So my conlang Zhastri has multiple 'possessive' cases/modes (sorry not aware of the correct word). I'm in need of terminology to refer to them. These are

First is 'perpossessive', marked by the terminal particle -ga. This is used for things not merely possessed by, but mastered and controlled. There's a lot of nuance to how this is used, but in summary, the higher the animacy, the bigger the hubris for using "-ga". In some contexts omitting it is a bigger faux pas; a leader would be cold and detached for not saying "myega bevniki" (my followers, my "boys"), a boisterous youth would be teased by his friends (and perhaps upset his woman) for not saying "myega kocinka" (my girl, my bitch).

Second is 'plain possessive', marked by "-de". This is widely used for anything that is associated to the subject: held, worn, placed nearby, intended use, owned, inherently possessed etc. Distinctions between things like "the clothes I am wearing" and "the clothes I own" are made by additional context words:

"ta hyade lakani" - now his clothes - what he is now wearing
"hyade ucini lakani" - his home(inessive) clothes - the clothes he owns
"hyade ucide lakani" his home-associated clothes - the clothes he wears when he's home.

The third, 'humble possessive', is marked by "-no". It is used in reverence about things one is honoured by having the grace to be associated with. It's almost exclusively used of persons like cherished spouses, leaders, and rulers; physical locations like hometowns and countries, and social locations like religions and organisations.

Poem in töcinna:
me zo mogo.
me viyiyye palla.
pimaye tassa lukun peme.
zallaye kin suna ipilince peme.
töcinseunte, sina ann izenna peme venso.
teppimayente pogayemte ann itelöyente. pemente, ann iay peme.
tiyye la pimaye lun.

Gloss:
1.NOM.SG PASS eat
1.NOM.SG must destroy black.NOM fill LOC.soul
GEN.1.SG nobody.NOM ABIL know ACC.suffering GEN.1.SG
poetry.VOC.PL , 2.NOM.SG COP ACC.friend.SG GEN.1.SG only
ink.NOM.PL DEM.DIST.NOM.PL COP ACC.blood.PL GEN.1.PL, COP NOM.life.SG GEN.1.SG
forever LA black.NOM.SG LOC.COP

Poem in toki pona:

ijo li moku e mi.
mi wile pakala.
pimeja li tawa insa kon mi.
jan ala li ken sona e pilin ike mi.
toki musi o, sina jan pona mi wan taso.
telo pimeja ni li telo loje mi, li ale mi.
tenpo ale la pimeja li lon.
wan taso.

In English:

I am devoured.
I must destroy.
Darkness fills my soul. No one can understand my suffering.
O poetry! My only friend.
This ink is my blood, is my life.
And Darkness shall reign forevermore.

Taribit Language

Alphabet:

• a, b, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z
• ç
• ḥ
• q
• ɣ
• š

Pronunciation:

• ç: Like Arabic ‘ع’, deep guttural sound
• ḥ: Strong "h" sound, as in arabic "ح"
• q: Deep "k" sound, as in arabic "ق"
• ɣ: Like the French "r" or arabic "غ"
• š: sound as in English "sh" or arabic "ش"
• r: as in arabic "ر"

Grammar:

• Pronouns:

  • Me = ni
  • You (singular) = šo
  • Him/Her = ta/ši
  • We = nou
  • They = to
  • It (neutral) = i
  • Us = ninu
  • Them = tonu

• Articles:

  • The (neutral nouns) = di
  • That = had
  • Which = šmin

• Verbs (Conjugation):

  • Present: qa
  • Future: ɣa
  • Past: ḥa
  • To Eat = ak
  • To Run = ran
  • To Help = asso
  • To Speak = tar
  • To See = tem
  • To Drink = sekk

• Verb Negation:

  • To negate a verb, use ma before the verb.
    Example: ma ran (I don't run)

Sentence Structure:

• Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) is the default sentence structure. Example: Ni ran aman (I drink water)

• To form questions:

  • Add laš for "why" at the beginning of the sentence. Example: Laš šo sekk aman? (Why do I drink water?)
  • Add šmin for "which." Example: Šmin atma? (Which tree?)

• To form negative sentences:

  • Add ma before the verb to negate. Example: Ma sekk aman. (I don't drink water.)

Vocabulary:

• Time:

  • Morning = mori
  • Afternoon = šimo
  • Night = anu
  • Week = asu
  • Month = maḥid
  • Year = san

• Basic Nouns:

  • Mother = yami
  • Brother = sami
  • House = taddart
  • Water = aman
  • Sun = yuk
  • Earth = šatra
  • Sky = iwad
  • Tree = atma
  • City = wadrak
  • Mountain = ammuz
  • Friend = awri
  • Family = akwad

• Pronouns and Possessive Pronouns:

  • I = ni
  • You (singular) = šo
  • He/She = ta/ši
  • We = nou
  • They = to
  • It = i
  • Us = ninu
  • Them = tonu

Prepositions:

• In = fi
• On = çla
• Under = taḥt
• Near = zwi
• Far = baɣ
• To = ɣla
• From = min
• Before = qal
• After = bad
• During = çand
• Until = ḥat
• Without = bala
• Through = amouk
• Inside of = al dokal
• On the side of = ala janib
• As = si
• Like = kama
• Than = min
• For (purpose) = li

Expressing Emotions:

• Happy = ayqi
• Sad = biqa
• Excited = wafid
• Angry = zed

Compound Words:

• yami + awri (mother + friend) = yamiwri (mom's friend)

Tense and Aspect System:

• Present: qa
• Future: ɣa
• Past: ḥa

Word Formation:

• Prefix ta-: To become (e.g., taḥmida = to become big)
• Prefix da-: Agents (e.g., darani = runner, daʕiso = helper)

Example Sentences:

• Ni sakk aman. (I drink water.)
• Šo ḥa sakk aman? (Did you drink water?)
• Ni ma sakk aman. (I don't drink water.)
• Laš ni sakk aman? (Why do I drink water?)
• Šmin aman? (Which water?)

It's a forum/app where members communicate Japanese by using only kanji (偽中国語 fake chinese), as a way to bridge the gap to chinese. It seems ok for the Chinese to understand too (mostly). I've seen chinese particles like 了 being mixed in by japanese speakers too, so it could be becoming a middle ground between the 2 languages in written form, maybe turn into a new language but its pretty chaotic atm. It can be funny for anyone of either language. Below is an example, it may offend eyes of chinese speakers 😅 漢字限定、仮名抜日本語掲示板有様也。此簡潔的通信可能之言語。但文法是日本的之為、中国人困惑可能。

Hello guys! After a break of 2-3 months and I'm slowly coming back to conlang. During my break, I was browsing here for some reference and I came across a post saying their conlang doesn't sound natural [which I've made a post like this here too]. I always thought my conglags didn't sound natural and I found out why.

Someone [can't remember their name] said that the OP's language sounded like a machine gun, always with the same structure, just changing the sounds. I realized I had just one syllable structure: C(C)V

Now I've changed to (C)(C)(V)V(C). This diphtong already existed in form of:

a+e = aye
a+o = ayo

and so on.

My question is: how do I change the previous created words with the old structure? I want to update some old words into the new structure without redoing all over again. Do I have to pick some sounds or shift some letters to it? I'm a little lost

Exclamations are often fun to make. What are some of yours, and what are their origins? I'll go first:

Ladjepcehan

Oyvah (/ˈojvɐχ/) comes from the popular Jewish exclamation "oy vey," but a popular eggcorn has taken hold: ayvah (/ˈæjvɐχ/), because ay- is an adjective meaning "supreme" or "divine." Along with ayvah came the noun vah (/vaχ/), meaning something like "insanity" or "problem."

Another popular exclamation is ayrafja (/ˈʀafʒɐ/), which means something like "ultimate disaster" or "apocalypse." It comes from the previously mentioned ay-, combined with the noun rafja (/ˈʀafʒɐ/), which means "storm" or "disaster."

I have a language, Classical Quthain, that I want to evolve to the next historical era. Thinking about the history and culture of the region, I thought it would make sense and be cool to do a diglossia. My thought is that High Middle Quthain, which would be the written and spoken form of the elites, would hew closer to the Classical language. And then Low Middle Quthain, which would be more widespread as a spoken language but have less written expression, would be more divergent. Does anyone have any experience with conlanging a diglossia? Any advice?

This is a weekly thread for people who have cool things they want to share from their languages, but don't want to make a whole post. It can also function as a resource for future conlangers who are looking for cool things to add!

So, what cool things have you added (or do you plan to add soon)?

I've also written up some brainstorming tips for conlang features if you'd like additional inspiration. Also here’s my article on using conlangs as a cognitive framework (can be useful for embedding your conculture into the language).

Often, we come here to this forum to seek advice or inspiration. We ask questions and finally find answers to solve a problem or dilemma in our conlang.

So, how did you choose to solve that problem, then?

Post a link to a recent question of yours, and tell us what you eventually decided to do.

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...

Mrakwëli Jadi by /u/Runninglikeaturtle

Rupljen - to cry, Rupljë - cries, ruplii - crying.

Tli ruplii gëdë mizki.

[t͡ɬi ruplʲiː ɣəðə mit͡ski]

3.POSS. Cry-NOUN. have-PRS. reason-NOUN

His crying has (a) reason.

Take care of yourselves!

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

Guys, my conlang - as most of all others aren't in kyrillic script, but latin script.
And im thinking anyways to do an same lvl script, like the serbs do

But that lead me to one question:

Why don't YOU use it? Im just curious about it, i mean it looks nice

https://preview.redd.it/6c8baavxrdge1.png?width=166&format=png&auto=webp&s=b0da79bae7d68cd23a3ae2ce6446caa687f9c4f9

During a few minutes of rest in their time in Narnia, Polly and Diggory thought to teach Frank and Helen a few words in Latin; specifically those related to royalty and war (because really, what else is there to know for Latin?).

Upon Frank and Helen’s coronation, they thought that Latin sounded rather regal to them; coming from lower-class backgrounds, they wouldn’t have been given the privileges of Latin classes. From their perspective then, Latin was a sign of middle/upper class education, so they tried to use it in court as much as possible.

However, some words were misheard or forgotten. Summus, for example (Latin: High) was misheard as Semmus, which turned into Semus, which turned into Tsemuts, which turned into Tsehwemuts.

Some of the Talking Animals in court found it hard to pronounce the trilled ‘R’ and the lateral approximate ‘L’ sound, turning into a ‘w’ instead. This adapted labialization slowly became part of the language itself; most of the consonants are labialized, but still keep the trilled ‘R’. In the same vein, Latin loanwords from Greek that had ‘x’ in them were softened to ‘ts’, which merged with ‘s’ (Hence why it’s Tsehwemuts, and not Sehwemus). The phoneme ‘h’ eventually split into two: ‘h’, and ‘x’.

As the years progressed, these changes and adaptions, along with some influences from English, turned it from a sort of Latin/English creole into a language in of itself.

Phonemes:

High Narnian also has its ‘lower class’ equivalent: Low Narnian. When Frank and Helen’s children married ‘commoners’ to expand the family, High Narnian was passed down second-hand from spouse to children to grandchildren. This created a sort of pidgin, which turned into a High Narnian/English creole, which itself turned into Low Narnian as it is today. There are also some High Narnian loanwords, which emerged after Peter and Edmund started on a project to make High Narnian more widespread- a project that eventually failed upon their disappearance.

To most outsiders, High Narnian sounded like the waves of the sea, while the Pevensie’s thought that Low Narnian sounded more like rocks falling, or in the case of Lucy, like waves crashing against a cliff.

High Narnian kept Latin’s SOV order, and most words are influenced by Latin (with some being influenced by English as well as certain words that were influenced by Greek). Basically, it’s a sort of thought experiment into what would happen if you left Latin and English alone in another world for some-thousand years.

https://preview.redd.it/rcv3zzc8sdge1.png?width=301&format=png&auto=webp&s=15b570dd25aa0d2a99889519f4094f7395d10287

The unfortunate part of this is that the Pevensie’s disappearance the first time heralded the end of both High and Low Narnian. While their children did take their seats at Cair Paravel, some transitions were made to other parts of Narnia that left key scriptures of High Narnian behind at Cair Paravel. By the time Caspian I took over the lands, both languages were already falling out of use, and quickly became endangered under the Telemarine’s regime. When Caspian X was born, only few Low Narnian speakers remained of the populace- High Narnian had already gone extinct. When Miraz banned Low Narnian from being spoken by his subjects, Low Narnian quickly followed become a dead language as well.

https://preview.redd.it/4sbcn6z6sdge1.png?width=393&format=png&auto=webp&s=9255fa5a2cf03f23cdbc430ef43b29b7dca531c8

(Explanation to come in the neography subreddit on the script)

Reposted to fix formatting issues.

Hi all, I'm very new to creating conlangs, as well as the IPA, and am kinda confused about creating diphthongs.

I've decided on these vowels to be letters within my conlang:

ɛ, ä, ø, ə, o̞ , yː

How do I go about creating diphthongs from these? Do I just combine two and find a different IPA sound which seems to match the combination? Thanks for any help, sorry for the dumb question haha

I am creating a conlang for spoken Alternian and have already assigned 4 main verb tenses. Past, present, future, and eternal(things like time and the universe)That planet has 12 blood castes as shown here and from left to right is trash to royalty. Some trolls don't care about blood castes, while others discriminate based on blood color and that's normal. But what if that was even more ingrained in everything? What if every caste conjugated past, present, and future differently?(Eternal tense is left out. Everyone uses that the same.) It's how the grammar could be taught there and everyone understands it or else they wouldn't be able to talk to each other. Is that too much?

What are your favorite words or phrases in your conlangs based on the way they sound? I'm having trouble lately with building a lexicon or finding inspiration because I'm starting to find all words in all languages to be... Just words. Nothing sounds particularly pleasant anymore.

The aesthetics of my main conlang are meant to sound like Native American languages (specifically Tanoan and Athabaskan) mixed with some subtle Bantu and Semitic influences, and with lots and lots of aspiration, pre-aspiration, sibilants and ejective sibilants. h s sh zh f th ɬ tɬ (sorry for the lack of IPA I'm on my phone and lazy rn). I also like using a 3 tone system: high, low, and falling, with tone lowering sandhi. I don't care for rising tones or for utterances ending in high tone too often. Anyway lately it's been feeling repetitive and uninspired.

So... Even if your conlang doesn't have anywhere near that aesthetic, I'd love to hear words you're proud of based on their phonaesthetics (sp). It might reawaken my inspiration.

Drop them below?

In real life, off the top of my head I've heard literal translations that become "Hello then," "Until then," and obviously an antonym of hello. (Can't remember source, probably etymology_nerd or human1011)

So I got curious, how does everyone say it in their languages?

In Ha'Ikalm

Há'ik mákál

/heɪʔik meɪkeɪl/

edit: spelling

Input-output mapping

Hello, dear Conlangers

I have a question regarding the input and its correspendent output while creating a language. Does a conlang work like a natural language? For example, the word [bags] is surfaced as [bag+z] after the voicing assimilation. Or does it have only outputs? For example, you just create a word that has no underlying input.

Thanks in advance.

I'm currently torn on whether to make a super complicated punctuation system or stick to the bare minimum.

And perhaps unrelated, but how do you space words, if at all? Are word spaces necessary to understand the language?

Some of the posts I've responded to have really pushed some of my projects. I didn't even notice until I decided to come back to one after a long (couple years) break and realized I had hardly any notes for it stored in digital media, and no idea where my notebook is.

I went back to my comments in here. Not only did I recover things, but I also realized how much more progress i made than i remember.

I'm now going to have to work backward on that project, in order to recover my thoughts before working forward again.

Thanks r/conlangs community!

I just became an uncle for the second time!! Not sure why, but this has inspired me to ask what the kinship terms, terms of endearment and the sorts are in everyone else's languages.

An optional detail if you have it, I would also like to the etymologies of the terms. Just wanna see how other's derive kinship terms.

This is a bimonthly game of combining random words into compounds with new meanings! This can give our conlangs a more (quoting telephone game) "naturalistic flair".
Having the compounds be random allows for more of a naturalistic usage of words you may have forgotten about or even giving you an opportunity to add a translation for a word you may not have thought about adding.

How this activity works:

1. Make sure all of your normal words have a number assigned
   • Spreadsheets do this for you :>
2. Open a random generator and set the range between 1 and the amount of words you have.
   • The one built into google is perfect for this
3. Generate 2 numbers, combine the words' and definitions, and give it a new fitting definition
   • I like to combine word's proto forms so they come out looking more interesting
4. Put in the comments:
   • Your Language name
   • Your 2 words (optionally their numbers too)
   • The new compound(s'), their definitions and IPA
   • And more info abt it to make more sense of it

Extra (optional): Since 'calque-ing' is something that rarely ever happens in the telephone game, I thought it would be fun if you could also do some of that in this activity. (my compounds are also open for calque-ing, just mention if you're doing that)

So, if you see a word combo with a result you like, you can reply with the combination of your native words to get the same result. Telephone game's example: "taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper"

Now I'll go first:
(I do 3, but you don't have to do that many)

Oÿéladi

odēlamurai /o.ðeː.la.'mu.ɹai/ - order, governance (307) + helloÿeoÿe /he.ʎo.'ɥeo.ɥe/ - flower bulb, plant husk (148)

odēlamuraoÿeoÿe /o.ðeː.la.mu.ɹao.'ɥeo.ɥe/ - command structure
a "command structure" being the "husk of governance" idk

.

helōmya /he.'loː.mja/ - to flash^((as in quick light)) (151) + nufego /nu.'ɸᵝe.ɣo/ - feast, buffet (278)^((yes, I got it again lol))*

nufegyōmya /nu.ɸᵝe.'goː.mja/ - quick/small meal, finger food
I would 100% add "fastfood" as a translation if it was used in the modern world
.

čaula /'tʃau.la/ - to deny, negative auxiliary (39) + hyebo /'hje.βo/ - fast, quick (173)

čayebo /tʃa.'je.βo/ - to quickly deny (usually without looking at the options)
yeah

Can anybody tell me if these sound changes I've been playing with make logical sense? I am comfortable with the basics of phonology but not so much with the finer details, so I want to make sure my thoughts are going in the right directions. Also, sorry for any formatting issues. Most people usually say its because they're writing on mobile, but its actually my first time writing from the web so I'm not sure how all of this will end up in the final post.

1. /θ/ → /ð/ → /d/

Example: άνθρωπος → άνδρωπος → αντρος (/ˈan.θɾo.pos/ → /ˈan.ðɾo.pos/ → /ˈa.dros/)

2. /θ/ → /s/

Example: θέλω → σέλο (/ˈθe.lo/ → /ˈse.lo/)

3. /θ/ → /f/ (this one seems the most logical to me because I myself often mispronounce 'th' as 'f')

Example: αισθάνομαι → αισφάνομαι → έσφετε* (/eˈsθa.no.me/ → /eˈsfa.no.me/ → /ˈes.fe.te/)

*this looks like a drastic change but has more to do with grammar and orthography. The verb form was simplified (it comes from αισθάνεται /eˈsθa.ne.te/), and all remaining instances of aι (as in /e/) were simplified to ε (which is also /e/).

4. /θ/ → /t/

Example: Αθήνα → Ατήνα → Ατένα* (/a.ˈθi.na/ → /a.ˈti.na/ → /a.ˈte.na/)

*Again, the η → ε change has little to do with phonology and more to do with the word for Athens being 'Atenas' in Spanish, which is another language that I am pulling from.

Do these make sense? Are they sound changes that could realistically happen? I'm leaving /θ/ in my inventory for now in case I decide that I don't want to get rid of it after all, but this is an idea I am definitely playing with. Thank you for any assistance!

Summary / TLDR

I'm currently looking to create a liturgical language for my own personal use in worshiping the universe as a giant living being. TLDR; i see humans as the microorganisms living in the gut biome of the universe. Or like, humans as the mites living in the universe's skin. You'd think I'd want to create this language by my lonesome, but honestly I'm just feeling somewhat out of ideas for a conlang and would like someone(s) to bounce ideas off of. Feel free to see this as more of a fictional project for a conworld or something, I don't really mind. I just wanna work on a language with someone folks!

Expectations

Collaborators would be expected to just chime in with any ideas they have, or help work things out in google docs, etc. There's no real pressure to help all too much, you could dip your foot in or your whole leg into the project, up to you! I'm really just looking for people to bounce ideas off of. I could also use some major help with the phonetics, as I'm trying to go for a bit of an Arabic + Greek mix but I'm not sure where to start.

Where is this happening?

The conlang would be worked on through google docs and sheets, and discussions between collaborators would be facilitated through discord. I can send a discord link to anyone interested!

I asked y'all yesterday to write in English using your conlang's grammar.

Now write down a sentence in your conlang, but strictly following the English grammar.

My conlang, Ladash, is SOV, and quite rigidly so. The subject can be moved from its initial position and placed right before the verb phrase (so the order is OSV then), that topicalizes the object instead of the subject, this way you get an equivalent of "the man was eaten by a bear" instead of "a bear ate the man".

The morphosyntactic alignment is ergative, just like Basque. Another thing that's kind of like Basque, is that person and some other markings are not put directly on the verb but on a word called the verbal adjunct, that's kind of like the auxiliary verbs in Basque. Although the syntax is different, the verbal adjunct in Ladash goes right before the verb phrase.

So the basic word order of Ladash is SOXV, where X is the verbal adjunct. The S can be moved as I said, producing OXSV, where the O is topicalized.

It's also possible to suffix the verb with the verb coordination suffix -m and then use it at the beginning of the sentence, like this:

V-m X S O

Beyond these options, shuffling words around is not really possible.

The indirect object is marked with a dative case suffix but the dative can also be used adnominally and even derivationally, so the indirect object must be put in the verb phrase, if you put the dative-marked noun elsewhere it would mean something different.

Nouns, adhectives, verbs and adverbs all have the same basic morphological form, which one of these a given word is depends entirely on its place in the sentence. Just like in Toki Pona. If you move the word somewhere else the meaning will be different.

Another consequence of this, just like in Toki Pona, you have to know where a sentence ends and another one begins.

Also similar to how Toki Pona has the topic marker la, Ladash has u, and it can be used very much the same way syntactically, although the semantics are a bit different and more precise.

When you say things correctly, Ladash has inambiguous word boundaries (thanks to the phonology), is syntactically inambiguous within a sentence and it's also quite overt in how stuff binds across sentences, there's s clear system to participant tracking where you always know what each proximal (there's proximal and obiative) pronoun refers to.

So even though the ability to shuffle stuff around seems quite low for a language that has case marking and polypersonal marking (on the verbal adjunct), there's this benefit to it that it is insmbiguous. One thing that kind of throws a wrench into that, is that it all that inambiguous niceness falls apart when you don't know where sentence boundaries are. Exactly like in Toki Pona.

What are your conlangs like when it comes to stuff like this? Where are they on the spectrum from totally fixed word order to totally free (nonconfigurational), and in what ways? Any interesting details?