Hello, i'm Frodo
Some friends and I have come up with the idea to make a 3 phase conlang

the first phase consists of making a Protolanguage (already done)
the second phase consists of making descendants (we are doing this right now)
and the third or las phase consists of marging the descendants again

here you have a sample sentence: Sedas mŕsil bok₂ŕh₃ń Kīsrimŕl [ˈsədas ˈmr̩sil boqr̩ʔn̩ kiːsrimr̩l] My son is named kīsrimŕl

the map in which it takes place is this (we need to flesh it out a bit more)

https://preview.redd.it/gvja10wbcjed1.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=40871aa24f7a404c1cd46f56575baa1504f059a1

if you think this is cool or interesting you can conlang with us here: https://discord.gg/MJbPqnWy

See you there

Hey guys, I made a program in scratch for word generation, but it's not the "conventional" random letters random size generator, it is based on actual phonotactics.

Here's the link for the SUPER word generator: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1045787068

https://youtu.be/NQe1_O6jQnA

I actually found recording this, a lot easier than doing a script based recording, which was quite surprising.

See what you can follow from the story.

Today, I thought it would be fun if I wrote a little back-and-forth in my conlang, and I really liked the way it turned out, so I'm sharing it! Feel free to add your own dialogue!

A: Enoli? Did you hear?
B: Ada soch? About what?
A: Vidalna olebaslid tozana, u legana. People fought here yesterday in the building.
B: Olebaslid? Ezeli osulebaslid? Fought? Do you mean argued?
A: Ba! Vidalna diz dallitas'd! No! A person nearly died!
B: O, em futsi... Wow, that's no good...
A: Olebaslid u legusna. They fought over a snack.
B: Legusna!? A snack!?
B: Yi asuzeli fudumto. They seem stupid.
A: Ab... Yeah...
B: Soph-opo adenli? Izeli, vi soch asudaklid? Did anybody help? I mean, how did it end?
A: Oronlitas'd legusna. They split the snack.

Hi Reddit!

I like realistic conlangs, and even when I create a language for a completely fictional world I like to have a certain consistency and realism. For this I really like to group my languages ​​into families. And there I will begin to create the Runnakian languages. This is from my fantasy world, Ravenflight.

Here's some context: "the Runnakian languages ​​include six living languages ​​and several dead languages. They are spoken by the human peoples of the North-East of the Continent, they are all the official languages ​​of their kingdom" The Runnakian languages ​​are:

Oriental - Oriental is a language known for its many dialects, spoken by almost everyone. This language serves as the lingua franca of the peoples of the Wildlands and the Iron Marches of the East. I want it to be a language that is not too difficult, with a basic sound that would help me to do toponymy for example.

Helosian - Helosian is a noble language spoken in the Magocratic city-state of Helos. It is a complicated language that has preserved several archaisms and is strongly associated with magic. I want this language to sound good for casting spells.

Rysorese - Rysorese is the official language of the small kingdom of Rysor. It is the northernmost of the Runnakian languages ​​and is surrounded by Norse and Orc languages. Thus, people are often surprised that Rysorese is a Runnakian language and not a Nordic language like all its neighbors.

Borodian - Borodian is spoken in the barony of Borodor. It is in fact a language very close to Oriental but with some differences which allow it to be considered as a distinct language.

Arkalian - Arkalian, spoken by the humans of the Arkalian people, became the official language of the United Kingdoms of Arkalia. It is nowadays an influential language with a good reputation spoken by the northern nobility. I want it to be a “beautiful” and aesthetic language.

These are all the languages ​​I want to create. Each language will have its own specificities of course but I want them all to have something in common because they are from the same language family. I heard that for this I had to create a Proto-language: which I did. My proto-language, Runnakian, was spoken by the first humans in this region of the world and evolved to give rise to all the Runnakian languages ​​(the name Runnakian comes from Mount Runnak, a mountain where the first traces of habitation were found humans in the East). I have phonology, basic grammar rules and a few words. Here are the Proto-Runnakian vowels:

Vowels

And here is the Romanization : i /i/, u /u/, ï /ɪ/, y /ʏ/, ö /ʊ/, e /e/, o /o/, ë /ə/, a /a/, ä /ɑ/, Each vowel is pronounced separately to avoid the creation of diphthongs. The grave accent on a vowel indicates that the vowel is long: à /a:/ Here are the consonants of Proto-Runnakian :

Consonants

And here is the Romanization : p /p/, b /b/, t /t/, d /d/, c /c/, k /k/, g /g/, m /m/, n /n/, nn /ŋ/, r /r/, f /f/, s /s/, z /z/, x /x/, v /ʋ/, l /l/ ll /ʎ/. The consonants p, b, t, d, k, g, s, z each have an aspirated version, ph /pʰ/, bh /bʰ/, th /tʰ/, dh /dʰ/, kh /kʰ/, gh / gʰ/, sh /sʰ/, zh /zʰ/.

Proto-Runnakian had three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The nouns were declined in number, sex and case, just like adjectives. The Proto-Runnakian grammatical cases were: nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, instrumental, vocative and possessive.

Feminine nouns end in -i or -a and sometimes -e. Masculine nouns end in -o or -u and sometimes -e. And neutral nouns end in a consonant. To decline nouns in case, we change the final vowel, or we add one for neutral nouns. Verbs are conjugated in person, tense and mood. The tenses are past, present, future and the moods are: imperative, conditional, subjunctive and indicative. The tense and person are indicated with the verb ending, and moods are indicated by prefixes. The order of words in a sentence is SOV.

Here are a few words: enna (woman), uèstu (man), inth (human), mine (children), andhi (mother), thafo (father), shyce (fish), lamvi (bird), ghëru (dog), lläxa (cat), khilïm (house), bhanli (good), xäughu (bad), mnöghu (big), cethi (small)

Now that you have read this I can ask you my questions:

How to create realistic sound changes? What logical sound changes do you suggest? What differences between Proto-Runnakian and its daughter languages ​​should there be? Should I keep my grammatical cases for all child languages? Should I remove gender neutral? In your opinion: what logical developments do you think should happen to my proto-language?

Since many of us make a lot of conlangs that never end up being finished, I wanted to make a post for people to share their sketches or abandoned projects since I think it could be a good source of inspiration for others, or just a fun way to show off our past work.

Whether you want to share your first conlang, or a phonological sketch from a few weeks ago, I encourage you to comment something below.

Here's an unnamed phonological sketch I made a few months ago:

https://preview.redd.it/5wrk9qok6fed1.png?width=1257&format=png&auto=webp&s=2692700ce4b7fe00e829807a7c31fc3bbd76fd33

This question has been on my mind for a while and I really want to hear from people who have much more knowledge of languages and writing systems than I do, so I thought asking people that are constructing their own languages would be a good idea. In ASL and, as far as I know, all other major sign languages (please correct me if wrong), there is a signed alphabet based on the corresponding spoken language alphabet that spells out words that don’t have signs. But I don’t believe a sign language created on its own with no spoken language counterpart would have this. So if they don’t have an alphabet, how do they create new signs for new words? Would the develop their own way of breaking down and creating new signs?

(Again, if my assumption is wrong and there is a well known sign language without an alphabet that I can learn about, please tell me.)

So Zũm has such differences in pronunciation between Formal/Classical Zũm and Modern Colloquial Zũm that it can almost be considered diglossic, but the most notable difference has to be the difference in size of their phonemic inventories.

As MCZ moved away from Formal Pronunciation, words began to shorten in pronunciation while retaining spellings. This was because more and more consonant clusters emerged into digraphs, often representing new unique phonemes.

These became so common a part of speech that like Vulgar Latin, it could no longer just be considered mistakes. It was an exercise in delusion to learn and teach Zũm by Formal Pronunciation when it was so outdated that it was more apt to call it Classical Pronunciation. These new phonemes had to be acknowledged as distinct and treated as such.

Classical Zũm Phonemic Inventory

Classical Zũm has 26 unique sounds, one for each letter of its alphabet. When 2 more letters were added, Ć /ts/ and Ź /dz/, their sounds were considered compounds of TS and DZ.

Vowels

Classical Zũm has 8 vowels, A /a-ɑ/ E /æ-e/ I /ɪ/ O /o/ U /u, y, ʊ / W /ʌ/ Y /i/ and schwa, which is unwritten. They later evolved nasal and lengthened forms, and eventually, long nasals. Nasal E collapses to nasal W and schwa could not be lengthened or nasalized. It has since gained a nasal equivalent.

Consonants

Classical Zũm has 18 consonants, some of which are single-sounded and some of which are dual-sounded/allophones, all of which can be geminated. B F G K M N P Q /ŋ/ S V X /ʔ/ Z had a single pronunciation each and unless indicated have the same pronunciation as in the IPA. C /ʃ, tʃ/ D /d, ð/ H /h, x/ J /ʒ, dʒ/ L /ɣ, w/ R /r, ɹ, ɾ/ T /t, θ/ have multiple pronunciations which are considered interchangeable allophones. Ć /ts/ and Ź /dz/ have single pronunciations and U and Y can act as consonants /w/ and /j/.

Modern Colloquial Zũm Phonemic Inventory

MCZ has at least 73 unique sounds, with massive expansions both to vowels and consonants. It retains lengthening and/or nasalization of vowels and gemination of consonants, making the effective total significantly higher.

Vowels

MCZ added six new vowels bringing the total (sans modifications) to 14. Added to A E I O U W Y (which retain their pronunciations) are digraphs EI IL/IU OA UI/UÍ and UY/YU, as well as U'. IL/IU, OA, and UI/UÍ are new vowel sounds, representing /ʏ/, /ɔ/, and /ɨɯ/, respectively. EI, UY/YU, and U' distinguish between sounds which were formerly allophonic, representing /æ/, /y/, and /ʊ/, respectively. E and U still can make any of the same sounds as before and in areas where they stand alone they are still treated as interchangeable sounds. Each vowel can have 3 modified forms, but E nasals still collapse to W, schwa is unable to lengthen nasal or otherwise and long U' collapses to regular U in both forms, making the total including modifications 14×4-6, or 50, compared to Classical Zũm 28.

Consonants

MCZ really expanded in consonants, with a number of new phonemes and modifications. The nasals M, N and Q gained devoiced forms HN, HM and HQ; and Ć, D, N, S, T, Z and Ź each gained both retroflex and palatal forms. H gained a palatal form as well with HI/HÍ/HY /ç/.

Additionally, many allophones became distinguished. C split between sibilant SC and affricate TC, as did J with ZJ and DJ. Soft fricative D and T, formerly only allowed after E, I, and Y, now appeared after U', and after other letters as the digraphs ÍD and ÍT.

Modifications began to be seen as standalone phonemes as well, with every original letter and many new colloquial phonemes gained a velarized form. S saw two additional modifications distinguish themselves as independent phonemes: pharyngealized SX and apical HS, bringing the total number of sibilants alone to 10: S /s̻/, HS /s̺/, SH /sˣ/, SX /sˀ/, Z /z/, ZL /zˠ/, SI/CY /ɕ/, ZI/JI /ʑ/, C /ʃ/, J /ʒ/.

New phonemic rules breakers emerged, with schwas before and after U and Y, L as /ɣ/ at the end of a syllable using LÍ. All in all, not counting gemination OR velarization, MCZ has 59 unique phonemes.

Conclusion

Has anyone else seen a similar phonemic explosion? What was it the result of and how did you handle it?

As a result of phonetic shifts in the transition from Middle to Modern Nikarbian, many grammatical cases were lost or merged with other cases, and passive verbs disappeared completely. To make up for the loss of distinction, a Agentive-Passive noun system arose in Nikarbian.

Every Nikarbian noun has an Agentive and a Passive form. In the unmarked basic case, passive nouns always end in "o", while agentive nouns may end in "a" (generally inanimate objects and concepts) or "i" (generally living beings):

Passive constructions, for example, are indicated not by the verbs, but by the nouns. Here is an example with "hura" (dog) and "haki" (man):

• Hurai hakiũ qazakur - The dog bites the man
  • Hur.a.i haki.ũ qazaku.r
  • dog.AG.NOM man.PSACC bite.3sgan
• Huroi haker qazakur - The dog is bit by the man
  • Hur.o.i hake.r qazaku.r
  • dog.PS.NOM man.AGABL bite.3sgan
    • (final vowel in "haki" shifts to "e" in most agentive cases)

The verb "qazakur" remains unchanged, while the nouns themselves indicate who is biting and who is being bit. "Hurai" is the agentive nominative form of "hura", while "huroi" is the passive nominative, indicating that it is the subject of the sentence, but is the one affected by the action.

"Hakiũ" is the passive accusative form of "haki", indicating that it is the recipient of the action. In the second sentence, "haker" is the agentive ablative form, which indicates the cause of something or, as in this case, the agent of a passive clause.

Use with other grammatical cases

Accusative

The passive accusative, as seen above, is the common way to indicate the recipient of an action. However, the agentive accusative marks something that is doing an action and receiving another action.

• Garrinũ qartu hakẽ nirtam - I saw the man eat an apple
  • Garrin.ũ qartu hakẽ nirt.a.m
  • apple.PSACC eat man.AGACC see.PST.1sg

Here, "garrinũ" is the accusative passive form of "garrino" (apple), "qartu" is the infinitive verb "to eat", and "hakẽ" is the agentive accusative form of "haki" (man). The man is both doing an action (eating the apple) and receiving an action (being seen by the subject).

Genitive

The genitive case, when used in conjunction with the Agentive and Passive cases, indicates a hierarchical relationship. An agentive genitive noun is superior (or equal) to the object it qualifies, while a passive genitive noun is inferior. This is explained below with the 1st person singular pronoun "ma", passive form "mo".

• Man aruka - My son ("ma" is agentive, indicating a relation of hierarchical superiority)
• Mon saki - My father ("mo" is passive, indicating hierarchical inferiority)
• Man kana - My house
• Mon tana - My country

An interesting use of this distinction is with "bedaki" (brother) or "beremi" (sister).

Man bedaki - My younger brother (the subject is agentive, therefore superior, therefore older)

• The agentive genitive is also used for equal relationships, so one would generally use this to refer to a twin (unless they want to portray themselves as inferior for some reason)
• Mon bedaki - My older brother (the subject is passive, therefore inferior, therefore younger)

Ablative

As shown in the first example, agentive ablative nouns can be the cause of an action, as well as the agent of a passive clause. The basic ablative function, meaning movement from a location, is indicated by the passive ablative. Below is an example with the word "ravi" (king):

• Raver felios igam - Because of / by orders of the king, I went to the city
  • Rave.r feli.o.s ig.a.m
  • king.AGABL city.PS.ALL go.PST.1sg
• Ravior felios igam - I left the king's presence and went to the city
  • Ravi.o.r feli.o.s ig.a.m
  • king.PS.ABL city.PS.ALL go.PST.1sg

"Raver" is agentive, indicating cause, while "ravior" is passive, indicating departure.

Locative

The passive locative indicates location in, on, at something. Marked by the suffix -d.

• Feliod um - I'm in the city

The agentive locative indicates a temporary state of being.

• Raved tadbatũ torvaravam - As king, I managed to end the war
  • Rave.d tadbat.ũ tor.varav.a.m
  • king.AGLOC war.PSACC POT.end.PST.1sg

This function can also be fulfilled by the agentive nominative, although there would be a different nuance: the locative suggests that it is necessary to be in that state for the conclusion of the task or the understanding of the sentence, while the nominative merely adds some extraneous information, describing the subject.

• Raved tadbatũ torvaravam - As king, I managed to end the war
  • Rave.d tadbat.ũ tor.varav.a.m
  • king.AGLOC war.PSACC POT.end.PST.1sg
• Ravii tadbatũ torvaravam - I, the king, managed to end the war
  • Ravi.i tadbat.ũ tor.varav.a.m
  • king.AGNOM war.PSACC POT.end.PST.1sg

Transessive

The passive transessive indicates location or movement through something. It is marked by the suffix -l.

• Iskovol riunn yaccii - Few people live throughout the mountains
  • Isk.o.vo.l riu.nn ya.cci.i
  • mountain.PS.PL.TRS live.3pl person.few.AGNOM
• Kanol sugdur hurai - The dog is running across the house
  • Kan.o.l sug.du.r hur.a.i
  • house.PS.TRS run.GER.3sgan dog.AG.NOM

The agentive transessive indicates a matter of discussion. It is equivalent to English "about".

• Iskaval tyktavar - He / she wrote about the mountains
  • Isk.a.va.l tyktav.a.r
  • mountain.AG.PL.TRS write.PST.3sgan
• Kanal haremin - Let's talk about the house
  • Kan.a.l har.e.min
  • house.AG.TRS speak.IMP.1pl

Note that the plural suffix "va / vo" changes according to the form of the noun it modifies.

Allative

The passive allative indicates movement to something or the recipient of a concrete object. It is marked by the suffix -s.

• Felios iksym - I will go to the city
  • Feli.o.s ik.sy.m
  • city.PS.ALL go.FUT.1sg
• Zemios miltũ anavam - I gave my mother a dress
  • Zemi.o.s milt.ũ anav.a.m
  • mother.PS.ALL dress.PSACC give.PST.1sg

The agentive allative indicates finality, the recipient of an abstract object, or the person expressing an opinion (ethical dative).

• Feles qa dum - I am here for the city
  • Fele.s qa du.m
  • city.AGALL here be-present.1sg
• Ŧon zemes miriũ! - Health / hail to your mother! (wishing health upon someone is a common Nikarbian greeting)
  • Ŧ.o.n zeme.s miri.ũ
  • you.PS.GEN mother.AGALL health.PSACC
• Kas jyhemmi ut - It's not good enough for him / her
  • Ka.s jy.hemmi u.t
  • he/she.AGALL NEG.enough be.3sgin

Gloss guide:

AG = Agentive
PS = Passive
in = inanimate
an = animate
___

There are a few more grammatical cases, but I've already got the main ones down and this post is already getting absurdly long. What do you think of this system? Are there any natlangs or clongs with something similar? I thought Nikarbian was looking way too similar to Indo-European and Turkic, so I created this system in order to make it more unique.

Also, I swear it's just a coincidence that "mon" can mean "my" in both Nikarbian and French lol.

Edit: I hate Reddit formatting

#"And after sleeping for a few days he got up."

—Worrorra // Nouns and noun classes (pg. 18)

Please provide at minimum a gloss of your sentence.

Sentence submission form!

Feel free to comment on other people's langs!

Hi! In my conlang, the verbs have two stems, a short stem which represents the imperfective, and a reduplicated long stem which represents the perfective. To create the future tense, a suffix from an auxiliary verb, va, "to will” was added.

For example,

However, I want to find a new use for the Future Imperfective, as I don't think the speakers of the conlang will find it useful to specify and will just do so in other ways.

As such, one thing I was curious about is whether or not the semantics of the auxiliary might allow for some kind of different interpretation? A distinction I think would be fun to make using "to will" would be to emphasize something inevitable, or that was going to happen already. So in discourse, to respond to something like, "We're out of bread!" I could respond with one response being "I will go to the store," meaning I'm going to the store with the purpose of getting bread. However, I could also respond with something like, "I will be going to the store (anyways)", meaning I was going to the store before I realized we were out of bread.

In this case, I was thinking the perfective could be the first response, like "(in that case,) I will go to the store." And the imperfective could be the second response, like "I will be going to the store (anyways)". I feel like this reanalysis could continue through other parts of discourse which would make it be used more, with a conversation like "Don't go, it's dangerous!" and a response like "I will be going (anyways)". Does this make sense to others, and does it sound naturalistic at all? If so, what would I call this reanalyzed imperfective future tense with intent encoded in it?

Thanks in advance!

Hi, i'm new to this and i'm currently working on a conlang called "Kaiano". I had an idea to make all my verbs "specific" in a way. I'm not sure how else to describe it, or if its already a linguistic phenomenon or whatever. An example of this idea would be with the words for run in Kaiano. There are two words that mean "to run", hami and ikuto. Hami is used when you have a specific destination in mind when you run. For example the sentence, "Ko hami ta ki" means "I ran (to) you". Ikuto, on the other hand, means running without a specific destination, such as running for exercise. "Ko ikuto ta tayamu" means "I ran (for exercise) yesterday". Most of my verbs are like this, where there is 2-4 variations of a verb which all can mean specific things. Is this too confusing? Or does it exist in some actual languages?

In my conlang kweliru verbs have a gender system like hat of nouns and this effects alot of things in the sentences of the language

Verbs have 11 genders in kweliru

It's hard to tell which verb is of which gender at fiest glance but alot of them either have an affix to idenify there gender.

Here is an example of a verb

"Milaro" it means "to come" its of gender "3"

Lets say you want to say "the fish is coming"

Nouns are inflected for the verb

"Dero" = "fish" class "o"

The gender systems of the verbs and nouns intersct alot

And the inflection here would be "ksa"

So the sentence would be "ro deroksa milaro"

This will be tackled in a different post.

So what are your thoughts everybody.

"Help is on the way!"

• Daniel Hillard disguised as Euphegenia Doubtfire, Mrs Doubtfire (1993)

###Xobax (𐐟𐐲𐐺𐐪𐑇) /ʃʌˈbɑʃ/
#####𐐟𐐲𐐺𐐪𐑉 𐑂𐐮𐑊!

/ʃʌˈbɑɻ vɪl/
Help (is)-arriving!

How do you say this in your conlangs?

Hi, I am new to this forum and I would like to ask some questions. This thread is extremely long, as a result, thank you for taking your time reading it if you are doing so. Recently I’ve been working on a conlang called Xoijaiyaji for a fictional alien civilization, so basically I want to make it peculiar, thus this language has some grammatical and phonetic rules, and I would like to know whether these rules have ever been found in any existed human languages. The language has 5-7 tones. Speakers may use less tones due to their social status and regional differences. It also has only 5 consonants (which is technically false but I will explain), y,w,j,q,x, yet only y and w are written. These two can be used either as a vowel or a consonant. j,q,x are not written in standard scripts as it is assumed that the reader knows the correct pronunciation of when to use which, which is quite the opposite from the first human writing system. The verbs of this language conjugate depending on both of the person doing the action and the person receiving the action. This inflection is sometimes down by changing the tone of a vowel. For example: Jòwqā. You(sg) kiss. But: Jòwqá. You(sg) kiss him/her. I hope it won’t make the meaning ambiguous, as they sound similar. I occasionally use the change in tone for declensions of nouns as well. I know if you change a tone in a tonal language, the listener may understand it differently, but I am not sure if it’s used in these inflections as well. This feature makes this language hard to learn, though. This language has 3-4 numbers, singular, dual, trial, and plural for men, but no trial for women. Itself has 12 genders too: Water: female living, female non-living, neuter(may be called ‘liquid gender’), male living, male non-living. Earth: living (sometimes called ‘plant gender’), neutral, non-living Wind: female, male Fire🔥 : common, neuter I classified them this way partially due to the religion of those fictional users(the belief that the world was made of these four elements). There are some ways to determine the gender of a noun, for example, water is water, nouns related to weather fall under the wind category, and trees are earth-living, but it is not always possible to tell, for example: rain. Now here comes the most bizarre part. Since these fictional beings who speak this language displayed extreme sexual dimorphism, I would like to make the grammar and phonetics different depending upon the gender of the speaker and listener. For men, they also change regarding the social status of the listener. For example: Á! Hello! (for a woman/girl saying to a man/boy) A’a! Hello!(for a woman saying to a non-binary person/when both men and women are present) À! Hello! (for a woman saying to another woman) Yälēqì! Hello!(literal meaning:be well, for a man saying to his close male friends/relatives) Yàji yòji jōji! Hello! (literal meaning: let today be sunny. A man saying ‘hello’ to those who do not identify as a man/boy and/or to someone he’s not close to and/or someone with a higher social status than him) Qīwöqó. (Literal meaning: He/she greets you(sg). This can be interpreted as either hello or farewell and can be used by speakers of any gender. Used especially when the speaker doesn’t know whom they are talking to, such as on the phone. ) The combination j,q,x as mentioned before, also changes in a similar way: when a woman is talking to a fellow woman or herself, the pronunciation changes into b,p,m respectively, but if she’s talking to someone that is not a woman, she will continue to use j,q,x. For men, they use j,q,x in formal occasions, when talking to someone of a different gender, and to somebody they are unfamiliar with. If they are saying something to their close male friends/relatives, however, these sounds are converted to k,g,h when speaking. Nevertheless, since these three are not written, they do not impact the way people write things. In addition, there’s another special thing about the grammar. The language has two persons: the second and the third person(separate pronouns for the proximate and obviative, but they do not impact verb conjugations). When a person wants to say ‘I’, they use their name and the third person instead. Apart from that, ‘we’ is changed to words such as ‘everyone’. I know languages without the third person, yet I don’t know any that is without the first person. Also does this mean the users of this language will be more logical as they always see things from a detached perspective? Are they more prone to live in a collectivist society because they lack a sense of individualistic self? I am fully aware that men and women do speak differently in real life and in almost any languages —— but we are too immersed in this type of norm that we don’t realise these subtle differences, and also most people do not communicate in the same way when they encounter their friends compared to talking to their co-workers. Perhaps the speakers of my language just ‘chose’ a way that is more obvious for conveying these social norms. Nevertheless, can any of these characteristics mentioned above be found in any human languages?

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...

Tenkirk by /u/DaAGenDeRAnDrOSexUaL

ԥанкүабе, ფჰანქჳაბე
/ˈpʰaŋkʷaɓɘ/ — verb. n-stem

1. to burn

рутаъкүабе, რუთაჺქჳაბე
/ruˈtaːkʷaɓɘ/ — verb. n-stem

1. to set ablaze, light a fire

Take lots of care!

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

In many natural languages, certain things can be expressed both analytically and through bound morphology. In Danish, for instance, there are two ways to form the passive, one uses an /-s/ suffix, the other uses an analytic construction with the main verb in a passive participle form and the verb "at blive" (to become) as an auxilliary:

"Jeg spises"= "I am eaten"

"Jeg bliver spist" = "I am eaten" (literally "I become eaten")

Does your language have something similar?

My conlang Mukbal Vetic, despite being polysynthetic, most of the bound morphemes that appear in the verb also have free alternates, so the sentence "She kissed me quickly before going" can be expressed both as a single word and as multiple words:

Hwagatibigemmitjiriqidjarrii’

hʷagatɨbɨ-gə-m:ɨ-tʲɨɾɨq-ɨ-dʲar:ɨ-:ʔ
kiss-3SG.SUBJ-1SG.OBJ-ASSOC.MOV-Ø-quickly-PST

Djarridjarrii’ misjiiriq bee’ gwaaahii’ hwagatibii’

dʲar:ɨ-dʲar:ɨ-:ʔ      mɨsʲɨ:ɾɨq     bə:ʔ       gʷa:-:h-ɨ-:ʔ     hʷagatɨbɨ-:ʔ
quickly-REDUP-PST     3SG.ERG       1SG.ABS    go-CONV-Ø-PST    kiss-PST

This is because:

1. Adverbs have both free and bound forms

2. Agreement is optional if the referent occurs overtly

3. The meaning of the associated motion affix can also be expressed through a converb.

so I have a conlang, Alagian, and it has a big alphabet. but need help for ideas for sounds of the other letters. here are all the letters:

Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzáéíóúþħŋłăĕĭŏŭøåůàèìòùæœđąęįųǫꝁğ

And here is all the ipa i have assigned so far:

a /æ/, b /b/, c /t͡ʃ/, d /d/, e /ɛ/, f /f/, g /g/, h /h/, i /i/, j /d͡ʒ/, l /l/, m /m/, n /n/, o /ɔ/, p /p/, q /ʒ/, r /ɹ/, s /s/, t /t/, u /u/, v /v/, w /w/, x /ʃ/, y /j/, z /z/, þ /θ/, ħ /ħ/, ŋ /ŋ/, đ /ð/, ğ /ɣ/, áéíóú (primary stress, or more emphasis), æ /e/, ă /ə/, ò /o/, ų /ʊ/, ĕ /ɪ/, ł /ɸ/,

Now here are a few text samples:

Hello, how are you?

Miyári, xobcewò e?

I love you so much.

Anxĭqòda ce temůcœ.

What did you learn at school today.

Ꝁænèþlòcewò ånkalò amu tekirųowųo þyeħ.

You write with a book and pen.

Abrúǫjadzòce líŋsåþ àn juŋłă keįnă àn né.

You are not doing badly in your agility, but as for speed, you are very slow.

Abłaꝁòånkaqòce e nŏwa ĕ rúptúbwu, akaísa se gyopa ħanya, ce e kárabœ.

I would appreciate any ideas you could give.

I am new to conlanging and this is my first conlang. I am making an isolating language, so I am trying to have one morpheme to word ratio.

Using my syllable structure and calculating the amount of vowles and constants I have, I can make about 2900 "base" words. Of course most concepts in my language will be made of several words because it is isolating. So, what should I assign to my most "base" words? Should I go with the most used words generally or should I go with the most basic words?

That's like the most boring title ever but also pretty accurately described the new phenomenon emerging in Zũm. Here's the different rules and phenomena in Zũm that caused this new trait to emerge:

Zũm Augmentatives/Diminutives Emerge

The words yor and yek meant big and small respectively, and in Zũm you add the adjectives after the noun connected with an i/', as in dom'yor, a large house. Eventually this 'y dropped to produce domor, with -or now functioning as a suffix. Now Zũm has aug. -or and dim. -ek, and starts deriving more, like comparatives -ter and -tyk.

Zũm Lacks Adjectives for Major Concepts

As Zũm was developing, certain basic words denoting physical properties like height, length, weight, temperature, speed, etc. started to be conceptualized less as quantities with a magnitude and more as entities with a size.

Zũm, especially earlier forms of the language, considered most concepts as amounts, either countable or uncountable. You weren't too tired, you had too large an amount of tiredness. But for some reason these most countable and measurable of concepts became thought of as increasing in size not amount.

As such, whereas you would say 'I have a large amount of hunger' to say you're hungry, you would describe a fast person as 'having large speed,' sydorrx aū.

Zũm Has Compound Verbs

Zũm often forms verbs by taking a noun, adjective or concept and either adding the appropriate infinitive suffix or adding a suffix verb. Suffix verbs, such as con (to become) koṅ (to illicit an outcome) amn (to have) etc, allow virtually any word to have a verb derived from them, like nyz (a need) → nyzamn (to need). They can even compound, such as hoyter → hoytercon (to be made larger) → hoytercodkoṅ (to compel to become larger, to grow).

The Colloquial Pronunciation Schism

The guiding principle of Formal Zũm pronunciation is to ensure a single sound to every letter and vice versa. The close runner-up is to shy away from consonant clusters whenever needed or desired. Instead, split them with schwas; more syllables is always better than clunky, slurred, or worst of all, elided speech. Enunciate just about everything; every sound has a letter, so make sure every letter has its sound.

Colloquial Zũm takes a radically different approach. Zũm as a language in all its forms believes, rather uniquely, that a word is a collection of letters rather than of sounds, and that it is not the letters which serve a dependent purpose in documenting sounds to the best of their ability but rather the sounds' job to most efficiently communicate the letters. Formal Zũm believes that means pronouncing them each. Colloquial Zũm is built around the idea that the fewest sounds needed to reliably represent the letters is the most efficient way to speak.

Amongst the countless codified changes are derhoticization, the morphing of affricates to plosives before plosives and sibilants after sibilants, the rule that 2 consecutive consonants can merge, taking the voicing of the first and articulation of the second, and so forth.

Attributive Affixes

Zũm is a highly agglutinative language, and often times key concepts will have an standalone and an affix form, which may not always be linguistically related. These affixes can't operate as standalone words or stems, and must be used in a modifying context.

Many of the attributes/qualities which Zũm treats as entities rather than quantities have two such affixes, called attributive affixes. Hoy (height) has bla (up) and pay (down), leq (length) has tuan (long) and kuṡ (short), etc. As mentioned above these affixes can't serve as an independent word or stem. You can't describe a ta (day) as ta'tuanx, it must be ta'leqorx, but the word for the 'long day season' is tuantaq̇am. You can't say something is rising by combining 'is' with bla, you must use hoyor, but you can use bla as a removable prefix on other verbs, like ran (go) → blaran (rise, go up).

How It All Came Together

The most common words for rise and lower are hoytercodkoṅ and hoytykcodkoṅ. In Formal Zũm these would be pronounced as /'hoj.tær.ʃod.konː/ and /ˈhoj.tik.ʃod.konː/, but Colloquial Zũm condenses these pronunciations in a number of ways.

In each, the unstressed vowels are reduced. -codkoṅ is realized as -ckn /ʃk.n̩/. The -er in hoytercodkoṅ is derhoticized and unstressed, effectively forming hoytckn, with the TC being pronounced together as tʃ, an allophone of ʃ.

T, when palatalized, can often be realized as tʃ as well, and there is a tendency for all plosives to be realized as their dental equivalents before sibilants, so the KC is pronounced as tʃ as well. These consecutive tʃ sounds geminate.

We now have a pair of antonyms pronounced as hoyckn /ˈhojtʃ.kn/ and hoyċkn /ˈhojtʃː.kn/ in colloquial speech, which quickly merged into one word denoting a change in height. Attributive affixes began to be used when speaking to clarify, hoytckn bla or hoytckn pay, leqckn tuan or leqckn kuṡ, and so forth.

This is already a rather interesting occurrence, but moreso because it has started to bleed over into writing, where words still retain the letter that aren't heard. This has lead to growing redundancy, especially amongst younger generations, unnecessarily writing hoytercodkoṅ bla and hoytykcodkoṅ pay.

TLDR: Words involving certain attributes like height, length, weight, etc. must be modified with aug/dim suffixes to show change, but these suffixes have become silent in colloquial speech. A second set of related affixes was repurposed to remove ambiguity, but since the silent suffixes are still seen in writing, this has led to colloquial written redundancies not observed in formal writing or casual speech.

I want to start by saying that I have no intent of doing this, although it has crossed my mind.

While I've been exploring different conlangs and trying to learn more about the community, I've come across some cases of children being raised speaking a conlang. Esperanto is obviously a big one and already has a couple thousand native speakers. Some more obscure ones I've come across are High Valyrian and Toki Pona. I know also that there have been attempts at creating a native speaker of Klingon.

I think it's a cool idea in concept, but in practice, could be rather damaging. I'm interested to hear what y'all think about this subject.

Edit: I've made a server that all can join, no matter if you plan to learn Ironic or not: https://discord.gg/Ab6es3ntdS.

Edit 2: ş has been replaced by sh.

I've been following Ironland, the micronation made by a youtuber Magnify, and I thought I'd been fun to make a language for it. I wanted it to semi-fit the world today so I made my first (semi-)natlang, so if you see things that could be better, please comment them! (I made the name Ironic due to the humorous nature of Ironland. This is all for fun!)

​

Ironic is a west germanic language that takes influence from English, cause Ironland is surrounded by the U.S, German, Dutch, Persian, and Romanian since Ironland was recognized by Romania, I thought I'd be fun to add some Romanian vocab. It currently has 241 (approx.) words. (Also, Proto-German, cause I couldn't find any Proto West German resources.)

Phonology

w is missing from the charts but is in the phonology

​

The alphabet (in order): a b c d e ę (mi) f g h i j į (ie) k l m n o p r s t ş (şi) u ü (nü) v w x gj (gji)

​

Dipthongs are rarely used but the most used ones are:

• au
• ou
• ie

Grammar

Some simple grammar rules:

• SVO language
• All infinitive form verbs end with "an" except for the copula, ess.
• an > e = adjective
• an > van = simple past tense
• an > i = present
• an > ane = future
• an > nd = ___ passive (E.g: etan = infinitive, eti = present, etind = present passive)
• Passive verbs go at the end of the statement. (In formal text)

Plurality

To make plural, add -as.

E.g: (ENGLISH -> IRONIC)

tooth -> tend, teeth -> tendas

(if the word ends with a vowel, remove that last vowel): snake - ştarpe, snakes - ştarpas

*from romanian's "şarpe"

​

The chart for to be "ess":

​

Example:

I like to eat.

Ag placi etan.

i like-PRS eat-INF

*placi comes from placan which means to like/is pleasing in romanian (plăcea)

*sa is also from să in romanian which is the infinitive marker

​

Numbers

1. on
2. tę
3. trį
4. fwo
5. fim
6. see
7. saf
8. weet
9. nowa
10. dun

*0 is just Zero.

Basic Vocabulary

​

​

Example Sentence:

​

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Elle węmanas frije and same wit węrdige and rehtas burtind. Ezas wit ressta and menti eswiftind, and skai bian te ellje wit uu gest ap brodersip.

/ele wəmanas fɾije and same wit wəɾdige and ɾehtas buɾtind/

/ezas wit ɾesta and menti eswiftind, and skai bian te elje wit uː gest ap brodeɾsip/

(Pronounced pretty much how it's written)

all human-PL free-ADJ and equal-ADJ with dignity and right-PL bear-PRS-PPRT. 3PL with reason and conscience endow-PRS-PPRT, and should-PRS behave-INF to each.other with a spirit of brother-being. 

(all human-PL free-ADJ and equal-ADJ with dignity and right-PL bear-PRS-PPRT. 3PL with reason and conscience endow-PRS-PPRT, and should-PRS behave-INF to each.other with a spirit of brother-being.)

​

For my first (semi) natlang, I'm really happy with the vocab and simple grammar. I tried to get others to learn it but the conlangers in the Ironland server want a IAL instead of a euro-centric one so I wanted to post it here and share it, because as a start, I'm really proud of my work. Again, if you have any feedback, I would really really appreciate it! (Also, if I make any errors on the gloss, let me know too.)

An ending note: If anyone wants to learn this fairly easy conlang, I’d be glad to give you a dictionary sheet and if you wanna speak it/are interested in it, comment and if enough people are interested, I’d open a server for Ironland citizens. I’d love to speak with other Ironland citizens using this conlang.

​

#"Both of them found each other quickly."

—The Munda Verb (pg. 244; submitted by mia)

Please provide at minimum a gloss of your sentence.

Sentence submission form!

Feel free to comment on other people's langs!

I want to take on an ambitious translation project for my conlang and I think a movie would be the right challenge I'm looking for. Top comment decides what movie I dub into my conlang.

Rules (only the first one is actually a rule, the others are suggestions)ː

1ː The full movie and its script need to be accessible free of charge online.

2ː Preferably there should be few characters, since I am only me and they will all end up sounding like my voice.

3ː Too much wordplay and sharp dialogue will get hard to translate, so it would be easiest for me if there wasn't any.

4ː Please don't give me something genuinely high quality, I don't want to ruin it with this cringe.

Zhalem! (Peace)

I'm one of the makers of Neoviossa. It's quite an interesting language, taking the idea of Viossa but more concrete and learnable.

First, it's more of a creole than a language. We borrow or adapt words from languages all around, including spanish, english, nordic languages, even Hebrew (for our greeting!) We currently have only 4 active members of Neoviossa, and although it's coming along nicely (as will be shown below) this is by nature a collaborative project. If, after reading this, you are interested in joining, please check the comments and there should be an invite link.

The four main workers here are Endeavour, Trøll, canto_enrustido_do_galo_54408 and me, Blacksmith52. Each of us represents one of our three main language types from which we usually borrow: romance, nordic, and english/germanic. Together, we created some original words, grammar, suffixes and more, and can create sentences and hold simple conversations.

Here's an example interaction that you might have in Neoviossa:

A: Zhalem! Pardir te mirir lesk hund? (Hi! Can you see this dog?)
B: Nge. For kuen te neskir ik mirem hund? (No. Why do you need me to see the dog?)
A: Ik nge pfona, sel thenir lesk's ani lomelm hund! (I don't know, just think this's one shining hound!)

And so on and so forth.

VOWELS AND CONSONANTS (and ORTHOLOGY)

Our consonant inventory (θ and ð are currently under scrutiny)

Our consonant inventory has most of the sounds you need to create words. Notably we have lots of fricatives. Also note the absence of the letter [g] from this chart. It is missing but will be added in the next chart update. It is a used sound.
Our consonant orthography is pretty standard. The IPA characters that use english letters, we simply use that letter. For our non-english-letter IPA characters, we use the following

Our vowels as well are simple and easy to remember

The vowel chart

Note the absence of [a] because it is only used in the digraph [ai]
As with consonants, our vowel orthography is pretty standard. There are no split digraphs to confuse us.

Currently we store our dictionary as a sort of unorganized digital notebook in the discord server where we make Neoviossa. We all contribute words as needed and vote on more important matters like sounds and stuff.

And, well, that's all I have to say right now. If you're interested in joining, the link is in the comments!

Danklar en gottfaj!

The Diplomatic Flag of Neoviossa