we going to dress them up? Why, developing new orthographies for them!

In the comments below we’ll have you share a passage in your conlang and then that same passage again with a new orthography. You could keep the same script and use it in a new way, or you could try and adapt an entirely new script for your conlang. Swap those diacritics for multigraphs, or vice versa! Reform your historical nightmare spelling systems to be entirely phonemic! Cyrillicise your romlangs! Oghamise your celtlangs! Lontarise your bantulangs!

Make a point to discuss how you adapted the new script, or what differences there are between the original and new passage if using the same script. Who knows, you might find a new way you really like to write your conlangs!

We’re going to invoke Rando Cardrissian this hour!

There are 2 ways to play Conlangs Against Humanity: you can play a black card as a top-level comment, or you can play a white card in the replies. If you play a black card, write a Cards Against Humanity prompt in your conlang, but don’t share the translation yet. Other folks can reply to your black card with words or phrases from their conlangs as white cards to fill in the blank, making sure to include gloss (or equivalent) and translation. After a suitable amount of time (we’ll leave this to your discretion), you can reveal the translation of your black card, complete with gloss (or equivalent), and choose a winner based on whose reply you think was funniest for your prompt.

Feel free to mix it up with some “Pick 2” or “Pick 3” prompts, too; we’ll start!

so i want to evolve tones and i'm just wondering if i'm doing it right and such for when i'm done with the mother language.

let's say i had the word tufgas and for this example maybe it means "tree"
would it go through these changes?

tufgas > tuhgas > tuhgah > tu˥˩ka˩˥

is this a good start to adding tones or not? i just want some moderate feedback, all types of criticism is fine.