答:
To use your example from Japanese: ika-se-rare-ta-kuna-katta Yes, all one word. A word of 10 syllables, 6 morphenes. What, precisely, is the advantage over "didn't want to be made to go" (8 syllables, and 8 morphenes)? It only works if you decide that "word" is the most basic unit to measure against, but "word" can be a very arbitrary concept.

In a 2010 paper, a study was done looking at the "information density" of speech; that is, given the same text translated into multiple languages, so everyone is conveying the same information, how long would it take a fluent speaker of that language to transmit that information, speaking at a normal cadence (and using multiple speakers to get an average, of course). As part of that process, one step was determining how much information was conveyed per syllable. They used Vietnamese as a baseline, arbitrarily giving it a value of 1.00. If a language conveyed the same information in more syllables than Vietnamese, it would be lower than 1 (you need more syllables to communicate the same information). English was 0.91. Japanese was 0.49. In other words, you needed nearly twice as many syllables to communicate the same thing in Japanese as you did in English, Mandarin (0.94), or obviously Vietnamese (1.00).

When you compare speaking rates (how fast those syllables are spoken), it turns out that most languages are about the same when it comes to transmitting information per time, between 0.9 and 1.1 (Vietnamese again being 1.00). Except Japanese, which although having easily the fastest speaking rate of the languages tested, because of the extremely low density of information per syllable, they had the lowest rate of transmission by far, at 0.74.

So Japanese is significantly less information dense than many other widely spoken languages.

You see the same thing in other agglutinative languages. Just because a given language can pack more information into a single word doesn't mean that it will necessarily be shorter to communicate. I work with Inuktitut translations all the time, and I just pulled up an example I've dealt with:

The Proponent intends to conduct a mineral exploration program including drilling, sampling, magnetic surveying, and mapping.

The Inuktitut translation is:

ᐱᓕᕆᔪᒪᔪᖅ ᐅᔭᕋᖕᓂᐊᕐᕕᒃᓴᖅᓯᐅᕈᒪᒐᒥ ᐱᓕᕆᓇᔭᖅᓱᓂ ᐃᑰᑕᖃᕐᓂᖅ, ᐲᔭᐃᖃᑕᕐᓂᖅ ᖃᐅᔨᓴᒐᒃᓴᓂᒃ, ᓇᐅᒃᑯᑦ ᓂᐱᖓᓂᖃᕐᓂᖏᓐᓂᒃ ᓄᓇᐅᑉ ᐃᓗᐊᒍᑦ ᐅᔭᕋᖏᑦ ᐊᒻᒪᓗ ᓄᓇᖑᓕᐅᓂᕐᒥᒃ.

Which transliterates as:

Pilirijumajuq ujarangniarviksaqsiurumagami pilirinajaqsuni ikuutaqarniq, piijaiqatarniq qaujisagaksanik, naukkut nipinganiqarninginnik nunaup iluagut ujarangit ammalu nunanguliunirmik.

Obviously the English is much more concise simply based on inspection even though it has more words. Now, an argument can be made that the English has some terms which might require a longer word to explain it in Inuktitut, so that's a fair argument. So here is a more "common language" example from the Government of Nunavut's website (https://livehealthy.gov.nu.ca/en/health-topics/injuries/preparing-hunt-land):

Telling someone at home where you are going. Even if you are going
out on the land for just a few hours, you should tell at least one
person at home the names of all riders and passengers, where you are
going, and when you plan to come back. If you do not return in time,
this person will be able to send for help.

And here is the Innuinaqtun version:

Uqaqlugu kimut humungauliqtutin. Aulaaqhimanahuaqtillutin ikituni
ikaangnini, uqaqtukhauyutin atauhinaugumi inuk aimavingni kitkut
aulaaqatiniatatin, humungauliktutin, humi utiqnahuaqtuninlu.
Uttinngitkuvin mikhaatigun, tamna inuk ikayutikhangnik
aullaqtittniaqtuq.

The Innuinaqtun is 21 words compared to the English 67. If, however, you look at the syllables, there's 109 compared to English's 73. English clearly has the higher information density per syllable. Just because the average word is longer doesn't make the language more information dense.

Part of the issue with Inuktitut, just as with Japanese, is that the number of possible different syllables is limited due to the phonotactics of the language, which means you have to use more syllables to compensate for the limited inventory you have. Standard Inuktitut has at most 210 possible syllables. Japanese has, depending on who you ask, about 400 possible syllables, so you could have that number of possible one-syllable words. With English phototactics, for "standard" English, you have about 316,800 possible one-syllable words (there is about 9,300 in use).

The reason for this difference is the number of consonant clusters allowed and the ridiculous number of vowels in most English dialects.

tl;dr summary: to have a more information dense and still practical language (so you allow some natural redundancy and not have so many near-homonyms that mininterpretation due to missing something is a constant problem), you need a language with a lot of possible syllables and phonotactics that allow those syllables to be used or combined into sufficiently many distinct morphenes, however you put those morphemes together or not in any kind of language, whether isolating or agglutinative.


问:
Alternate direction systems for spatial reference
What are some alternative direction systems besides egocentric direction systems (left, right, &c)?

Some natural languages use {north, south, east, west} like Guugu Yimithirr and Tzeltal (Maya) (source for Tzeltal). The situation in Tzeltal is probably more complex, since there's references to an uphill/downhill distinction too, but I'm having trouble locating a free resource for it.

Ithkuil uses the position of the sunrise and sunset. It does not appear to use the current position of the sun.

答:
So, one idea I was considering is a spatial reference system designed for indoor navigation. It's intended to coexist alongside an egocentric direction system which is much more typical.

There's a cardinal direction, let's call it P that refers to the direction towards the primary entrance/exit or "downhill" as a metaphorical extension.

If used in a room or house, the primary entrance is the front door to the house, the main door to the room, the door you used, or the door that is currently to your back.

If used outside on a hill or mountain, the foot of the hill is the primary entrance. Let q refer to a direction 90 degrees to the right of the current direction.

The idea, basically, is that if you are travelling uphill or into a room, P is the direction you would have to go to double back.

Here's a crude drawing of a room with the directions labeled with their symbolic names.

```<code>    +-------------------------------------+
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    A                 Pq                  |
                       |                  |
                   P---+---Pqq            |
                       |                  |
    V                 Pqqq                |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    +-------------------------------------+
</code>```

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0

Body:
So, one idea I was considering is a spatial reference system designed for indoor navigation. It's intended to coexist alongside an egocentric direction system which is much more typical.

There's a cardinal direction, let's call it P that refers to the direction towards the primary entrance/exit or "downhill" as a metaphorical extension.

If used in a room or house, the primary entrance is the front door to the house, the main door to the room, the door you used, or the door that is currently to your back.

If used outside on a hill or mountain, the foot of the hill is the primary entrance. Let q refer to a direction 90 degrees to the right of the current direction.

The idea, basically, is that if you are travelling uphill or into a room, P is the direction you would have to go to double back.

Here's a crude drawing of a room with the directions labeled with their symbolic names.

    +-------------------------------------+
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    A                 Pq                  |
                       |                  |
                   P---+---Pqq            |
                       |                  |
    V                 Pqqq                |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    |                                     |
    +-------------------------------------+


答: For directions on a galactic scale, much SF (and the Traveller RPG) use Coreward (toward the center of the galaxy), Rimward (away from the center of the galaxy), Spinward (moving about the center of the galaxy in the same direction as general stellar motion), and Antispinward or Trailing (moving about the center of the galaxy in the direction opposite to the general stellar motion).</p>

Title: Alternate direction systems for spatial reference

Body:
What are some alternative direction systems besides egocentric direction systems (left, right, &c)?

Some natural languages use {north, south, east, west} like Guugu Yimithirr and Tzeltal (Maya) (source for Tzeltal). The situation in Tzeltal is probably more complex, since there's references to an uphill/downhill distinction too, but I'm having trouble locating a free resource for it.

Ithkuil uses the position of the sunrise and sunset. It does not appear to use the current position of the sun.


答: Okay. How about instead of an egocentric direction system, employing a listener-centric or "you"-centric system? We do this in natural language when we say "On your left" or "At your 3:00". Probably such a system would be developed among speakers from a highly empathetic and listener-oriented culture, where the individual's reference is considered secondary to the listener's.</p>


问:
Anti-Newspeak, making a language harder
So, the government of Oceania in 1984 creates a new, altered cersion of English to make its people easier to control.

What about the opposite?

A dictator wants to make his people harder to control, so that any invading nation would have to go through an ungodly amount of trouble to subjugate them.

Could he do it?

I'd imagine he'd start by gradually altering the language to be more complex, more foreign to neighbouring languages, and popularizing words or phrases that are harder to interpret by an outside listener.

He has already completely isolated this nation from the surrounding region, and the language present there is pretty unusual for the region, think Hungarian or Basque.

I am however unsure if this'd be enough; other ideas would be helpful if you think it could be done.

答:
Couldn't the dictator just impose a completely new language? If all children were taught this new language at school from a young age, and if all teaching materials and literature they had access to was in that language, they'd eventually forget their parents' tongue. It happens all the time with kids that move to a different country when they're young.

Imposing a new language through the education system would make it easier for the dictator to control access to information and therefore to control the population. At the same time it would create an artificial language barrier with the surrounding nations. Still, it wouldn't be the language itself that makes a population easier or harder to control, only the fact they use a different language.

If you really want a language whose grammar makes it inherently harder to lie and manipulate people, as a thought experiment you could perhaps try to create:

A language even less expressive than stereotypical caveman speech, where the grammar is so ambiguous it is impossible to understand a sentence outside of its context. Take these words for example:

Anger death flower friend.

This could mean many things: It angers me that my friend stepped on the flowers and ruined them / My anger ceased since I was brought flowers by a friend / The death of this person angers me, so I brought flowers to his relatives.

I don't see how you could incite a revolution or plot a coup while speaking such an ambiguous language. But then again, I don't see how someone could cause a society's communication skills to devolve to that point.

A very verbose language with a complicated grammar that makes it hard to write short sentences that leave part of the context out, so anyone trying to lie would have to be extremely careful not to contradict themselves. Again, I'm not sure how you could force people to speak such a language for long without it evolving to be more functional.

Title: Anti-Newspeak, making a language harder


问:
From known languages, what are the expected features of a Generation Ship Language?
Pandorum is a generation ship movie. Generation ships are a fairly big sub-genre of sci-fi where people live for many generations in a ship while travelling to a distant star.

The movie Pandorum did not use a conlang at all, despite the ships residents devolving into a tribe of "primitive" natives. What sort of features would we expect to find after 1000 years of travel in space, using real world island languages as a guide?

答:
I found a (rather new) publication on this theme, namely

McKenzie, A., & Punske, J. (2020). Language Development During Interstellar Travel. Acta Futura, (12), 123–132. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.3747353

The publication is rather high-level invoking analogies to the Polynesian explorers, the Malagasy language, and the Balkan Sprachbund.

I became aware of this by the following blog post:

https://diaryofdoctorlogic.wordpress.com/2020/07/09/resolution-read-week-28-space-travel-and-language-change/

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0


问:
Designing realistic pragmatics, particularly with respect to answering questions
Coming up with new kinds of pragmatics is sort of fun, but it's hard to tell when an idea is incompatible with how people work psychologically.

For instance, what are the limits or universals around asking and answering questions?

I had an idea the other day for a particle that can be used to refuse to answer a question without giving an excuse such as I don't know, but that also isn't rude.

I can think of a couple of non-specific ways of refusing to answer a question in English, but they're all rude or combative.

```<code>1. None of your business.
2. Don't ask me that.
3. What a great question.
4. No comment.
</code>```

The idea behind the question-refusal particle is that it shifts some of the social burden of asking appropriate questions from the asker to the recipient. The other part of the idea is that, in the larger pragmatics/[fake culture] surrounding this language, asking a question that the recipient cannot decline to answer is considered inherently hostile. Therefore, most questions in an ordinary conversation would not come with an expectation of being answered merely considered.

Let's assume with a generic verb-initial language with a few case suffixes for the purposes of this question

```<code>y/n.ques INT-see-FIN-REALIS   story-ACC
Did you see the movie (lit: story)?

NONRESPONSE
No comment.
</code>```

Is it unrealistic to design such a language and then insist by fiat that the various ways of explicitly not-answering a question are not rude?

答:
Consider the following:

"I can't answer that."
"I'd rather not say."
"I don't understand the question."
"It's not that simple."
"It depends."

All of these are examples of non-answers which, as far as I'm concerned, are not rude. So I see no problem with designing a language that just has a non-rude particle for any or all of those situations.


答:
Incomprehensive languages on themselves never stopped conquering by brute force; the winner's language being imposed on the conquered people.

Forbidding the local language. Out of respect for many fine people in China, I will not mention China. China itself was under colonial suppression with even Opium, though Chinese is hard to master for an European. The colonial past of the Western countries has similar phenomena. There was also the persecution of Esperanto by dictators like Stalin; a language to contact with the rest of the world. As I thinks your proposed self-isolation may have a contrary weakening effect too.

A (pseudo) secret language like from gypsys, or a (high-level) signal language at least caused a cultural identity. But your argument of "ikh ken dir nisht farshteyn" (I cannot understand you - and you not me), would require a stoicism, like in Gordon R. Dickson's sf universe "Soldiers, Ask Not."

Without a culture ready to encorporate pride, stoicism, self-sacrifice it would be hard.
Never done with success (native Americans), but alluring as theme in science-fiction.

One scenario: the dictator could oppress his people, and let his secret agents launch a secret revolution language against oppression. That could be feasible.

A further bit of science fiction too: Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao.

Title: Anti-Newspeak, making a language harder

Body:
So, the government of Oceania in 1984 creates a new, altered cersion of English to make its people easier to control.

What about the opposite?

A dictator wants to make his people harder to control, so that any invading nation would have to go through an ungodly amount of trouble to subjugate them.

Could he do it?

I'd imagine he'd start by gradually altering the language to be more complex, more foreign to neighbouring languages, and popularizing words or phrases that are harder to interpret by an outside listener.

He has already completely isolated this nation from the surrounding region, and the language present there is pretty unusual for the region, think Hungarian or Basque.

I am however unsure if this'd be enough; other ideas would be helpful if you think it could be done.


问:
How to say right and left in Toki Pona?
As we know, Toki Pona is a quite minimal language and it sometimes not easy to come up with a word we use everyday in English. The problem is that I cannot think of a non-culture-specific and easily understandable way of saying right and left.

How to say right (and left) in Toki Pona as those words are not a part of the official dictionary?

答: People have come up with quite a few extra words some of which are used to some extent on discord. 'soto' is left & teje is right. several of the words are just joke words but some like 'linluwi' - netwowrk/internet (len), & lanpan -take/grab (kama jo) are useful.</p>

Title: How to say right and left in Toki Pona?


问:
How does one express "want to want" in toki pona?
For example, "I do not want to want opium"

For example, this doesn't work, it is a yes-no question!

mi wile ala wile e ijo nasa

     Do I want a drug?

      ? Do I want not-want a drug?

The positive doesn't seem to work either

mi wile wile e ijo nasa

      * I want [in a wanting manner?] a drug.

答:
mi wile e ni: mi wile tawa.

I want this: I want to go.


问:
How can I format a dictionary that mixes vertical and horizontal scripts?
My conlang Atili is written in a vertical script. I'm having a hard time trying to imagine how to write out words in the Atili script within my dictionary. This is important because Atili spelling is not predictable, and the normal Romanization that I use for Atili is phonetic and thus does not convey how a word is meant to be spelled in the Atili script. Right now, I'm using a secondary Romanization as a proxy for the native script that does convey the spelling of words in the conscript, which leads to dictionary entries like the following:

azih   ÄZYIH n. (A) hand; (B) the first letter of the Atili alphabet, which represents the consonant /∅/

I would rather just write the Atili word in the native script, but I'm not sure how to sensibly mix the horizontal Latin alphabet with the vertical Atili script. I'm not looking for technical details about implementing such a thing, just how to lay out the entries on the page.

答:
In a dictionary, you'll sometimes want to mix text from the languages concerned within a block, or perhaps even a sentence. At that point, I believe there really is only one viable option: Rotating one of the scripts entirely. Yes, the one you rotate will be a bit misrepresented, but it works. For an example, see this picture from what seems to be a French book on the Mongolian language:

This is not me trying to discourage you to change, or even downplay, your conlang's directionality. Indeed, rotating the English is also an option. Though I'd probably suggest rotating whichever one features the least, and from your snippet that seems to be the Atili.

One last thing to keep in mind.

If Atili text runs top-to-bottom right-to-left like Chinese traditionally did (or bottom-to-top left-to-right), rotating it 90 degrees to match Latin alphabet text is simple, as is doing the opposite. But if it runs top-to-bottom right-to-left like traditional Mongolian (or bottom-to-top left-to-right), it gets a little bit more complicated. Assuming you rotate the Atili, then it either ends up as right-to-left text in the middle of your left-to-right Latin script text or you end up with the side normally facing the next line being the upper side rather than the lower side - neither is ideal, but either is fine.

The book from the example picture seems to have gone with the latter approach.


问:
What would be the most accurate character to use to transliterate the 'e' sound in 'bet' to the Arabic alphabet?
I'm trying to transliterate toki pona words containing an 'eh' sound like 'esun', 'en', 'kule', 'ken' & 'seme'.
I found an online Kurdish transliteration tool that displays 'esun' as ئه‌سون  & 'kule' as کوله. Is that accurate? I've also seen ێ used.

the tool gives the initial vowels as: ئا for a, ئه/ئە for e, ی/ئی for i, ئۆ/ۆ for o, & ئو for u.  is there a difference sound-wise between ه and ة (as in سه‌مه/سةمة-'seme')?

I like the idea of using only harakat for vowels when possible & leaving them out if not neccesary for comprehension like کَلاَ/کلا instead of کالا for 'kala',(except for finals to make 'sin'/'sina' & 'pan'/'pana' clear) because it fits the minimalist nature of toki pona, but e (as in bet) & o (as in open) are a problem since they don't really exist in Arabic. I would probably use 'ۆ/ئۆ' for o, but is ه/ة or ێ better for 'e'? Could I use ِسِمه for 'seme' or is سةمة/سه‌مه better?

is 'میِ کن سِتِلِن إِ تۆکیِ یۆکیِ پۆناَ کِپِکِن سِتِلِن أَلَپیِ' a reasonable transliteration for 'mi ken sitelen e toki toki pona kepeken sitelen Alapi' or should 'kepeken' be کەپەکەن?

答:
I don't know any language written using the Arabic script, but as far as I can tell the most common approach across languages for representing /e/ is using some variant of ي.

Somali uses ئ, Pashto and Uyghur use ې, and Kurdish, as you mentioned, uses ێ. The Jawi script used to write Malay even uses ي for both /i/, /e/ and /ɛ/. Urdu uses two different symbols, ے (which is based on ي) and ہ (which isn't).

I can't really speak in terms of how recognizable any of this would be to Arabic-speakers of course, but since multiple languages that needed an /e/-like letter reached for ي, it seems reasonable to suggest that approach.

But things are never simple - ە is also quite common. For example, you mentioned Kurdish which uses it to represent /ɛ/ (which is not /e/, but pretty similar), and Persian also uses it for /e/. And as I said earlier, Urdu does use ہ (based on ه), though I believe ے is more common (except word-intially, where it can't appear).

It seems to me like some twist on ي is the most common across languages, but which one to pick is not obvious (though I expect they'd all be about equally clear to someone who isn't already familiar with one of them). ە is more uniform, but might be a bit less common, and in languages that use both (like Uyghur and Kurdish) it seems that the ي variant usually represents /e/, while ە is something like /ɛ/.

So, I'd probably suggest ێ, but either option seems reasonable.

Source: Arabic script § Additional letters used in other languages (Wikipedia) (and various language and script articles mostly linked to from there)


问:
Words for Mercy in Toki Pona?
I would like to translate Bismillah Ir-Rahmani Ir-Rahim into Toki Pona.

The parts I'm struggling with are the Rahma part, and the Raheem part, as they encompass similar but subtly different meanings of Mercy.

Rahma is more closely associated with motherly love. Rahim is more of an extreme mercy regardless of what is being forgiven.

I haven't found a translation for mercy, let alone one that encompasses these subtle differences.

答:
Maybe something like:
"jan sewi li pana e olin tawa jan li lawa pona la lon nimi ona."

If you wanted to write it in what looked like arabic there is an adaptation of Arabic for English that could be also used for toki pona here.

یاَن سِوئ لئ پانا اِ اُولین تاوا یاُن لئ لاوا پُونا لا نئمئ اُونا.

Title: Words for Mercy in Toki Pona?


问:
Where should I start planning my grammar?
I'm about creating my first conlang grammar, I know a few general characteristics yet I don't truly know where or how I should start to outline it. I only have messy pieces of informations about. From your experience, what could you advise me?</p>

答:
It would probably be a good way to start with the features you want to express through grammar. Many features can be expressed in different ways, lexically, through morphology, or through syntax. For example, 'subject' could be done through a particle, an affix, or through the position in the sentence.

You first come up with the list of features, and then you look at the inventory of forms in the grammar. Do you want a complex morphology? English, for example, marks very few features through morphology (plural for nouns, 3rd person singular for verbs, tenses, …) and a lot through word order or by adding auxiliaries.

The inventory will define the shape of your language; you can also start with that and then assign features to it. But be clear what kind of features you want to be able to express – not every possible distinction needs to be expressed in language. Do you want to mark the gender of the subject in the verb? Perfectly possible, but probably not very useful, unless your language is for a very gender-segregated society.

Obviously, the more features you want to express, the more complex your grammar will be. As an extreme example, toki pona pretty much only uses word order and a few particles to distinguish between subject/verb/object, and ignores number or gender markers. In Esperanto most work is done by the morphology, which encodes the role in the sentence, gender of nouns, number, and even a range of semantic relationships (eg "room where you do a particular action").


问:
Is it attested for noun classifiers to be coopted for directionality?
A noun classifier marks on the verb some information about the form of one of its arguments. For example, Atili has a handful of "stationary" classifiers that produce semantic distinctions:

```<code>Emanyo bu-vahkin-us azven<k>o.
Emanyo ball-cook-P/3;PFV cow<3>
Emanyo cooked the meatball.
</code>```

vs

```<code>Emanyo mal-vahkin-us azven<k>o.
Emanyo board-cook-P/3;PFV cow<3>
Emanyo cooked the brisket.
</code>```

Atili also has "motile" classifiers that indicate manner of motion:

```<code>Yeredol many-az-a ranhal<k>o la.
Yeredol run-go-P;IPFV beach<3> to
Yeredol runs to the beach.
</code>```

vs

```<code>Yeredol ib-az-a ranhal<k>o la.
Yeredol climb-go-P;IPFV beach<3> to.
Yeredol climbs (down) to the beach.
</code>```

Is it attested for a language to use a similar system for encoding whether motion is towards or away from the speaker, as in the following hypothetical examples?

```<code>Yeredol ko-az-a ranhal<k>o la.
Yeredol go-go-P;IPFV beach<3> to
Yeredol goes (away) to the beach.
</code>```

vs

```<code>Yeredol kom-az-a ranhal<k>o la.
Yeredol come-go-P;IPFV beach<3> to
Yeredol comes to the beach.
</code>```

答:
Such a system is indeed attested! And not only that, it’s actually surprisingly common. Usually the category is called andative and venitive, for ‘going’ and ‘coming’ respectively (though I prefer ‘translocative’ and ‘cislocative’). Here’s an example from Komnzo (Döhler 2018):

Yfathwroth.

They hold him away.

```<code>y-          fath     -wr -o   -th
3SG.MASC.α- hold.EXT -ND -AND -2|3NSG
</code>```

And one from Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Oto-Manguean, Anderson 2017):

Rata rsily rityug Lia Petr gyia.

Every morning Petra goes and cuts flowers.

```<code>rata  rsily   r-  i-  tyug Lia  Petr  gyia
every morning HAB-AND-cut  Miss Petra flowers
</code>```

Many languages have even more elaborate systems, distinguishing many different directions beyond just ‘coming’ and ‘going’. For instance, Yagua distinguishes ‘upriver’ and ‘downriver’ directions (Payne 1997):

Sąąnaa suutiimuníí.

Wash him/her downriver.

```<code>sąąna -a   suuti -imu -níí
2DL   -IRR wash  -DR  -3SG
</code>```

While Southern Pomo has an exceedingly large array of around 15 directional suffixes, which may be applied to verbs of motion (Walker 2013):

ʔapʰ꞉alméčʼin

climb down from above

```<code>ʔapʰː -alamečʼ -Vn
carry -DIR     -SG.IMP
</code>```

Body:
Such a system is indeed attested! And not only that, it’s actually surprisingly common. Usually the category is called andative and venitive, for ‘going’ and ‘coming’ respectively (though I prefer ‘translocative’ and ‘cislocative’). Here’s an example from Komnzo (Döhler 2018):

Yfathwroth.

They hold him away.

y-          fath     -wr -o   -th
3SG.MASC.α- hold.EXT -ND -AND -2|3NSG

And one from Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec (Oto-Manguean, Anderson 2017):

Rata rsily rityug Lia Petr gyia.

Every morning Petra goes and cuts flowers.

rata  rsily   r-  i-  tyug Lia  Petr  gyia
every morning HAB-AND-cut  Miss Petra flowers

Many languages have even more elaborate systems, distinguishing many different directions beyond just ‘coming’ and ‘going’. For instance, Yagua distinguishes ‘upriver’ and ‘downriver’ directions (Payne 1997):

Sąąnaa suutiimuníí.

Wash him/her downriver.

sąąna -a   suuti -imu -níí
2DL   -IRR wash  -DR  -3SG

While Southern Pomo has an exceedingly large array of around 15 directional suffixes, which may be applied to verbs of motion (Walker 2013):

ʔapʰ꞉alméčʼin

climb down from above

ʔapʰː -alamečʼ -Vn
carry -DIR     -SG.IMP


答:
It's probably best to start at broad strokes and clean up the detail later. The first question you should ask yourself is "Do I want to have an analytic, agglutinative, fusional, or polysynthetic language?" This will decide whether your language will be making sentences by putting a lot of words together in a specific order (like English or Mandarin), putting a bunch of affixes on a moderate number of words (like Korean or Navajo), putting a few very specific affixes on a moderate number of words (like Spanish or German), or stringing together a large number of component pieces to make a few very specific words (like Coptic or West Greenlandic).

Next, you should ask "Should my language be primarily head-initial or head-final?" A head-initial language will probably have Verb-Subject-Object or Subject-Verb-Object word order, put auxiliary verbs before matrix verbs (e.g. have gone), use prepositions (e.g. at home), put adjectives after the nouns they modify (e.g. house new), and mark the start of a relative clause. A head-final language will probably have Subject-Object-Verb word order, put matrix verbs before auxiliaries (e.g. gone have), use postpositions (e.g. home at), put adjectives before the nouns they modify (e.g. new house), and mark the end of a relative clause. Of course, as these examples show, you don't have to pick one exclusively, but nearly all languages are predominantly one or the other.

Third, you should ask "Should my language be primarily head-marking or dependent-marking?" A head-marking language will be more likely to use polypersonal agreement instead of case marking, mark possessa instead of possessors, and have adpositions that agree with their referents. A dependent-marking language will be more likely to have case marking, mark possessors instead of possessa, and have demonstratives and adjectives that agree with their referents. Again, you don't have to go all in here, but you should lean either one way or the other.

For these last two especially, it's very helpful to learn which word is going to be the head of a given phrase. For example, the head of a sentence is the verb, the head of a noun phrase is the noun, the head of an adpositional phrase is the adposition, the head of a possessive construction is the possessum, etc. These aren't really intuitive (at least to me), so it's best to just memorize them.

Knowing these three things right from the start will help you avoid some of the most common typological pitfalls that will make your language feel clunky to use. But choose carefully, because these choices will end up so ingrained in the language that it will be a royal pain to try to change them later. From here, you can move to making more specific decisions, like what grammatical distinctions you actually want to make, and how specifically you're going to make those distinctions.

Title: Where should I start planning my grammar?

Body: I'm about creating my first conlang grammar, I know a few general characteristics yet I don't truly know where or how I should start to outline it. I only have messy pieces of informations about. From your experience, what could you advise me?</p>


问:
Is there anyone that has a conlang as their first/only language?
It seems that people generally use constructed languages in very limited circumstances, or within small communities that speak the language.  Thus it seems to me unlikely that one of these languages would every be someone's first or only language.

Are there any documented cases of a child learning a conlang as their first language?

答: Kim Henrickson is one example of a native speaker of Esperanto, however, I'm certain that there are hundreds of others.</p>


问:
Simplified Version of IPA?
In IPA, the sounds of many symbols are so close that they are indistinguishable to me! For example, [bʊk], [ɓʊk], or [βʊk]. Even though they do have some minor differences, but all a listener like me hears is "book".

So is there any "Simplified IPA" where they contain all possible pronunciations but yet omit all those phonetically indistinguishable symbols?

答:
There is SaypU, which tries to creates a universal phonetic alphabet for all languages with only 24 letters, many of which can be used to represent slightly different sounds in different languages.

"a" in SaypU can represent /a/, /æ/, and /ɑ/, depending on the language. "y" represents /j/, /ʎ/, and /ʝ/. "w" represents both /w/ and /ɥ/.

Title: Simplified Version of IPA?


问:
Will I be able to read texts written in all Romance languages simply by learning Interlingua?
Interlingua's official site claims that speakers of all Romance languages will immediately understand the language on paper when first exposed to it. Is this true? Can I really understand Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French simply by learning a conlang?

If it is true, then why isn't it more popular?

答:
On their site it says:

Millions understand Interlingua "at first sight". Speakers of Romance languages especially understand Interlingua immediately and almost effortlessly. Ideal for traveling!

So it's the other way round: if you speak a Romance language, Interlingua will make sense to you because it contains many elements (eg vocabulary) from these languages. This does not, however, mean that you can necessarily understand any Romance language after learning Interlingua, though I assume there will be some benefit going both ways.


答:
Yes. And also No.

Interlingua is certainly a "simplified" Romance language and much of the lexicon is shared with other Romance languages. But not all Romance languages are made alike. Romanian is pretty divergent. Sardinian is pretty conservative. I believe Interlingua has more in common with the "central" Romance languages, standard Italian and Spanish (Castillian).

I'm sure a speaker of Italian or Castillian would have as little difficulty with Interlingua as they would have had, a couple centuries ago with Lingua Franca. I think if you were to learn Interlingua to a high degree, you would find relatively straightforward Spanish and Italian texts to be comprehensible.

Let's find out for ourselves!

Interlingua

Nostre Patre, qui es in le celos,

que tu nomine sia sanctificate;

que tu regno veni;

que tu voluntate sia facite

super le terra como etiam in le celo.

Da nos hodie nostre pan quotidian,

e pardona a nos nostre debitas

como nos pardona a nostre debitores,

e non duce nos in tentation,

sed libera nos del mal.

Portuguese

Pai nosso, que estás no céu,

Santificado seja o Vosso nome.

Venha a nós o Vosso reino.

Seja feita a Vossa vontade,

Assim na terra como no céu.

O pão nosso de cada dia nos dai hoje.

Perdoai as nossas ofensas

Assim como nós perdoamos a quem nos têm ofendido.

Não nos deixeis cair em tentação,

Mas livrai-nos do mal

Mozarabic

Padre nuoso dal ciel

sanctificadu sia al teu nomne

venga a nos al teu reynu

ed faya-se al tua voluntade

ansi en al tierra quomo en al ciel.

Al pane nuostru de cada dia da-nos-lu huoi

e perdonad-nos al nuostras offensas

quomo nos autrossi perdonamos al qui nos offended

ed non nos layšes cadere in al tentatzione

ed liberad-nos dal male

Castillian

Padre nuestro que estás en el Cielo,

santificado sea tu nombre,

venga a nosotros tu Reino,

hágase tu voluntad en la Tierra como en el Cielo,

danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día,

y perdona nuestras ofensas,

como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden,

no nos dejes caer en la tentación,

y líbranos del mal.

Catalan

Pare nostre, que esteu en el cel,

sigui santificat el vostre nom;

vingui a nosaltres el vostre regne;

faci´s la vostra voluntat,

així en la terra com en el cel.

El nostre pa de cada dia doneu-nos avui;

i perdoneu les nostres culpes,

així com nosaltres perdonem els nostres deutors;

i no permeteu que caiguem en la temptació,

ans deslliureu-nos del mal.

Languedocien

Le nostre Paire që ess eïs cels

sanctificat sia lo teus noms

avenga lo teus regns

et sia faita la tua voluntas

sico ël cel è ë la tera

è dona à nos ôi lo nostrë pa që ës sobrë causa

è perdonna à nos lès nostrès dëoutès

aissi co nos perdonan à nostrès dëouteïrès

è no nos amenés en tentatio

mes delioura nos dël mal.

French

Notre Père qui es aux cieux,

que ton Nom soit sanctifié,

que ton règne vienne,

que ta volonté soit faite

sur la terre comme au ciel.

Donne-nous aujourd'hui notre pain de ce jour.

Pardonne-nous nos offenses,

comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés.

Et ne nous soumets pas à la tentation,

mais délivre-nous du mal.

Anglo-Norman

Li nostre Pere, qui es ciels,

saintefiez soit li tuens uons;

avigne li tuens regnes.

Soit faite ta volonte, si comme ele est faite el ciel,

si foit ele faite en terre.

Nostre pain de chascun jor nos donne hui.

Et pardone-nos nos meffais,

si comme nos pardonons a cos qui maeffait nos ont.

Provencal

Paire nostre, que iest els eels;

ton nom sia sanctifficat.

A nos veng-a lo teu reg-nat.

En la terra faelia sia quo el eel voluntat tia.

Lo pa nostre cotidia liuei nos dona dieus de ta ma.

Remet so que nos te deuem,

quo nos als autres remetem.

De temptacio nos deffen,

ens delivra de mal.

Italian

Padre nostro che sei nei cieli,

sia santificato il tuo Nome,

venga il tuo Regno,

sia fatta la tua Volontà

come in cielo così in terra.

Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,

e rimetti a noi i nostri debiti

come noi li rimettiamo ai nostri debitori,

e non ci indurre in tentazione,

ma liberaci dal Male.

Sicilian

Patri nostru, ca siti nnô celu,

Fussi santificatu lu nomu vostru.

Vinissi imprescia lu regnu vostru,

Fussi faciuta la vostra Divina Vuluntati,

Comu nnô celu, d'accussì nnâ terra.

Ni dati sta jurnata lu nostru panuzzu cutiddianu,

E ni pirdunati li nostri piccati,

D'accussì niàvutri li pirdunamu ê nostri dibbitura.

E mancu ni lassati a cascari nnâ tintazzioni,

Ma ni scanzati dû mali.

Sardinian

Babbu nostru k’istas in sos kelos,

santificadu siat su nòmene tou,

benzat a nois su regnu tou

e fatta siat sa voluntade tua

comente in su kelu gai in sa terra.

Su pane nostru de dogni die dàdenolu oe,

perdona a nois sos peccados nostros

comente nois perdonamus sos inimigos nostros,

e non nos lesses ruer in tentatzione,

ma lìberanos dae su male.

Romanian

Tatăl nostru care eşti în ceruri,

sfinţească-se numele Tău,

vie împărăţia Ta, facă-se voia ta,

precum în cer aşa şi pe pământ.

Pâinea noastră cea de toate zilele,

dă-ne-o nouă astăzi

şi ne iartă nouă greşelile noastre

precum şi noi iertăm greşiţilor noştri

şi nu ne duce pe noi în ispită

ci ne izbăveşte de cel rău.

Classical Latin

Pater noster, qui es in caelis;

sanctificetur nomen tuum;

adveniat regnum tuum;

fiat voluntas tua,

sicut in caelo et in terra.

Panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie;

et dimitte nobis debita nostra,

sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris;

et ne nos inducas in tentationem;

sed libera nos a malo.

Title: Will I be able to read texts written in all Romance languages simply by learning Interlingua?

Body:
Interlingua's official site claims that speakers of all Romance languages will immediately understand the language on paper when first exposed to it. Is this true? Can I really understand Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French simply by learning a conlang?

If it is true, then why isn't it more popular?


问:
Has anyone tried learning and speaking Kesh?
The book "Always Coming Home" by Ursula K Le Guin is an anthropological account of the Kesh, a people that "might be going to have lived" in future California. It includes short stories, songs, poems, recipes and sacred texts of the fictional people; but relevant to the question is the section at the end of the book which contains the script, numerals, and punctuation of the language, as well as an extensive glossary. I don't think there are any details on grammar written there, but there are example sentences in different places in the book. So, my question is, is there anyone that has tried to learn this language or studied it much? And, if so, what is it like?</p>

答:
I have the novel, but haven't yet read it, so can't say that I've tried learning Kesh.

I used to (and may still) have the cassette tapes that came with some work about the Kesh. As I recall, it was recordings very much as you describe for the texts: songs and lore of various kinds. As I recall it was a pretty sounding language.  I think this is it.

I think it's therefore safe to say sòmeone has tried to learn it! Well enough to record it, anyway!


答:
I'm sort of bemused that every answer I've seen has seemed to overlook the rather large elephant in the room.

Data is among the cheapest, most storage efficient things you can carry. Plugged into my computer at this moment is a 512 GB thumb drive. It is, in its (thick) protective case, 50mm long, 20mm wide, and 10mm thick.

This is a generation ship, made by a technologically advanced culture. Let's assume, for simplicity and practicality's sake, that everyone is fluent in one common language. Just for the hell of it, let's say English. And so, to keep people entertained, not only written material is provided but recordings. Lots and lots of recordings. Music. Movies. Documentaries. Learning material. TV shows.

Assume they provide the material in 720p resolution, so not quite full HD but better than standard. You'll get about 3.5 hours per gigabyte. Rounding off at 500GB of data, my perfectly ordinary thumb drive has a capacity of roughly 1,750 hours of audiovisual recordings. That's over 10 weeks of video. That's every Marvel Cinematic Movie released so far repeated 35 times. That's 2,500 "one hour" (ie, 42 minutes) North American television episodes. On a single drive.

There is a box beside my desk that is abut 100x150x300mm in size. I could stick about 450 of my thumb drives in there. That's 225,000GB, or about 787,500 hours of video. That's ninety years of video. All in something the size of a small box easily picked up by one hand.

So, one thing we could safely assume, if no one is trying to censor the material for some reason, and putting aside the stability of storage media, since if we're talking a long duration ship and everything is still working is probably a mostly solved problem, the people on board may well have access to a ridiculous amount of recording of people talking, and they're going to grow up with it.

There's not going to be any argument over how people talked a 1000 years before. No equivalent discussions over whether someone pronounced vici as "veechee", "weechee", "veekee" or "weekee" because they will know. They'll know about different accents and how people pronounced vowels and consonants and how the written was different from the spoken because they can literally see and hear it first hand. It is what they will learn from because they grew up with it, just as their parents learned it, and their parents, and their parents.

Everyone proposing the language will radically change in this scenario, how?

You can't use a historical example of how much a given language has changed over a few centuries to make your argument because you are ignoring the fact that audiovisual recordings fundamentally alter how people communicate and never existed during the time spans your examples are going to cover. You can't cite historical precedent regarding language change because there isn't any. The situation we've been in over the last century and a bit in terms of communication is entirely unprecedented in the history of the freaking planet, let alone our species.

Title: From known languages, what are the expected features of a Generation Ship Language?

Body:
Pandorum is a generation ship movie. Generation ships are a fairly big sub-genre of sci-fi where people live for many generations in a ship while travelling to a distant star.

The movie Pandorum did not use a conlang at all, despite the ships residents devolving into a tribe of "primitive" natives. What sort of features would we expect to find after 1000 years of travel in space, using real world island languages as a guide?


问:
How do you determine a New Letter's sound?
I'm trying to create a new language, but I need some advice. How do you determine what a new letter sounds like? Is there a pattern, or do I just make it up?</p>

答:
If you're designing a fully new language, it's usually better to pick phonemes (sounds) before even thinking about orthography. Writing should really come after even grammar.

If you're just designing a new writing system, then yeah, you just make it up.


问:
Could you have a language with only three words?
Don't immediately dismiss this! Just give me a moment to explain and you might realize it's an idea that might have merit, especially considering the question title is a little misleading. Also, I'm no conlang or linguistics expert, so if there's a couple small things I got wrong but don't necessarily make this impossible, especially if fixing it might make it possible, correct me in the comments and I'll integrate it into my question to make the question something that can actually be answered.

Could you construct a language--or, at least, a grammar system--with only three words? OK, so first of all, "word" is not the proper term for what I'm trying to say, but I don't know of a term that fits. So. When I say three words, I mean three combinations of consonants and vowels that morphemes can be derived from. From now on, though, I'm going to refer to them as "words", just because it's the only term that vaguely fits. Again, don't dismiss me immediately. Let me explain my idea, and then please critique it.

The three base words would each have particular consonants and one particular vowel, in the structure 1v2v3 (where v represents the vowel, and the numbers represent the three consonants). For a silly example, let's say the three words are:

Sazar: Fire (s, z, r; a)

Kitiv: Lie (k, t, v: i)

Lomon: Truth (l, m, n; o)

(If I were to actually construct this language, I would definitely use different base words, but let's stick with these for the sake of example.)

There are thirteen distinct combinations of these letters to be derived from these words (1, 2, 3, v, 1v, 2v, v2, v3, 1v2, 2v3, v2v, 1v2v, v2v3), and that's without rearranging the letters at all. If you allow for rearranging letters, there are thirty-one  distinct combinations (if I did my math right). Including the original "word", it's thirty-two.

All these combinations templates can result in 96 different roots/suffixes/prefixes/morphemes/etc. If you somehow made each combination represent some kind of modifier that can be made to a root word, could you construct, if not a language, then at least a grammar system, this way?

For example, if we made v3 represent plurality (-iv=singular, -on=plural, -ar=dual) and v2 represent person (-it=first person, -om=third person, and -az=second person) then that could be the conjugation for the language, giving you:

I: -itiv

You: -aziv

He/She/It: -omiv

We: -iton (or -itar for special, dual cases)

You pl.: -azon (or -azar for special, dual cases)

They: -omon (or -omar for special, dual cases)

Then, -omiv could be extended using v1, which would represent gender (-as=neuter, -ik=female, -ol=male). Using this, the conjugation for he would be the way-too-long-for-conjugation "-omivol".

You could make a modifier for roots that determine whether it's a noun, verb, or adjective, and you could also have the three tenses (it's fascinating how much language fits into groups of three) and make cases using combinations of the vowels and consonants, and you would have to stretch some things for prepositions, but maybe instead of having prepositions be words, you could make this an entirely written language and use visuals to convey prepositions (essentially making sentence order influence the physical positions of the objects the words refer to, instead of the grammatical meaning of the words).

I would probably need to create a couple (or many) other roots that the modifiers would be added to (or at least start with more flexible words than fire, lie, and truth), but could I at least base the grammar system off of only the three original words and modifiers derived from those three words?

I don't see any obvious issues with this language, besides long words, but I would appreciate it if more experienced conlangers could critique this. Also, if there are no issues with a conlang with only the grammar based on the three base "words", what about an entire language, where you could only build basic words by combining roots based on the three base words? This would limit the number of morphemes you could use for grammar, which might be an issue if there are a certain grammatical components every language needs and there aren't enough morphemes for all the components.

答:
Your terminology is a little strange, but it sounds like your suggesting something like the tri-consonantal roots of Arabic. For example, د ر س represent the idea of acquiring or giving knowledge. يدرس = to Study; يدرّس = to Teach. The only difference between these and the root is the adding of ي (an infinitive marker) to the start of the word and a ّ to 'to Teach' (which acts as doubling the ر). Vowels and subvowels go between the letters to change the meaning of the words.

Is that similar to what you're talking about or am I off the mark?


问:
Has anybody come up with a "Japanized" version of toki pona?
I saw a post on twitter about creating a "Japanized" version of toki pona. Has anyone done that? toki pona certainly seems to be influenced at least a little bit by Japanese anyway (word structure/particles). The poster suggested starting by substituting the vocabulary with the equivalent Japanese words, which would be a little difficult, because tp words can vary quite a bit in meaning so it's difficult to fit them into one word/kanji. Kanji are usually chosen with simplicity in mind first, over having the exact equivalent meaning. 'lon' for example can mean at/in/on, but also means true/real/alive. 在 is the standard kanji used. 'tawa' can be go/move (could be 行?), but also means for (as in 'for me/you'). Officially 去 is used. The word 'toki' could be 話 (hana, speak) or 語 (go, language) depending on the context, but generally 言(gen?) is used.(言良-good statement/quote 話良-good speech, & 語良-good language, would all normally just be written as 言良). Has anybody created a list of toki pona words with the equivalent Japanese words? I use the seperate kanji as well as unofficial words like te...to for surrounding quotes</p>

答: There's a list of Chinese symbols that can be used for toki pona words on the official toki pona website. I know I saw something on Reddit about a week or two ago that said that there was somebody trying to create a mapping system for kanji for toki pona, but he hasn't uploaded a finalised version from what I've seen.</p>


问:
Is there a language that meets these criteria?
I feel less and less comfortable with the incoherence of natural languages, so I'm looking for a constructed language that suits me.

semantically close words must share a common affix (not like biology and mathematics in English which are sciences but do not have the same suffix),

vocabulary must be finite and relatively small (a few hundred or thousand words would be fine) with no synonyms,

grammar must be fully regular.

答:
The best one that I've seen is probably Esperanto. It has a relatively small vocabulary that makes up a great bulk of the words and there are different affixes that change the meanings of words. For example, bo- is used in front of any family member to make it '-in-law' (boonklo, bopatro, bofrato, &c are uncle-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law) The language is perfectly regular with no exceptions once you learn the quirks of the grammar. I see above in the comments that somebody said that they didn't like Esperanto but it doesn't look like it's the OP, so I'll leave the suggestion here anyway.

If you want minimalism is the goal, then I definitely suggest toki pona which has only has 120-125 words. There's a varation of that called toki ma which has closer to 300, but there's a lot of overlap with vocabulary.


问:
How many dialects of Tolkien's Elvish are there?
I've seen several variations of Tolkien's Elvish around, with different names, such as Sindarin and Q(u)enya.

How many dialects of Tolkien's Elvish are there, and how do they differ from one another?

答:
In this article, it is mentioned:

Primitive Quendian (language of the Elves in Cuiviénen)

Avarin

Various Avarin languages (some later merged with Nandorin)

Common Eldarin (the early language of all the Eldar)

Quenya (the language of the Ñoldor and the Vanyar)

Quendya (also Vanyarin Quenya) (daily tongue of the Vanyar: closest to archaic Quenya)

Ñoldorin Quenya (also Exilic Quenya) (the "Elven Latin" of Middle-earth)

Common Telerin (the early language of all the Lindar)

Telerin (the language of the Teleri who reached the Undying Lands)

Nandorin (languages of the Nandor — some were influenced by Avarin)

Original language of Greenwood the Great

Original language of Lórinand

Sindarin (language of the Sindar)

Doriathrin (dialect of Doriath)

Falathrin (dialect of the Falas and Nargothrond)

North Sindarin (dialects of Dorthonion and Hithlum)

So a good many dialects exist. However, we cannot exactly count how many there are, because it mentions "various" and we don't know whether there is a hierarchy of languages that have branched off somewhere else.  However, we can confirm there are at least 17 dialects of the Elvish.


问:
Strategies for dealing with limited/simple phonologies
What problems arise when creating a language with an extremely simple phonology and what are some good strategies for dealing with them?

I'm calling this type of phonology extremely simple for the purposes of this question, but limited or rigid might be a better fit. I'm also not sure whether "phonology" is the right term here or if something like "phonological inventory" would be better. Using "phonemes" or "phonemic inventory" is close, but does not cover phonotactics and suprasegmental features.

An extremely simple phonology is one that does not allow the speaker to pack many bits of information in each syllable/mora/unit of speech time. Prototypical extremely simple phonologies have some or all of the following features:

Few segmental contrasts

Restrictive phonotactics

Limited or no phonemic use of gemination or vowel length

Limited or no phonemic use of tone

Phrased another way, a simple phonology in the sense of the question is what you would get if you started with an inventory like Hawaiian's, Rotokas', or Pirahã's and removed contrastive vowel length or contrastive tone.

Conlangs like Toki Pona have extremely simple phonologies.

What are some common problems that appear in languages with phonologies like this?
What are some strategies for dealing with them?
One example of a possible "problem" might be a large number of homophones.

答:
One major problem is that a small phoneme inventory leads to longer words, as you have fewer short ones available. This kind of relates to the point you already mention, namely homophones: here you simply re-use a word form for multiple meanings.

Words would also sound more alike, even if different. This is one of the main problems I have with Hawai'ian (of course the vocab is mostly unrelated to the Western European languages I know), that words are hard to recognise for a learner, and then it's even harder if individual phonemes are different and completely change the meaning of the word.

This is fine for toki pona, which only has a small inventory of words anyway, but any more extensive language would quickly run into longer words or phrases.


答:
There are many ways of approaching the art of language invention.  Some folks devise phonologies (sound systems) first; some people prefer to fashion logographies (writing systems) first.  Still others like to write out a snippet of a song or poem first and try to sort out what just happened...

Whichever way you prefer to go, the basic answer to your question, depending on your philosophy of language invention, will be either the conlanger's answer: you make it up -- or else the glossopoet's answer: you discover the relation from within the language itself.

For example, if you came up with this letter:

§

you could either look through your chart and say: ah! that'll do nicely as the letter for [v]. Then it's just a matter of filling in the blank.

Or alternatively, you could delve into the history and culture of the people who speak the language and consider the prehistory of their writing systems (if any) and consider any sound symbology that might exist, and someone from that speech community might enter your dreams one night and teach you what sound that letter makes.

There may perhaps be a pattern: that too is something the conlanger will create or the glossopoet will discover along the way! Or there may not be a pattern at all.

Title: How do you determine a New Letter's sound?

Body: I'm trying to create a new language, but I need some advice. How do you determine what a new letter sounds like? Is there a pattern, or do I just make it up?</p>


答:
I think Oliver pretty much nailed it on the head. There are a couple of ways around the problems that were mentioned. The first way is to have a highly inflectional language; this would give an explanation for why words are similar, but the words would get longer. Because you would already be expecting to have longer words, this could at least be turned into a feature rather than a detriment. The second way is to allow for less 'traditional', let's say, syllable structures. Think of the English word 'strengths' (/stɹeŋθs/) which has a CCCVCCC structure. Using a much more restrictive (C)V(N) will only make the generations of new words more difficult.

Another problem is the potential overlap of meaning. The word moku in toki pona basically means to Ingest but it also means something that is ingestible (to Eat, to Drink, Food, Beverage). If you don't mind having words having a number of meanings which are generally related, then this shouldn't be a problem. If you want a free couple of words, don't put 'to Be', 'of/from', or (more extremely) 'to Have' into the language. That will save you 3 words right there for different concepts.

Title: Strategies for dealing with limited/simple phonologies

Body:
What problems arise when creating a language with an extremely simple phonology and what are some good strategies for dealing with them?

I'm calling this type of phonology extremely simple for the purposes of this question, but limited or rigid might be a better fit. I'm also not sure whether "phonology" is the right term here or if something like "phonological inventory" would be better. Using "phonemes" or "phonemic inventory" is close, but does not cover phonotactics and suprasegmental features.

An extremely simple phonology is one that does not allow the speaker to pack many bits of information in each syllable/mora/unit of speech time. Prototypical extremely simple phonologies have some or all of the following features:

Few segmental contrasts

Restrictive phonotactics

Limited or no phonemic use of gemination or vowel length

Limited or no phonemic use of tone

Phrased another way, a simple phonology in the sense of the question is what you would get if you started with an inventory like Hawaiian's, Rotokas', or Pirahã's and removed contrastive vowel length or contrastive tone.

Conlangs like Toki Pona have extremely simple phonologies.

What are some common problems that appear in languages with phonologies like this?
What are some strategies for dealing with them?
One example of a possible "problem" might be a large number of homophones.


问:
What tools are there to make this alien language?
Probably already been asked before but here goes.

Stevefan has traveled through some sort of trans-dimensional breach made of handwavium to another dimension where the inhabitants don't speak English. What tools are there on the internet that could help me form this language?

I want to make the spoken language for these aliens based off of Spanish and something similar to Spanish, close enough together that if you know Spanish you can kinda-sorta piece together the general meaning of the sentence. I could try to do something like the Minions from Despicable Me did where they alternate language every few words, but that doesn't feel very alien to me, just confusing.

As for the written language I'm not too concerned about, it just needs to be a glyph based written language. If you know of a little-known language like this I could just use Google Translate for that so I'm not too worried there.

答:
If you need to have your language loosely based on another language, you're very limited in how you build it. You need it to sound familiar but different to native speakers of that language. There isn't a lot of ways to accomplish this, you need to keep your changes small. My advice would be to prepare "find and replace patterns" for the vowels and a few common words, leave most of the consonants as is, and just run them over the text and use that as a starting point.

Eg. I've chosen a really simple replacement map: A->E. E->I, I->O, O->U, U->A. I'm ignoring diacritics because I'm a heathen but you could take steps to ensure hard vowels remain hard and soft ones remain soft - especially at the end of words where they could add an extra syllable. Anyway:

We come in peace, take me to your leader

In Spanish is

Venimos en paz llévame con tu líder

Becomes:

Vinomis in pez llivemi cun ta lodir

That should sound sort of familiar to Spanish listeners, but also kind of alien, and you wont be able to understand it in entirety first time.

OwnerDisplayName: Ash


答:
Let's take modern Spanish Spanish and apply some nice natural sound changes to it, together with some plausible alterations to the spelling rules, and see what we get.

To begin with, let's take a Spanish text on which to apply the changes, so that in the end we have an example of Alien Spanish, with the goal of ascertaining that it is at the same time Spanish-like and alien enough. The chosen text consists of the first ten articles of the French Revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, as given by the Spanish Wikipedia:

Los hombres nacen y permanecen libres e iguales en derechos. Las distinciones sociales solo pueden fundarse en la utilidad común. La finalidad de toda asociación política es la conservación de los derechos naturales e imprescriptibles del hombre. Esos derechos son la libertad, la propiedad, la seguridad y la resistencia a la opresión. La fuente de toda soberanía reside esencialmente en la nación; ningún individuo, ni ninguna corporación pueden ser revestidos de autoridad alguna que no emane directamente de ella. La libertad consiste en poder hacer todo aquello que no cause perjuicio a los demás. El ejercicio de los derechos naturales de cada hombre, no tiene otros límites que los que garantizan a los demás miembros de la sociedad el disfrute de los mismos derechos. Estos límites solo pueden ser determinados por la ley. La ley solo puede prohibir las acciones que son perjudiciales a la sociedad. Lo que no está prohibido por la ley no puede ser impedido. Nadie puede verse obligado a aquello que la ley no ordena. La ley es expresión de la voluntad de la comunidad. Todos los ciudadanos tienen derecho a colaborar en su formación, sea personalmente, sea por medio de sus representantes. Debe ser igual para todos, sea para proteger o para castigar. Siendo todos los ciudadanos iguales ante ella, todos son igualmente elegibles para todos los honores, colocaciones y empleos, conforme a sus distintas capacidades, sin ninguna otra distinción que la creada por sus virtudes y conocimientos. Ningún hombre puede ser acusado, arrestado y mantenido en confinamiento, excepto en los casos determinados por la ley, y de acuerdo con las formas por esta prescritas. Todo aquel que promueva, solicite, ejecute o haga que sean ejecutadas órdenes arbitrarias, debe ser castigado, y todo ciudadano requerido o aprendido por virtud de la ley debe obedecer inmediatamente, y se hace culpable si ofrece resistencia. La ley no debe imponer otras penas que aquellas que son estrictas y evidentemente necesarias; y nadie puede ser castigado sino en virtud de una ley promulgada con anterioridad a la ofensa y legalmente aplicada. Todo hombre es considerado inocente hasta que ha sido declarado convicto. Si se estima que su arresto es indispensable, cualquier rigor mayor del indispensable para asegurar su persona ha de ser severamente reprimido por la ley. Ningún hombre debe ser molestado por razón de sus opiniones, ni aún por sus ideas religiosas, siempre que al manifestarlas no se causen trastornos del orden público establecido por la ley.

(Spelling change) Replace ce, ci with the, thi (as they are pronounced): nacen $\rightarrow$ nathen, sociales $\rightarrow$ sothiales etc.

(Spelling change) The acute accent indicates the position of the dynamic stress when it falls in a place other than where it's expected:

If the acute is on the last syllable before an n or an s, delete the acute and double the consonant: ningún $\rightarrow$ ningunn, demás $\rightarrow$ demass, razón $\rightarrow$ razonn. (It's not deleterious, since Spanish cannot have double consonants in that position.)

(Spelling change) Replace ñ with ny and ll with ly. (It could have been the chosen spelling, but wasn't.)

(Spelling change) Replace qu with k (or c, since by now we no longer have any possibilit of confusion); que $\rightarrow$ ce, aquellas $\rightarrow$ acelyas etc.

(Spelling change) Replace all is and us with y and w when they represent semivowels (also called glides, the less sonorous parts of diphthongs): igual $\rightarrow$ igwal, cualquier $\rightarrow$ cwalcyer.

(Spelling change) Delete initial and intervocalic h. (It is silent anyway.)

(Spelling change) Replace ge, gi with hhe, hhi, and then j with h:
ejecutadas $\rightarrow$ ehecutadas, ejercicio $\rightarrow$ eherthithyo etc.

At this point we have regular Spanish with a somewhat novel, but yet still consistent, spelling. Let's go and apply some natural sound changes:

Replace endings in -ad, -ades with -à, -ass. (Italian did it, for the singular; in the plural, Italian keeps -à unchanged.)

Delete final -o; in order to preserve the position of the dynamic stress, you must of course double the preceding consonant, as required by rule 2. (Romanian did it; we have lup for Spanish lobo, tot for Spanish todo etc.)

If the word ends in -wo, replace with -u.

If the word ends in -yo (at this stage of the modifications), replace the -o with -u.

If the final -o is the only vowel in the word, replace with -u.

Replace final -i with iy, final -e with i, and final -a with e. (Old French did the last one.)

Now do the plurals: replace final -os with -uy. (Romanian went even further, but let's keep it Spanish-y.) Replace final -es with iy. Replace final -as with ey.

(Slight, if any sound change.) Consistently replace vl and vr with br and bl, and elsewhere consistently replace b with v.

Finally, replace clusters of two occlusives (also known as stops) with the second one doubled, as Italian did.

At this point we have:

Luy ombriy nathen yiy permanethen libriy i igwaliy en derechuy. Ley distinthyoniy sothyaliy soll pweden fundarsi en le utilidà comunn. Le finalidà di tode asothyathyonn polítice iy le conservathyonn di luy derechuy naturaliy i imprescrittibliy del ombri. Esuy derechuy son le livertà, le propyedà, le seguridà yiy le resistenthye e le opresionn. Le fwenti di tode soveraníe residi esenthyalmenti en le nathionn; ningunn individu, niy ningune corporathyonn pweden ser revestiduy di awtoridà algune ci nu emani direttamenti di elye. Le livertà consisti en poder ather tod acelyu ci nu cawsi perhwithyu e luy demass. El eherthithyu di luy derechuy naturaliy di cade ombri, nu tyeni otruy límitiy ci luy ci garantizan e luy demass myembruy di le sothyedà el disfruti di luy mismuy derechuy. Estuy límitiy soll pweden ser determinaduy por le ley. Le ley soll pwedi proivir ley acthyoniy ci son perhudithyaliy e le sothyedà. Lu ci nu está proividd por le ley nu pwedi ser impedidd. Nadyi pwedi versi obligadd e acelyu ci le ley nu ordene. Le ley iy expresyonn di le voluntà di le comunidà. Toduy luy thyudadanuy tyenen derechu e colavorar en su formathionn, see personalmenti, see por medyu di sus representantiy. Devi ser igwal pare toduy, see pare proteger u pare castigar. Syend toduy luy thyudadanuy igwaliy anti elye, toduy son igwalmenti elegibliy pare toduy luy onoriy, colocathyoniy yiy empleuy, conformi e sus distintey capathidass, sin ningune otre distinthyonn ci le creade por sus virtuss yiy conothimyentuy. Ningunn ombri pwedi ser acusadd, arrestadd yiy mantenidd en confinamyent, exthett en luy casuy determinaduy por le ley, yiy di acwerd con ley formey por este prescritey. Todd acel ci promweve, solithiti, ehecuti u age ci sean ehecutadey órdeniy arvitraryey, devi ser castigadd, yiy todd thyudadann receridd u aprendidd por virtù di le ley devi ovedether inmedyatamenti, yiy si athi culpabli siy ofrethi resistenthye. Le ley nu devi imponer otrey peney ci acelyey ci son estrittey yiy evidentementi nethesaryey; yiy nadyi pwedi ser castigadd sinn en virtù di une ley promulgade con anteryoridà e le ofense yiy legalmenti aplicade. Todd ombri iy consideradd inothenti aste ci e sidd declaradd convitt. Siy si estime ci su arrest iy indispensabli, cwalcyer rigor mayor del indispensabli pare asegurar su persone e di ser severamenti reprimidd por le ley. Ningunn ombri devi ser molestadd por razonn di sus opinyoniy, niy awunn por sus ideey religyosey, syempri ci al manifestarley nu si cawsen trastornuy del orden públic establethidd por le ley.

Now, this is still sufficiently Spanish-y for a Romance speaker to be able to go through it, albeit slowly. It may or may not be sufficiently alien...

If still not sufficiently alien, continue sound changes:

Replace intervocalic r with rh and intervocalic s with r (Latin did the latter).

Replace s between vowels, or at the beginning of a word before a wovel, with w (Greek did it).

If still not alien enough, you may want to go through some chain shifts (as in Germanic for example).

Title: What tools are there to make this alien language?

Body:
Probably already been asked before but here goes.

Stevefan has traveled through some sort of trans-dimensional breach made of handwavium to another dimension where the inhabitants don't speak English. What tools are there on the internet that could help me form this language?

I want to make the spoken language for these aliens based off of Spanish and something similar to Spanish, close enough together that if you know Spanish you can kinda-sorta piece together the general meaning of the sentence. I could try to do something like the Minions from Despicable Me did where they alternate language every few words, but that doesn't feel very alien to me, just confusing.

As for the written language I'm not too concerned about, it just needs to be a glyph based written language. If you know of a little-known language like this I could just use Google Translate for that so I'm not too worried there.

OwnerDisplayName: AlexP


答:
You have a few options:

They actually speak Portuguese, which although being similar to Spanish, is sufficiently different and incompatible to make them mutually unintelligible.

The alien dimension was actually a rural area in Paraguay, possibly even an indigenous area, and its inhabitants speak Spanish as a second language and not fluently, with an accent, vocabulary and grammar strongly influenced by Guaraní (an indigenous language widely spoken in Paraguay).

OwnerDisplayName: Victor Stafusa


问:
Which character is best to use for a schwa? Ь or Ъ?
Cyrillic for English - (Сарилик фоьр Иңглиш) is an adapted Cyrillic orthography to write English using ь as schwa, so 'sofa' would be written 'соьфь'. Does ь make sense as a schwa or is ъ better? The way I understand it ъ basically forces a pause. Is there really any use for ь or is there something I'm not understanding about how they are used? Is there a character that would make sense to use at the beginning of a word?</p>

答: I'd use neither ь nor ъ because they aren't vowels in Russian or related languages. I could think of Ы that is a vowel and may be the closest by pronunciation, or of Э that looks a bit like a schwa. In extended Cyrillic we even find a true schwa Ә but this one may be out when we have only a Russian Cyrillic keyboard available.</p>


问:
Which constructed languages have been used to write scientific articles?
One of the most interesting aspects of Interlingua is that during its early days there were a number of scientific articles published in it. This is in contrast with most other constructed languages, which are primarily used to publish things that are of interest only to their own communities.

Have other constructed languages been used for that purpose?

答:
The Occidental magazine Cosmoglotta occasionally published scientific articles.

In the 32nd publication of Cosmoglotta, a "supplement" was added to the magazine, stating that it was "necessary to use the language not only in linguistics articles". The first "scientific article" appears in the 33rd publication of Cosmoglotta, which published an article about Wegener's theory of continental drift. The publications that follow also contain articles about biology and physics as well as philosophy, economics and politics.


问:
How can syntactic ambiguity with pronouns be avoided?
Due to the way pronouns work in place of any particular noun (subject or object) in the sentence, this often leads to ambiguous grammatical constructions.

Take this phrase in English for example:

Adam sent the essay to James to help him with his writing

Do him and his refer to Adam (where James will help edit Adam's essay or give him suggestions) or James (where Adam is sending James an exemplar to help James see examples of good writing)?

How would ambiguities like this be avoided in constructed languages? I know a simple solution is to just eliminate pronouns from the language but is there an alternative solution to allow pronouns to be used unambiguously?

答:
I was thinking about the ease of Blissymbols in this context ... although Charles K. Bliss never mentions the case, one could imagine that the person symbol can be followed by an index 4 (or even 5) ... allowing in all cases just one reading ... but with some problems for doing so out loud ...

There is a nice Facebook post from Blissymbols about pronouns at https://www.facebook.com/298159500318475/photos/a.298161243651634/1360473830753698/?type=3

... I made an archive for acccessibility : https://archive.is/PI4PY


答:
I'd use Ъ. Because:

<ъ> is used to write /ɤ/ in modern Bulgarian (some of which are non-etymological). <ь> and <ъ> were also used to write "ultra-short" vowels in some older Slavic languages, e.g. Old Church Slavonic and Old Russian. – Miztli Oct 30 at 10:07

But Ь is not used for a vowel in all Cyrillic languages.

Title: Which character is best to use for a schwa? Ь or Ъ?

Body: Cyrillic for English - (Сарилик фоьр Иңглиш) is an adapted Cyrillic orthography to write English using ь as schwa, so 'sofa' would be written 'соьфь'. Does ь make sense as a schwa or is ъ better? The way I understand it ъ basically forces a pause. Is there really any use for ь or is there something I'm not understanding about how they are used? Is there a character that would make sense to use at the beginning of a word?</p>


答: If you're going to use one of <ъ> or <ь> to represent /ə/, it's probably better to use <ъ>. This letter is currently used to write /ɤ/ in modern Bulgarian, whereas <ь>, as far as I'm aware, is only used to write actual vowels in dead Slavic languages. Moreover, because <ь> historically represented a short front vowel, it is used in modern languages like Russian to indicate palatalisation, something that does not accompany /ə/, whereas, e.g. in both modern (and more widely in pre-reform) Russian, <ъ> marks not a vowel but the absence of palatalisation.</p>


问:
What are resources for conlangers designing a knot writing?
I have not encountered many con-scripts encoding information in knots, rather than by marking flat media. I imagine that many conlangers would enjoy the inspiration of Andean khipus, which, going back to about 3,000 BCE, are ancient comparable with Proto-cuneiform.</p>

答:
One knot-like writing system (not mine) is Sylvia Sotomayor's Kelen Ceremonial Interlace Alphabet (can be found at http://www.terjemar.net/kelen/lajathin.php). It is ceremonial because it would likely be immensely impractical in every-day usage. The alphabet uses an interlace pattern where each letter is defined by a binary left-right pattern.
From the author: "If these make your eyes water, don't feel alone. The idea was to create an alphabet for identifying things and places that could only be read by the initiated."

The following PDF distributed as a handout by the author at the LCC2 conference for even more information.
http://conlang.org/cms/wp-content/uploads/Sylvia_Sotomayor.pdf


答: No. Of course you won’t. You don’t just learn a language by staring at it. Like everything, learning a language takes time. I would recommend learning one of those languages.</p>


答:
I think it should be toki pona. Reasons:

semantically close words must share a common affix (not like biology and mathematics in English which are sciences but do not have the same suffix)

In toki pona, every science has a compound noun word beginning from sona. Biology is sona jan and Mathematics is sona nanpa. (Physics is sona lon and Linguistics is sona toki.)

This is due to the fact that toki pona has a limited vocabulary; so, to form words like "physics", it simply says the phrase "science of existence" or sona lon.

vocabulary must be finite and relatively small (a few hundred or thousand words would be fine) with no synonyms

The vocabulary is just 123 words. Almost all of these are polysemantic, there's nothing like synonyms.

grammar must be fully regular

Grammar is not fully regular, but that's only because of the fact that toki pona has a few words. However, there are not that many exceptions, as in any language like English or Spanish. I have studied 12 lessons of the official book and till then, the only irregularity is the fact that li doesn't follow mi and sina.

In all, the language satisfying (1) and (2) and partly (3) to its fullest is toki pona.

Another close competitor is Esperanto. It totally satisfies (2) and (3) and partly (1). (Some semantically similar words don't seem to have common affixes in them.)

So, in all, if you are looking for such a language, go definitely for toki pona or Esperanto.

PS. Even I felt the same (unable to successfully learn natural languages due to the several irregularities) and thus myself decided to go for toki pona first (because I already know a lot about it) and then Esperanto.

Title: Is there a language that meets these criteria?

Body:
I feel less and less comfortable with the incoherence of natural languages, so I'm looking for a constructed language that suits me.

semantically close words must share a common affix (not like biology and mathematics in English which are sciences but do not have the same suffix),

vocabulary must be finite and relatively small (a few hundred or thousand words would be fine) with no synonyms,

grammar must be fully regular.


问:
Are there conlangs using constructed sounds?
Usually, constructed languages of all kind (naturalistic or not) draw their sounds from existing natural languages.

Are there conlangs with constructed sounds, i.e., sounds that do not occur in natural languages (or are at least very rare in natural languages)?

答:
Click consonants are rare in natlangs, but rather popular in conlangs, though despite this, given the existence of things like !Xóõ reality is stranger than most fiction in this specific regard. Language-game/conlang(?) turned actual spoken register Damin had several phonemes not seen in (other?) natural languages, such as an ingressive glotally interrupted unvoiced lateral fricative /ɬ↓ʔ/, an egressively released bilabial click /ʘ↑/ and stuttered bilabial trill /ʙ\ʙ/.

Searching for the various hypothetical combinations as well as ext-IPA sounds on google turns up a fair few instances of conlangs using sounds such as percussives, implosive fricatives, velopharyngeal and nareal fricatives, etc.

Outside of these humanly-possible, but non-attested outside of disordered speech phonemes, some languages made up for non-humans include sounds that are impossible for humans to make, such as this one spoken by a race of giants, including a special type of whistle-like sounds, or this one made for creatures with bird-like anatomy, differentiating between 4 different types of contraction of muscles in the throat overlaid with 5 different pitch contours.


问:
Is is okay that most consonant assimilations result in a phone whose dedicated letter doesn't exist?
Whilst worldbuilding, I decided to make a conlang. A lot of consonant assimilations happen in this language. This language is supposed to be spoken by angels.

My native language is Korean, btw. Korean also has many consonant assimilations.

Orthography and phonetics

My conlang uses Latin alphabets except W. No diacritics. All of them is pronounced as their IPA counterpart, except four:

C = [qʼ] (Voiceless uvular ejective)

N = [ɴ] (Voiced uvular nasal stop)

Q = [ʔ] (Glottal stop)

X = [ǃ] (Voiceless alveolar click)

Sounds exotic, huh? That makes 19 consonants and 6 vowels.

Plosives are tenuis by default.

Consonant assimilation

In my conlang, syllables have structure of (C)V(C). So two syllables can make two adjacent consonants. Every combination of two consonants can occur. That's where consonant assimilation happens, and also where this question arises. Let's call CC "former consonant" and "latter consonant", respectively:

Plosives as the former consonant get no release. Examples: "BK" to [b̚.k], "KB" to [k̚.b].

"H" as the former consonant usually assimilates to [x].

"V" as the former consonant usually assimilates to [ʋ].

"H" as the latter consonant...:

...turns voiced plosives to implosives. Example: "BH" to [ɓ].

...makes fricatives pharyngealized. Example: "FH" to [fˁ].

...makes nasal stops voiceless. Example: "MH" to [m̥].

...makes voiceless plosives aspirated. Example: "KH" to [kʰ].

"J" as the latter consonant usually makes the former consonant palatal or palatalized. Examples: "MJ" to [mʲ], "SJ" to [ɕ].

A plosive followed by "L" has lateral release.

"V" as the latter consonant usually makes the former consonant labialized. Example: "XV" to [ǃʷ].

"CH", "DJ", "DZ", "PF", "TJ", "TS" assimilate to affricates.

To show all combinations:

I set these consonant assimilations to make pronunciation easier, but my concern is that these introduce too many new phones that lacks their own letters. Are they tolerable?

答:
I would argue that the orthography of your conlang is not just OK but really excellent given your description of the phonology.

Why is this the case? It keeps the number of letters needed to write the language in a very comfortable range. The additional sounds are given by digraphs, a method that is often preferable over adding more letters to the basic alphabet or adding diacritics to the base letters.

I also imagine that the orthography keeps morphemes recognisable assuming that at least some morphemes are just CVC syllables and combining them results in assimilation.


问:
Is there any general rule for constructing a word? Example: "q" or "w" should not end a word, something like this
I am developing 4 conlangs (sparish, old sparish, elvian and barrish (need a new name)) for a story which is used by humans of Spar, Northern Sparian, Elves/Aspian, Barrians of south respectively. I have no knowledge about developing language whatsoever, I have learnt some few things from youtube and google(youtube was much helpful). I have the constants and vowels that I want to use in my language, but I am facing trouble with the letters.

The sound of "q". I don't understand how to pronounce any words that have "q" in it. According to IPA pulmonic consonant chart (with audio), it sounds like /ka/. So how should I pronounce a word like "qakt"

Are there any kind of rules for word building? Like a word should never end with certain letters, or shouldn't start with certain letters.

I want these languages to sound and feel as natural as possible. I am asking because some of my created words exist in one language or the other, and I want them to be as distinct as possible.

Moreover, I want sparish to have a word like "re(letter)". This letter helps them to in poetry, its intonation depends upon the letter that is placed inside the bracket, but it does not feel write when you pronounce it. Can anyone help me with it too?

How to Create a Language

How to Create a Made Up Word

Conlang Case Study

How to Make a Language

Artifexian (channel)

How to Create a Language

答:
Yes, there are but they are language-specific. These are called phonotactics. They are well explained in the book of David Peterson "The Art of Language Invention"(E-book download link). Actually, these rules include:

structure of a syllable. E.g. in Hawaiian language closed syllables are impossible. So words like "heck" are not allowed. ;)

stress. The Finnish language always stresses the first syllable.

What consonants/vowels can be combined. "st" is quite common in English but not in Hungarian. But "ts" is quite common in Russian but not in English. But on the other hand Russian allows "st" too.

there are many other things. I suggest reading this article on Wikipedia.

P.S. I'm not good at linguistic terms in English, sorry for possible wrong use of words ;)


答:
(Side note: asking multiple questions at once is not recommended here. I see that @VictorVosMottor has already given a good answer to your question (2), so I will restrict myself to answering (1).)

The sound of "q". I don't understand how to pronounce any words that have "q" in it. According to IPA pulmonic consonant chart (with audio), it sounds like /ka/. So how should I pronounce a word like "qakt"

The sound /q/ is a voiceless uvular plosive. By contrast /k/ is a voiceless velar plosive. We can compare the two:

They are both voiceless: produced without vibration of the vocal cords.

They are both plosive: produced by blocking the mouth and then releasing it.

They differ only in their place of articulation. /k/ is velar; that is, it is produced with the tongue touching the back of the soft palate. By contrast, /q/ is uvular; that is, it is produced with the tongue touching the uvula. (Another way to think about it: /q/ is produced towards the back of the mouth compared to /k/.)

So, to summarise: /q/ and /k/ are very similar sounds, except /q/ is slightly backer than /k/. Due to this similarity, it is not surprising that they will sound the same to you if your native language does not distinguish the two.

Title: Is there any general rule for constructing a word? Example: "q" or "w" should not end a word, something like this

Body:
I am developing 4 conlangs (sparish, old sparish, elvian and barrish (need a new name)) for a story which is used by humans of Spar, Northern Sparian, Elves/Aspian, Barrians of south respectively. I have no knowledge about developing language whatsoever, I have learnt some few things from youtube and google(youtube was much helpful). I have the constants and vowels that I want to use in my language, but I am facing trouble with the letters.

The sound of "q". I don't understand how to pronounce any words that have "q" in it. According to IPA pulmonic consonant chart (with audio), it sounds like /ka/. So how should I pronounce a word like "qakt"

Are there any kind of rules for word building? Like a word should never end with certain letters, or shouldn't start with certain letters.

I want these languages to sound and feel as natural as possible. I am asking because some of my created words exist in one language or the other, and I want them to be as distinct as possible.

Moreover, I want sparish to have a word like "re(letter)". This letter helps them to in poetry, its intonation depends upon the letter that is placed inside the bracket, but it does not feel write when you pronounce it. Can anyone help me with it too?

How to Create a Language

How to Create a Made Up Word

Conlang Case Study

How to Make a Language

Artifexian (channel)

How to Create a Language


问:
Four vowels, with no /i/ sound. Is it possible?
My vowel phonemic inventory would be just /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ with no /i/ sound. Is this possible or not?</p>

答: A vowel system of /a e o u/ would certainly be unusual and unstable, and appears to be unattested, but lack of /i/ is certainly attested. Marshallese, for instance, has the thoroughly strange vowel inventory of /a ɜ ɘ ɨ/ (though [i] is present phonetically, as an allophone of /ɨ/). Kalam has a vowel system of /a e o/ (though [i] is again present phonetically, as an allophone of /j/). And, depending on which website you trust, Hixkaryana has either /a e ɨ o u/ or /æ e ɯ ɔ u/.</p>


问:
good naturalistic system for Germanic language?
I hope this isn't too redundant of a question...

I was hoping somebody could briefly summarize what general features languages descended from proto-Germanic tend to have?  I understand all the relevant terms, but I cannot work my way through grammar breakdowns because I have unmedicated ADHD, so it all blends together :(

I'm really stuck and I would REALLY appreciate if some kind person could lay out some key features of either Germanic languages in general or protogermanic specifically.. like a brief bullet point list?

答:
A long time ago, I was involved in a project named Folkspraak to create a Germanic conlang. It was entertaining, but it did not went very far at that attempt.

Some grammatical hallmarks of Germanic languages are:

A very simple tense system, present and past only, all other tenses are periphrastic and later acquisitions

A past participle as third principal part of the verb

Weak verbs ("regular" verbs) and strong verbs (looking irregular, but in fact they are regular, too, falling into several classes of strong verbs)

Related pairs of strong and weak verbs like fall/fell where the weak verb is a causative of the strong one one (to make fall). More examples for this relation from German trinken (strong verb, "to drink")/tränken (weak verb, "to water (animals)"); springen (strong verb, "to jump, to leap")/sprengen (weak verb, "to explode; to water (lawn); to gallop"). A notorious one is erschrecken (strong verb; "to get frightened, to startle)/erschrecken (weak verb; "to startle so., to frighten")—notorious because the infinitive and some other form coincide and there is some confusion and a tendency to use sich erschrecken (weak verb) instead of the original strong verb in Modern colloquial German.

Modal verbs that are special (preterite-present)

For nouns there is less common ground for the Germanic languages, while German retained four cases and three genders for nouns, those features are partially or completely lost in some other Germanic languages. You can do whatever you want (strive for simplicity or keep a more complicated system at your wish). Same for adjectives.


答:
you could, with conlangs you really can do anything. it doesn't need to make sense.

however you should probably ask yourself what your goal is with that.
if you're going for naturalism, /i/ is one of the most universal sounds crosslinguistically, a language without /i/ is practically unheard of... even languages that don't have an /i/ in the inventory will usually have it as an allophone of something.
of course, nothing is stopping you from making a naturalistic lang with no /i/ still... it would be a weird trait, but overall, hardly any real life language is 100% naturalistic, and they tend to have strange quirks. even if this one is one of a kind, if you are going for naturalism in other areas, it could probably be passable.

if you want to make an auxlang, then again, lack of /i/ would be strange given it is easy to pronounce, and seen in practically all languages.

if you want an artlang and you simply dont like the sound of /i/ then there's not much otherwise stopping you. the same if your language is for a non-human phonology.

Title: Four vowels, with no /i/ sound. Is it possible?

Body: My vowel phonemic inventory would be just /a/, /e/, /o/ and /u/ with no /i/ sound. Is this possible or not?</p>


问:
Are words for "machine" and the like in Tolkien present in Elvish/Westron?
Tolkien was very much known to be a bit of a Luddite - no fan of technology; Treebeard says in reference to Saruman

He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.

Which just about sums up his attitude towards technology. I'm curious if as a consequence words for "machine" and the like only show up in, say the Black Speech/Orcish, or if they are known to be rarely used, or derived from Khuzdul.

答:
Quenya has tanwë which means "device, craft, construction."  A search for "machine" on this site which may or may not be reputable gives a couple of other words in Quenya, Sindarin, and Noldorin.

Tolkien did once use the word gun in the Hobbit.  This question on sff explains that, and the top answer to it includes this quote:

The Common Speech, as the language of the Hobbits and their narratives, has inevitably been turned into modern English. In the process the difference between the varieties observable in the use of the Westron has been lessened. Some attempt has been made to represent these varieties by variations in the kind of English used ... (LOTR: The Return of the King, Appendix F, "II. On Translation")

I'd recommend reading the entire answer.

Anyway, it seems that, logically, there should be no words for "future" technologies in Middle earth; any translation of them by Tolkien can be explained as Tolkien trying to make it easier for us to understand.

The other point I want to bring up is that many of the words found in modern Quenya dictionaries are not original creations by Tolkien, but derivations from his notes.  I doubt he created these words intentionally to violate the technology level of the world.

In the Black Speech, we have only a very limited number of words, as seen here; in Dwarvish, as you pointed out in your own answer here, Tolkien has a very limited vocabulary, and only one word has been borrowed from Khuzdul into the Elvish languages.

I think the quote you have about Sauron being a robot is not literal--the orcs' tehnology was no more advanced than the men and the elves'.  I'm sure that "mind of metal and wheels" is meant to be some Entish idiom that references being hasty.