问:
What are some options for alternative contrasts in demonstratives?
Most languages contrast demonstrative in a "here/there/over there" distance system, with two to five grades (with some referring to the hearer's location too). I'm looking for a different concept for demonstrative contrast.

Does anyone have suggestions for me?

答:
As the linked WALS chapter already mentions, a common distinction is to contrast near speaker/near listener/distal rather than a simple distance constrast.

One way to make such as system more "interesting" can be to add additional usages or shades of meaning to the different demonstratives, for example having one be a neutral term and the other one that is only used when specific focus on the distance is desired, or alternatively having a neutral demonstrative in addition to ones overtly marked for distance (the WALS chapter again already has examples of this, mentioning modern Hebrew and Lithuanian respectively). Korafe (TNG, Oro Province PNG) has a 3 demonstratives e, a, o in a speaker/listener/distal system which additionally serve the function of showing emontional evolvement of the speaker in utterance, with a "near listener" being the neutral default, e "near speaker" showing a great deal of involvement and o "distal" showing a desire of the speaker to distance and dissociate him/herself from the utterance1 pp.75-77.

Variables may be paradigmatically overlaid on top of a distance system, e.g. a visibility contrast as seen in Malagasy(Astronesian, Madagascar)2, or may supplement it, for example by having a 3-way proximal/distal/non-visible contrast. Other contrasts than visibility are possible, for example in Fore(TNG, Eastern Higlands Province PNG), which has a 5-way speaker/listener/proximal/medial/distal system, with proximal and distal further exhibiting a 3-way same level/above/below vertical relationship, for a total of 9 different demonstratives1.

Other than overlaying various such contrasts on a system there is also the possibility of instead having a large set of what may be called "positional stems", whith relatively specific semantics such as "up above", "on the beach" or "towards the Siberian mainland" which can then either be used as or derived into demonstratives. The various Yup'ik languages(Eskaleut, Bering Sea area) are an example of languages with a lot of these, and using various specialised and general nominal morphology allows forming demonstrative pronouns and adverbs with meanings such as "the ones up there" or "from the two entities upstairs/on the mountain", though I think there is a fair bit of variation in the actual meaning of the different stems between the different lects and langs. Section III.4 of this document covers them summarily as they are used in Gambell, St. Lawrence Island.

A somewhat similar in result but structureally different approach to this is exemplified by Nasioi(South Bougainville, Bougainville Province PNG), which rather than have a large inventory of deictic stems and a limited set of affixes instead has just one demonstrative stem a~e from which a large number of directional, as well as some nominalising and oblique affixes may derive different demonstratives such as a-un-toom-peto DEM-NOM-down.north-near.movement_toward"that down there, closer, ascending towards us from the north" or e-eʔ-dan-to DEM-INSTR-seaward-far "by going seaward far away (from us)"1.


问:
Is there an existing constructed language that once was dead?
That means, are there any such conlangs that exist today but were once declared as dead or not in use by any community?</p>

答:
My answer is a little biased, but I can speak for the history of Solresol. Solresol was invented in the early 1800s, grew in popularity over the next ~70 years, even after the death of its creator, and then (apparently) abruptly died out in the early 1900s, despite supposedly being at the peak of its popularity. There were only a few brief mentions of Solresol throughout the 1900s in books about universal language attempts. Then, in the 1990s, someone started a mailing list discussion about Solresol through reading one of those books, and the community has been slowly growing ever since, with a desire to further develop and promote the language.

Gufferdk makes a good point that it's difficult to prove the "death" of a conlang. There is no known documentation of Solresol being in use through most of the 1900s, but I cannot prove that more private communication did not exist.

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0


问:
Are there conlangs which compel their users to speak with honesty?
George Orwell's novel 1984 introduced us to
Newspeak,
a language devised by authorities to be entirely misleading.

Languages that attempt to guide knowledge have been termed Orwellian
and, more technically, relativistic or Sapir-Whorf.

Any examples of languages that are opposite of Newspeak,
compelled to be genuine?

答:
One example of this would be the massively more complex Ithkuil, whose author says this:

As for a hypothetical community of Ithkuil-speakers, I do not think Ithkuil would serve the purpose of being the primary day-to-day language, as I agree the language would quickly degenerate into a “vulgar” form due to its complexity. I see Ithkuil’s hypothetical usage as being a specialized language for specific purposes where exactitude and clarity of cognitive intention is called for, and to make deliberate obfuscation difficult, e.g., political debate, the teaching and discussion of scientific disciplines, the discussion of philosophy, the written presentation and preservation of history. As such, it would be a “learned” language (like learning a computer programming language or the predicate calculus) whose structure would be consciously preserved by its speakers. An analogy might be the way that Classical Latin continued to be used for over a milennium after the death of its last native spearker for academic and religious purposes. A similar analogy is the use of Modern Standard Arabic (essentially a modernized version of Classical Arabic) in official and academic contexts.

emphasis mine

Due to the nature of the question, it's highly inconcievable that we could answer it exhaustively.


问:
Why is the Lord's Prayer so common as a translation?
I'm an amateur conlanger, but I've seen multiple instances of people using the Lord's Prayer as a test or a way of showing off a translation of their conlang.  I've even done it a couple times myself.

Why is this such a common practice among conlangers?

答:
Christians are quite firm in their beliefs and as such many pray the Our Father (Pater Noster) with great devotion. I would be very surprised if a Christian liturgical celebration did not recite the Our Father at their Sunday services. I know many who recite this prayer before meals.

Given the popularity of this prayer, I am not surprised that it is so commonly used as a translation tool. Even some private schools will pray the Our Father before class and that in turn will be said in the language of the class being taught: Pater Noster for Latin class and the Notre Pere for class in French.

It would be interesting to see if some Christian high school would recite the Lord's Prayer in Elvish in a Constructed Language course if one exists.

The Quenya translation is by J.R.R. Tolkien (published in Vinyar Tengwar #43).

Átaremma i ëa han ëa,

na aire esselya,

aranielya na tuluva,

na care indómelya

cemende tambe Erumande.

Ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma,

ar ámen apsene úcaremmar

sív’ emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen.

Álame tulya úsahtienna

mal áme etelehta ulcullo.

Násie.

As one can see the Our father is short enough to be memorized over a very short period of time and this prayer has immense value for a certain percentage of the population.

With all due respect let us remember that the Lord's Prayer was taught by Jesus Christ himself. For those who believe that is huge.


答:
I can imagine a system that is based on size/importance instead of one based on near me/near you/distant. In this system, one demonstrative would point to the larger, more massive, more important, less recently introduced etc., another would point to the smaller, less massive, less important, more recently introduced target. Various degrees of intermediates could be thought of between these two extremes (but I think just one intermediate would be the most obvious choice.

More practical examples:

Two people talking about cars on a road. In a this/that system, one might say:

I like that huge car.

while pointing at one. In the system I’m imagining, that would turn into:

I like [Demonstrative-important] car.

without the need to point a finger. It would immediately imply the largest car to be seen.

A discussion about which colour a dress should be. A blue one was introduced first, a red one second and now we are looking at a green one.

I like [Demonstrative-intermediate] best.

Even though we may be looking at the green one and without turning any heads it would be clear that red is preferred. My train of thoughts here is that the first introduced object has been sitting around for a while in the discussion and thus acquired some sort of importance of the elder.

It can even easily be applied to people. Depending on what the culture of your conlang values, I can imagine both mere height or age/respect factoring into the decision which one of two people would get the important demonstrative. In Japan, if the choice is between the young, tiny professor and the older, larger secretary, the professor would probably be labelled with [demonstrative-important]. But going by age or size alone may make more sense in other cultures.

An interesting feature when applying it to people is that the demonstrative would change depending on who is a potential target. Comparing a teacher to their students would mean they receive [demonstrative-important]. However, if the headmaster is part of the group being talked about, the same teacher would suddenly be [demonstrative-intermediate] or [demonstrative-unimportant].

Of course, many more examples are possible.

Title: What are some options for alternative contrasts in demonstratives?

Body:
Most languages contrast demonstrative in a "here/there/over there" distance system, with two to five grades (with some referring to the hearer's location too). I'm looking for a different concept for demonstrative contrast.

Does anyone have suggestions for me?


问:
Does Lojban completely remove semantic ambiguity?
As a constructed, syntactically unambiguous language (Wikipedia), does Lojban also completely eliminate semantic ambiguity? If not, what are some examples?

答:
Let's take an element of Lojban's grammar, and see if it's semantically ambiguous.

In lojban, tanru are basically two predicates in adposition. The first one semantically modifies the second one; and that's all.

Example:

{lo zdani gerku cu barda}: The house dog is big.

{lo gerku zdani cu barda}: The kennel is big.

Where {zdani} (roughly) means "home", {gerku} means "dog", and {barda} means "big (the rest is grammatical witchcraft, don't bother).

In the first example, {zdani gerku} is syntactically a tanru, and {zdani} modifies {gerku}. However, the tanru is primarily about {gerku}.

In the second one, it's the reverse. {gerku zdani} is also syntactically a tanru, but {gerku} modifies {zdani}; and the overall tanru is about {zadni}, not {gerku}.

However, it isn't possible to make assumptions about the overall meaning of a tanru. Though it's syntactically not ambiguous, it is semantically ambiguous.

I've chosen the english “house dog” and “kennel”, but it was just my intent, and english translates this way. Officially, it's not possible to infer the meaning from a tanru.

You can even read yourself in the last official reference grammar that “All tanru are ambiguous semantically.”

For a surer version:

{lo gerku poi ta'e zvati lo zdani cu barda}: The dog that uses to live at the house is big

{lo zdani poi zukte ke'a lo nu stuzi lo gerku cu barda}: The house that is aimed so that dogs could live in is big.

EDIT: added an explanation on how it's ambiguous, and the surer examples.


答:
I don't think that languages, whether natural or constructed, have this power.

The fact is that there are numerous ways to be deceptive. You can straight out lie, you can speak as if there is uncertainty when really there is not, you can be deceptive through what you don't say, and you can be deceptive by saying true facts that are not actually strictly relevant, something called "paltering".

Like most linguists now, I think that the weak Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that our language influences our thoughts and decisions, is surely true, but I am sceptical about the strong version, that language completely determines and limits our thought categories. Either way, I don't think it's really relevant to the aspect of human psychology which makes deception possible. Lying through omission or distraction is possible because our minds can generate multiple possible statements to make to others, each disclosing a different level of truth, but none of us are compelled to speak every thought that enters our minds.

Perhaps someone has invented an alien species with an alien psychology and an alien language to speak, and maybe in their universe their language does compel them to speak honestly. But what would it mean to prove such a thing, and how could anyone else present an argument to refute their claims? So for humans I say the answer is no, and for fictional creatures it's not a useful question for us to ask.

Title: Are there conlangs which compel their users to speak with honesty?

Body:
George Orwell's novel 1984 introduced us to
Newspeak,
a language devised by authorities to be entirely misleading.

Languages that attempt to guide knowledge have been termed Orwellian
and, more technically, relativistic or Sapir-Whorf.

Any examples of languages that are opposite of Newspeak,
compelled to be genuine?


问:
What are common origins of accusative case markers?
What are the primary way(s) accusative case markers can develop?

The primary way of development of oblique case markers seems relatively straightforward, with attachment of adpositions (which can already be considered "case markers" under some definitions and which can in turn come from nouns or verbs) on the noun, then possible generalisation onto all elements of the NP as agreement. Ergative cases are a little less straightforward, but they very frequently have an oblique double function, hinting at origins such as reinterpretation of passive constructions or the generalisation of usage of e.g. instrumental or ablative case markers as markers of unexpected agency (e.g. via the occasional omission of agents in sentences like "[the man] opened the door with the key").

The emergence of accusative cases seem less straightforward to me though, and while reinterpretations of antipassives are a readily availible source that doesn't to me seem like a plausible origin for the majority of accusative markers, nor does it provide a way to go from no case marking to accusative (which seems like a thing that should be able to happen), and I'm not aware of any similar broad tendency of oblique double-function as seen in ergatives which could otherwise hint at origins. As such I particularly would like to know what oblique cases could reasonably be extended to accusative, and under what circumstances the original extension (from which further generalisation could be done) may occur under, and additionally if there are any reasons accusatives seem to have fewer double functions (even if this is just a result of me looking in the wrong places).

答:
This is merely a marginal answer and I’m sure there’s a lot more data that might prove valuable, but in multiple Romance languages (at least Spanish and Romansh) the preposition a has developed into an accusative marker for particularly animate objects. This preposition derives from Latin ad “to(wards)” and is in both languages somewhat equivalent to English to or at in usage (in Romansh it is commonly used to mark the dative as well, as in French).

In general I would not be surprised to see allative or dative adpositions turn into accusative markers, there is quite a bit of overlap in the meanings (compare “I hit towards you” and “I hit you”).


问:
Is the Klingon alphabet inspired by Tibetan alphabet?
Is the Klingon alphabet inspired by Tibetan alphabet?

Because they look similar..

答:
Considering this question is a rehash of another question on SX, I'm inclined to say it's chance resemblance — and not a very high one at that. It is very highly plausible that it was designed by a non-linguist at Paramount (if I understand correctly) at a time when there was no easy way of finding out about Tibetan even with the budding Internet of 1992 when the aforelinked article was published in the HolQeD journal of the KLI. The article specifically says:

More recently we’ve been treated to a different alphabet, (often incorrectly attributed to Michael
  Okuda, scenic designer for Star Trek: The Next Generation™), one which corresponds to the phonemes of
  Klingon as described by Okrand in The Klingon Dicitionary. While the characters themselves are easily identifiable from background displays on Star Trek: The Next Generation™ (assuming one has access to video
  equipment and a reasonably large television screen), there has never been an “official” release describing
  the particular relationship between individual glyphs and specific sounds. As Okuda has indicated (HolQeD
  1:1, 11) all Klingon background displays are composed for appearance, not communication. And yet, an
  unofficial letter to a Klingon fan group from an unnamed source at Paramount resulted in the following
  alphabet: [...]


问:
Are there any good programs out there to help when constructing languages?
Are there any tools out there to keep track of which works you have already defined, managing your lexicon easily, and storing conjugations and the like?

Barring that, what are some good strategies to keep everything organized in text files?

答:
Polyglot is a piece of software made specifically for the organisation, and management of conlangs as a whole. I haven't used it personally (preferring pen and paper to a large extent), but I've heard a fair few positive things about it.

Conworkshop includes a bunch of different tools for storing and organising things, but I've personally not found it particularly useful, and I have heard from people who have looked at the backend that you do not want to look at the backend, though I think they are doing a rewrite.

SIL Fieldworks is a vocabulary management program, and while developed for natlang lexicographers, it's also useful for conlangs. It's a rather powerful tool, but it has a significant learning curve to it. SIL also publishes other potentially useful free software such as Toolbox: https://software.sil.org/products/

Lexique Pro is a piece of software for making and editing presentable dictionaries. I haven't used it but it apparently offers compatibility with Fieldworks.

In addition to these, a regular spreadsheet program and a text editor can be quite useful, and there is a sea of both web and downloadable word generators (e.g. Gen, Awkwords, Lexifer) and sound change appliers (e.g. SCA2, GSCA), and for writing publishable materials, LaTeX, combined with a variety of packages for extra functionality such as Lingmacros and TikZ can produce fantastic results.


问:
Are there concrete examples of slang developing within a conlang?
One of the unique challenges of a constructed language, in my mind, is how they handle the way in which language longs to break rules.  In other words, how does constructed language handle slang?

For the most part, the entire notion of underground language runs entirely contrary to the notion of constructed language, where the rules are strictly prescribed.

However, in unique cases where conlangs have had time to brew with native speakers, such as with Esperanto, have we seen specific examples of slang develop within the language?  What conditions seem to prompt the development of slang terms in such circumstances?

答:
Wiktionary has a list of Esperanto internet slang but most of these I've never seen or heard used before (at least in the main esperanto chats on Telegram).

Esperanto slang terms I've heard or used

krokodili - to speak in a language other than esperanto in a group of esperantists. No one really knows where it originated but the most popular story seems to be that it's because crocodiles have big mouths and small brains. "Ne krokodilu" is a very commonly used phrase.

sal - hi (short for saluton)

kvf - how are you (abbreviation of kiel vi fartas)

mdr - lol (multe da ridoj)

mns - idk (mi ne scias)

Interjections

ho ve (occasionally just "ve") - oh geez

(according to this post on Esperanto SE the literal translation is "oh woe" but who says that)

8, ok, okej - k, ok, okay

("ok" is the word for eight in Esperanto, mdr.)

ho - oh

jes ja - yes, indeed

(according to this post on Esperanto SE "ja" can be used in other situations, but I have never heard or seen it used other than after "jes")

Fek' - f*ck

Kio la fek - what the f*ck

(This is an obvious anglicism and considered "grammatically incorrect" by many esperantists, who will tell you it's actually kio feke)

Volap*ko - "the v word". More offensive than all the offensive words you know combined.


答:
In Esperanto, the word knuflo is mainly used by young people, who participate in local meetings, around the dutch-speaking regions of Flanders and the Netherlands. It is almost not used in international context, like on the Internet ("knuflo" esperanto gives less than 12 results with Google), outside of groups that are community specific. Outside of these groups, the word is not understood.

Knuflo is like hugging, but longer, with more parts of the body. It is like cuddling, but it is hard to describe. Users say you have to receive a knuflo to understand it, and you have to experience it to understand why the word is needed in the language.

So here, you have three factors. People sharing the same factor tend to speak together. When people speak mainly within their own community, slang appear.

Age factor: Young people coin new words for the new environment, and for concepts that are felt important for the social group. It is exactly the same in Esperanto. But there is no clear barrier. Here is a footage of an older person using the word "knuflo".

Location factor: Not all Esperanto-speakers participate regularly in Esperanto events, in fact only a minority do. There is an event-slang, with words such as "gufujo", "stelo (mono)", etc. Esperanto events are often attended by people from neighboring countries. This way local slang is shared among people of different countries and age. Because of this, you can sometimes hear "knuflo" in French-speaking Belgium and Germany (near the Netherlands). The word is also shared in huge international youth events like JES and IJK, where a consequent number of participants come from the knuflo-region.

Language factor: "knuflo" comes directly from the Dutch verb "knuffelen". Dutch-speaking beginners who are not aware of similar words like "brakumo" "kareso" "dorlotado" are more likely to remember and understand "knuflo". This kind of beginner-slang tend to not go outside the local club, but "knuflo" is an odd exception. Maybe because some local experienced speakers think it brings new meaning.

Title: Are there concrete examples of slang developing within a conlang?

Body:
One of the unique challenges of a constructed language, in my mind, is how they handle the way in which language longs to break rules.  In other words, how does constructed language handle slang?

For the most part, the entire notion of underground language runs entirely contrary to the notion of constructed language, where the rules are strictly prescribed.

However, in unique cases where conlangs have had time to brew with native speakers, such as with Esperanto, have we seen specific examples of slang develop within the language?  What conditions seem to prompt the development of slang terms in such circumstances?


答:
All languages, natural or constructed, must have verbal negation. So, in any language, it must be possible to say something and to negate that same thing:

Sidney is in Australia.

Sidney is not in Australia.

Since only one of these can be true, it follows that any language makes possible to say at least as many falseties as truths (in practice, many more, as we can lie that Sidney is in Russia, Gabon, or the Middle Earth). And so, no. A language cannot compel its speakers into honesty.


问:
Can programming languages be categorized as conlangs?
Would it be correct to say that the majority of computer programming languages (such as functional or procedural) are the form of constructed languages? If so, what makes it a constructed language in this case?

Let say a "Hello, World!" program as the example.

Hello World! by Brian Kernighan, from Artsy's Algorythm Auction based on a 1978 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial, which contains the first known version. 2 lines of C Code. -
   Wikipedia

答: Programming languages are constructed, but they are not languages, in the sense English or Esperanto or Klingon are languages, as curiousdannii shows. We cannot translate things like "I will be late for dinner" into a programming "language". And a characteristic of all "languages", properly speaking, is their mutual "translatability".</p>

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


答: As a programmer and a conlanger, I'd say "no". As noted above, programming languages cannot convey metaphor, emotions, sensory impressions, and other such human-relevant messages. Abstraction they can handle, but only abstractions that are relevant to the processing going on inside the machine. Such languages have an extremely limited sphere of reference: bits, bytes, and data structures inside the machine, and operations upon them. </p>

Title: Can programming languages be categorized as conlangs?

Body:
Would it be correct to say that the majority of computer programming languages (such as functional or procedural) are the form of constructed languages? If so, what makes it a constructed language in this case?

Let say a "Hello, World!" program as the example.

Hello World! by Brian Kernighan, from Artsy's Algorythm Auction based on a 1978 Bell Laboratories internal memorandum by Brian Kernighan, Programming in C: A Tutorial, which contains the first known version. 2 lines of C Code. -
   Wikipedia


问:
Can a conlang be used for machine-machine communication?
On Wikipedia page we can read that constructed language is devised for human or human-like communication. Given the fact, that there are already some constructed language examples for human-computer communication such as Lojban, can constructed language be created by humans for machine-machine communication? Or it won't be a constructed language anymore?

One example could include a Droidspeak code (the fictional language spoken by droids).

答: Rick Morneau has a conlang designed to be suitable as both a machine translation interlingua and as a medium of communication. And two Facebook AIs apparently spontaneously constructed their own mutual language. FWIW.</p>


答:
According to this answer on Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange, no. The author draws from the official Klingon language website, saying:

"...the producers called on professional linguist Dr. Marc Okrand to create authentic speech for the Klingons. His task was to make their language as alien as their ridged prosthetic foreheads, while still remaining pronounceable by human actors and consistent with the battle cries from the first movie.

Dr. Okrand did not base Klingon on any particular language, but drew on his knowledge of how language works to construct a wholly new language."

Body:
Is the Klingon alphabet inspired by Tibetan alphabet?

Because they look similar..


问:
Is there any concept of "isomorphic" constructed languages?
What I'm thinking is: if two conlangs have the same syntactical structure and can be translated by simply exchanging words while maintaining the same (or very similar) structure, is there are specific term for this scenario, and are there any examples for this? I'd imagine Lojban and Loglan would probably fit in this category as Lojban is, after all, a child project of Loglan. Are there any other examples of conlangs designed with identical (or very similar) syntactic features, and is there a name for this relationship?</p>

答: There is the term relexification meaning that the words of a given language are replaced by new words without changing the structure of the starting language. Relexification does not only occur in conlangs but also in natural languages.</p>


答:
I would say, to a very limited extent, that yes, they can be, but only as a proxy grammar for other languages. For example,

```<code>from sys import exit as stops ; import os
thing = [] ; me = can = remember = False ; this = open(__file__)
def terrible(v): return v

# ==== start song snippet

me = can = remember = not any(thing)
can = not this.tell(), [True, "dream"]
locals()["deep"] = {"down":{"inside":{"feel_to":"scream"}}}
if `this` + (terrible("silence")): stops(me)

# ===== end song snippet
</code>```

(source: Coding in song - Representing music lyrics in a programming language of your choosing)

However, this isn't a great method of communication. Programming languages are not designed with the same intentions as conlangs.

Body:
I would say, to a very limited extent, that yes, they can be, but only as a proxy grammar for other languages. For example,

from sys import exit as stops ; import os
thing = [] ; me = can = remember = False ; this = open(__file__)
def terrible(v): return v

# ==== start song snippet

me = can = remember = not any(thing)
can = not this.tell(), [True, "dream"]
locals()["deep"] = {"down":{"inside":{"feel_to":"scream"}}}
if `this` + (terrible("silence")): stops(me)

# ===== end song snippet

(source: Coding in song - Representing music lyrics in a programming language of your choosing)

However, this isn't a great method of communication. Programming languages are not designed with the same intentions as conlangs.


问:
How do you pronounce the ":" in Wede:i?
Looking at the zompist page for Wede:i, I don't see any instructions on how to pronounce the ":" that we see in the name of the language and other places.

Am I missing something? How are you supposed to pronounce the ":"?

答:
The phonology table shows it quite simply, it modifies the e to indicate that it is a long vowel. I don't know why the vowel table shows the dipthongs a:i and a:u but not e:i (or any others).

Note that although this may seem to be a common colon, the actual IPA diacritic is two triangles, flat sides on the outside: U+02D0 ː. But as the colon doesn't have another meaning in the IPA and it's much easier to type, a lot of people just use it instead.

Title: How do you pronounce the ":" in Wede:i?


问:
Do any conlangs have verbs that change form depending on the object?
Are there any examples of constructed languages that have verbs with different forms depending on the object of the verb?</p>

答:
Yes.

I am not familiar with any “well-known” conlangs, but a quick search reveals that Klingon verbs inflect for both subject and object. This is a phenomenon called polypersonal agreement and it is very common in natural languages, and so it is only expected that it would also crop up in several conlangs. Among them, for example also my own, for which I just yesterday put up a puzzle that involves decoding the verbal system here.

I cannot currently think of any examples of a language which inflects for only the object, but it’s a rather low-hanging fruit and I cannot imagine that it has never been done before.


问:
Were Tolkien's Elvish languages based on known natural languages?
I'm a great fan of Tolkien's books, especially The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. One thing I have always wondered about in his books though, is whether the Elvish tongues were actually fully new languages. Were they totally constructed as it were from scratch, or was Tolkien patterning them after some European / other languages that were actually in use (or ancient languages out of use)?

答:
Tolkien started really early in his life to develop languages. Started at 13 and developed languages till his death.

Tolkien was a professional philologist and a specialist in the Old
  English language. He was also interested in many languages outside his
  field and developed a particular love for the Finnish language (he
  described the finding of a Finnish grammar book as "entering a
  complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind
  and flavour never tasted before".

Finnish morphology (particularly its rich system of inflection) in
  part gave rise to Quenya. Another of Tolkien's favorites was Welsh —
  and features of Welsh phonology found their way to Sindarin. Numerous
  words were borrowed from existing languages, but less and less
  obviously as Tolkien progressed. Words that are an exact match with
  existing Welsh words can be found in the early drafts of Tolkien’s
  manuscripts published as The History of Middle-earth,[4] but attempts
  to match a source to a particular Elvish word or name in works
  published during his lifetime are often very dubious.

Source: Languages (Tolkien Gateway)


问:
In what ways are well-known a priori conlangs inadvertently eurocentric?
It’s well-known that among inexperienced conlangers¹, many times their conlangs turn out to be way more European than intended, often showing features found only rarely outside of European languages, because the creator is not aware there was even an option.

What I’m curious now is whether among the “big names” such as Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki etc. there are any such accidental Europeanisms? We can disregard Tolkien’s works as he was actively taking inspiration from various European languages (such as Welsh or Finnish²). Obviously auxlangs meant to suit primarily Europe can also be excluded, and whatever Esperanto is meant to be I’m well aware of the situation there, so you can exclude that from answers as well.

¹ Who are native speakers of an European language, i.e. statistically probably English.

² While not Indo-European, Finnish does share many features with other European languages.

答:
The Na’vi language for the movie Avatar was created from scratch by a linguistics PhD, Paul Frommer. In an interview available on Unidentified Sound Object, he details how the language was devised. The director, James Cameron, had created about 30 words many of which he needed as place names. These helped Frommer understand what kind of sounds Cameron had in mind. They discussed what the language would need to be and sound like in general and then Frommer was on his own. Most notably, the only input from the director was a set of isolated words and confirmation that the primary way to differentiate between them should be stress.

Frommer decided that he wanted to employ all sorts of features of various human languages in a unique combination. Thus:

verbs are inflected by infixes, not the more common prefix or suffix models (suffix inflection is a feature of Standard Average European)

the case system is tripartite, a feature which exists but is rarely found in natural languages; SAE would be nominative–accusative

the language features ejective consonantes. Again, these are found in about 20 % of the world’s languages but only the Caucasian languages feature them in Europe

All in all, it seems like any features present in Na’vi that are also present in European languages would be a conscious design choice to not make it too non-European.

Furthermore, the interview also briefly mentions Klingon:

USO: Is there a “gold standard” for constructed language that served as an inspiration to you?

Frommer: In terms of “alien” languages, that would have to be Klingon, the language developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek series. It’s a very impressive piece of work—a rough-sounding language with a complex and difficult phonology and grammar that now has a devoted base of followers. There are Klingon clubs all over the world where people meet to speak the language, and there’s even a translation of Hamlet into Klingon! If Na’vi ever came close to that kind of following, I’d be delighted.

This hints that Klingon, which was also developed by a linguist, would similarly be free from eurocentric bias.


答:
CALS lists 9 conlangs where the verb only agrees with P in transitives, 20 where it can agree with either A or P, and a further 127 where the verb agrees with both A and P, though of the ones listed, the only really well-known one is Klingon, which Adarian also mentioned. Including Mark Rosenfelder's langs (which aren't in CALS) in the at least relatively well-known bucket, Wede:i and Old Skourene both inflect the verb for both A and P to different extents (though note that Old Skourene works on an ergative basis).

Of the languages that mark P but not A, most of them are listed as having ergative agreement and so presumably agree with S as well, however two of them, 'Yemels and Snahhian are listed as accusative, and so presumably has the verb agree only with P.

Interestingly enough, despite conlangers often liking to solve problems by throwing affixes at them, a complete lack of personal agreement is actually overrepresented in CALS, when compared to WALS.

Title: Do any conlangs have verbs that change form depending on the object?

Body: Are there any examples of constructed languages that have verbs with different forms depending on the object of the verb?</p>


问:
Is the alien writing in "Arrival" really a language? Can we form custom sentences?
Here are few examples of words written in the alien language from "Arrival" (film):

Image source: Pinterest.

Does this alien writing have some logic in order to construct some custom meaningful sentences?

答:
The short answer: no, the language from Arrival is not a full conlang.

The logographs were designed by artists and designers, and, while some components of the logograms were assigned meaning, they did not define enough of its rules for it to be possible to make new symbols with definite meanings.

They did hire linguist Jessica Coon to consult on the film, and she annotated printouts of the logograms so the set designers would know what to put in the background and on the whiteboards (If I remember correctly, they consulted physicists for similar work as well). They also had Stephen and Christopher Wolfram provide some analysis and design the computer program used to analyze and generate the logograms in the film.

However, in the end, the movie was not for linguists or conlangers, so they did not design it as a fully fledged conlang—given that it's supposed to be a mystery they don't quite solve in the film, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

These articles might interest you if you want more information.

How Arrival's Designers Crafted a Mesmerizing Alien Alphabet

'Arrival' nails how humans might actually talk to aliens, a linguist says


答: While it's true that languages like Na'vi and Klingon (can't speak for Dothraki) do contain quite a few explicitly non-SAE (Standard Average European) features, it's worth noting that both Paul Frommer and Marc Okrand have stated that they were deliberately using less common and lesser-known features in their respective conlangs to make them sound more alien. Since avoiding features that would be considered common or familiar to their audiences (typically comprised of speakers of English and other SAE languages) was a goal during their language creation. I'd argue that deliberately avoiding all SAE features to make your language sound "strange" and "alien" is a sort of eurocentrism (though perhaps a less obvious sort than unthinkingly including all SAE features) in that your language ends up very influenced by European languages and their features.</p>

Title: In what ways are well-known a priori conlangs inadvertently eurocentric?

Body:
It’s well-known that among inexperienced conlangers¹, many times their conlangs turn out to be way more European than intended, often showing features found only rarely outside of European languages, because the creator is not aware there was even an option.

What I’m curious now is whether among the “big names” such as Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki etc. there are any such accidental Europeanisms? We can disregard Tolkien’s works as he was actively taking inspiration from various European languages (such as Welsh or Finnish²). Obviously auxlangs meant to suit primarily Europe can also be excluded, and whatever Esperanto is meant to be I’m well aware of the situation there, so you can exclude that from answers as well.

¹ Who are native speakers of an European language, i.e. statistically probably English.

² While not Indo-European, Finnish does share many features with other European languages.


问:
What is the difference between an Isolating and an Analytic language?
These two terms appear to be used nearly interchangeably to refer to languages with little morphology. However at the same time I sometimes see them contrasted with each other, but cannot identify a pattern. </p>

答:
When I've seen a clear distinction made here, it has been the following:

Isolating languages have a very low morpheme-per-word ratio

Analytic languages have little inflection

However, this distinction is not made very consistently, so they're often used interchangeably. I have also seen a different distinction made, where analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio and isolating languages have a morpheme-per-word ratio of 1:1, though this one is less common in my experience. The fact that even with this distinction isolating languages end up being a proper subset of analytic languages only makes this problem worse. This has its origins in the definition of "synthetic", the category both of these are typically contrasted with, since it's used both as a description of languages with a high morpheme-per-word ratio and as a description of the superset of terms like fusional and agglutinative, both of which describe languages with lots of inflection.

In practice, conlangers seem to make too big of a deal out of these sorts of labels. They're there to be descriptive, so it's not a problem to discard them when they aren't, and they're often far less informative than most who use them think.


问:
Is there any research on the efficacy of intentionally designed linguistic relativity in conlangs?
Toki Pona is a language designed to shape the thought process of users. So is Loglan: According to Wikipedia, "Loglan was originally conceived as a means to examine the influence of language on the speaker's thought."

Has any research been done on how well these languages (and others with similar aims) achieved their goals?

答:
To gauge how well these languages have achieved their goals, we really need to quantify what exactly achieving those goals would entail, and what steps along that path we would consider progress. What constitutes success for Toki Pona or Loglan? A world of people thinking differently? A small group of speakers who have improved the way they think substantially based on learning the language? Without knowing that, we cannot say whether these languages have achieved their goals.

Additionally, when looking for research into linguistic relativity, the place to look would be linguistic research, and we're unlikely to see much research into Toki Pona's or Loglan's influence on the minds of their speakers. Why? Well, strong Sapir-Whorf is pretty much a settled question in linguistics -- the vast majority of the field agrees it's not the case -- and weak Sapir-Whorf is more likely to be tested on natlangs for many reasons, not least of which is the number of potential subjects. Even the most popular conlangs have much smaller speaker communities compared to most natlangs, and so even if conlangs and natlangs were equal in all other ways when it came to this research (and from a linguist's perspective, they really aren't), it would be far harder to gather subjects and conduct research for the conlangs.


答:
I had a look through the conlangs in Wikipedia and listed which ones I could see morphologically marked TAME categories. There are sure to be some mistakes in here.

Tense: Atlantean, Dothraki, Esperanto, Glosa, Idiom Neutral, Interlingua, Kalaba-X, Kēlen, Kotava, Láadan, Langue nouvelle, Lingwa de planeta, Loglan, Mondial, Na'vi, Neo, Novial, Quenya, Sambahsa, Sindarin, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Universalglot, Uropi, Valyrian, Verdurian, Volapük, Wenedyk

Aspect: Kēlen, Esperanto (participles only), Ithkuil, Klingon, Na'vi, Quenya, Wenedyk?

Modality: Atlantean, Esperanto, Ithkuil, Kēlen?, Langue nouvelle, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Uropi, Valyrian, Wenedyk?

Evidentiality: Láadan

What's the verdict? Not only does this show that the conlang community has a strong Eurocentric bias, I think it shows it has a massive Anglocentric bias! Because it is English which is so strongly tense prominent. Most other current European languages also mark aspect or modality, but English doesn't even have a full aspect inflectional system, just the continuous -ing. Some European languages arguably don't even have tense, such as Koine Greek (for the last decade this has been a huge debate among Biblical scholars.) And evidentiality, which is present all around the world, including some European languages (some Slavic) was only present from what I could see in a single conlang! If Anglocentric bias were not a factor I would expect to see conlangs with a much broader distribution of inflected TAME categories, but as it is, 80+% have tense, maybe alongside aspect or modality.

In addition, many languages had muddled/fusional verb paradigms. You've probably seen them before: they include tense, aspect, the perfect, mood, utterance type (question or command), all in one table, each affix marking some combination of these semantic categories, but the combinations aren't very visible when they're listed one-dimensionally. Where are the agglutinative conlangs? Don't forget that European languages includes Turkish and several Uralic languages! (I found one conlang which is agglutinative in its verbal morphology: Einodo.)

Furthermore, often even when I judged a language to have aspect or modality it was because they had something called a "conditional" or a "subjunctive", rather than a core division between the prototypical categories: realis/irrealis, or perfective/imperfective. Now maybe some of those languages do actually have what should be analysed as the simple core categories, but they have been given alternate names by those describing them in Wikipedia. This reflects the Eurocentric and Anglocentric bias which is a big problem in descriptive linguistics. A helpful and short book about the importance of being aware of your biases in relation to TAM categories is The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood by D.N.S. Bhat.


问:
Languages where the part of speech of a root is "fixed"?
By way of introduction, this question is about a quirk of Esperanto, but there is a general conlang question at the end, I promise.

In Esperanto, every root has a natural grammatical part of speech, much like how nouns have a grammatical "gender" (or noun category) in many other languages.

For example, "ŝoveli" means "to shovel". It is naturally a verb. The same root with a noun ending, "ŝovelo", does not mean "a shovel". Rather, it is the noun-of-the-verb, that is, it refers to the act of shovelling. To refer to a shovel, you have to say that it's the tool of the act of shovelling, that is, "ŝovelilo".

Similarly, "humana" means "humane". It is naturally an adjective. The same root with a noun ending, "humano", does not mean "human", it is the noun-of-the-adjective, that is, "humaneness".

This was an interesting design choice, and one that's puzzled me. For an Esperanto speaker, this is something you have to learn about every root, like noun classes in many IE languages.

Are there any analogues to this in natural languages, or is this a device that has been used in other conlangs?

答:
This is pretty common in natural languages. Think about English words -- most of them have an inherent part of speech and require derivational affixes to change that. "Anger" is inherently a noun and requires "-y" to become an adjective, whereas "excite" is inherently a verb and requires "-ment" to become a noun or "-ed" or "-ing" to become an adjective. This sort of thing is incredibly normal in natlangs -- the reason it seems a bit abnormal in Esperanto is that Esperanto derivation is far more productive than even derivation-heavy natlangs, leading to irregularities in these sorts of changes being much more noticeable.

Also, as an aside, because "human-" is inherently adjectival, you would not say "humano" to mean "humane-ness", but "humaneco" (source). Adding the "-eco" suffix, meaning "the quality of" or something to that effect, is necessary for adjectival Esperanto roots. This is the very reason why Esperanto roots are said to have inherent part of speech, and it's a large part of why the "-eco" suffix exists in the first place.


问:
Are there any resources to learn Solresol available in English?
I've been interested in learning Solresol, as the idea of it intrigues me. But I haven't been able to find anything in English to learn it from (the original works on the language are in French, which I don't know).

I checked out sidosi.org, and it shows a couple of links to an English translation of the original grammar of Solresol, but one redirects back to the sidosi.org homepage, and one leads to a message saying the site has been retired from service. Other resources are also linked, and also turn out to be missing.

So are there any resources (preferably online) to learn Solresol from English?

答:
You can find many articles at SiDoSi (sidosi.org)'s resources page or at this tutorial on blogspot. Also, I'd recommend a translation of "The second major book about Solresol, written by the other major contributor to Solresol, Boleslas Gajewski," also at sidosi.org over here.

Note that SiDoSi (sidosi.org)'s resources page has an error that requires you to click the [+] and then the link that appears because the direct links don't work and redirect you. Else see the beta version, without broken links.


问:
What are the main limitations of Lojban?
Suppose we want to translate the whole of Wikipedia from English into Lojban, what are the main known big limitations or concerns we should be aware of? In other words, does Lojban as a language have sufficient expressive power for being translated from English?</p>

答:
Length

A few things. First, Lojban often needs longer sentences to express something than it does in, for example, English.

Vocabulary

Secondly, Lojban's vocabulary isn't that big, especially in the domain of sciences. Words would have to be calqued, adapted from English, French, etc. or completely re-invented.

Loaning and naming

Thirdly, the English language (and many natural languages) loans words directly (for example, champagne could be *shampain and buoy could be *boy or *boi) without changing spelling (a slight counterexample would be German, which often changes the letter c pronounced [k] to the letter k, like Kanada and Vokabular).

Lojban doesn't. .romas. is Rome (Italy), .xavanas. is Havanas (Cuba) and .lidz. is Leeds (UK). This makes it confusing in some cases. How would Lojban adapt Turra Coo or people like Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela? The name should stay recognisable but pronounceable.


答:
I believe your question conflates two related, but crucially distinct concepts, patients (a thematic relation and semantic concept) and objects (a verbal argument and syntactic concept).

By conventional syntactic definition, if only one argument is being agreed with, that argument is the subject. In that sense, it's by definition impossible for a verb to agree only with an object.

However, the patient of a verb does not have to be its object! In ergative languages, it's generally acceptable to analyze that the syntactic subject of a transitive verb is its patient.

In summary: it makes no sense to say that a verb agrees only with its object, because it would causes that object, by definition, to be the subject, merely reversing the agency alignment of the verb (cf. English I like X vs. Spanish me gusta X).


答:
Әřant has a change that, while it may not be what you're asking for, does fit the question in that depending on the animacy valency of the object, the verb conjugates differently:

men xshanni - - tassu han-ne!

it  drop.2S.IMPER - - thou.2S INTERJ-hey.EMPH

vs

san xshannos - - tassu han-ne!

her drop.2S.INDIC - - thou.2S INTERJ-hey.EMPH

The person has a higher animacy valency, so requires a (slightly) more polite idiom.


答:
One of Lojban's most famous features is, of course, its lack of syntactic ambiguity. While this is an advantage in some cases, it can also be a limitation. It wouldn't likely be an issue in something like Wikipedia, but does make certain kinds of wordplay impossible. Take for example this exchange from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass:

'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out his hand
  to the Messenger for some more hay.

'Nobody,' said the Messenger.

'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young lady saw him too. So of
  course Nobody walks slower than you.'

'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. 'I'm sure nobody
  walks much faster than I do!'

'He can't do that,' said the King, 'or else he'd have been here first.'

In Lojban there is no way to conflate "nobody" meaning "no person" with "Nobody" meaning "someone named Nobody", because proper names are always preceded with the article "la". Other works that rely on wordplay based in syntactic ambiguity would also present major difficulties in translating to Lojban.

That said, there is a Lojban translation of Alice in Wonderland, so these difficulties aren't necessarily insurmountable.

Title: What are the main limitations of Lojban?

Body: Suppose we want to translate the whole of Wikipedia from English into Lojban, what are the main known big limitations or concerns we should be aware of? In other words, does Lojban as a language have sufficient expressive power for being translated from English?</p>


问:
Does Esperanto have any words that mean more than one thing?
Looking at the "about Esperanto" page, I see this line:

While he realized that a common language would not end the cultural barrier, it would enable ordinary people, not politicians, to have cross national conversations. To this end, he created Esperanto, a language that would be easy for most people to learn, due to it's logical, regular design.

Speaking from experience, one of the difficult parts of learning a new language is keeping different meanings straight for words that have different meaning. It's a little hard to bear at times how many words mean many things.

Does Esperanto, with it's "logical, regular design", have any homographs?

答:
One such word is vato, which means both "watt" and "cotton wool.

Wikipedia says that

the physical unit "Watt" was first borrowed as ŭato, to distinguish it from vato ('cotton-wool'), and this is the only form found in dictionaries in 1930. However, initial ⟨ŭ⟩ violates Esperanto phonotactics, and by 1970 there was an alternative spelling, vatto. This was also unsatisfactory, however, because of the geminate ⟨t⟩, and by 2000 the effort had been given up, with ⟨vato⟩ now the advised spelling for both "Watt" and "cotton-wool".


答:
One also has to bear in mind polysemy: a word that might correspond to one concept in English might translate to two different words in Spanish or German. A classic example is “corner”, which can be translated to Spanish as either rincón or esquina, depending on whether one is talking about an “inside” or “outside” corner. I went to check how Esperanto deals with that particular word and found that eo angulo refers not only to both kinds of corners, but additionally also means “angle”.

So yes, Esperanto clearly has polysemies.

Title: Does Esperanto have any words that mean more than one thing?

Body:
Looking at the "about Esperanto" page, I see this line:

While he realized that a common language would not end the cultural barrier, it would enable ordinary people, not politicians, to have cross national conversations. To this end, he created Esperanto, a language that would be easy for most people to learn, due to it's logical, regular design.

Speaking from experience, one of the difficult parts of learning a new language is keeping different meanings straight for words that have different meaning. It's a little hard to bear at times how many words mean many things.

Does Esperanto, with it's "logical, regular design", have any homographs?


答:
In addition to the examples cited above, it's worth noting that due to Esperanto's extensive use of derivation and encouragement to use affixes as productively as possible, there is the potential for semantic ambiguity to arise. This occurs when a string that is an affix also occurs within a root word. For example, the suffix -em means "a tendency/propensity for...", deriving words like kompatema "charitable" and kompatemo "charity/mercifulness" from kompato "compasson, pity". However, what of a word like modemo? The root mod- means "fashion", so upon encountering this word you might assume it means "tendency to be fashionable" or something like that, but it's also a root of its own meaning "modem".

Now, realistically, this would be distinguishable from context, but then again that's the case for "watt" vs. "cotton wool" too. These sorts of weird ambiguities based on affixes are pretty rare anyway, and I don't think there's anything wrong with Esperanto having a few, but they aren't nonexistent.

Also, it's worth noting that when it came to "logical, regular design", Zamenhof was mostly concerned with avoiding irregularities in inflection and derivation. I'd argue he didn't quite succeed, but he definitely cared more about that than he did polysemy.


问:
Do the ADVENT in XCOM 2 speak a real language?
In the game XCOM 2 ADVENT soldiers shout observations and commands to each other. Their words are not understandable, but context makes clear to the player what they're thinking.

Did the creators of XCOM 2 design a full conlang for ADVENT?

答:
In this article the dev team of XCOM 2 explain that they didn't have the time or resources to invent a full conlang, but instead made up gibberish that got across the sort of 'feeling' they wanted. In order to sound "darker and more ominous," they were deliberate in their choice of sounds for this gibberish, basing it on so-called "guttural languages" such as German and Dutch, and then they designed filters to make the voice actors sound more robotic.

Steve helped shape the final sound by experimenting with the gibberish pronunciations that we came up with. In order to convey meaning to the player, we had to rely solely on the tone and delivery of the lines, with things like ‘Halt!’ Or ‘Enemy Spotted!’ coming across with more intensity than say a standard ‘I’m moving’ line. In the process I also tried to establish vocal patterns in each subset of lines to create some cohesion between the otherwise meaningless words the actors were reading.

A feat on the part of the sound designers and voice actors, to be sure, but not a proper conlang. Nothing stopping XCOM fans from expanding it into a full conlang, though!


问:
How do languages manage to make sense with a free word order?
Many of the world's natural languages, and some conlangs, have a free word order, so that the words can be put in any order with it still making sense.

If they can't use word order to indicate the structure, what strategies do they use instead? Have any conlangs used strategies not found in natlangs?

答:
The way these languages do this is with inflections.  Nouns, for example, can be declined to show cases, which tell the speaker things about what they are doing.  Verbs can be used to show who the subject is, and the tense and mood and stuff.  For example, in English we would say:

The boy loves the girl

However, in Latin (I don't know any other languages with cases well enough for this answer) we would say:

Puer puellam amat.

There's a lot of info here: the first word (puer), meaning "boy" is in the nominative case, meaning it is the subject of the sentence.  Puellam, girl, is in the accusative, meaning it is the direct object.  In addition, the verb, amat, has the 3rd person singular present indicative ending -t.  In this case this isn't enough to tell us who the subject is, as both the nouns are 3rd person singular, but coupled with the nominative, we can easily figure out who is loving whom.  Therefore, the same thing can be expressed as:

Puellam amat puer

or

Amat puer puellam

or any other combination you'd like, and the listeners or readers would understand because of the cases of the nouns.  Latin has six or seven cases (depending), but some languages have more.  Finnish has 15, Hungarian has 18; Wikipedia has a whole bunch of cases that appear, all to free up the word order.

Because of these, many prepositions can be omitted entirely, verbs can use inflections to show the subject and stuff.

Adjectives that modify nouns must agree in case with the nouns--so a reader can easily infer their meaning from what case they are in.  Because of these, word order having any grammatical function is unnecessary and redundant.

As another example, my own conlang Simean has four cases.  Here is a sentence with all of them:

Nuler loyile shuir edeï sefmou.

Translated, this is: "The soldier (Nominative) is giving the king (Dative) of the land (Genitive) a book (Accusative)."  The verb, loyile, is the stem loy- plus the imperfect affix -i- plus the third person singular -le.  If instead, we wanted to say "I am giving the king of the land a book," we could take out sefmou, soldier, and we wouldn't have to add in the word for I because of the verb inflection.  Instead, the subject could be expressed through the verb.  Instead of the -le we would use -ë, and the listeners would know what we were talking about--who gave whom what and all that.

Technically, any one of these words could be moved somewhere else--the only thing in Simean that dictates word order is convention.


问:
How to read One Ring inscription?
The following inscription appears on the One Ring in The Fellowship of the Ring book:

Which in Black Speech can be written down as:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,

Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

However, the inscription is using different letters. I've checked Tengwar, but I can't find any of the words (e.g. ash, nazg, etc.).

How should the inscription be read exactly, in other words, how it's transformed from the above fiery letters into latin letters?

答:
You are likely having a hard time reading these tengwar because of three big problems:

the style itself is such that the tengwar are slanted and written
calligraphically

the mode used to write them is unusual and not common for Elvish languages

there are no spaces between words!

The page linked should provide assistance; the issue is that the tengwar and tehtar behave (like in several modes) as in an abugida: the vowels are diacritics to the "host" consonants, and a null consonant is used for vowel-initial words (even when the words aren't separated by spaces).

Title: How to read One Ring inscription?


答:
Apart from the morphological / grammatical angle, we can also understand meaning by context.

A mournful song sang the choir.

Except in the Land of Strange Tales, we know that choirs sing songs. Songs don't sing choirs. The inversion is startling when interjected into speech of ordinary pattern, but it's quite understandable. Even though we don't have morphological clues to tell us, we intuitively know that this sentence is not to be "read straight through".

Man bites dog.

Again, context informs our understanding. Here, the (seeming!) inversion is nòt used for poetic effect, but is instead the epitome of the ironically prosaic. In this case, the context is journalism and headline writing style and is a commentary on what is newsworthy.

Title: How do languages manage to make sense with a free word order?

Body:
Many of the world's natural languages, and some conlangs, have a free word order, so that the words can be put in any order with it still making sense.

If they can't use word order to indicate the structure, what strategies do they use instead? Have any conlangs used strategies not found in natlangs?


问:
With the death of CSUR, has there been any new Unicode proposal for con-scripts?
The CSUR (ConScript Unicode Registry) is — or, rather, with its last update in 2008, was — a project "to coordinate the assignment of blocks out of the Unicode Private Use Area (E000-F8FF and 000F0000-0010FFFF) to constructed/artificial scripts, including scripts for constructed/artificial languages." As its authors do not seem to be involved with it anymore and the page suffering neglect, I can assume the project has stalled or died. Has anyone come up with a similar project since?</p>

答: There exists the UCSUR (Under-ConScript Unicode Registry) which was created as a sort of temporary holding place for proposals to avoid conflicts until the CSUR is once again active.</p>


问:
Self-reflexive verbs and pronouns in Vulcan language
I'm stumped - I'm sorta confused getting the proper phrasing svi'Vuhlkansu because the English grammar seems self-referencing for me to get the order right. The quote is:

"The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind." by FH Bradley

"worth having is" seems like three verbs in a row, then "one's own" seems like I could omit "one's" and nam-tor can be stated by describing the noun, is it

Kerik ma fai-tukh t’shai goh fai-tor kashek t’du.

or am i missing it?

答:
I don't know Vulcan, however I might be able to help you with your interpretation of the English:

"worth having is" isn't quite the string of verbs you might think it is.

Firstly, "worth having" is modifying the preceding noun phrase, rather than being part of some grouping with "is". This can most easily be shown by rearranging the sentence as such:

To know one's own mind is the one self-knowledge worth having.

Furthermore, "worth" here is an adjective¹. It might help to expand the phrase out to the following:

"The one self-knowledge that is worth (one's) having."

¹ - "worth" is most commonly described as an adjective, however it does have some qualities which lead some to classify it as a preposition. For more detail see Joan Maling, 1983, "Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis", pages 268-269.


答:
The key principle to understanding what is being uttered or has been written is to know how to put the words into a structural context. This is often explained in simple terms using the W questions: who is doing something, what are they doing, how are they doing it, to whom are they doing it, when and where are they doing it, etc. In grammatical terms, these can be labelled as subject, verb, adverbs, objects, adverbials and more.

In some languages, quite a few categories are distinguishable a priori just by their ending. For example in Esperanto, singular nouns are marked with terminal -o, adjectives end in -a and conjugated verbs usually in -[vowel]s. Likewise, a general knowledge of the conjugation tables of Finnish often allows a quick and dirty rough estimate whether a word happens to a noun or adjective or a verb form. English is generally terrible at this distinction with a number of words being written and pronounced the same regardless of the category (see: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo).

However, what is mentioned in the paragraph above only accounts for the word type; if a sentence has two nouns we may not immediately be able to distinguish between the subject noun and the object noun without additional information. Thus, languages generally use one of two methods to clarify what exactly is meant:

The information is encoded in word order. This is often the rule for languages with rather low levels of inflection such as English or Chinese. In English, the following two sentences are different because of the different subject and object functions even though all the words are the same:

The man bites the dog.

The dog bites the man.

The information is encoded in inflection, prepositions, participles, suffixes and the like. While very likely all languages make use of this scheme partially, some do to a much larger extent than English; for example German or Finnish. In German and Finnish, the following two sentences with the same words but different order mean the same:

Der Mann beißt den Hund.

  Mies puree koiraa.

Den Hund beißt der Mann.

  Koiraa puree mies.

(I’m not sure if the second Finnish example is strictly allowed in that way; however, my Finnish course includes a  similar precedence of an OVS sentence).

By marking the nouns according to case — and thus, according to their grammatic function — we have one clear subject (the agent, the man; nominative case in both examples) and one clear object (the patient, the dog; accusative or partitive case). Once the relation between the two is established like this, one is typically free to move the components around.

Other than using declension by case, modifiers can be placed around a word. In Japanese, that would be the particles が, は, を, に, へ and others. The word or phrase that precedes the particle が is understood to be the subject of a sentence, whatever precedes を is an object. In theory, this would allow the parts suffixed in that way to be moved around as seen fit. (Whether Japanese actually does that I do not know as my knowledge of it is still too basic.) Other options of the same general flavour include prepositions: in the house shows that the house is used to denote location and is not an agent or a patient of the sentence. Even in the otherwise relatively strict word order of English, adverbials such as that can be moved around to a certain degree.

tl;dr:

Languages that allow a more or less free word order will not rely on word order to assign syntactical roles. Instead, markers or modifiers of certain types will likely be used; cases and declension being a rather common choice.


问:
Is there a constructed language in existence that has graduated to "natural" status?
That is, are there any such languages in use today that are in use for day to day activities, or are formally recognized, etc?</p>

答: In addition to the examples given by Darkgamma, Damin, an extinct ritual "register" of Lardil and Yangkaal, which in the traditional mythology of the speakers is considered a conlang, and believed by linguists to have been invented by the elders of one of the tribes, was in addition to ritual contexts also used in day-to-day life between initiated members of the tribe.</p>


答:
It should be noted that in addition to relying heavily on one strategy, it's also possible to mix strategies is various different ways, relying on different strategies to back each other up. For example in Fore(Kainantu-Goroka(TNG), PNG), there is a hierarchy like this, where if each strategy fails, the one lower in the list can be relied on. I'm putting "case" in quotation marks, because the "ergative" case marker in Fore is not really a case-marker as much as it is an often optional and occasionally prohibited derivational marker:

Verbal agreement

Animacy

"Case"-marking

Word order

Point 2, "animacy" means that referents higher on the animacy hierarchy are interpreted as being more likely to be agents, as such the NPs in a sentence like aebá nanita: yaga: amiye he pig food 3sg:gave_to:3sg "he gave the pig food" can be freely reordered without a change in truth value, despite the fact that the verbal agreement is wholly inadequate to disambiguate the roles of the participants. Only in the few instances where the other strategies fail is word order a primary disambiguative device.

There are some languages where a primary disambiguation strategy is marking on the verb whether such a hierarchy a broken or not, called direct/inverse marking (this can disambiguate situations with two 3rd persons of equal animacy as well by considering e.g. topicality or obviation).


问:
How similar are Loglan and Lojban?
Loglan is a predecessor to Lojban, and Lojban apparently directly grew out of Loglan.

How similar are the two languages at this point? Are they more like dialects of the same language, or more like Anglo-Saxon and English at this point?

答: Lojban started as a relexification of Loglan but it has evolved independently from Loglan since that starting point. I don't think that the two languages can be considered dialects of each other because there is no mutual understandability left because every single word of Loglan was replaced with something different in Lojban (with the famous exception of the word blanu "blue").

Title: How similar are Loglan and Lojban?


问:
How would you say "good morning" or "hello" politely in Klingon?
Klingons from Star Trek aren't very polite, and the language developed for them reflects that - they don't exactly have many polite ways to say things. The closest think I've found to a polite greeting is "Nuq'nuh", which translates to "What do you want?", which... isn't very polite, IMO.

Is there any way to approximate a polite greeting in Klingon?

答:
According to klignonwiki.net, there isn't an exact equivalent, but you do have a few options:

nuqneH: It's the only word that could literally be called a greeting, but literally it means, "What do you want?"  It's possible as a conversation starter, though. (Also indicated by kli.org.)

qavan: Litterally, "Salute."  It's actually the imperative, meaning that it could come across sounding like an order.  It's a possibility, though, similar to the Greeks who greet one another with the imperative form of "Rejoice!"

qaleghneS: Literally, "I am honoured to meet you."  It was used by Riker in The Emissary.

All in all, probably the best supported one is nuqneH, which kli.org states is the Traditional Greeting.


问:
Are there any small scale auxlangs that are actually used by a substantial amount of people?
International Auxiliary Languages are very, very ambitious, and probably bound to fail on a large scale. However, it seems plausible to me that there might be some corners of the world where an auxlang might be used to facilitate communication between more localized groups, much like English is used in many parts of Europe (and really, the world) for this purpose. But does this actually occur anywhere?</p>

答:
I know of one very localized example myself:

Rumantsch Grischun is a constructed variety of the Romansh language which tries to unify the dialect continuum. It is the variety of the language used in official texts and also in some schools and media, but the population in general is rather unhappy about this status quo and prefers using either their own dialects, or Swiss German if that fails.

In addition, some consider Modern Hebrew a conlang, and it does serve as a lingua franca between various Jewish populations. But this is definitely a less prototypical example.


答:
The line between "conlang" and "supradialectal standard" can get incredibly fuzzy. You mention Rumantsch Grischun and Modern Hebrew yourself, something along similar lines, but much more successful in terms of number of speakers is Bahasa Indonesia. Any number of other supradialectal standards depending on how strict you are with drawing the line may fall under this category.

In addition to supradialectal standards, another thing that may or may not be considered a conlang is controlled languages, such as ASD STE-100 Simplified Technical English which see some use in various technical documents (but aren't really spoken).

Title: Are there any small scale auxlangs that are actually used by a substantial amount of people?

Body: International Auxiliary Languages are very, very ambitious, and probably bound to fail on a large scale. However, it seems plausible to me that there might be some corners of the world where an auxlang might be used to facilitate communication between more localized groups, much like English is used in many parts of Europe (and really, the world) for this purpose. But does this actually occur anywhere?</p>


答:
Lojban vocabulary was deliberately constructed from scratch, in an attempt to get around James Brown's copyright on Loglan (Brown was the creator of Loglan, but continued to retain control over it. The Logical Language Group was formed to reinvent the words, beginning in the late 1980s, while retaining Loglan's grammar.

The words LLG created are the gismu, the roots that make up Lojban. They generated over 1300 of them, taking source words from Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic and scored many potential gismu by their similarities with the source words. The highest-scoring gismu were used; from there, the rest of the vocabulary was generated.

Now, this was similar to Brown's original process, although he used Japanese, French and German as three more reference languages, while leaving out Arabic. This algorithm was quite similar to the one used to generate Lojban's gisme. Brown's scores - and, in a sense, the LLG's - were explicitly based on learnability, which is why these languages were used. However, the implementation of the Logban algorithm resulted in a completely new lexicon, due to different weightings, quantification of similarity, and the differing source languages.

Since the relexification, the grammar of Lojban has changed in certain ways. While it would have been easier for speakers of Loglan to learn shortly after its inception, it has now diverged enough that the two languages, while based on the same principles, are now very different. I think the analogy of Anglo-Saxon and English is a good one.

Title: How similar are Loglan and Lojban?

Body:
Loglan is a predecessor to Lojban, and Lojban apparently directly grew out of Loglan.

How similar are the two languages at this point? Are they more like dialects of the same language, or more like Anglo-Saxon and English at this point?


问:
What are the benefits of inventing irregular verbs in one’s conlang?
Many natlangs have irregular verbs that do not follow the same patterns as the majority of verbs, often as a product of old verb patterns that are no longer used. Some of the benefits of not having irregular verbs are an easier to learn and interpret conlang, but are there benefits, such as giving a sense that the language has changed over time?</p>

答: Depends on what your goal is. If you want to create an auxlang, then you should have few, if any irregular verbs. If you want naturalism, then most natlangs have at least one irregular verb, though the exact number varies widely. Also consider how your irregular verbs will arise.</p>


答:
An invented language should have in it what the glossopoet wants to put in it. Regardless of which point of the Triangle your language most closely identifies with, there is plenty of room for whatever you might want to put in there.

So, yes, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language shòuld have irregular verbs (irregular nouns, irregular adverbs, irregular interjections, etc) if that's what is required by the language for it to be true to itself within its context and also be an accurate projection of the glossopoet's vision for it.

Yet also, no, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language should never have irregular forms of any kind. If they cause the language to run afoul of its creator's vision for it, then they are inappropriate to the work of art being created. Or if such irregularities would in any way foul up the language's subcreated realism.

In some respects, there may be matters of taste or audience expectation involved. For example, I think most language inventors would argue that auxlangs should be as irregularity free as possible. I'd argue the opposite, but that is indeed a matter of taste and sense of plausibility. Perhaps also a nod to a future where the auxlang in question shall have conquered all others and taken its rightful place as the naturalised L2 of the entire world. Irregularities are bound to creep into such a system.

There is no particular benefit one way or the other external to the invented language. I don't think a perfectly regular system is any easier to learn. It's not inherently better to be irregularity free. Within the language, it might be argued that verisimilitude and plausibility (leastways of human language) demand some amount of irregularity. Surely that might be seen as a benefit, perhaps for a language within a fictional setting.

So, yeah. Put em in or leave em out. Dealer's choice. Six of one, half dozen of the other! There is no right or wrong answer here.

Title: What are the benefits of inventing irregular verbs in one’s conlang?

Body: Many natlangs have irregular verbs that do not follow the same patterns as the majority of verbs, often as a product of old verb patterns that are no longer used. Some of the benefits of not having irregular verbs are an easier to learn and interpret conlang, but are there benefits, such as giving a sense that the language has changed over time?</p>


答:
Irregular verbs are naturalistic.

For this reason, even an international auxiliary language, namely IALA Interlingua, has irregular verbs to match its Romance source languages (that are famous for their wealth of irregular verbs mostly directly inherited from Latin)

Irregularities add flavour to your conlang.

They make the conlang as a whole more interesting and create some esthetic effect. It also shows that the conlang designer has spent some more time to make Eir creation not too schematic.


问:
Are constructed languages intellectual property? Do they ever stop being IP, once people use them?
Are conlangs intellectual property? Can they be copyrighted?

The second question is a little more complicated. Does a certain level of public, common usage cause a conlang to become public domain, even when the language was created by a select group?

I know there has been some debate over the Klingon language regarding this, especially since there are a few people who were raised with Klingon as a secondary natural language. But I'm not certain about its legal status.

For the purposes of location, consider the US generally. If a state is needed, in California.

答:
The short answer is that there are no mechanisms in place by which one could credibly copyright, patent or otherwise secure ones language. Works you create about the language (such as a grammar document or a poem) of course fall under the same copyright laws as any other works of their kind and as such generally belong to you, but your language as of now is just as copyrightable as English.

For a long answer, I recommend watching this talk by Sai (founder of the LCS) about exactly this topic.


答:
There are three main strategies for indicating grammatical relations in languages with free word orders. It is common for languages to have more than one of these, and to my knowledge all free word order natural languages have either case or verbal agreement.

Case

Case refers to grammatical markers attached to nouns which indicate the noun's role in the sentence. Some languages have a very large number of cases, but in general you can expect such a language to have at least two cases: nominative and accusative, or ergative and absolutive. Here is an example from Walmajarri:

```<code>parri-ngu  pa   manga-Ø   nyanya
boy-subj   AUX  girl-obj  saw
'The boy saw the girl.'

parri-Ø  pa   nyanya  manga-ngu
boy-obj  AUX  saw     girl-subj
'The girl saw the boy.'
</code>```

In Walmajarri ngu is the ergative case marker. Walmajarri has a null absolutive case marker, shown here as Ø.

Agreement

The second strategy is agreement, where markers are attached to the verb to give information about the subject and object. Depending on the language, these markers might indicate the person, number, or gender of each noun. Here's an example, again from Walmajarri:

```<code>nayili  nya-ka-kyaka-ji-pila
north   see-IRR-REDUP-1sgO-3dlS
'You two watch out for me in the north.'
</code>```

Here the verb has two suffixes (actually clitics), -ji and -pila, which mean a 1st person singular object, and a 3rd person dual subject. While it is most common for these verbal agreement markers to be attached to the verbs, in some languages they are attached to other elements in the sentence. In Walmajarri the most common sentence form actually has these markers attaching to a modal auxiliary:

```<code>ngayirta  ma-rnalu     majurra  kang-ka-rla
NEG       AUX-1plincS  matches  carry-IRR-PAST
'We didn't take matches.'
</code>```

Here ma is the unmarked modal auxiliary, to which -rnalu is attached, the marker for a 1st person plural inclusive subject. Matches is a third person singular object and so has a null marker.

Incorporation

The third strategy is incorporation, where a language productively forms compound words where the verb includes the object. English doesn't do this very productively - our compounds are more like individual set combinations. So in the verb babysit the object baby is incorporated, but the meaning of the compound is not obviously derived from its component parts. In incorporating languages this process happens productively with the components often keeping their normal sense. Here is an example from Nuu-chah-nulth:

```<code>maḥt'a-ʔa-mit-ʔiš    čakup
house-buy-past-3ind  man
'A man bought a house.'

ʔu-ʔaa-mit-ʔiš    maḥt'ii  čakup
Ø-buy-past-3.ind  house    man
'A man bought a house.'
</code>```

Nuu-chah-nulth is called an obligatory incorporating language because if the object is not incorporated a dummy morpheme ʔu must be used.

Now while incorporation is used in many languages, we have to be careful about making generalisations as each language incorporates nouns according to its own rules. Some incorporate adjectives, and some don't. Or for example, in Nahuatl an independent noun indicates a specific event, whereas an incorporated noun indicates a more general or habitual meaning:

```<code>ni-c-qua  in   nacatl
I-it-eat  the  flesh
'I eat the flesh.' [particular act]

ni-naca-qua
I-flesh-eat
'I eat flesh' or 'I am a flesh-eater.'
</code>```

A free word order conlang could require incorporation of all objects and not use either case or agreement, a typological combination that does not exist in natlangs to my knowledge.

Body:
There are three main strategies for indicating grammatical relations in languages with free word orders. It is common for languages to have more than one of these, and to my knowledge all free word order natural languages have either case or verbal agreement.

Case

Case refers to grammatical markers attached to nouns which indicate the noun's role in the sentence. Some languages have a very large number of cases, but in general you can expect such a language to have at least two cases: nominative and accusative, or ergative and absolutive. Here is an example from Walmajarri:

parri-ngu  pa   manga-Ø   nyanya
boy-subj   AUX  girl-obj  saw
'The boy saw the girl.'

parri-Ø  pa   nyanya  manga-ngu
boy-obj  AUX  saw     girl-subj
'The girl saw the boy.'

In Walmajarri ngu is the ergative case marker. Walmajarri has a null absolutive case marker, shown here as Ø.

Agreement

The second strategy is agreement, where markers are attached to the verb to give information about the subject and object. Depending on the language, these markers might indicate the person, number, or gender of each noun. Here's an example, again from Walmajarri:

nayili  nya-ka-kyaka-ji-pila
north   see-IRR-REDUP-1sgO-3dlS
'You two watch out for me in the north.'

Here the verb has two suffixes (actually clitics), -ji and -pila, which mean a 1st person singular object, and a 3rd person dual subject. While it is most common for these verbal agreement markers to be attached to the verbs, in some languages they are attached to other elements in the sentence. In Walmajarri the most common sentence form actually has these markers attaching to a modal auxiliary:

ngayirta  ma-rnalu     majurra  kang-ka-rla
NEG       AUX-1plincS  matches  carry-IRR-PAST
'We didn't take matches.'

Here ma is the unmarked modal auxiliary, to which -rnalu is attached, the marker for a 1st person plural inclusive subject. Matches is a third person singular object and so has a null marker.

Incorporation

The third strategy is incorporation, where a language productively forms compound words where the verb includes the object. English doesn't do this very productively - our compounds are more like individual set combinations. So in the verb babysit the object baby is incorporated, but the meaning of the compound is not obviously derived from its component parts. In incorporating languages this process happens productively with the components often keeping their normal sense. Here is an example from Nuu-chah-nulth:

maḥt'a-ʔa-mit-ʔiš    čakup
house-buy-past-3ind  man
'A man bought a house.'

ʔu-ʔaa-mit-ʔiš    maḥt'ii  čakup
Ø-buy-past-3.ind  house    man
'A man bought a house.'

Nuu-chah-nulth is called an obligatory incorporating language because if the object is not incorporated a dummy morpheme ʔu must be used.

Now while incorporation is used in many languages, we have to be careful about making generalisations as each language incorporates nouns according to its own rules. Some incorporate adjectives, and some don't. Or for example, in Nahuatl an independent noun indicates a specific event, whereas an incorporated noun indicates a more general or habitual meaning:

ni-c-qua  in   nacatl
I-it-eat  the  flesh
'I eat the flesh.' [particular act]

ni-naca-qua
I-flesh-eat
'I eat flesh' or 'I am a flesh-eater.'

A free word order conlang could require incorporation of all objects and not use either case or agreement, a typological combination that does not exist in natlangs to my knowledge.


问:
Methods to avoid similarity in lexicons
When creating words I have often run into the problem that too many words sound similar even when I have allowed many different phonemes. Are there methods to avoid too much similarity between words, while making words similar enough to feel part on one language?</p>

答:
A modern approach to this problem is to generate the words automatically according to some formula describing allowed words. You can filter out words that are too close to already generated ones, but usually the randomness used by a computer program will be sufficient.

There are well-known examples of Conlangs with computer generated vocabulary. Loglan and Lojban used some vocabulary lists from natural languages as input for their vocabulary generating algorithm.

Title: Methods to avoid similarity in lexicons


问:
How to classify the language of "Uncleftish Beholding"?
The essay Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Andersen is written in a special kind of English without borrowings from Latin, French, and Greek. The gaps in the lexicon are filled with German style compounds (in fact, a lot of them, like waterstuff "hydrogen" or sourstuff "oxygen" are real calques from Dutch or German).

Is this piece of art written in a conlang? Or is it just a funny form the natlang English?

答:
I wouldn’t personally call Anglish (that is, English without non-Germanic (or sometimes even non-Anglosaxon) vocabulary) a conlang. Taken at face value, it replaces English vocabulary 1:1 with coined words, which is basically the definition of a relex. Whether you want to consider relexes a subset of conlangs or an entirely different category (perhaps a subset of ciphers and codes) altogether is subjective.

As a note, Anglish can also just be stylistic in nature — favouring germanic word stems over loaned ones where possible, but in the context of the essay you posted this is clearly not the case.


答:
I'm going to disagree with Adarain and say that Anglish might be a conlang in instances where it is used to as full an extent as in Uncleftish Beholding, though I think it pretty much straddles the line between relex and full conlang. In something where the preference for Germanic word stems is more of a preference than a hard-and-fast rule, it's definitely not a conlang, so those are disregarded for this discussion.

While it is true that Anglish is pretty damn relex-y and to my knowledge doesn't change any Modern English syntactic rules (although if it did, it would undeniably be a conlang), but I do think it does some things differently than more transparent relexes. The word "uncleftish" certainly breaks the rules of Modern English morphology, and extensions of sense, as in using "motes" to refer to particles, give opportunities for the semantic space to change quite a bit (I don't know to what extent the author took advantage of this, however). It depends a lot on an individual's use of the language whether it leans closer to being a conlang or a relex.

Title: How to classify the language of "Uncleftish Beholding"?

Body:
The essay Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Andersen is written in a special kind of English without borrowings from Latin, French, and Greek. The gaps in the lexicon are filled with German style compounds (in fact, a lot of them, like waterstuff "hydrogen" or sourstuff "oxygen" are real calques from Dutch or German).

Is this piece of art written in a conlang? Or is it just a funny form the natlang English?