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1637 | What sounds would snake-people be able to pronouce?
The snake-people are humanoid creatures with snake-like traits:
Their mouth and nose are longer than in humans. The tongue can work as in humans, but sits only in the front half of the jaw and is forked. The rear half contains the opening of the larynx, which has no epiglottis. The nasal passage is roughly human in its structures, and their face has muscles as in humans
I have already worked out some of the sounds which would be impossible to pronounce, specifically the velar, uvular, and epiglottal sounds (their tongue can't reach velum and uvula, and they don't have an epiglottis). It also seems they may have issues with back vowels. However, I am unsure if there are other sounds which their anatomy could prevent
Well, snakes also don't have very flexible lips (or no lips at all?), so maybe their labial consonants would be restricted?
That's what I was about to ask: do they have lips? Can their tongue create a good closure anywhere in the mouth?
If they can independently control each half of their forked tongue(s) they have unique phonology accessible - double articulation in human languages is rare and only some consonant combinations are observed, but with such a tongue they can co-articulate almost all the possible consonants (most likely alveolars, but if they have lips, also labials+alveolars, dentals etc...). This alone might give you enough richness to compensate for the missing consonants (and quite uniquely sounding languages) - and if not, perhaps their languages will have to resort to tones to get enough syllables.
To summarize:
if they have flexible mouths and finely controlled tongues, the languages will prominently feature double articulation (of some consonants)
if not, their languages will be likely prominently tonal
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1570 | How would different species (e.g. human + hypothetical alien) create a language dictionary/ translation guide?
So I’m working on a species (called Xohamyan if your curious) in a sci-fi universe. They possess three tones (high, medium, and low) and a variety of ways to use them. As the written language is completely different from any language system I know of on earth (e.g. =, ~, ^, -, <, and >), designating different whistling patterns, how would the Xohamyan and humans create a translation guide? Mainly for intangible items like time and space. E.g. define tonight, tomorrow, yesterday, money, distance, etc., etc. I’m curious as to how they would define objects that are measured differently (time+space)
I'm not sure I understand the question. Is there some supernatural element that prevents humans from learning their writing system, or inventing their own writing system to represent the language? That's how lexicographers generally approach this problem.
No, it’s just like how we still don’t know what the Egyptian hieroglyphs mean, but we have the Egyptians speaking a completely unrecognizable language.
If Xohamyans are working with the humans on this project, surely they could just explain the system?
@RYANLANDELS ... Egyptian hieroglyphs have been mostly deciphered, and we know a lot about the language of the Ancient Egyptians, not to mention current Egyptians.
Regardless, I'd suggest this video wherein linguist Daniel Everett demonstrates how to learn an unknown language without prior knowledge.
They could, but it’s like having a group from Japan and a group who only speaks Navajo come together. Only the Navajo uses the English alphabet and the Japanese use their characters. I’m trying to figure out how the translation process would work. Mainly for concepts like yes, no, yesterday, and other intangible objects
So what you're asking is not "How would those species communicate and learn each other's languages?" but more specifically "What would a 'Xohamyan lanuage tutorial' in English look like?", am I getting that right?
Essentially, yes that’s the idea. I’m trying to figure out how to set up contact and sharing of language.
I think this question is too open ended - there are lots of ways this could be done. Can you [edit] this to add some criteria to narrow down the possible answers?
I agree with @curiousdannii that this currently seems too open ended
that said, @Richard's linked video seems to provide a demonstration of how far you can get in a very short amount of time. Essentially you would continue that method for as long as it takes. Doing so will also likely require substantial changes to how you analyse certain things, as can be seen in language documentation literature IRL, e.g. in Everett's own work on Pirahã
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1583 | For a whistling language, what other keys could be used to represent tones/tone actions
I already have used ~,<,>,’,=,-,^, and v for trills, rising tones, falling tones, glottal stops, chord tones, neutral tones, rising/falling tone, and falling/rising tone. This language is structured like music. Letters in exponents denote the lowest part on a chord, or the final tone in any other sequence. All moving tones are 3 tones except trills, which are 4 tones. Are there any other keys on a standard english keyboard that could be used and make sense for whistling? Please include how to get the character if option is used.
I don't know which character, but in case you need to map something unusual: Autohotkey is invaluable to me for mapping unusual characters. You write the keymapping script which shall run in the background in a text editor (I use Notepad++) after a straightforward fashion you can see on its website. e.g., ">!a::Send á" tells it when you press Right (>) Alt (!) and a, type an accented a.
Thanks for the input
If one of your main goals is to be easy to type, I'd recommend repurposing Latin letters. This is quite common in real-world languages, since a lot of international standards are now based on the English alphabet.
The Romanized Popular Alphabet, for example, repurposes miscellaneous letters for the tones of Hmong (aka Hmoob). B indicates a high tone, s a low tone, j a falling tone, v a rising tone, m or d a creaky tone, and g a breathy tone. There's no inherent connection between these letters and the tones they represent, but they're easy to type and won't cause issues on passports and official documents.
If you don't want to use letters, it would help if you explained your goals in more detail (like what other things you're trying to represent).
That’s a brilliant idea. Hadn’t thought of that.
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1618 | Why would a language created by humans lack both the /k/ and the /g/ consonants?
In my story, there is a species of aquatic humans often called merfolk (Homo maritimus, so they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens). They do not look the typical descriptions of merfolk (I want to go on a semi-realistic way instead of a psychedelic-like creature as Princess Ariel from a famous Disney animated film): they are MUCH more massive than anatomically modern humans (they are as large as adult belugas), they have a seal-like blubber, they have webbed digits (both toes and fingers), they do not typically have visible hair, and they can drown (it just takes a MUCH longer time than anatomically modern humans).
In the most spoken language used by merfolk, there are many strange features:
There are no /k/ and /g/ consonants (almost all real-life human languages have at least one of those phonemes) (/k/ is the sound corresponding to English "crash", this word is also sometimes used in French) (/g/ is the sound corresponding to English "green", this sound is also found in French, as in graisse, which means "fat").
There are twelve standard vowels: the /a/ phoneme (as in French arbre, which mean "tree"), the phoneme corresponding to the "a" in English "madness", the /e/ sound (as in French étatisme, which means "statism"), the /o/ sound (as in French agneau, which means "lamb"), the /u/ sound (as in French ouvrier, which means both "worker"), the /i/ sound (as in English "hippie", this word is also used in French), the /y/ sound (as in French univers, which naturally means "universe"), the sound corresponding to the French "o" in ordinateur (which means "computer"), the sound corresponding to the "e" in English "red", the sound corresponding to the Japanese "u", the sound corresponding to "eu" in French euphémisme (which naturally means "euphemism"), and the schwa (as in English "about", or as in French petit, which means "petite", "little", and "small"). All vowels can be long. There are also the same nasal vowels as in French. There are four semivowels: the /w/ phoneme, as in English "world" (or as in French oiseau, which means "bird"), the /j/ sound, as in English "yellow" (or as in French hyène, which means "hyena"), the sound corresponding to the "u" in French fruit (which naturally means "fruit"), and the sound corresponding to the Japanese "w". Finally, there are five diphthongs: the sound corresponding to the "y" in English "fly" (or as in French chandail, which means "shirt"), the sound corresponding to French réveil (which means "awaking"), the sound corresponding to English "toy", the sound corresponding to English "brownie" (this word is also used in French), and the sound corresponding to English "slow".
There are the following consonants: /s/ (as in English "snake"), /z/ (as in English "zebra"), /f/ (as in English "fool"), /v/ (as in English "virus"), /h/ (as in English "heroine"), the sound corresponding to the English "sh" (as in "shower"), the sound corresponding to the French "j" as in joie (which means "joy"), the voiceless English th sound (as in "thick"), the voiced English th sound (as in "father"), the sound corresponding to the Dutch "w", the /p/ sound (as in English "parrot"), the /b/ sound (as in English "big"), the /t/ sound (as in English "transgender"), the /d/ sound (as in English "danger"), the /l/ sound (as in English "lesbian"), the /n/ sound (as in English "nerd"), and the /m/ sound (as in English "mother").
There are four rhotic sounds, in order from the most common to the rarest: the guttural "r" (as in French rédemption, which naturally means "redemption"), the sound corresponding to the English "r", the voiced alveolar trill (the Russian "r"), and the sound corresponding to the Japanese "r".
Also, merfolk mostly communicate by singing, because they are as solitary as blue whales, but they still CAN speak.
So, I wonder why would a language created by mammals from the Homo genus lack both the /k/ and the /g/ consonants?
I think we assume that everyone here understands the International Phonetic Alphabet, so you can list phonemes without explaining that each one “corresponds” to … uh, a phoneme? Except that the varieties of ‹r› may need clarifying.
Because it Just Happens Not To.
Hawai'ian has free variation between [t] and [k]. The more standard pronunciation, reflected in spelling, is [k], but you can replace all the [k]s with [t]s and it doesn't make any difference.
[t], it turns out, is the "default" plosive. If you test a bunch of people who speak different languages by asking them to identify phones, [p] and [k] are confused for [t] more often than [t] is confused for [p] or [k]. That is in tension with a tendency towards contrast-maximization--[p] and [k] are more distinct from each other than either is from [t]--but that just means there are in fact reasons for going either way. Hawai'ian happens to have drifted more in the [k] direction... but you just happen to have a language that happens to have settled on using [t] instead of [k].
Your list of phonemes doesn't include any closures at the velum. You could simply say one of the anatomical differences from modern humans is that they can't produce a full closure there. Maybe there's a ridge that makes it so, if the back of the tongue is pressed against the velum, some air can still get through.
You don't really need to justify this, though, especially when your creatures look more like belugas than modern humans. If they're that physically different from modern humans, I imagine most readers will immediately accept that their vocal tract is a little bit different too.
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1917 | Is a language in which a person will not have rhotacism, neither lambdacism when speaking it realistic?
I imagined a language created by humans, not common humans (Homo sapiens), I mean a fictional species named tusked humans, commonly named orcs (their scientific name is Homo desertum) (which means human from deserts).
In the most common language created by orcs, the following phonemes are:
There are two nasal consonants: the /m/ sound (as in English mother) (as in French mère, which means mother) (as in Spanish madre, which also means mother), and the /n/ sound (as in English night) (as in French noir, which means black) (as in Spanish negro, which also means black);
There are six fricatives, four voiceless, and two voiced: the /ɸ/ sound (as in Maori whakapapa, which means genealogy), the /s/ sound (as in English snake) (as in French serpent, which means both snake and serpent) (as in Spanish sangre, which means blood), the /x/ sound (as in Spanish juego, which means game), the /h/ sound (as in English house), the /z/ sound (as in English zoology), (as in French zoologie, which naturally means zoology), and the /ɣ/ sound (as in Spanish amigo, which means friend);
There are six plosives (or stops, if you want), four voiceless, two voiced: the /p/ sound (as in English princess) (as in French père, which means father) (as in Spanish padre, which also means father), the /t/ sound (as in English turtle) (as in French tortue, which means both turtle and tortoise), the /k/ sound (as in English kilogram) (as in French kilogramme, which means kilogram) (as in Spanish casa, which means house), the /q/ sound (as in Somali qaab, which means shape), the /d/ sound (as in English dipteran) (as in French diptère, which means dipteran), and the /g/ sound (as in English green) (as in French gorille, which means gorilla);
There are five affricates, three voiceless, and two voiced: the /ps/ sound (as in French psychologie) (which naturally
means psychology), the /ts/ sound (as in French tsar, which means czar), the /dz/ sound, the /ks/ sound, and the /gz/ sound (respectively, as in French réflexe, which means reflex, and as in French xylophone, which naturally means xylophone);
There is only one subfricate (which means inverted affricates): the /sk/ sound (as in English scarlet) (as in French scarabée, which means scarab);
There are three semivowels: the /j/ sound (as in English yellow) (as in French hyène, which means hyena), the /w/ sound (as in English world) (as in French oiseau, which means bird) (as in Spanish abuela, which means grandmother), and the /ɥ/ sound (as in French fruit, which naturally means fruit);
There are ten standard vowels: the /a/ sound (as in French arbre, which means tree), the /æ/ sound (as in English cat), the /ə/ sound (as in French atelier, which means workshop), the /e/ sound (as in French étranger, which means stranger), the /ø/ sound (as in French bleu, which means blue), the /o/ sound (as in French automne, which means autumn), the /i/ sound (as in English hippie) (as in French illusion, which naturally means illusion), the /u/ sound (as in English cook) (as in French ouvrier, which means worker), the /y/ sound (as in French univers, which means universe), and the /ɯ/ sound (as in Japanese kuki, which means air);
There are zero nasal vowels;
There are seven diphthongs: the /aj/ sound (as in English knife) (as in Spanish aire, which means air) (as in French chandail, which means shirt), the /aw/ sound (as in English cow) (as in Spanish menopausia, which means menopause), the /ej/ sound (as in English day) (as in Spanish rey, which means king), the /ew/ sound (as in Spanish neutro, which means neutral), the /oj/ sound (as in Spanish hoy, which means today), the /ow/ sound (as in English show), and the /uj/ sound (as in French ratatouille, which naturally means ratatouille).
So, I wonder why would a language created by humans almost completely lack approximants (the only ones are semivowels).
The lack of /n/ stands out to me more than the lack of /r/ or /l/.
For brevity, please assume most readers here know basic IPA. It's a bit hard to find the content – the lists of phonemes, most of which are common as dirt – among the redundant lists of examples.
What actually is the question here? What do approximants in human languages have to do with the phonemic inventory of your conlang; why is the species of the hypothetical speakers of your conlang relevant (perhaps you really have a question for worldbuilding.SE?); and what do rhotacism and lambdacism have to do with any of that?
To answer the actual question asked, lacking /r/ and /l/ doesn't seem especially odd. It's very plausible for /l/ to turn into /w/, for example, or for /r/ to turn into /z/ or /h/.
But the rest of your inventory strikes me as very weird in its asymmetry. It's not just about what sounds are missing, but about what sounds you have.
To see this, I recommend putting your phonemes into a table, rather than listing them out like this; most conlangers already know what /d/ means (or can easily look it up if they don't), and giving English and French examples with translations is just clutter. It also doesn't offer much clarity into the pronunciation, because e.g. English and French /d/ are pronounced somewhat differently—is your intent to have it be alveolar, like in English, or dental, like in French?
Once you make a table, some things will stand out:
Having only a labial nasal is quite weird. Is there a reason for the lack of /n/? Similarly, the stops are strangely asymmetrical. Having /p/ and /d/, but no /b/ or /t/, is quite unusual. Having gaps in the inventory is fine, like how Arabic has /b/ but no /p/, and /q/ but no /ɢ/. But these gaps usually still have a pattern to them: notice how these gaps in Arabic happen right at the edges of the inventory, to the frontmost and backmost stops.
If you add /t/ and /n/ to your inventory, it'll be more symmetrical and come off as more naturalistic.
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2030 | What would a language created by anthropomorphic and humanoid dogs look like?
I imagined a language created by anthropomorphic and humanoid dogs.
The following phonemes are:
The simple vowels are: /a/ as in French adolescent (which naturally means adolescent), /ɶ/ as in Swedish öra (which means ear), /ə/ as in English about, /e/ as in Spanish estado (which naturally means state), /o/ as in Spanish ogro (which naturally means ogre), /i/ as in English easy, /y/ as in French univers (which naturally means universe), /ɯ/ as in Japanese kuki (which means air), and /u/ as in French ouvrier (which means worker).
The diphthongs are the same as in Spanish.
The semivowels are the same as in Mandarin Chinese.
The nasals are the same as in French.
The plosives/stops are: /p/ as in Spanish perro (which means dog), /t/ as in French tortue (which means turtle), /d/ as in French diptère (which naturally means dipteran), /g/ as in French gorille (which naturally means gorilla), and /q/ as in Kavalan qaqa (which means elder brother).
The fricatives are: /ɸ/ as in Japanese fugu, /v/ as in English virus, /θ/ as in English thick, /ð/ as in English father, /x/ as in Spanish jalapeño, /ʁ/ as in French restaurant (which naturally means restaurant), and /h/ as in English hippie.
The approximants are: the standard English r phoneme as in rice, the alveolar trill as in Spanish guerra (which means war), /l/ as in French loup (which means wolf).
The standard canine language has no affricatives, neither suffricates, or even sibilants. It has no pharyngeal/epiglottal consonants, neither retroflex ones.
If we are taking into account a mouth which looks like more a dog's one than a human's one, are the phonemes that were mentioned realistic?
Potential answers in https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/45328/what-phonemes-would-a-snouted-animal-e-g-dog-or-cat-be-able-to-pronounce and https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/86067/what-would-a-language-spoken-by-caninoids-sound-like/87032#87032
Do you own a dog? Listen to it and try to map the sounds a dog makes to some human sounds. I'd also think about phonemic tone.
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1594 | Why would a language lack a T-V distinction, but with a pronoun system that is the opposite of English?
In English, you is used both in the second-person singular and in the second-person plural (thou is now only used in some old proverbs and old expressions).
At the opposite, French (my native language) has a T-V distinction: tu is always used when addressing to only one person, but vous is often used when addressing to multiple people; however, sometimes, vous is used for only one person despite being always syntactically plural. When addressing to only one person, vous is reserved for strangers, or people older than oneself, or authority figures.
In my world (in the sense of a fictional universe I want to create), in the most spoken language used by therianthropes (their scientific name is Homo pilosus, so they are humans, just not Homo sapiens) (Homo pilosus means "hairy human"), Di is exclusively used in the second-person singular (even when addressing to a monarch, a president, a stranger, a deity, an elder, etc.) and Wos is exclusively used in the second-person plural (in their language, pronouns are always capitalised) (if you ask me, in the most spoken language used by therianthropes, the w is pronounced like the English w as in "world").
So, I wonder why would a language have a second-person pronoun system opposite to English.
What do you mean by "opposite to English"?
I was taught that "tu" was familiar and "vous" was formal. But in Québec, "vous" is rarely heard.
I would get rid of a lot of the parentheticals here. You don't need to tell us how is pronounced, or that pronouns are always capitalized, or what "pilosus" means, or even what you mean by "my world". About the only one that actually is important is that therianthropes are not Homo sapiens, which fact I use in my answer but edges it into the scope of se.worldbuilding.
I second the question by @OliverMason . To me, the opposite of the English system would be to use the singular pronoun to address a group. In Sweden this is be the natural state of affairs. We have one pronoun for addressing singular people and one to address multiple people, and use them accordingly. The king is usually addressed as "the King", as "Would the King like to see?". There used to be a system for polite plural, sometimes used by people trying to be overly formal, almost but not quite like English "thou". More recently, we used the 3rd person singular instead to address strangers.
I agree with most of No Name's answer, but I disagree with "this is a significant departure from human psychology".
Look at this map (via linguisticmaps.tumblr.com) showing which languages in the world have a T-V distinction—that is, a formality distinction in the second-person pronouns.
A T-V distinction is common in Europe, and more elaborate formality systems are more prominent in Asia, but large parts of the world (and in fact most of the world's languages) don't have such a distinction. In Swahili, for example, a single person is always wewe and a group of people is always ninyi (or nyinyi depending on dialect), whether you're showing respect or not. Instead, respect can be shown in other ways, such as adding a title like bwana (the equivalent of English "you" vs "you, sir"). Even in Europe, in Classical Latin the plural pronoun vōs (presumably the source of your Wos) was primarily used for groups of people; the T-V distinction was a later development in Romance.
So you don't need any justification at all for your language to work that way; it's how most languages on earth already work.
You don't really need a reason to not implement a T-V distinction. Just because your native language does, doesn't mean every language does.
But if you insist: In German, "du" (the T pronoun) is used to address God, suggesting that they (or rather, the people in charge of these things want them to) think of God as more a friend than a ruler. Perhaps your therianthropes have a populist leader who insists he's "just one of the guys", so pluralis majestatis (i.e., the royal we) never got off the ground. No royal we, no royal you; no royal you, no T-V distinction.
Of course, this is a significant departure from human psychology, as plural=power is an old, old cheat code, and we love power and flaunting it. But you've already stated that these people are Homo, but not Homo sapiens. Different species within a genus can have significant psychological differences, such as that between Pan troglodytes (the chimpanzee) and Pan paniscus (the bonobo). All of this, however, is worldbuilding - I'd suggest any follow-ups go there.
Also, I wouldn't call a language with a T and a V pronoun the "opposite" of English - that honor would go to a language with only a T pronoun, as opposed to the V pronoun of English
To complicate things further, the standard formal address in German is not the 2nd person plural (ihr) but the 3rd person plural (Sie). 2nd p. pl. ("ihrzen") can be used in some contexts (e.g., dialects in rural regions) as a semi-formal address, but this is non-standard.
the use of T-pronouns for God is a historical accident, although it has been subject to later rationalisations. Hebrew has no T-V distinction and so uses singular pronouns for God. Latin and Greek also did not generally make use of a V-pronoun as a respectful 2nd person and so the early translations used by Christians preserve the use of the singular from Hebrew. Later translations T-pronouns largely because that's what's always been done. If Greek or Latin had had a robust T-V distinction, chances are we would see God referred to with V-pronouns today
@Tristan That makes sense, but the fact remains that the church decided to rationalize rather than retranslate (admittedly, mostly due to the belief that the Bible was God's word and even merely translating it was borderline sacrilegious, but still)
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1667 | Two different symbols representinɡ a phoneme
How would I represent multiple transliterations for one phoneme in a chart?
I was thinking something like this:
⟨k~q⟩ /k/
It might work, though it doesn't make the most sense, and I would prefer to use the more common method [if there is one.]
Your method idea sounds good. You could also add a footnote to the effect of "An alternate glyph for is ...".
I would use a comma: ⟨k⟩, ⟨q⟩.
The tilde is a reasonable option, since it means "alternates with depending on context" (i.e. /k~q/ is a phoneme where [k] alternates with [q]), but I also associate it very strongly with phonology; when first seeing ⟨k~q⟩ /k/ I mentally transposed the brackets and thought the glyph ⟨k⟩ meant the phoneme /k~q/.
I was looking at some wikipedia pages on orthography a few minutes ago, and I seen it was represented like this: ⟨k/q⟩ So, that's an alternative too.
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1941 | Challenge: compress all of English into the smallest symbol set
Imagine mapping English to short codes, like “a”, “aa”, “abc”, “cde”, separated by spaces. How would you do it?
In my opinion, this is very mathematical: because combinations of any finite alphabet are orderable, they are countable in the set-theoretic sense (like integers). Whereas it is difficult to conceive of a good “ordering” on the elements of English, but it is a good paradigm to explore and learn something from.
You can proceed from concepts, or a compression algorithm on sentences, for example.
You could take a frequency list of strings from an English corpus and make a basic algorithm that compresses each string to the first letter - if the letter is already taken, next it seeks the first letter of each word, if possible, to form a partial or total acrostic - it can also choose to add a numerical suffix, like a1, a2, a39, etc. It can also take common letters from words, like ‘cabbage’ becomes cbg.
What algorithm would you design?
This is a simple, non-ideal example, in Algol. I don’t think it works perfectly. Work in progress.
It iterates over strings of letters from shortest to longest.
begin
file f := stand out to "map-english-to-short-codes";
char array alphabet[1:26];
alphabet := ('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'o', 'p', 'q', 'r', 's', 't', 'u', 'v', 'w', 'x', 'y', 'z');
int i := 1;
while i <= upb alphabet do
begin
printf(stand out, "Is %c a word? (1 for yes, 0 for no)", alphabet[i]);
int response;
scanf(stand in, "%d", response);
if response = 1 then
begin
printf(stand out, "What is its shortcut?");
char array shortcut[1:10];
scanf(stand in, "%s", shortcut);
printf(f, "%c %s\n", alphabet[i], shortcut);
end;
i := i + 1;
end;
end
I am picturing making a tree of strings, like
(a, an)
(an, and)
(and, andy)
(and, andrew)
(bat, batch)
(bat, batter)
(batter, battery)
What is interesting here, is that in one direction, the tree is not totally ordered, but starting from the longest strings, every string has only one “parent” string.
This could be a way to find an ordering on English words, and map them into all possible alphabet arrangements, a, aa, ab, abc, abcd, abdd, etc.
You have basically described a Huffman code.
The first step is to gather a corpus and use it to estimate the entropy: how many bits of information each signal conveys (where signals can be letters, syllables, words…your choice). The first reference I have on hand gives an entropy of 9.51 bits per syllable (page 58).
So you could count all the possible syllables, assign each one a number, and encode them that way. But this isn't quite ideal, since the distribution is very skewed: the syllable /ɪz/ is far more common than /strɪkt/. Huffman coding gives an algorithm to encode signals into variable-length binary strings in a way that's guaranteed to be optimal—that is, averaging around ten bits per syllable.
But in many cases we can do better still! Sometimes the context affects the probability of the next signal. If you're looking at a sequence of letters, then U is not especially frequent, but the odds of seeing it right after a Q are almost 100%. If you look at the conditional entropy, taking the context into account, that will generally be significantly lower: the same source reports 7.09 bits per syllable for English using the previous syllable as context (page 61).
To take advantage of this, you can have a bunch of different Huffman trees, and choose which one to use based on the context. The more context you use, the more efficient the encoding becomes, but also the more trees you need to keep on hand for decoding.
As for whether it's more efficient to go by letters, phonemes, syllables, words…and how much context to use, that's something that has to be determined empirically. It comes down to a tradeoff between the level of compression and the ease of decoding.
That’s brilliant
@KarlKnechtel You're right, I worded that badly. Updated the answer.
Looks much better, thanks. (Feel free to NLN.)
This is basically what the Hutter prize is about. So far it achieved rather impressive results, getting about 8× compression. With the current avalanche of LLMs, we can expect further improvements, e.g. see the ts_zip project (though computational requirements to train and quantize really large models are currently quite prohibitive).
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"حسين أبوشهد"
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2229 | What counts as a word in a conlang's lexicon?
I'd like to count how many words I have created so far and am wondering what I should consider a word. Is it standard practice to include, for example:
verbs/adjectives etc. derived from nouns (e.g. noun: lbala, verb: lbal, adj: lbalu)
open compound words where there is a single English word equivalent (e.g. darosha tambu - princess)
affixes
proper nouns (I assume words such as days and months would be counted, but what about place names or organisation names?)
Three of the four categories are clearly part of the lexicon, one can be discussed, In detail:
verbs/adjectives etc. derived from nouns (e.g. noun: lbala, verb: lbal, adj: lbalu) Yes Usual dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual ones) have them separate
open compound words where there is a single English word equivalent (e.g. darosha tambu - princess) Yes, they are for sure lexemes but they are typically not considered words but expressions made of multiple words.
affixes Optional. They are typically seen as part of the grammar and not the lexicon, and they are surely not words. however there are enough dictionaries in the world that have entries for affixes as well.
proper nouns (I assume words such as days and months would be counted, but what about place names or organisation names?) Yes, specially if they are different in form from the usual native or international recognised form. Spanish Estados Unidos is different enough from United States to be an entry in the lexicon. Even if you only add a very predictable affix to place names (e.g. Esperanto Berlino for German Berlin) important place names should be in the dictionary. Of course, Podunk or Kleinkleckersdorf aren't worth mentioning.
Of course, for the stated purpose of the question (How many words ...) only the first category is relevant, the second and the third aren't words at all (but still lexemes to appear in a practical dictionary), and the fourth is excluded for practical reasons (add a big thesaurus of geographical names to inflate your vocabulary? Naw).
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2005 | Polysemies in Proto-Languages: Ways of Formation & Construction?
I'm curious about (and also stuck at) the natural formation and ways of construction of polysemies in naturalistic conlangs / natural languages.
More specifically: I'm constructing the vocabularies of a proto-language. When it comes to words with only subtle differences, I failed to come up with a proper method.
To my knowledge words are formed by putting word roots together. The word roots should have all the basic meaning covered. But I frequently see words with same or similar basic meanings, like learn / study, middle / center, get (one of the senses) / become, etc. in English. As for now I can only think of two reasons, but I'm not sure:
These words comes from different sources. But for proto-languages this is simply impossible.
Multiple possible combinations of roots has similar meanings, and eventually the two become polysemies. But I suppose this only works for not-so-basic concepts.
My problems are:
a) How polysemies is formed in natural contexts?
b) How can a proto-language have polysemies? Or it shouldn't have any? (In this case how to express the "subtle" differences between words?)
EDIT Thank you, Draconis and Sir Cornflakes! I would clarify that by proto-language which might be the wrong term to use I actually (somewhat) mean the first language ever evolved in a group of people. So it's at the root of any language tree, thus can have no or little external sources of words.
What I care more is how can I construct polysemies (or just words with similar meanings) in a naturalistic conlang: by using a new word root, or some other construction?
Why's it impossible for words in proto-languages to come from different sources? We can point to words in Proto-Romance that came from Germanic, for example, and words in Proto-Germanic that came from Romance. Sometimes, like with Proto-Indo-European, we have no idea what those different sources were, since we don't have reliable reconstructions of any older stages. But it still had its own ancestors, even if we don't know what they looked like.
What do you mean by proto-language? In usual linguistic terminology, it is just the language at the root of a certain language tree, and it is not different from any present day language in its principal features.
So, let's start with some thoughts on the first language of humanoids.
Genetics
I think that there are some genetic mutations necessary to create speaking humanoids from non-speaking, more chimp-like creatures. I won't speculate much about the nature of that mutations (whether there are some "language genes" or if just an enlargement of the human brain is sufficient), but I assume, there are such mutations.
The first humanoid who was able to speak didn't
Just because there was no other humanoid to speak with. Even nowadays, children deprived of linguistic input don't develop a fluent language later in their lives.
When there are several humanoids who are able to speak they develop a language
When there several children (at least two in a sufficiently short time interval) that have the capability to speak, they will develop their own private language. These children will have the first language among humanoids. Since there is more than one speaking child, they already have different (highly overlapping, but not identical) idoelects, I assume one source of polysemy (different lects) is present from the beginning.
Language probably emerged at roughly the same time in different groups of humanoids
The language enabling genes spread between different groups of humanoids before the onset of language. They reach the critical concentration at different groups at about the same time. In each group, a different language evolves. Multilinguality is an issue from the very beginning of mankind.
Conclusion
I think there was already some polysemy in the earliest languages of mankind, and this is unavoidable because natural language only exists when more than one single individual speaks it. And when something new has to be named, different speakers come up with different words for that something, and only continued language usage streamlines it to one or two stable words.
I'm sorry that my question is misleading. (My English is not fluent, to be honest.) So is it your opinion that in a natualistic conlang, some words with similar meanings may have completely unrelated forms, and we can create them (almost) randomly?
Yes, and this is a very principled yes: The connection between sound and meaning in human language is to a very large part arbitrary. There are some tendencies, e.g., the Booba-Kiki effect, but those tendencies can be overridden and are overriden quite frequently.
Thank you for your explanation! That solved my concerns.
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1861 | From what could I derive a morpheme that explicitly marks a noun as being a phrase head?
I have a number of languages I want to combine into a macrofamily, and one thing they have in common is nouns that ending the the pattern *-(V)nVm, e.g. *-n-om in a PIE-esque language, -unum in an Akkadian-esque language, etc. This really looks more like two morphemes smooshed together, and since *-om is a core argument case marker in the PIE-esque language, *-(V)n- is presumably something else that isn't a case marker, but that can stack with a case marker. Like what?
One idea I thought was cool was to use this *-n- to indicate that the noun is a phrase head. Semitic languages have something similar with the "construct state", which marks the possessee, i.e. the head of a possessive phrase, e.g.
*gi iki
1.SG father
"I am a father"(?)
gi iki -n
1.SG father EA
"my father"
But my idea generalizes this to other noun phrase types, like a noun modified by an adjective or locative expression:
*es geneš -a
fish canal LOC
es -in geneš -a
fish EA canal LOC
"the fish in the canal"
*ilu mulkud
white pearl
ilu mulkud -un
white pearl EA
"a white pearl"
Or a noun modified by a relative clause:
giš g -ab ua -du
house 1.SG ERG see PST
"I saw the house"
giš -en g -ab ua -du
house EA 1.SG ERG see PST
"the house that I saw"
ukku -a eguš -ar deb -ek
saltwater LOC blue_crab PL sit 3.PL.S
"there are blue crabs in the water"
ukku -n -a eguš -ar deb -ek
saltwater EA LOC blue_crab PL sit 3.PL.S
"the water in which there are blue crabs"
I'm glossing the *-(V)n here as EA for état d’annexion "annexed state", a term used in grammars of the Shilha Berber language for a vaguely similar marking.
This begs the question of where the hell this EA morpheme evolved from, since not all of the macrofamily has it. The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization doesn't give an origin of the construct state. I considered maybe the construct state might be derived from a 3rd person possessed marking which might in turn be derived from a pronoun or a verbal person marker, but none of the languages that have this EA morpheme also have any pronouns/person markers with /n/ at all.
Also, assuming it was originally a separate word that cliticized onto the stem... why does it occur before the case ending *-om? I guess it's just so ancient it preceded even the development of case markers? Or did it metathesize into the stem, and if so, why, since *-om-Vn is not particularly hard to pronounce?
How about a topic marker, like Japanese wa? You could start with a deictic of some sort ("this thing right here"), which got semantically bleached into a general marker of new information ("this thing is important" > "this is the core of the clause"), and then got bleached even further into a head marker ("this is the core of the phrase").
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2017 | Can core argument markers swap roles? If so, how?
I have been trying for some time to figure out how to smoosh a bunch of my originally-unrelated languages into a larger family. They have a fair amount of noun and verb morphology that was suspiciously similar despite my not originally intending it. Here are some affixes I've reconstructed with their reflexes across 3 languages I'm trying to stitch together under this family: Proto-West-Celean (PWC), Mtsqrveli, and Apshur:
Proto-form
PWC reflex
Mtsqrveli reflex
Apshur reflex
Proto-meaning
*-VS
*-oS (agent)
-is (direct object), -os (nominalizer)?
-os (nominalizer)?
???
*-Vm
*-om (direct object)
m- (verb transitive/telicizer)?
/m/ in am (demonstrative)?
definite???
*-l
*-l-om (dative)
-(Vl)i (genitive)
-lda (benefactive)
dative
*-ʕ
*-eH (feminine agent)
-ɣe (benefactive)
-a (oblique object), -lda (benefactive), -[w,h,d,z]a (allative)
allative
*-r
*-(e,o)r (transitive agent)
-ar- (plural, earlier partitive)
-Vr (ergative, genitive), -[wile,hile,di,zi]r (ablative)
ablative
*-k
*-(ey)k- (genitive)
?
-kʰ (adjective ending)
genitive
*-j
*-ye- (verb stative aspect)
-(Vl)i (genitive), -ia (definite agent), -is (definite direct object), iq'- (copula root)
-di (pegative), -lda (benefactive), -ldi (instrumental), -da (superlative), -daj (superessive), -dir (superelative), -d- (verb subjunctive mood)
stative
*-β
*-ob-oS (comitative)
ba (and), -[e,o]b (verbalizer)
-wa (allative), -waj (adessive), -wiler (ablative), -Vw- (verb progressive marker)
adessive ("next to")
You can see many of the reflexes are similar enough to reconstruct a proto-meaning. What's throwing me off is the cases where the PWC agent markers *-oS and *-eH correspond to object markers in the other languages. How to explain this discrepancy?
One idea I had was that maybe the parent *-VS and *-ʕ morphemes simply had a meaning that could re-grammaticalize as either an agent or a patient - WLG 2019 implies the dative case (or, one step back, the genitive, ablative, or allative) could do this. But all of those already exist, and they all already map to different morphemes.
I also thought about how split-ergativity can arise in a nominative-accusative language, like in Hindi; verbs become rendered in the passive voice, ditching the semantic agent ("she(NOM) saw the man(ACC)" > "the man(NOM) was seen"), then the agent is reintroduced via an oblique case ( > "the man(NOM) was seen by her(INST)"), which gets reinterpreted as an active form (" > she(INST-ERG) saw the man(NOM)").
Apshur is purely erg/abs; PWC and Mtsqrveli are currently nom/acc, though I've been toying with making them split ergative instead (partially to explain how they could be sibling branches with a purely erg/abs language...). That + PWC seemingly inventing a new accusative case *-om without an equivalent in the other languages, suggests something like that ergativization process above might have happened, except... in reverse. But how does that process happen in reverse?
Straight up swapping the meaning of two case markers (let's call them like that for simplicity's sake) seems a pretty strange occurrence. There are however, theoretical ways this could happen:
You have some sort of "trojan horse" phenomenon with several words that have "inverted" arguments (cf. "I like X" vs. inverted Spanish "me gustas X" or German "Es gefällt mir"), and the inverted force somehow becomes generalized, causing what is essentially a reanalysis of these two cases.
Two of the main paradigm from two different cases became so similar as to generate confusion, and one of them is replaced with something else, which just happen to cause what looks like an inversion of the meanings of these affixes.
Though I know of no example offhand for affixes, I would be surprised if this second situation has not happened in some language somewhere! English borrowed they from Old Norse because the thirst person pronouns were getting almost all identical, she was also innovated for the same reason, but its sources are less clear (cross-linguistically, innovation or borrowing of pronouns is not a frequent phenomenon).
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1848 | What is a plausible lexical source for the remote past?
I've always had a huge focus on utter realism, so I require lexical sources for all of my morphology. In my most recent project, the Thakina ['tʰa.ki.na] family. The proto-language has four tenses: recent past (unmarked), present (assumed to be imperfective), future, and remote past. I have lexical sources for the present and future, but I don't have any ideas for the remote past.
(I did check the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, but I didn't find anything on the remote past.)
Edit: This is not a far-past thing, it's anything that didn't happen just now.
The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization divides the past tense in PAST, NEAR and PAST, so PAST alone gives some hints on the more remote past.
Honestly, I would probably explain it as the pre-proto having had a generic past tense, and then when the proto developed a near past from a lexical source, the generic past got reinterpreted in contrast as the remote past.
Alternatively: some Indo-European languages, like Attic Greek, had in common this weird quirk where verbs rendered in past tenses of various aspects - aorist, imperfect, perfect, whatever - were obligatorily prefixed with with a vowel, called the "augment". Compare e.g. λυομεν "we release", present vs. ε-λυομεν "we were releasing", imperfect past. The PIE augment is thought to have descended from what was earlier a separate word meaning "then; at that time" that got glommed onto the start of verbs.
This demonstrates the feasibility of deriving temporal deixis (tense) marking from spacial deixis markers like demonstratives, like the remote past from "that time" and the near past from "this time". This probably works better with a 3-way proximity distinction like Georgian has instead of English's 2-way: the remote past from "that (distal) time" and the near past from "that (medial) time".
The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization has YESTERDAY > PAST as one way to get at a generic past. You can take a marker of remote past like "Once upon a time" as a source for a remote past grammaticalization.
That's a good analogy, and you don't even need the "...upon a time" bit. In English, saying something like "I once fell off a cliff" by implication implies that this action was somewhat distant. You wouldn't normally say "I once went to an AC/DC concert" if that had happened last week.
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1891 | How to create irregular pronoun paradigms
My language has several cases. I have their affixes worked out for the nouns, as well as the proto-affixes, but what I want to know is, how can I get the pronouns to have different-looking cases? I know I can just simplify (e.g. the dative was *-lū, and 1sg *īs; deriving the 1sg dative from *īlu instead of the proper *īslū gives modern yel vs. 1sg ye [properly yes]), but I want something more like she vs. them, or I vs. me. How could I do that?
To get a disconnect that extreme between different cases of the same pronoun, there's really only one tool for the job: suppletion.
Suppletion is the process where Word A gets reanalyzed as an inflection of Word B. For example, in English, the adjective good has the comparative and superlative forms better and best, respectively - but we would regularly expect *gooder and *goodest if good worked like all other adjectives, so how did this disconnect happen? Was it some horrifically complicated sequence of sound changes? Nope! Better and best descend from a completely different Proto-Germanic root than good. They were originally the comparative and superlative forms of an entirely different word, *bataz, until - for some reason, lost to time - *bataz fell out of use and was regularly replaced by *gōdaz (from whence good), but the comparative/superlative forms of *bataz for some reason didn't get replaced by the comparative/superlative forms of *gōdaz. Thus, *gōdaz snuck into the co-opted the inflections of *bataz, making them now irregular inflections of *gōdaz instead. Suppletion!
Pronouns can be susceptible to this too. As you mention, "I" and "me" look very different, very possibly the end result of some suppletion, but that wasn't English's doing, or even Proto-Germanic's. This weird suppletion-looking "I/me" distinction can be reconstructed all the way back in Proto-Indo-European, and got inherited into all its daughter languages. Since the result of (I'm assuming) suppletion goes back as far as the comparative method is capable of taking us, it's hard to say which form was originally what other word - they've been linked together for as long as we have data. You could do the same, and make different cases of the same pronoun look totally different as far back as the proto-language, and not bother to explain it beyond "well who knows why the proto did that; if we could reconstruct further back than the proto, then that would be the new proto ¯\_(ツ)_/¯".
If you insist on evolving suppletive pronoun forms though - it's telling that IE languages all seem to derive their 3rd person pronouns from demonstratives - words for "this one" or "that one". If you already have a word for "he/she/it", and then derive another one from a demonstrative, you can smoosh them together to get case suppletion. We can see this in action in Georgian: the 3rd person singular pronoun, in 6/7 cases, is derived from m(a)- (ergative მან man, dative მას mas, instrumental მით mit, etc.) which looks suspiciously like the ergative case ending; one is maybe derived from the other. But the nominative case is ის is... which also happens to be the distal demonstrative pronoun ("that one").
Hungarian took the word mag "body" and derived a number of reflexive pronouns from it, e.g. magam "myself", magunk "ourselves", etc. But the most important one is maga "him/her/itself", which acquired a dual meaning as a formal, polite 2nd person, non-reflexive pronoun. Later, Hungarian derived another formal 2nd person pronoun, ön, from a reflexive affix. They're both just polite ways to say "you", but deapite both being derived from a reflexive form, they fundamentally come from completely different roots. This hasn't happened in Hungarian yet, but you could imagine a scenario where, if ön is preferentially used in certain cases but maga is preferentially used in other cases, then they could be smooshed together into a single, suppletive pronoun with e.g. nominative ön, but accusative magát.
Hungarian is an interesting example - the (personal) pronouns are not inflected by the (agglutinative) suffixes, but vice versa, the suffix is inflected by the pronoun.
E.g. the dative suffix is -nek (simplifying a bit):
ember -> ember-nek, "to the human"
but:
én (1st person singular pronoun, "I") -> nekem
te (2nd person singular pronoun, "you") -> neked
ő (3nd person singular pronoun,
"he/she/it") -> neki
mi (1nd person plural pronoun, "we") ->
nekünk
...
you get the picture (this is different from Finnish).
Then apply repeatedly regular phonetic changes and case merging and you end up with a completely different though still regular pronoun paradigm.
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2145 | Are there any free resources for creating a customized keyboard layout for a conlang?
Are there any free resources (third-party or otherwise) that would allow me to create a customized keyboard for my conlang?
While I have still not finished my conlang I am currently working on, I am trying to think ahead to when it does get finished.
My thinking is that while it would be pretty cool to be able to write using a conlang that uses a script specific to that conlang, it would probably also be pretty cool to use a keyboard to type using said script. (i.e. trying to show someone your conlang when all you have is a computer laying around)
I have found a conlang fandom which if I remember correctly, has a page dedicated to resources that can help with the conlang creation process, however I have not been able to find anything related to tools that aid in the creation of a customized keyboard layout.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to clarify OS and version. Currently I'm using the latest version of Chrome OS if that makes it less confusing.
The answer to this would depend on what version of what operating system you're using.
@JeffZeitlin I can make an edit quick to clarify that
You might find https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-os-dev/c/y4hFCQ6GryQ of interest.
Also https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/e5qi4i/creating_custom_keyboard_layout_or_customizing/?rdt=55890
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1807 | What features should I include in a presentation of a heavily inflected conlang that copies the format of 19th century grammars?
I'm toying with an idea for my next project:
Remember those old-fashioned grammars of heavily infected languages with reams of paradigms for declensions, conjugations, and agreement rules--not to mention irregular forms? Generally, these grammars had a teeny tiny half-page about syntax at the end. I am thinking of writing a grammar of a fictitious language called "Old High Middle Arcanian" with a similar format, though the syntax section is going to have to be longer than in the actual grammars I referred to.
Since this project is (ultimately) tongue-in-cheek, I wonder what other features I should add to my reference grammar to do justice to the old-fashioned format that I've chosen.
Modern texts for learning Lithuanian might be helpful. Of course it depends on the specific features of OHMA.
General Scheme
You've pretty much got it! I use the same general framework found in Wright's grammars (Germanic) and Allen & Greenough (Latin):
Introduction
Phonology (pronunciation, accentuation)
Morphology
Accidence (all the paradigms)
Syntax
Prosody
Miscellaneous (writing system, numerals, etc)
Texts
Two Way Lexicon
Topical Index
I'm not sure I'm familiar with the particular format you have in mind. When I think of a "grammar of heavily infected languages with reams of paradigms for declensions", I think of The Georgian Verb by Tamar Makharoblidze (pdf), which is 645(!) pages along of which at least 500 is just conjugation tables.
Some tidbits I notice about it:
One page on the orthography (p.10) that consists of nothing beyond just showing you the alphabet, and then assuming you can read it fluently for all the conjugation tables thereafter. (If you think that's that not that bad for Georgian with only 33 lettters to memorize, I remember an Amharic grammar doing this too that required you to have all of the Ge'ez abugida memorized before you could read any of the Amharic, because absolutely none of it was romanized.)
Half a page on word order (p.99) that basically just says "Georgian is usually SOV but it doesn't have to be"
Throw in some opinions out of the blue that sound extremely confident despite being completely unsubstantiated. From the above orthography page: Mkhedruli has 33 letters. The number of sound is equal to the number of letters: We read as we
write. There are 33 letters for 33 sounds. That's why Georgian alphabet is considered one of the best among 14.
3 pages of "additional items" at the end of the non-conjugation table pages that just say "oh by the way you could classify verbs according to this scheme instead", drop several tables out of nowhere without explaining what any of the cells correspond to, say nothing more about it, and then go straight into the bibliography
Use one and only one example for each new grammatical concept you introduce
Explain how a conjugation is formed without explaining what it is or how it's used. e.g. the book's treatment of so-called "dynamic passives" in 2.11.4, which... from the one example verb per subsection, it sounds like "dynamic passive" is what they're calling an obligatorily intransitive verb in the active voice, but I don't know for sure because they don't actually tell you what they mean by "dynamic passive", they just show 1 conjugation table for each of 3 ways to form the "dynamic passive", and none of those examples sound like a passive.
To give some fair evaluation of this kind of grammar: It is not meant to be used alone as the sole teaching material of a language. It is always assumed that you have additional teaching material, and the grammar gives a condensed overview on the grammatical forms.
Not having my Latin School grammar anymore I remember the following structure and features:
First comes a section on phonology, but it is not called that, but something like "Writing system and pronunciation".
Second part is a longish section on morphology (called Formenlehre in my German based school grammar, but that is essentially the same) Exposing the morphology and inflection paradigms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The fully irregular verbs (like ire, ferre, velle, nolle, malle, and fieri) are included here, and there is mention of defective paradigms and deponent verbs. The long list of verbs with their principal parts is relegated to an appendix in the end of the grammar.
Third comes a part on the usage and translation of the different forms, differentiating the cases in many subtypes like objective and subjective and partitive genitive, and so on.
Fourth comes a part on some famous Latin constructions, like accusative with infinitive, double accusative, absolute ablative, and joined participle.
Fifth is a part on conjunctions and what mode of the verb they govern. It was rather lengthy, especially on conjunctions like ut, cum and quod.
There is also a chapter on relative clauses.
Somewhere was a list of prepositions with the cases they govern, but I don't remember its placement. Also a list of basic parts of speech was somewhere.
That's what I remember right now.
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114 | How much of Slovio is based on Esperanto?
According to Wikipedia,
Slovio (from the Slavic word "slovo") is a constructed language begun in 1999 by Mark Hučko. Hučko claims that the language should be relatively easy for non-Slavs to learn as well, as an alternative to languages such as Esperanto which are based more on Latin...
[...]
Slovio has a relatively simple grammar based on a mix of Esperanto grammar with Slavic elements. Just like in natural Slavic languages, new words can be formed with a variety of suffixes and prefixes.
I'm not familiar with Slovio or Esperanto at all. How much is Slovio based on Esperanto? Does Slovio just borrow some parts of Esperanto's grammar, or does it go to a further extent than that?
In terms of the vocabulary, not much is based on Esperanto.
From the Slovio website:
Esperanto? While Esperanto is a simple language its main problem is the fact that it is made up of too many unrelated languages and thus, if you speak Esperanto, no-one will understand you only other Esperantists. On the other hand Slovio, since it is made up of only closely related Slavic languages, can be put to an immediate use. Using Slovio, you will be understood by some 400 million people, most of whom have never ever heard of Slovio, but who will understand you.
So, it looks like the only inspiration Slovio has taken from Esperanto is the grammar.
IMHO, this answer contains even less information than the the question.
@lXBlackWolfXl - I didn't look into verifying that part of the claim :)
Slovio isn't intended to be an IAL right? The fact that Esperanto is derived from many languages, is why it is suitable as an IAL. Otherwise It's just another Interslavic. That's what Esperanto was originally intended to be, but Zamenhof realized that it could be beneficial to the rest of the world, so he reworked to it into a suitable IAL.
I doubt that Zamenhof considered the use of multiple vocab-sources a virtue in itself; he might have used only one stock if the Procrustean word-structure did not create homonyms.
See Joop Eggen's comment below. Esperanto was intended to be as easy to learn as possible for the majority of people, so yes he intentionally derived words from multiple languages. That was the whole point. The grammar is easier, so you can get that out of the way & start learning the vocabulary sooner, which will likely already be somewhat familiar to you. Since you can start learning vocab sooner, you'll have more time to learn what isn't familiar to you.
Esperanto uses loanwords like "hospital", but you also have "native" words like "malsanulejo" meaning "unhealthy people place" (mal-san-ul-ejo). That same kind of logic can be used to create a large amount of words. To form the word for the offspring of an animal, you simply add -ido to the root word. Bovo is cow, so bovido is calf. For the meat of an animal you add 'aĵo' , so bovidaĵo is beef. In this case it's better than English. English uses the word chicken & turkey for the animal & the meat. The Esperanto equivalent for chicken is 'koko' vs 'kokaĵo'. Turkey is meleagro vs meleagraĵo.
The greatest advantages of Esperanto are the regularity and parsimony of its grammar and the productivity of its affixes, not the sources of its roots. I know Romance vocabulary quite well and know a bit about the other source languages, but have no idea where –eco, –ego, –ema, –iĝi come from, and a learner has no reason to care. (And recognizing the origin of mal– is likely a disadvantage to the learner.) What is it to a Hungarian student that Esperanto drew on multiple languages unrelated to Hungarian? Did Zamenhof ever mention trying to keep a balance among sources?
Esperanto took its vocabulary from different European language families, especially Romance and Germanic languages. Beside that it ensured the word choice did not lead to ambiguities like homonyms and plural meanings. (Slovio will not need this.)
Also there is a strong word creation mechanism in Esperanto. You will need to know a fraction of the word stems in comparison to other languages, and be able to actively create new words, that you know are correct. A child, a mentally handicapped, an aged person will all be able to be fluent in the language.
Slovio unites the Slavic languages, with appropriate simplifications. It has the advantage to be "immediately" readable by users of the Slavic family. One may compare this language with Interlingua for Romance languages. But Slavic languages seem to be even more similar.
Concrete Esperanto I consider a more powerful language, but with its claim on more heterogeneous language origins, it has coincidental choices (Tuesday = mardo, month = monato), and a hard phonetical spelling (peace = paco [pátsoh]).
Also Esperanto has its own accented letters for phoneticism: ĉĝĥĵŝŭ (she = ŝi).
And Slovio is a more acceptable, familiar language, though non-Slavic loan words risk getting purged. Though not to the degree as in Interlingua.
Myself I am Esperanto user, and merely have read a bit on Slovio. It seems there are some small reforms (?) on Slovio, say on verbs. But that is less important (than with Esperanto). As Slavic languages can have their difficult parts, which in Slovio are simplified, I would be interested how Slovio would compare to Basic English, an English without unneeded, superfluous terms, and inflections.
The Question
Slovio is based on the ideas of Esperanto. The alphabet for instance, including the x-system. Suffixes, prefixes. It is also simplified.
Remains the "ideology:"
There is the (contestable) fact that when one first learns Esperanto and then French, one learns French faster, than immediately learning French.
I see this also for Slovio: it might make learning faster and more pleasurable, so when after that learning a more complicated Slavic language, one progresses better. Not sure whether faster.
A Serbian and a Bulgarian will be able to communicate, even without Slovio. Slovio as common lingua franca? Who knows. With respect to Russian it might have a harder political stand.
It might be a more homely language.
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1928 | Term for common derivational suffixes which are also standalone words
I'm here trying to learn a better term for the type of suffix I seem to have made. I'm writing a grammar, so I'd like the term to seem right to folks like you.
Compounds?
Like compound word modifiers--e.g., fire modifies the head man for the new compound word fireman: a sort of man--for fires!--my set of suffixes are real words that make new sorts of words. However the odd thing is that these 8 words do this way more often than any other words. Other words can also compound; these 8 are the go-to.
Derivational suffixes?
Being a small group very commonly used for making new words, they're like derivational suffixes (-er, -ish, and some of their friends). However, I think that by definition derivational suffixes are not also standalone words with the same meanings.
Noun classes?
The 8 suffixes form two groups of contrasting concepts. Well, okay, common word-endings that distinguish related words by repeating certain contrasts. Sounds like gender. Could they be noun classes like gender? I don't think so: they don't prompt agreement from other words (la amiga mexicana); and they're common across all parts of speech but technically most words lack them.
Well, I don't know what to call them. What do you want to call them?
I'm happy to show the 8 suffixes if it helps. I wanted first to avoid an intimidating-length for the post. Thank you for your time.
You might be interested in looking at how verb conjugation works in Japanese. Most changes are made by a sound shift to create a stem + attaching a suffix to that stem, but most such suffixes are also standalone words, and the others often seem like they should have been able to work that way, or did at some point in the language's history.
Ok, thanks for the tip!
If I were you, I would call them compounds because your frequently compounded morphemes can stand alone and possess lexical meaning.
What is more, it is doubtful that your frequently compounded morphemes have the same semantic relationships with the morphemes that they are compounded with across the lexicon.
Consider "-man," in the sense of 'person':
A "fireman" is a man who helps douse structural or wild fires.
A "milkman" is a man who brings the milk.
A "businessman" is a man who conducts business for a private company.
A "policeman" is a man who works as a law-enforcement officer for a police force.
Contrast this with "-er" as in "doer." The semantic relationships between "-er" and the verbs that it converts into nouns is far more uniform than with the compounded "-man."
A seeker is one who seeks.
A sweeper is one who, or that which, sweeps.
A burner is that which burns.
A cleaner is that which cleans.
A miner is one who mines.
I don't think that the fact that some morphemes are compounded more often than others has a bearing on what you should call them.
Ok, thanks for the answer! So I could just call them the Frequent Compounds or something in the grammar. Your surmise, that they (like -man) don't have a uniform semantic relationship with their heads, is correct.
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1979 | Are there any free resources for learning conlang creation?
Where are some free resources available online for learning how to create conlangs? I'm very new to this, however I can speak one conlang (toki pona).
I checked a few other questions this was marked as a duplicate of but they are not what I need. I'm looking for resources for learning to make conlangs (not conlang creation tools, like here) that are accessible online for free (rather than paid books like I found in the answers here).
Hi Jme, and welcome to the site! Can you explain how the answers to those questions aren't what you need? What in specific are you looking for that they don't provide?
@Draconis Sure! The first one was very close, but all the answers were books you had to pay for, whereas I'm looking for something accessible for free online. The second one does contain websites, but they're tools for conlang creation rather than tutorials on how to create one.
Makes sense! If you edit that into the question, I'll vote to reopen it.
@Draconis Done! Look good to you?
Looks good to me!
I have been working a conlang for a few years now, and I initially found some free lists of words here and there, bought a book or two, but never really found them that deep.
Recently I encountered Lojban. If I were to start this process over learning from scratch, I would study Lojban. They tell you in there the history of how it was made, the problems they tried to solve, etc.. It's a pretty good glimpse into how to create a conlang. Here is a Lojban timeline.
I created a repo with some word/sentence lists to be able to know some things to cover at the basics. Wikipedia has a bunch of basic word lists, and there are some other spreadsheets floating around on the web somewhere.
But other than that, just wrapping your mind around the pieces of creating a conlang, there are several good books on this which I'm sure you've seen recommended (like the Language Construction Kit you linked to). Creating a sound system, maybe a writing system, creating a lexicon, and then creating the grammar (the real hard part, which there's not much out there for learning materials).
Toki Pona would also be another good conlang to study, for a minimalist perspective. Here is a word and grammer cheat sheet.
Hey! It seems like the 10 word lists are broken? I checked 10 word list for adjectives and nouns and it gave me a 0-byte csv file... Other than that, are there any word lists for minimialist languages (like toki pona, as you mentioned)?
Hey, op, I should probably remove the 10 word list, the main lists are the larger ones, thanks for pointing out. There is a toki pona word list, as there are only ~120 words in it. Another minimal lang being actively created is Bleep (spreadsheet here).
Ooh! I'm already (mostly) fluent in toki pona, but I'll check out bleep! That seems interesting. Thanks :)
This isn't properly a conlang resource, but it's a language learning resource which is pretty useful, at least if your conlang is set in the modern world and not a fantasy one: Gabriel Wyner's 625 Word List of cross-linguistically common non-function words you may want to create to jumpstart your vocabulary generation and have something to start messing about with when you start the syntax.
Besides that, Zompist's Language Construction Kit, though it is not as detailed as the paid, print version you mention, still works fine as guide to get someone started and is still free. There was a time when it was just about everything that was available on the Web.
As for more modern materials, there are Artifexian's and David Peterson's Youtube channels have a lot of tutorials on how to organise your conlanging work. In fact, Peterson once gave a talk at Google where he sketched out the beginnings of a conlang in an hour, which you may try to emulate for an attempt 1.
Ah! I wish I could accept two answers, this is great! Thank you!
The conlang-guiding spreadsheets @Ylahris made, Der Spracherfinder, seeks to take a new person through stages and resources recommended by some of the other guides. It carries your work on one stage to the next stage.
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2024 | An all-consonant language? (Part One)
I'd like to make a language that only has consonants. Since I kind of feel like the letter "h" is a consonant, I'd prefer to omit it. The language would include b, ch, d, f, g(hard), j, k, l, m, n, ng, p, r, s, t, th(voiced and unvoiced), v, and z. I think maybe humans wouldn't be able to speak it without also pronouncing h and/or vowels.
My question is, what (if any) problems in pronunciation would arise if humans tried to speak a language like this?
The IPA draws a sharp distinction between "vowels" and "consonants", but really, there's nothing you can measure in a spectrogram to decide if something is a vowel or not. [w] and [u] are basically identical, in terms of objective acoustics. The real difference is phonological.
In other words, the true difference between a vowel and a consonant is how it's used in a language. "Vowels" act as the core of a syllable, while "consonants" attach to either side. In my variety of English, /m/, /n/, /l/, and /r/ can be used as syllable cores (the second syllables of "rhythm", "button", "bottle", and "dollar"), which in some sense makes them "vowels". (The most common term for this is "syllabic consonants".) For me, "mirror" actually has /r/ acting as both a consonant and a vowel in the same syllable!
So if you want to make a language that doesn't use any of the letters the IPA deems to be vowels, that's totally doable. If you don't want to have any syllable cores, that gets harder. You need to decide how you're sticking your phonemes together in order to avoid having anything that could be considered a syllable or its core.
To finish with a conlang example, I once made a very limited conlang for a tabletop game, in which a character was named Gzhzaqrh: /gʒ̩.ˈzɑ.qʁ̩/. In this name, the zh and rh act as syllable cores, even though they're normally considered consonants. The result tends to sound strange and unusual to humans, which is probably what you're going for. (In the game, it was spoken by orcs.) But the players didn't have much difficulty pronouncing the name, once they got used to it (though as English-speakers they usually substituted velars for uvulars).
There is no problem in an all-consonant language as natural languages like Nuxalk aka Bella Coola demonstrate. The example language actually has vowels, but it is famous for its long vowelfree consonant sequences and even full sentences without vowels.
Your choice of consonants including a lot of voiceless fricatives may be problematic because the different fricatives can easily be mistaken for each other in a noisy environment, when transmitted over a traditional phone line, or when the listener is hearing impaired. But again, Nuxalk also goes with a range of voiceless fricatives, so this is probably also not a problem.
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2033 | What are the characteristics of "Non-Linear Language"?
What characteristics would describe a "Non-Linear Language"?
For instance would it use Logographs (Chinese, Egyptian, etc.)?
Or could it use IPA sound symbols?
What would make the language Non-Linear in a speech context (not written)?
(update as of 2024-09-28)
Thank you all for your feed back. I don't know the appropriate way to freeze this thread... but I will not be responding to any further comments...
What do you mean by 'non-linear language'?
In written form it would appear as a "Hierarchical tree" -example: link or as a "mind map" -example: link ... where a thought starts but branches out into elaboration on each modifying phrase like a very large parenthesis ... The German language does this to some degree ... Also Egyptian Hieroglyphs spread out into 2 dimensional space ...
I'm not sure how one would be able to do this verbally ...
@bobengineer Well, in a certain sense, language does work like that! Words form noun and verb phrases together, those make sentences, and the sentences might themselves be subordinate to other phrases. This article might be an introduction to the concept.
Cecilia, Thanks for your thoughts.
@Cecilia This is only a hypothesised internal structure, though; it is not actually present in the language itself.
This is not a discussion forum but a question and answer site. You can mark one answer as accepted, this is kind of a closing signal of your side, but this does not prevent new answers from coming in. It is not necessary that you watch your question forever, but it it will be here forever (or at least as long as this site exists).
A purely spoken language could not be non-linear, as sounds must be expressed one after another. The only real exception to this that I can think of would be a language that must be spoken by multiple speakers simultaneously.
Written languages have significantly more options though, as they aren't restricted by time. The author will have to write in a certain order, but nothing has to guarantee that the reader reads in that same order. I would recommend reading this essay on nonlinear languages and looking at UNLWS, the Unker Non-Linear Writing System, which I think is an example of a nonlinear language done well.
This work is worth a "notable mention" because it goes some steps beyond conventional writing systems. However, computer scientists have devised effective methods to transform complex graphs into linear notation as well.
OP, I think that your question does something like the opposite of begging the question: it isn't clear what you yourself mean by what you're asking, so a cogent answer has to beg the question by characterising the properties of what it chooses to consider "non-linear".
As nyxbird kindly noted in their answer, I've thought a fair amount and what I would consider a non-linear (fully 2-dimensional) language, both in the abstract and in practice, both of which they linked to. You can read my opinions about my interests there. I would strongly suggest looking at the section of the UNLWS document which links to my own inspirations, and to the many other non-linear languages that came both before and after UNLWS. They all take somewhat different approaches, and what wit made is only one.
I believe that after 20 years, my views on this subject are by now somewhat famous in the conlanging community, to the point that I may well have effectively defined this concept for most conlangers. UNLWS is considered by some to be the prototypical example of a non-linear language.
But nobody is a unilateral authority on definitions, me included. The kind of non-linearity that interests me may not be what interests you. I always encourage people to make a fresh consideration and invention of the fundamentals.
I suggest that you make a new question where you first more clearly say what you mean by a "non-linear language". Then people could make a coherent answer about the properties of the thing you point to. Without knowing what you want described, it's not really possible to give an answer that's about what you mean by it.
Thank you for your feed back.
I agree with the answer by Sir Cornflakes; to phrase it in a different way: there is plenty of information that is non-linear. Thought, concepts, relationships, images, etc. But language is a code to transmit this information between people. I have an image that I want to describe to you, but I need to linearise my description, because in languages you have a temporal/sequential element in the transmission. Even German and hieroglyphs do that. There is a fixed sequential ordering when you read hieroglyphs (or Hangul for that matter, which is also two-dimensional).
If you want to look at an image, you cannot look at it all at once, so you need to select a sequence in which you visit the various areas of it. That is then linear again. And depending on the order, the image might have a different meaning to you, just like word order in many languages.
So, language being a means of communication, there has to be a linearity to it.
Oliver, Thanks.
... "even German"? Why are we imagining German to be some special language?
German is special in Oliver Mason's post because bobengineer cited it for discussion in comments under the question.
@AzorAhai-him- -- exactly! And I'm a native German speaker, so I know it's not special :)
@Vir Oh okay skimmed right past it
Maybe German is not the right example...
I'd like to argue that there is no such thing as a non-linear language. Every language needs to convey some some information from the speaker to the listener (or signer to the viewer, or using another channel at all), and that information can by represented as a stream of bits that is linear in time. I have heard of scifi writers talking about "non-linear languages" used by some non-human beings but no one of them provides samples or a tentative description of those non-linear languages.
P.S. My notion of "linear" is not identical to the term "linear language" in Theoretical Computer Science, those "linear languages" are a proper subset of the context-free languages (and from linguistics we know that natural languages are sometimes not context-free). In my answer I just mean "being able to be represented by a linear string of symbols".
Sir Cornflakes, Thanks.
This is mostly true for spoken languages, but what about signed languages, that can express multiple morphemes at once with none of them clearly coming "before" or "after" each other?
Well, think of them in an analogy of a musical partitur, and the different instruments are the hands, the facial expression and the other body parts relevant for the sign language, and everything stacked vertically above each other is one letter of a sufficiently large alphabet. A little bit of abstraction also helps, not every movement in going from one sign to another is really relevant for the meaning conveyed.
Your answer is in my view true about temporally expressed languages, but not (in principle) about written ones.
Sure, you can linearize anything. A database of books can be alphabetized or sorted by publication date or author, but that doesn't mean it's naturally linear, just that you've expressed it in a linear form.
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2147 | Would cuiviëquendion be the proper translation of the awakening of the Elves?
Would cuiviëquendion be the proper translation of the awakening of the Elves ? As far as I understand cuivië means awakening and quendion is the genetive adjective associated to Quendi which literally means "the elves". As far as I see, cuiviëquendion is not used in Cuivienyarna nor anywhere else in Tolkien's legendarium.
I would make it two words, cuivie quendion, or else put the head noun last, quendacuivie. Compare lasselanta (attested in the Appendices), ‘leaf-fall’, which could otherwise be something like lanta lassion.
@AntonSherwood Quendacuivie looks suspicious. I think it would be just Quendecuivie (cf. Quendelie).
They work better as separate words: cuivie quendion. I've tried to find a compound of the form noun + noun-gen, so far there is only Nan-tasarion "Vale of Willows".
One big reason to avoid it: It would be awkward to decline cuiviequendion. For example, "the account of the awakening of the Elves" would have to be quenta cuivieo quendion, much unlikely quenta cuiviequendiono - genitive ending upon genitive ending.
If you need a compound word, I think quendecuivie will do.
BTW, Quendion isn't technically adjective, it's the genitive plural case of quende. The adjective would be quenderinwa, which is actually declined like adjectives.
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981 | What decides where is the break between syllables?
I'm getting started with creating a language and I run into trouble when I started using rules I devised for protolanguage (e.g. only open syllables).
However I run into trouble when I tried to apply it to string [epse] which I'd syllabilized as [ep.se] rather than [e.pse]. I'm assuming I did something wrong with sonority hierarchy but I failed to find resources about what exactly.
EDIT: I would prefer generic rules for syllabication but for the Y problem - the rules I set so far is (C)CV syllable where:
If there are two consonants exactly one of them is a fricative (s, x or ʂ)
Fricative must follow plosives, nasals and trills but must precede lateral approximants (l)
It would help if you could give us the details of your rules, and why you think they are giving you a bad result.
@curiousdannii I edited the question.
I think as a general rule, a syllable comprises some combination of the following kinds of one or more of the sound types of your language: vowel, liquid, consonant.
You've decided on (C)CV. And if there are two C then one must be a sibilant and the sibilant must follow a stop. So you can have syllables like sa, ta, tsa but apparently not sta. You might then have a words like tasa & satsa & tsatsa.
In English, we'd probably break that into SAT-SA. Your language will likely differ, because everyone knows that a syllable can't end with a consonant! So, they'd much more likely break the word thus: SA-TSA!
I would argue that what little you've described of your language and its rules speaks in favour of E-PSE rather than EP-SE. The only thing you "did wrong" was to apply the English rule rather than the rules that apply to your invented language! The second thing you did wrong was to second guess yourself based on the English rule!
You are the conlang designer, and you are in power to decide that epse is syllabified as e.pse by design of the language. This is not as unnatural as it might look at first sight for a native speaker of English, in Classical Greek, the letter Ψ (psi) can occur word-initially and is always considered a unit for syllabification.
In Greek prosody, psi is always treated as two consonants and makes the preceding syllable heavy, even when it occurs word-initially
So the rules of syllabification are 'arbitrary and my division into ep.se was influenced by my language/accent rather than something inherited in this division?
At least, the rules of syllabification allow for some leeway that a language designer can use, I won't go so far to say that they are completely arbitrary.
Syllables are inherent to the spoken language and a native of that language will take a certain grouping of letters and turn it into a set of syllables according to that language’s rules.
In German, hyphenation generally follows syllables boundaries. About a decade ago, an article in a newspaper talked about the Chinese city of Shenyang but hyphenated it Sheny-ang. From a German point of view that could have been an acceptable syllable grouping if y is considered a vowel as ya (or ia) is not an acceptable diphthong, but Shen-yang (y as a half-vowel) would also have worked. For Chinese, only Shen-yang is possible because of the very restricted set of syllables. In Japanese, Shen-yan(g) or She-nyan(g) (strictly speaking, Japanese doesn’t have an ng sound unless k or g follow) would be possible with a y in the spelling; She-ni-an(g) or Shen-i-an(g) would strictly require an i in there.
As you maybe see, what will be seen depends on the language, and only what is possible will be produced. Another example is Japanese again, which only has open syllables or those ending in n. So when a Japanese tries to pronounce startling, that tends to end up somewhere near sutartolingu, a five-syllable (seven-mora) word. Thus, a speaker of your conlang will not even consider ep-se a possibility but will default to e-pse, if that is all the language does.
For the record, some languages with loose syllable rules still tend to end up with ambiguity. For example, the Finnish place Yli-Ii will have to have a hyphen to signify the short-long sequence. The German word Bakterien has an unusual syllable boundary between i and e (Bak-te-ri-en) while ie usually just signifies a long /i/ sound. Those things will need to be learnt at school, there is no way to predict.
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994 | How do lists of three or more items work in Klingon?
Concerning compound subjects and such, I'm not exactly sure how lists of nouns work exactly, especially with three or more items. How would "bears and metal drums" be distinguished from "bears, metal, and drums"? Wouldn't both be mIl'oDmey baS 'Inmey je?
The Klingon Dictionary says that je follows two or more nouns, so I wouldn't think you use multiple, and I've only seen commas used in dependent clauses. Is there a way to clarify your meaning?
You might want to visit the Klingon Language Institute, who maintain much material on the tlhIngan-Hol. Among their resources, they maintain a mailing list where one may discuss anything in tlhIngan-Hol, or tlhIngan-Hol in English.
@curiousdannii Klingon should be formatted as code as it uses both the uppercase I and the lowercase l, which are indistinguishable in sans serif fonts.
@Ullallulloo You should post this as a bug report in [Meta] so that we can request a different font.
I think it depends on the context. If it is "I can see bears and metal drums", then you would have to repeat the subject and verb, effectively saying "I can see bears and I can see metal drums".
As per The Klingon Dictionary (6.2, Complex Sentences):
When the subject of both the joined sentences is the same, the English translation may be reduced to a less choppy form, but Klingon does not allow this shortening.
If you are just talking about lists of items without having a complex sentence, then I would think this sentence from 5.3 (Conjunctions) applies (even though it is about the post-verbal meaning of je):
As in English, the meaning of such sentences is ambiguous: [..] The exact meaning is determined by context.
If there are bears and metal drums, then presumably you're not talking about bears, metal, and drums. An oft-quoted example where there is an ambiguity in English is I am dedicating this work to my parents, the Queen of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Without a comma before and, the list could be mistaken for an apposition. Obviously, the context makes this interpretation highly unlikely!
Just remember that language is rarely unambiguous and independent of context; any attempts to avoid this make it very unwieldy. Which is why legal language is typically so hard to read.
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995 | How to translate the word "lost"/"loss" into Klingon?
Say for instance I want to say something like, "I'm looking for bears and the lost sheep." I would think that would be to use the genitive case, making something like:
mIl'oDmey chIlpu'ghach DI'raqmey je vInejtaH
bear-<pl> lose-<perf>-<nom> sheep-<pl> too <I-them>-look for-<continuous>
But that looks kind of odd, and I've heard that using the nominalizer suffix "-ghach" is often discouraged, and should replaced by using sentences as objects if possible. Would
mIl'oDmey DI'raqmey 'e' chIlpu' je vInejtaH
bear-<pl> sheep-<pl> that lose-<perf> and <I-them>-look for-<continuous>
work and make more sense?
Also, how would "I can bear the loss of sheep." be translated? My first guess would be to just reverse the noun-noun-construction so that "DI'raqmey" is the genitive noun:
DI'raqmey chIlpu'ghach vISIQlaH
sheep-<pl> lose-<perf>-<nom> <I-it>-endure/bear-<ability>
Would some sort of subclause make more sense here too? Just the same one?:
DI'raqmey 'e' chIlpu' vISIQlaH
sheep-<pl> that lose-<perf> <I-it>-endure/bear-<ability>
You might want to visit the Klingon Language Institute, who maintain much material on the tlhIngan-Hol. Among their resources, they maintain a mailing list where one may discuss anything in tlhIngan-Hol, or tlhIngan-Hol in English.
I would translate it as I am looking for bears and I am looking for the sheep that are lost. — I don't know the word for sheep, so I assume from your question that it's DI'raq:
mIl'oDmey vInejtaH 'ej DI'raqmey chIlpu'bogh vInejtaH
bear-<pl> <I-them>-look for-<cont> and sheep-<pl> lose-<perf>-<rel> <I-them>-look for-<cont>
See: Klingon Dictionary 6.2 (Complex Sentences) and 6.2.3 (Relative Clauses)
Your second sentence, I can bear the loss of sheep. — I would opt for a subordinate clause, If I lose sheep, I can bear it.:
DI'raqmey vIchIlpu'chugh vISIQlaH
sheep-<pl> <I-them>-lose-<perf>-if <I-it>-bear/endure-<ability>
See: Klingon Dictionary 6.2.2 (Subordinate Clauses)
Disclaimer: I'm not a Klingon expert, so this might not be 100% accurate.
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1108 | 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?
what about using کِپِكٍ for kepeken?
You mention a Kurdish transliteration. Do all Arabic speakers pronounce that letter the same way? In other words, it might to narrow down which Arabic dialect / regiolect you wish to transliterate to.
I wasn't looking for a particular dialect, just one with equivalent or close sounds so I'm not assigning letters to sounds that are totally different from their normal sound. I only mentioned Kurdish because they have written letters for all 5 vowels including e & i. Arabic lacks those sounds & relies largely on harakat (vowel diacritics) anyway. I'm not opposed to using diacritics, but I'd rather have suitable letter alternatives for initial & final vowels.
I guess what I'm getting at is, how do you define "normal sound" for Arabic? I'm not an Arabicist, but I'd imagine that letters often have different sounds all across the Arabophone region.
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)
I found a system that somebody else created using إِ for 'e' & إِي for 'i'. 'en' can be written as إٍ or إِن so 'ken' could be كٍ or كِن. Diacritics are optional so it could also be ك or كن. The word 'sitelen' (draw/picture) is commonly written as سِيتِلٍ/سيتل, but can also be سِيتِلِن/سيتلن.
esun إِسُون/إسون or إِسٌو/إيو
en إِن/إن or إٍ/إ
kule كُولِ/كول
ken كِن/كن or كٍ/ك
seme سِمِ/سم
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1113 | what real world language does this look like?
This isn't really about a conlang, it's an alternative orthography but I didn't know where else to ask it.
I found an alternative orthography for english called 'EBEO'(Even Better English Orthography) at https://alternatescriptbureau.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/ebeo-a-phonetic-orthography-for-english/. it uses the letters á, à, ā, ȧ, é, è, ē, í, ó, ò, ō. ú, ū, ù, đ, ŋ, ś, ŧ, ŵ & ź in addition to the standard english letters. What language does that look like (ŵat láŋúaj das đát luk lāk?)
Here's the Universal Declaration of Human Rights & the days of the week in EBEO:
Ól hùmen bíŋs ar born frí ánd ikūl in dignití ánd rāts. Đē ar éndàd wiŧ rízen ánd konśens ánd śud ákt tòerds wan enađer in e spirit of brađerhud. (Artikel 1 of đe Ùniversal Déklárēśen of Hùmen Rāts)
dēz av đ wík
mandē
túzdē
winzdē
ŧerzdē
frādē
sáterdē
sandē
dē is day
What is the question?
What real world language does this look like? It reminds me of either Polish or Turkish because of all accented letters, but neither of them use 'ŧ'.
I don't really think this is on-topic here.
shrug Looks like a poor attempt to write English. Right from the title we can tell it's a losing proposition devised by yet another windmilltilting "reformer". After all, if it's supposed to be "fenetik", whose phonology is going to be used as the basis of what constitutes phonetic? Too much silliness in that article!
@curiousdannii - I concur that "what does it look like" kinds of questions are off topic (too subjective); but I think the orthography itself, silly as it is, ought probably to be on topic. Our List of Licit and Banned Topics is pretty sparse, after all!
@jastako - I could be wrong, but I don't think the argument is against the topic per se so much as the wording & nature of your query. Take a look at the [tour] and especially the [help], Pay especial attention to what not to ask.
Right, we have other questions about constructed orthographies for natlangs. What other natlangs this looks like is quite subjective though, and isn't a useful question.
I said it wasn't really about a conlang, but I didn't know where else to post it. @elemtilas It is an attempt to write English. I don't think all of them are a horrible idea. I think English is in the minority in terms of languages that use 2 letters for sounds like 'ch'. 'C' being used for 'ʧ' also means c, s, & k all have one sound, & Ś (∫) & Ź(ʒ) are also used in Polish & Montenegrin as palatalized forms of S & Z. The vowel choices are what doesn't really make sense to me.
The point of my question was if there is a natlang that actually uses all of those letters because there are quite a few languages whose alphabets are just heavily accented versions of the Latin alphabet. If I knew a more appropriate place to ask it I would've asked it there.
@jastako - I'm sorry, but I think perhaps we're miscommunicating with you, and for that, I at least apologise. To clarify, the content of your query is perfectly fine. Invented writing systems are perfectly on topic here. What is off topic here, and indeed everywhere on stack exchange, is the subjective nature of the query. If you just want general chat, I'd suggest reddit; but the bar is set a little higher here. An easy fix, I think, would be a simple change of approach. In stead of asking what it reminds us of, ask about the aesthetic principles involved, perhaps (cont)
(cont) ...with a focus on influences from other languages' aesthetic forms. This way, you get your underlying question answered and we get a better quality, not so chatty, not so subjective question to deal with.
Well, it looks like a sample of an English based creole language written down by an amateur linguist or a missionary in a private orthography. It looks like a first attempt on a writing system for a previously unwritten language, it does not look really ripe: Too many diacritics on the vowels, and some confusable diacritics, too, e.g., á, à, ā, ȧ, what do they become in handwriting?
EDIT: Also important: What happens when all diacritics are left out, is this writing system still readable and understandable, or does it fail under such circumstances?
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1275 | 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
It sounds like you're confusing Japanese with Chinese. "去" does not mean "go/move" in Japanese (but it does mean "go" in Chinese.) 行く (iku) is "to go" in Japanese. And 在 is not used to mean "at/on/in" in Japanese (上 is "on", 中 is "in" depending on context, and "at" could be に also depending on context,) but it does mean "at" in Chinese.
Kanji selection is difficult because most words have a few different meanings. 去 is used for 'tawa' go/move as well as 'for' like "for me" & is translated as go in Chinese according to G translate & 'leaving' in Japanese. 在 is translated as 'in/at/on' which matches G translate. 上 is up/above/divine. Very often kanji are chosen for simplicity (easy to write), over exact translation.
Google Translate is going to give you an approximation of the language at best, not the real thing. The character 去 was historically used in a word meaning "to go", but now is uncommon for this purpose, and is instead found combined with other kanji in words like 去年 "last year", and 過去 "the past". It is used as the verb "to go" (pronounced qu4) in Chinese. Japanese does not use 在 in the context you specify either (but Chinese does.) In Japanese, it is used in words such as "existence" 存在 and "the present" 現在. And so on ...
So I can't answer your direct question, as I have not seen any instances of Japanese / Toki Pona inspired conlangs. If you were to embark upon the project yourself, I would advise you to study some Japanese directly first, and not rely on Translate for your sources of information, as you will almost certainly get it wrong if you do.
I use Jisho.org occasionally too although I don't know how reliable it is, & according to it, 在, 行 & 此 could be used for 'lon', 'tawa', & 'ni' (this/here) respectively, but not 去. https://jisho.org/search/%E5%9C%A8%E5%8E%BB%E8%A1%8C%E6%AD%A4
actually 在る(aru) means 'to exist' which is part of the meaning of 'lon' in toki pona which uses that character. 去る(saru) does mean to leave or to go away which again fits 'tawa' (go/move/motion). It's generally not possible to find a kanji that simultaneously represents every possible translation or meaning of a toki pona word, because they always have a few different but related meanings (pali means 'to do' or 'to make' as well as 'to work'), so it's often difficult to decide on a character.
It's unclear to me what you're asking. The short answer to "Has anyone come up with a 'Japanized' version of Toki Pona?" is "Not that I'm aware of." Though if you search the Toki Pona subreddit for "Japanese", there are clearly people who are interested in both Toki Pona and Japanese. If what you're really asking is "Can I make a Japanised version of Toki Pona" then the answer is "Sure". It's conlanging - you can do anything you want.
Both your original post and comments since display a lot of misunderstandings and misinformation about how Japanese works, but in some sense that doesn't matter. If you want to make a Japanese-inspired version of Toki Pona, you can lift kanji from words without caring about whether they're correct Japanese, because the whole point is that you're creating a new conlang which will function as you see fit. The conlang world is your oyster.
https://jisho.org/search/%E5%8E%BB%E3%82%8B%20%E5%9C%A8
This might not be exactly what you're looking for, but are you familiar with sitelen telo? https://i.sstatic.net/m1TtV.jpg
I have heard of sitelen telo, & I like it, particularly the fact that you can create compound characters, but the great thing about hanzi/kanji is that they can be typed. Sitelen telo has a font, but it's not the same.
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.
http://tokipona.net/tp/Compress.aspx has conversion to & from both Hanzi(Chinese) & Kanji(Japanese) as well a unicode character set. The word list also gives both the Hanzi & Kanji.
https://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona/comments/s518h8/proposed_unified_hanzikanji_orthography/?rdt=54364
The “unified” is a good idea, so that more people can use it.
More specifically:
It should be classic or historical usage of kanji usage, which basically means we should focus on classic hanzi usage
Note that classic hanzi usage is different from today’s hanzi usage. This means we are not too much biased towards Chinese language, not today’s at least.
However, we should used the “simplified”, so that the system can be used by people from other areas. Effectively the system can be used as a practical browser or typing friendly option that is similar to emoji, but fits more serious occasions.
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1308 | 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?
Why are there two schwas in your "sofa"? Also, why do you need a schwa in "sofa" at all? Or is this some kind of attempt to apply Cyrillic letters to your own ideolect?
Using <и> to represent /ɪ/ and <й> for /iː/ is a bit backwards since the breve on <й> is traditionally used to represent short vowels.
@elemtilas The person who created this system on the linked page (not me) assigned 'оь' to the 'oʊ' (oh) sound. I thought maybe ъ would be better for a schwa anyway? 'Sofa' is spelled "soʊfə" in IPA. The 'a' in 'alone' is also a schwa (əloʊn).
@jastako K. I spell it [sofʌ], [ʌloʊn]. Pas de ə.
@elemtilas ʌ is 'uh' like the o in 'wonder', ə is shorter than that. It's the second a in 'alphabet'. The reason a symbol like Ә isn't used is to try to use only letters on the Russian keyboard where possible. As it is ҙ is used for 'ð' & ң for ŋ because there is no equivalent to either in Russian Cyrillic. Ц is used for þ, but 'ts' isn't considered a sound in English anyway.
@jastako - Exactly my point. This is what happens when you try to apply a different alphabet, in this case Cyrillic, using your own pronunciation. I don't pronounce sofa with a schwa. If you're going to Cyrillicise English, just pick the Cyrillic letter that is closest to the English letter in question, and forget about the dozens of ways people might pronounce the sounds in question!
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.
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.
<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 yeah...
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.
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1249 | Has anybody created an Arabic inspired shorthand for english?
I'm thinking of a system where all fricatives look similar to each other, all plosives look similar, etc; the same base shape could be used for similar sounds using the dots placed above/below letters (see I'jām) to distinguish between voiced/unvoiced. For example ز and ژ could both be fricatives but one voiced & one unvoiced with the number of i'jām dots indicating voiced & unvoiced. As an example 1 dot (خ) could be unvoiced, & 2 dots (ت) could be voiced , 3 dots (ش/چ) could be digraphs(?) like sh/ch/th etc;. Their placement above or below could even mean something (پ/ث)? vowels could be diacritics like how Arabic harakat are used. I'm not really talking about adapting Arabic itself to write english. Plenty of those have been done, some good, some bad. I'm talking about a script inspired by Arabic, but that is really suited to write English because it is designed for English. Dots & vowels could even be omitted to further speed up writing if the dots/vowels could easily be inferred from context as in (Rasm). To use an example that can be typed: 'تُن' could be 'dot', but without diacritics could be 'date' depending on context & with i'jām reversed it could be represent 't-d'. 'O' wouldn't have to be ُ (damma), I'm just using that as an example. I like the look of connected letters but disconnected could be used too. It could be designed to be written in either direction by rotating certain letters to face in the direction of writing as was done with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would be easier to learn because similar sounds would look similar which is rarely the case in Arabic. Has anybody created something like this or could it be created? The table is here
see https://www.key-shortcut.com/en/writing-systems/%EF%BA%95%EF%BA%8F%D8%A2-arabic-alphabet/
For example [ك/ڬ/ڭ/ڮ]
[ں / ڼ / ڽ]
other examples:[ڌ/ڍ/ڎ/د]
[ڥ/ڤ/ڢ/ڡ]
One actually exists for Spanish: https://languagelearning.stackexchange.com/q/2342/2167
I created a script, سۛٗط࣫ٮ࣭هَں࣪ٮ࣮ shorthand:
Arabic
English
ط࣪ / ط࣫
r / l
ک࣮ / ک࣭
k / g
ح࣪ / ج
v / f
ٮ࣮ / ٮ࣭
t / d
ٮ࣫ / ٮ࣪
p / b
س࣪
z
ی
y
و
w
ں࣪
n
ں࣫
m
ز
j
ه
h
س࣫ / س࣪
z / s
عُ
u
عٗ
o
عِ
i
عؘ
e
عَ
a
ٮِۛس࣫ عِس࣫ سۛٗط࣫ٮ࣭هَں࣪ٮ࣮/ٮس عس سطٮهںٮ
Unvoiced have one dot above/below, voiced have two. Letters don't match their sounds in Arabic in most cases.
Edit: Here's a spreadsheet. The keyboard is linked there also. I have a chromebook, so it installs as a chrome extension, then can be used as an input method.
this can be written with or without diacritics/vowels to speed up writing. عؘںۛطِ࣪سۛ/عںطس would both be "English".
Please add a table showing the mapping between the letters and their English phonemes. Is your proposal to write English in rasm but with the phonemes of English distributed onto the letters in a way that doesn't totally match the values of the letters in Arabic?
I changed some of the letters. Here's a spreadsheet with the mappings. Most of the sounds aren't the same as Arabic. I just tried to make similar sounds use the same shapes & use the i'jām to distinguish them. س࣪ is 's' سۛ is 'sh', ح࣪ is 'f' ج is 'v'.
It doesn't have to be like Rasm, it can be as minimalist as you want it to be. عࣦںۛطِ࣪سۛ or عںطس for "english".
The edit looks good @rek. Nice avatar.
Do these count?
Anglo-Arabic
Anglo-Arabic, created by Pangus Ho, is a fully phonetic writing system that can be used to write English. It borrows the shape of Arabic letters so that it looks like Arabic at a glance, however few of the letters have the same sound as they do in Arabic. For example the letter "nūn", which is used to symbolize the sound /n/ in Arabic, is pronounced /t/ in Anglo-Arabic. The main objective is to make similar consonants have similar letter shapes. Consonants, long vowels, and diphthongs are represented by letters, while short vowels are represented by diacritics.
Angrezi (انگریزی)
Angrezi is a method of writing English using the Arabic script devised by Adnaan Mahmood. It is designed so that each sound of English is represented by one letter, and to be a standardised way for transcribing English in the Arabic script. Adnaan also thought that if the large population of English speaking Muslims want to write English in the Arabic script they could do so by using this version of the alphabet which includes vowels for easy reading and comprehension.
The name of the alphabet comes from the Urdu name for English, انگریزی (angrezi).
I have seen them but what I was meaning was something on the order of gregg shorthand, but deliberately designed to resemble Arabic, taking advantage of how similar sounds often look similar & only have slight differences, like پ for 'p', & ب for 'b'. The idea is to do like rasm, allowing you to leave out the dots for brevity. Gregg is too messy in my opinion, & lacks the beauty of Arabic, for lack of a better way to explain it. There are several systems for merely adapting Arabic to English. For example: https://alternatescriptbureau.wordpress.com/2020/03/27/arabic-script-for-english/
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1338 | List of segment usage based on how many people use it?
The great Phoible 2.0 has exclusive list of segment usages based on "Languages", but since some languages such as Lak are only used by handful of people, it won't make any sense if I employ their pronunciations/segments in the language I'm creating , is it?
For example, /k͈ʷ/ sounds are ONLY used in Lak, this sounds would definitely not recommended to be put into my collection of alphabets of my language.
After all, what's the point of making a language if "only handful of people in the whole Earth knows how to pronounce it correctly"!?
And, English and Japanese are both count as "one" language, but we can't never deny the fact that "English speaker" is WAY~ more then "Japanese speaker"!
(~400M native speaker against ~128M according to Wiki)
So, if I choose some sounds that "only" English speakers knows how to pronounce over some "Japanese-only" sounds, you could bet that there are about 272M more people knows how to pronounce that sound correctly.
So, I was wondering if there is some other "outstanding" list out there based their list on "the amount of people using it"?
Much appreciated!
I’m honestly really confused about what you mean when you refer to ‘employ[ing another] language in mine’ — could you clarify this point please? As far as I’m aware, languages can’t really ‘contain’ other languages in any meaningful way. (Another point: just because Lak has few speakers, that doesn’t mean that non-speakers can’t pronounce it correctly — to give but one example, I (a monolingual English speaker) can pronounce a Lak text more or less correctly, if given in phonetic transcription.)
@bradrn I had updated my question, hope it helps.
Thanks @PiggyChu001! I feel that a big part of your problem is that you are running into PHOIBLE’s inadequacies (which are sadly many, so always take it with a huge grain of salt). For instance, your example of /k͈ʷ/ is not actually a sound unique to Lak: it is a perfectly ordinary phoneme found in many other languages as well. However, the person who input the Lak inventory into PHOIBLE decided to transcribe it using a non-standard diacritic for ‘fortis’; no other person has used this exact diacritic, resulting in PHOIBLE reporting it unique. PHOIBLE contains many other such inconsistencies.
@bradrn Wow, I didn't know that! Thanks for your information! Then where could I get more "consistent and accurate" list?
Sadly, I know of none. Any large list of languages like PHOIBLE will run into exactly the same issues. (For instance, WALS is a similarly useful database with similar inaccuracies, though it’s a bit better than PHOIBLE.) However, there are a couple of things you can do to get more accurate results. A good thing to do is to double-check with another source, such as a reference grammar or even Wikipedia (though that one can also be inaccurate) — this reveals, for instance, that Lak has /kʷ kːʷ kʷʼ/, but no /k͈ʷ/. …
… Also, if PHOIBLE lists a segment with strange diacritics or otherwise unusual transcription, or a segment which seems straightforward but is only in very few languages, that can be a sign you need to investigate it further. To give another example, /ⁿd/ is apparently attested in 23 languages — but only because PHOIBLE usually transcribes this phoneme as /nd/, present in 270 languages.
@bradrn OK, thanks trillion for your help! I'll do my best! :)
Assuming that it's possible to 'normalize' the segment representations at all, you could generate the list you're interested fairly easily by joining (database theory term) the normalized segment list with a list of languages and the count of their speakers.
it's also worth considering explicitly what your goals with your conlang are. There's no reason a priori that you shouldn't use an unusual phoneme. After all, Classical Arabic's /ɮˁ/ is almost unique and it certainly existed, and even without irl examples, not all conlangs need to be naturalistic, or even pronounceable by humans
Well, you need to add numbers of speakers from another source (e.g. Wikipedia or Ethnologue, or some other list with speaker estimates). Pro-tip: Use a list where the languages are ordered by the number of speakers. You can use a cut-off (no matter whether you choose 10k or 100k speakers) and set that cut-off for the number of speakers (in statistical lingo, this kind of adjustment is termed smoothing). This frees you from looking up the numbers for languages with fewer speakers.
Be aware of the following: By weighing the languages by the numbers of their speakers you are putting a bias into your language design, heavily favouring Mandarin, English and Hindi/Urdu over the rest of the languages. This kind of bias may be or may not be a good thing in your conlang.
All consonants in 50% or more languages:
m, k, j, p, w, n, t, l, s, b, ŋ, g, h
All vowels in 50% or more languages:
i, u, a, e, o
I hope this answers your question
OP asked about segments based on how many people use them, not how many languages use them, so the question is not answered at all.
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1644 | What are necessary elements to morphologies that rely upon syntax in 2D?
I've seen several approaches to non-linear 2D syntax for written languages. Circular arrangements of glyphs (ring, spiral and axial), clumping-assemblages (akin to Maya glyphs, etc).
Are there necessary elements or aspects to the glyphs, in order for them to best leverage (or be used in) a 2D syntax arrangement? i.e can glyphs has some affordance(s) that support 2D glyphs?
My question is more in the terrain of semasiology and semasiography — and what necessary for a related system of syntax. For an excellent background context of this matter, see The Elephant's Memory [1], [2]
Are you talking about morphology (how words are put together, like cats = cat + s) or writing systems?
One aspect would be an indication of reading direction. E.g. Egyptian hieroglyphs can be written in multiple directions, but you can see from the orientation of (non-symmetric) glyphs which is the reading direction.
I would think that this is even more important in writing systems which are not just one-dimensional.
All natural spoken languages are linear. Phonemes come one by one in a sequence over time1.
As a result, all writing systems for natural spoken languages are also linear2. Glyphs come one by one in a sequence over space. The order can be fairly convoluted—you might change reading direction three times in a single Egyptian word, for example, and Mayan hieroglyphs are arranged in three dimensions—but there's always a linear order. Right now, you're reading the letters in these words left-to-right, the words left-to-right, and the lines top-to-bottom.
If your conlang is linear3 (which some especially-alien conlangs aren't!), you'll also need some way for people to put those glyphs into the proper order. Oliver Mason mentioned how Egyptian uses glyph orientation to indicate whether the horizontal direction is left-to-right or right-to-left; it also uses differently-sized gaps between units to indicate whether you should be reading horizontally or vertically at any particular time. If the gaps between columns are wider than the gaps between rows, you should read vertically, and vice versa horizontally.
But, depending on the details of your system, you can also make this order entirely predictable: Mayan glyphs are arranged three-dimensionally but the order is always top-to-bottom, left-to-right, front-to-back. As long as readers can figure out the order, you can really design your glyphs any way you like.
1 Well, it's not quite this simple. There are also supersegmental features, which don't fit into this nice linear order. But the system is linear overall and writing systems reflect this.
2 Specifically spoken languages. Signed languages aren't necessarily linear in time in the same way. But we also don't have a lot of writing systems for signed languages to look at as examples.
3 jk mentions tree structures as well. It's generally accepted that language is structured recursively (with some sort of tree) in the mind, but it's still put into a linear order to be spoken, since it's hard to speak a tree out loud.
[1] seems to be a rather limited / fraught assumption, even in the 'expanded allowances' of the footnote. It just seems like overall you're omitting the area of thought around semasiology and semasiography
and yes I would not like to presume the necessity of a spoke language. "State ritual and ceremony" is not a spoken language, and yet is a process of communication.
@NewAlexandria A process of communication, but not a language, which is what this question seems to be about.
This is an example of a non-linear approach to written languages, which I have made up.
https://omniglot.com/charts/yomoal.pdf
Essential elements?
This system considers consonants, vowels, and spaces its essential elements. The vowels and consonants are the necessary elements and the example script makes vowels the most important element. For context, many scripts take consonants as their primary marks (abjads, abugidas) while marking vowels is of less importance. Alphabets make these types equal in importance. Regarding spaces, like several ancient and contemporary scripts, where a word begins or ends could possibly be left to context (especially if all reading is expected to be aloud). That said, I judged spaces practically necessary since all viewers of the script would be humans accustomed to spaces and not fluent in the conlang.
Are spaces necessary elements?
A general comment: spaces may be completely unnecessary for some languages. Phonotactic rules could, in theory, make the beginning of new words perfectly obvious or unlikely ambiguous even without the use of spaces. For instance, if words can only start with a certain set of letters and those letters never appear elsewhere in the word, then these letters would also serve like spaces. Something that takes minimal space like a period or underlining first letters could also save space on "spaces."
How to minimize written elements?
A writing system could reduce the amount of information it needs to write by accessing the reader's prior knowledge to help communicate the structure of words and thoughts. For an example of words, suppose everybody memorizes a couple poems which between them contain all syllables in a syllabary once: then the syllabary could be just numbers (and a reference to which poem, if needed).
What does Yomoal's example contribute?
Yomoal isn't attempting to minimize the amount of 2d information, per se, and actually it is rather space inefficient on paper. But it does use reader's prior knowledge to structure words and thoughts. The former: Yomoal's consonants refer to common words all speakers would know: the W-sound is written as a frog, the word for which is 'waŋ.'
Visually themed as a written river, Yomoal acceses its audience's familiarity with rivers to help communicate relationships between written ideas. For instance, readers are assumed to understand that streams contribute to a main river, and in that way the writer can communicate the sequence and importance of her ideas by writing one "stream" of thought to flow into others. It is necessary to clarify which way the river is "flowing," and for that purpose a mountain symbol heads each "river," its peak tilting also to indicate "left" and "right" of the river (important for syllables). Yomoal has punctuation to expand on the river theme at the same time is helps structure thoughts.
Another novel example for further reading
https://omniglot.com/conscripts/oriscript.htm
Oriscript also has an unusual inherent structure for constructing text. Suppose that the space each character (like a letter) occupies is a box. The characters are distinguished by certain positions within each box, rather than by variously shaped letters. I am not best informed to discuss Oriscript at length, but I did think it could be useful further reading to add to my "refers to prior knowledge for structure" point and for a potential "only minimal marks" approach.
I hope this analysis of one example's essentials and structure helps inform the general question of what elements are necessary in any written system.
Syntax follows a tree structure and the writing system can be used to display this tree structure in a transparent way. There are many artistic and creative possibilities to display tree structures far beyond the standard diagrams in linguistics text books, e.g. nested boxes of different sizes.
If folks get interested in tree structure writing system options, I have devised a river-themed writing system they might enjoy.
@Vir link? or please post it as an answer that demonstrates an example
Oh ok, I was not sure if one example I had made was appropriate to post as an answer. Thank you for your interest and the feedback
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1057 | 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.
your terminology is unclear; I don't think you mean three "words". More like morphemes or phonemes. So I can't answer this, as it's unclear what your point is.
@OliverMason Thank you, I've edited my post accordingly. Did my edit clarify what confused you?
So you are talking about an inflectional system that uses morphemes of VC structure with three possible vowels, and nine consonants? I don't see why that shouldn't be possible.
You've just described it, so what other criteria of "can you" do you want us to answer by?
Yes. I don’t see any issues with it either. Like you said, you’ll need to make a lot of prefixes and suffixes. Good luck with your language.
After seeing a lot of different things thrown out there, I've decided to take a shot at this one. I think what you are suggesting is totally possible and plausible. The confusion of answers arises from that fact that a "word" can be defined in a couple different ways.
One reputable definition which allows for your proposed linguistic system is found in the Collins Dictionary:
A word is a single unit of language that can be represented in writing or speech. In English, a word has a space on either side of it when it is written.
By that definition, you have designed three possible "units" which can be assigned the title "words" legitimately, and your language system works.
On the other hand, you have other possible definitions, such as that found in Meriam Webster:
A speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use
If you opt for that definition (which some people do by default), it's a bit harder to stretch "word" to define what you're talking about. One of your proposed "words" communicates no inherent meaning, and is necessarily divisible into smaller units. Of course, it's a bit ambiguous, and one could argue that this definition of "word" obfuscates the nature of compound nouns etc.
In short, I would answer, "It depends." If you define a word simply as a unit of speech separated by spaces, you're all set. Other linguists might argue however that you ought to define the different "words" as different classes of words, with the organization of the letters defining words. And since you're inventing the language, I guess you can set the rules. ☺
If you really mean "morphemes" or "phonemes", then yes, of course you could design your language this way. One straightforward example is the Morse code, composed of three symbols - dot, dash, pause. If you e.g. represent the dot and dash vocally as two different sounds (different duration, different pitch or whatever, or even the traditional dit and dah), you can plausibly claim your language has only two phonemes (Though I would call it only a code of the main language it is used to encode, since it lacks its own grammar and vocabulary. But then, there are Q-codes, so nothing is absolute.).
If you want to use three syllables, it would be even easier - after all, Solresol manages with just seven, and Marr's theory claims all (European?) the languages originate from just four syllables (but that is very much a pseudoscience, most famously debunked by no one else than J. Stalin)
From an information theory point of view, you can express anything if you have at least two signs: computers do this through the use of binary, where the signal is either "on" or "off", or "1" or "0". If you have a "message" with just one bit of information, you can express two meanings, which are "on" or "off". If you want to express more complex ideas, you need a longer message. For example, if you want to express the decimal numbers from 0 to 15 in binary, you need at least four bits to represent them.
We as people have created a system where we know beforehand what the bits mean when we send and receive them. So if we send a message consisting of four binary digits, e.g. "0010", then we know that that means the number "2", because that's the convention we've agreed upon.
So you could certainly expand this principle by using three signs instead of two, and use conventions and codes to create meanings. The snag is that the complexity of the message would increase massively. For example, if I want to write the word "message" in English, I only need a total of seven symbols, and each symbol can be one of 26 signs (the English alphabet.) If I want to write the word "message" in binary, however, it will look like this:
0110110101100101011100110111001101110011011000010110011101100101
Which is a considerably longer message, because I only have two signs to work with, not 26.
The other disadvantage is: you need a convention or a "code" which both the sender of the message (the speaker) and the receiver (the listener) to be understood before a message can be transmitted. If you saw the above binary sequence out of context, you would have no way of knowing it meant "message", because I haven't told you that it represents a sequence of ASCII characters. It could just be meaningless computer code, or a very large number, or part of a recipe for a salmon bake.
So you could theoretically create a language with three "signs" and combine them to make meanings. For example, if your words were "ka", "pi" and "ol", then you could have the following sequences:
kapi = woman
kapiol = man
olka = cat
olpipika = dog
And so on. But you would have two problems with such a language:
The complexity of each resulting "word" would vastly increase as you make the message longer, and
There's no obvious relation between your signs and your word, so you would have to make your messages understood by pre-existing codes, agreed between the speaker and listener.
I haven't (and won't) check your math, but you have defined a grand total of 96... I'll call them blocks. I'll take the position that a block represents a sufficiently new type of language element that it doesn't have an existing name already. Maybe they're a special case of morpheme or of something else, I don't really care. They're blocks, and there are 96 of them.
You allow for 96^2 and 96^3 combos, which is nearly 900,000 blocks or polyblocks. That's plenty of room to define a language. That's bigger than many lexicons, and you can certainly spare a large subset for grammatical functions. Chinese for example is said to have 50,000 characters --- yes those are graphemes and there's apples and oranges here, but you take the point.
Imagine a person who only speaks and writes Chinese and has no awareness that other languages even exist. One day they are told, you can write everything in a language using 26 letters and some punctuation and so forth, you can get away with old-school ASCII with a maximum of 256 graphemes! He'd think you're talking doo-doo kaka.
You could probably do it with a great deal less.
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?
If this is a language, then it should be possible to express more than just three words. You would need to be able to say, for instance, "the dog bites the cat." Imagine that we derive dog from sazar, bite from kitiv, and cat from lomon by reversing the consonants. Using only the grammatical information from your post and making some assumptions about syntax, we could form this sentence as razas vitikomivik nomol.
Is this possible? If so, then this is a working language. However, once we define razas to mean "dog," then we already have more than three words. Razas isn't an inflected or declined form of sazar; it's a new word formed by derivation. Even meanings related to the original word are a form of derivation (so making razas mean "fire-creature" and using it for all animals still won't help). Once you create new words by derivation, the language has more than three words. In the language you described, every word is originally derived from three roots or base-words.
As you describe it, the language is entirely possible. There's an infinite number of morphemes in the three roots, if you allow for very long words and a lot of repetition. You have 96 syllables, so to use your possible syllables most efficiently, the 96 most common morphemes/words could have a syllable structure like az or iv, your 962 next most common morphemes like azaz or aziv, and your 963 next most common like azazaz or azivaz, etc. But your vocabulary has to be limited to make sure that your longer morphemes (e.g. aziv) not be confused with combinations of shorter ones (e.g. az + iv) allowed for by your agglutinative morphology when they're not intended to be the same morpheme.
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1079 | Good Real World Languages to Base Proto-Lang Vocabulary
I'm working on a conlang that requires a LOT of work, particularly in the sound changes from proto-lang to the current version.
Instead of creating a whole set of words from nothing, I am considering using lexicon from an existing language and just putting it through sound changes to break it up and save time.
Factors to consider:
-Meaning simplicity- few to no double-meanings or idioms.
-Rare- Relatively few speakers, perhaps under 5 million to greatly decrease the chances of someone picking up on it (that may be too high or low, I'm not sure myself)
-Phonology- Complex enough to do some interesting sound changes but simple enough to easily transcribe (15 to 25 maybe?)
-Phonotactics- CVC ? This should be easy to copy but also to evolve.
-Availability- Online dictionaries readily available.
Note: I do not want to use a random word generator, as I am terrible at asigning meanings to words just from looking at them.
I think this is too broad - any "rare" language could qualify. You'd really need to explain what you mean by "easy to copy/alter".
Concur with curiousdannii about clarifying what you mean by "easy to copy/alter". I read it as easy to find an online source, copy it from source, paste it to word processor and easy to alter by stripping it of unnecessaries.
I went ahead and cut that part out. I was kind of looking for simple, short, and easily pronounced words, but even that definition can be vague.
It's still super broad, there are over 7000 languages, and I'd guess that at least 1000 have dictionaries.
One suggestion I'd give: use Proto-Indo-European lexicon for the words you want in your own proto-language, then use a word generator to create the actual roots of your language. That way you're not going to run into the problem of a having a word list that accidentally includes terms your proto-speakers would be unlikely to have.
I would probably go for a fairly homogeneous language, ie one that hasn't had too much contact with other languages.
English, for example, contains words originating from many other languages (German, Norse, Latin, French,...), so your resulting language will probably also appear mixed wrt to word roots. Other languages (eg maybe Icelandic) will have had less external influences (especially if they are politically controlled), and so the vocabulary will generally be more homogeneous, and might be a better source for you. Unless, of course, your conlang is meant for a trading/colonial society.
Try Khmer, (Cambodian) it has about 17 million speakers, a fun alphabet (abugida) where the two different series of consonants changes the vowel marker's sound. There's no inflection, it's very analytical, and it has a ridiculous number of glottal stops.
For the most part the phonotactics are CVC, but you don't say most of the consonants at the end of a word and instead do a glottal stop. It's an asian language, but it's not tonal.
As a bonus it also has a completely different vocabulary depending on whether you are talking about the king or not.
A lot of good suggestions are already in here, here are some more
Use another conlang as a base for your vocabulary, for an unusual feel I suggest Volapük or Lojban
Independent of the base you choose, apply some unnatural transformation to the roots to make them look unfamiliar. Potential unnatural transformations include reverting the roots (spelling them backwards), syllable swapping like in Verlan, or a cyclic permutation of the letters (putting the first letter at the end or the last letter at the start)
Well, you could use any language that has a lexicon...
If someone working out your source language by following the sound change bread crumb trail is problematic or undesirable, what is preventing you from simply using a word generator? Good ones allow you to define phonology and syllable shapes.
I used Awkwords for a recent project (creating a long text of gibberish) and found it quite suitable. I think it would work for your needs as well.
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1239 | A biphonic language
How could a language evolve such that the vowels are biphonic (like in throat singing)?
Note: Biphonicity is when two notes/tones are sung simultaneously.
There are languages that are whistled or toned, so I'd imagine it'd be possible, just how?
Perhaps, the language developes an unwieldy tone system that begins to overlap itself, creating vowels with two separate tones being used simultaneously?
What is biphonic???
Biphonic singing (throat singing) is when you sing two separate note/tones at the same time. I will update the question to explain as such!
In a way, vowels are already biphonic! Acoustically, vowels (and most sounds, actually) are simply combinations of formants: specific frequencies at which the vocal tract resonates. The differences between vowels are then caused by differences in the frequencies of the formants. This can be easily seen on a spectrogram, like this one from Wikipedia:
In this spectrogram, the vowel [i] has its first two formants at roughly 500 and 2500 Hz, while [u] has its first two formants at roughly 500 and 1000 Hz.
Now, it turns out that biphonic singing works on exactly the same principle! Biphonic singing works through shaping the mouth so that one of the formants becomes loud enough to be perceived as a separate note. Note that this uses exactly the same mechanism used in vocalising vowels; the only difference is that the shape of the mouth is changed slightly to emphasise the formants. To experience this yourself, you can try saying [u͡ʉ͡y͡ʉ͡u] very slowly; if you listen carefully to what you are saying, you should be able to hear a note growing higher and then lower in pitch. This note is one of the formants of the vowels (the first formant, I think); Biphonic singers simply emphasise this formant so it becomes loud enough to easily hear.
So, to summarise, languages already use vowels which could be described as ‘biphonic’ — the only reason we don’t hear it that way is because the formants aren’t as strong as they are in biphonic singing.
(For more information, you may find https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/voice.html and https://newt.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/xoomi.html interesting.)
You already hint a possible answer in the question: There is an art form named throat singing. A community where throat singing is practiced may carry over the some biphonic distinguishing features to their language. This may include borrowing a biphonic pattern for some formulaic expression from a throat song, or words with special poetic or religious meanings. Once established as a linguistic feature it may spread all over the language.
I think, linguistically this would be still described as a tone system, but with rather complex tones in it.
P.S. I once listened to a biphonic whistler who was able to whistle some classic music with two voices simultaneously. A flashing experience.
I'll take a stab at the "evolve" part. Throat singing might be a possibility, so we could look at the environment surrounding that.
"The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient pastoral animism still practiced today."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvan_throat_singing)
So in the context of conlanging, a landscape with sparse vegetation (or other... I'm not very familiar with geography) and perhaps combined with animist beliefs might explain the development of a polyphonic language, which would include not only specially spoken vowels, but also perhaps the use of false vocal folds and other throat singing techniques (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtone_singing).
In addition, you mention the possibility of such a language being doubly tonal. In that regard, a humid area might be conducive to a tonal language, though the Tuvan language is considered a pitch accent language rather than tonal. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvan_language). Alternatively, tone can arise from contact with other tonal languages.
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1354 | How many different interjections like 'aha,' 'oh' would you make up for a conlang?
I wonder if other people have thoughts and experience on this topic from the conlanging perspective. Have people with lots of translation experience found the distinction between (for example) 'aha' and 'oh' worth translating into a conlang? What interjections are worth "translating" into parallel words?
I could get foreign language dictionaries and check for how many are listed there.
Thanks for considering.
This is as much a question of invented culture as it is invented language. Strictly speaking, one can devise as few or as many such interjections as one likes. Likewise, the breadth and depth of meanings, overlaps and distinctions are similarly up to the inventor.
I'd argue that if the speakers of the invented language sense the need to distinguish "aha" from "oh", then the discoverer of their language ought to take note! Likewise, if they divide the semantic space of "aha" into three distinct areas, or if they don't distinguish "aha" from "oh", then that should also be noted.
As for the question of which are worth making words for: that's more a matter of pragmatism. Most language inventors engage with the art out of inner joy and as an expression of fundamental creativity and generativity. Making words is almost never a problem for most language inventors! If she should discover that the speakers of the invented language have a little used interjection, a word will surely present itself!
Thank you for your input!
For other people considering this question in future, these 20-odd are what I have happened to think of since I first starting thinking of these 13 months. Specifically, this is copying from the definitions column in case someone else wants to check their "interjection toolkit" against mine. I brainstormed like half a dozen originally (surprise, pain, hello, yes, etc.) and the rest have come up over time: from translating things, budding naturally off related words, etc.
hey, hello, look, see here: an interjection calling for attention
shh, a call for quiet, often repeated like a bird call
good health, wellness; as an interjection, used as a wish and valediction by itself like 'goodbye' or more formally with 'aŋcyo' as 'aŋcyo aŋcyala,' like 'farewell'
leisure, free time; as an interjection, used as a wish and valediction by itself like 'bye' or more formally with 'aŋcyala' as 'aŋcyo aŋcyala,' like 'farewell'
good evening or good night, when you are expecting the person to go to sleep
good evening or good night, when you aren't expecting the person to go straight to sleep
wow, aha!: expressing surprise which is not unpleasant
a cry of pain or alarm
dang, whoa, oh man, shoot: expressing surprise or alarm which can be pleasant or unpleasant
dirt smell; as an interjection, an expression of assent equivalent to "no problem," "alright"
okay, fine, alright
yes
intensified yes
no
intensified no
dark cloud, temper; as an interjection, an expression recognizing a bad situation, as crap, damn, alas, yikes
warning; as an interjection, warning
"lizard's loincloth": a mild curse alluding to something ill-fated, ruined, or worthless
I have some other idiomatic/cursing phrases that "feel like" interjections, but the line between what's an interjection and what's just an expressive thing reflexively to exclaim seems blurry. So, I omit here further short, idiomatic responses and regular words that could obviously be curses. I include here hello/goodbye, which don't feel reflective but which do feel worth the reader's considering for their own lexicons.
Essentially, you can add as many interjections that you could keep in your memory. Be it a hundred or more interjections with similar meaning (e.g. aha + yes) or a couple of interjections with definitive meanings (yes!, No!, What?, etc.)
I appreciate the input. Thanks to your bringing this back to my attention, I'll add to the topic what I've come up with so far.
I personally oftentimes stick to the basic template of:
An interjection meaning yes, true, and correct.
An interjection meaning no, false, and wrong.
An interjection meaning f*ck, ouch, damn it.
This is, of course, merely my opinion. Your conlang may have as many or as few as you see fit.
Thank you for providing a tested baseline
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1946 | Analyzing word order when the person-conjugation leads verb phrases
Suppose person-conjugation leads the verb phrase and (if the subject is clear or is not the focus) the verb phrase may often come before any lexical subject, too. Although this puts the subject information before the verb in the verb phrase, such sentences would be analyzed as Verb-Subject, not as Subject-Verb?
E.g., here the object comes first for being surprising; we seem to know "Grandpa" already, so the subject need not be out front.
Grandpa turned down Hedy Lamarr.
Ya Hedy Lamarr le eŋamoc Grandpa.
ACC Hedy Lamarr 3ps.PST reject Grandpa.
I gather the "only word-specified subjects count" from this line in WALS
a language is considered SV if the single lexical argument in an
intransitive verbal clause more commonly precedes the verb, but VS if
such an argument more commonly follows the verb.
(I gave a transitive example rather than an intransitive.) This mostly comes up for third-person-like subjects, I reckon. SV or VS does not factor when you specify first-/second-person pronouns with a vocative phrase (You were right, Fred).
But "you were right" or "I was right" still puts the subject first; the pronoun is the subject, not the vocative.
Totally 'you' is the subject. I thought that's why I should bring it up. The "lexical subject" criterion WALS analyzes with here basically requires a third-person sentence, because even if you name the lexical subject of a first- or second-person sentence using a vocative, you've still got a pronomial subject?
Side note: what would the word order be in "Hedy Lamarr rejected Grandpa" (i.e. with the subject emphasized instead of the object)? I've had to make some guesses to draw the tree.
@Draconis Thanks for your guesswork. I wasn't sure how much detail to go into. If the subject Lamarr is being emphasized in the sentence, then she should lead this sentence. Another reason to do S1 here would be if she and Grandpa have been alternating taking action, which could merit disambiguation. If narrating Grandpa's life is the speaker's main focus, it's possible he'll lead some subsequent lines as an object once Lamarr is no longer a surprise appearance. If "Grandpa was turned down by Hedy Lamarr," he'd be at the front to translate the construction's focus on patient/subject.
Clarification because out of time to edit: If "Grandpa was turned down by Hedy Lamarr," it'd be an OS sentence to translate into active voice the English passive's focus on the patient.
This looks like topic-fronting, when the topic (whether that's a subject, object, or something else) moves to the very beginning of the sentence. If the verb then comes first in the verb phrase, you get V2 word order, as found in many Germanic languages: exactly one phrase has to come before the verb, but what that phrase is varies. According to generativists, this topic moves to the specifier of the CP.
So knowing nothing else about your language, this is how I'd analyze your example sentence.
(Add in the small-v layer if you like; I left it out for simplicity. The gloss also doesn't show whether the object comes before or after the verb, if it doesn't get moved; I arbitrarily chose to put it after.)
In other words, yep, this language underlyingly has VS word order. It's just that the subject tends to get moved to the specifier of C, since it's usually the topic. But if something else is the topic instead, then you can see the underlying position of the subject: after the verb.
Thanks very much for this! I appreciate your time. I believe you're also confirming my reading that "Person-Conjugation Particle does not count as Subject." Topic-fronting is my intention, yes. The verb doesn't have to be second as in German. All else equal about newness and focus, verb proceeds object. So, if the subject is not changing sentence to sentence, the verb is often first. Is there something else I should tell you about my conlang that would further this analysis?
@Vir Ah, so nothing needs to get fronted? Interesting! And yes, I would say that conjugation particle is a "T", in generative terms.
Cases can mark constituents, so nothing needs to be fronted. Since speakers have to pick some order, I suggest a priority to front the Subject when it might be ambiguous in context (I am delineating these in the grammar I am writing). Otherwise, the speaker can choose to communicate other nuances by fronting other things, or by always fronting the subject when it's clearly not ambiguous (this is communicates especial politeness toward the subject).
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1162 | Is num-det-n-adj-rel a reasonable order for a noun phrase?
In English, noun phrases are det-num-adj-n-rel (e.g. "The five orange balls that John saw"). In Spanish, noun phrases are (mostly) det-num-n-adj-rel (e.g. "Las cinco pelotas naranjas las que Juan vió," lit. "The five balls orange that John saw"). Is num-det-n-adj-rel a reasonable order (e.g. "Five these balls orange that John saw").
My determiners are prefixes on the noun, so I can't put numbers between determiners and nouns. Do I have to put numbers after the noun in this case to be naturalistic? My language is primarily head-initial (SVO default word order, adverbs come after verbs, etc.)
Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7fX0Dbq_2I , especially at the 1 minute mark where they refer to Hawkins' Postpositional Universal (which I admit I don't fully understand yet). Is your language primarily head-initial, or head-final? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-directionality_parameter
My language is primarily head-initial.
If your determiners are prefixes and quantifiers are separate words, that implies that the quantifier phrase would be outside the determiner/definiteness phrase. Ie, it implies a rather different scoping and semantic interpretation. That's something that should be explained/justified or at least thought about.
It is reasonable, but I'm having trouble finding unambiguous precedent for it in natural languages.
This handout shows the frequency of different orders of demonstratives, adjectives, nouns, and numerals in a sample of 528 languages. Demonstratives and determiners are not identical, but there is considerable overlap.
The order Num-Dem-N-Adj is not attested.
More broadly speaking, demonstratives seem to show a clear tendency to be closer to the edge of the noun phrase.
From the handout,
The adjective and numeral tend to occur closer to the noun than the
demonstrative when the demonstrative and the adjective or numeral (or
both) occur on the same side of the noun.
Furthermore, in cases where the demonstrative is to the left of the noun, there seems to be a very strong tendency for it to be the leftmost thing.
That being said, a demonstrative is a very heavyweight thing and not always a determiner. Without knowing what kinds of things are determiners in your language, it is hard to tell how much, if at all, the handout applies.
Here are approaches you might want to consider.
Put demonstratives at the right edge of the noun phrase and other determiners directly before the noun.
Demonstratives show a strong but not overwhelming tendency to appear on the opposite side of the noun as the adposition. I think that, in general, demonstratives are not the heads of the noun phrases they appear in cross-linguistically. Since you mention that your language is head-initial, I am assuming that it is prepositional.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that your inventory of determiner prefixes marks definiteness and number only.
DEF.PLUR-book red
The red books
DEF.PLUR-book red that
Those red books
5 DEF.PLUR-book red that
Those five red books
Repeat the determiner on the number
As far as I know, this is also unattested, but it does solve the problem of the determiner not appearing early enough in the noun/determiner phrase.
PROX.DEF.PLUR-5 PROX.DEF.PLUR-book
These five books
ANY-5 ANY-book
Any five books
Make numbers occupy the determiner slot
This works well if your set of determiners is small, but doesn't work very well if it contains demonstratives.
INDEF.PLUR book
Some books
5 book
Some 5 books / the 5 books / 5 books
Make the determiner a clitic that attaches to first word in the noun phrase
This doesn't work if your language is fusional and it doesn't make sense to split the prefix from the base noun.
DEF.PLUR book
the books
DEF.PLUR-5 book
five books
Hmm, I think I'll go with the clitic or the repetition. I was actually using postpositions because I'd gotten it in my head that the noun was the head of an adpositional phrase, but Wikipedia says that's not the case. I guess I'll rethink that too.
Reasonable: sure!
We do this in English, fronting the number for emphasis or for poetry. There's no reason why you couldn't do this as a matter of ordinary in your language.
Five the orange balls that Johnny saw flew through air and bounced to jackadaw.
Do you know if this is attested as a default word order?
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1224 | 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.
You've implemented your own keyboard layout or you're using Private Use Area of Unicode?
@VictorVosMottorthanksMonica At this point, I'm just working about layout. I plan to use Private Use Area once I get the letters digitized along with \XeTeXupwardsmode.
Interesting... I'm a developer but I never used private use area.
Presumably, you're using a word processor or page layout program for this; which one?
@JeffZeitlin I am using XeLaTeX.
You might be better off asking this in [tex.se]; it's likely that there have been questions about mixing vertically- and horizontally-written languages before...
@JeffZeitlin I'm at least theoretically aware of how to implement mixing horizontal and vertical text in LaTeX. I just can't seem to come up with a sensible layout for an entry. Sometimes writing out the word could take up more vertical space than the rest of the entry.
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/342406/create-a-mix-of-horizontal-and-vertical-text-in-a-footer
@JeffZeitlin Can you make that an answer?
Maybe you could find an example of an (inner) Mongolian dictionary? I don't know much about it, but it can be written vertically.
If you have a situation where the entry in the conscript is taller than the textual material discussing it, you’ll have to accept ‘wasted’ white space filling out the rectangle. Really, the only sensible way to do this if your textual material is in English is to have your conscript entry run down on the left edge of the rectangle, and fill in the English on the right.
If you have an alternative horizontal orthography (even if it uses the same characters, like happens in Chinese and Japanese), I would recommend using that for the dictionary/lexicon.
(It stands to reason that if your descriptive material is in a right-to-left language, like Arabic or Hebrew, you'd put the conscript entry down the right side of the rectangle and fill in the left with your Arabic or Hebrew...)
One possibility, if the vertical words are fairly long, is to have multiple parallel columns on a page. Gives you rather short line-length for English, but since you are just writing dictionary definitions, most of those are probably very short.
Example:
(Image Credit: https://www.deviantart.com/darkangel8980/art/Vulcan-Script-Pon-Farr-212492799)
And this is a dictionary, so the text should be collumnated
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.
I found the picture in the Unicode Standard Annex #50 on Unicode vertical text layout. I'm not sure what the book is - as far as I can tell the annex doesn't seem to say.
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1232 | Can entire words be silent?
Most people will be familiar with the idea that naturalistic spelling can be tricky. Some examples of natlangs with annoying spelling that come to mind are English ("ough" can be pronounced /ʌf/, /ɔf/, /ʌp/, /au/, /u/, /ɔ/, or /o/), French ("Qu'est-ce qu'il mangent ?" /kɛs kɪl mãʒ/), and Modern Greek (/i/ can be spelled "η", "ι", "ει", "υ", "οι", or "υι"). But how bad can it get? Are completely silent words (that is, written but unpronounced) words attested in any language? I'm aware that Irish mutations developed from completely lost particles, but I don't think these particles are still written as separate words.
Was the "STOP" in telegrams intended to be pronounced?
In terms of spelling opacity, there's a continuum between exactly mirroring speech at the phonetic or phonological level and writing in a different language. Historical spelling normally refers to writing segments, especially consonants in clusters or inflectional morphology, that have been lost over time. I think adding back lost morphology or undoing sound changes in a much more common kind of historical spelling than adding back lost syntax.
There are some historical changes that cause words to be dropped without turning into affixes, though. For instance, a language can develop a null copula construction like Russian did for the present tense.
It would not be too much of a stretch to imagine a language where the null copula is a fairly recent innovation, and therefore the copula is usually written despite not being spoken. This may have been the case for Russian at some point in time.
I don't know of any examples, but you might create a language where things such as articles or measure words existed at one point but were lost. I think spontaneously losing articles or measure words is uncommon, so it would probably be a contact-induced change.
Dropping words happen (the ne of negation notoriously drops pretty systematically in spoken French) and commonly a that, as Gregory points out. However, I believer a true "silent word" is a nonsensical concept.
For starters, Silent letters are historical artifacts of a writing system. They are not a feature of the spoken language, so right there, a "silent word" cannot be something that happens in the spoken language unless the words in question are composed of phonemes or features that are merely difficult to hear from locutors of a different language. Still not silent in their native language. If a writer writes down a word, they typically do it with some sort of communicative intent (even if not consciously so).
Second, in the spoken language, something that isn't pronounced in one way or another literally doesn't exist by definition (we can argue about stuff like sandhi and the side effects of sound change, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion IMO).
So unless your language has a need to transcribe something that is literally not said (and we usually have punctuation and emoticons for that), then a "silent word" is, in my opinion, a self-contradicting concept.
The archaeological site L'Anse aux Meadows is pronounced (in English) /lænsi mɛdoʊz/, i.e. the aux is silent, if random internet sources can be believed. Of course, it is not quite a typical example - a proper name, derived from another language, and English speakers unaware of the local pronunciation are likely to read differently. But that's the fate of the English orthography.
I'll start by saying I'm not an expert, only an enthusiast.
But I believe this could be entirely possible. Written languages such as Egyptian never had punctuation. So they would not be capable of using punctuation to indicate certain moments in speech indicated by them. I could see how a similar constructed language would be capable of having a silent word being used that represents these punctuation moments.
For example, a sentence where you want to indicate a emphatic pause could simply use a word that might not have a normal use, like combining the words for "wait" and "moment" into a new word that when written symbolize the spoken need for a pause of emphasis.
There's a phenomenon in Chinese where two different written words are pronounced the same way in a sense, but a word is inserted in spoken speech. For a made-up example (because I don't know Chinese and but vaguely remember this), the words for chemistry and science are both pronounced the same way, so when the word for chemistry is read, "chemical" is inserted in front. A silent word could be the reverse; if two words were pronounced differently but written the same (either historically, or due to a very deficient writing system), a disambiguating word could be inserted.
A better example might be Egyptian; Egyptian hieroglyphics end in a determinative that shows meaning but isn't pronounced. If that's not enough of a silent word for you, they could evolve to be more word-like; if words are separated by spaces, they could be spaced out, perhaps become more complex; e.g. English snspt ☀️⚫.
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1434 | Could a language with only fricatives at the end of words reasonably exist?
There are several non-constructed languages, including English, in which almost all words end in consonants, but what about a language in which almost all words end in a certain type of consonant? In my case, I'm trying a synthetic language which relies on different types of fricatives at the end of words to show grammatical meaning. The language has several non-fricative consonants, but would it be realistic for those consonants not to form endings while the fricatives do?
‘would it be realistic for those consonants to form endings while the fricatives do?’ — I have no idea what you’re asking here. Also, the obvious answer is: this conlang sounds like it isn’t intended to be naturalistic, so you can do what you like in it.
@bradrn I think they mean 'for those consonants NOT to form endings while the fricatives do'
@Richard That’s what I assume, but I’d appreciate confirmation from OP.
Yes, I mean what @Richard said.
@WhyIt In the future, please edit your question to fix the mistake. People who see your question shouldn't have to look to the comments for a clarification.
Yes, of course, that's entirely possible!
See also word-final voicing in Basque, which is an example of a sound change that affects word-final consonants especially much. Conceivable, such could also lead to spirantization (plosive>fricative) word-finally. (And there are certainly more other ways such a trait could come to be)
In German you get "Auslautverhaertung", where voiced consonants become de-voiced (/d/ -> /t/, /g/ -> /k/)
@OliverMason True, it's a feature if other Germanic languages as well.
@OliverMason And Russian, and Sanskrit (there the change is shown in writing), and likely many others.
@Richard Very cool, thank's for the answer!
@WhyIt If you think the answer is sufficient, you can also accept it by clicking the checkmark!
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1198 | What to do when my conlang has a word that means something in one of my languages?
This is a bit subjective problem. As a Hungarian who knows English, I have the high ground when it comes to making up words, as I can mush the English and Hungarian words together with some outliers (usually Japanese-sounding words) and things I make up. However, first, let's take a look at a composite I created with my WIP Swadesh list:
rén+kile = red feather = rékile/régile
Red Feather is a rare genetic mutation among tengu (based-off of Japanese mythology; anthro birds, six-limbed variant). Those who are born with this mutation have striking red plumage, yellow/golden beak and eyes, along with an unusual pointy crest, similar to that of a cockatiel. Rékile is often translated to phoenix in Common (British English). While the resemblance is hard to deny, rékile tengu don't set themselves on fire, nor revert into younger forms.
Now, régi means old in Hungarian. And Ré is Hungarian for Ra, who just happened to be a god with a bird's head and is associated with the Sun (which is a deadly laser). Rékile is still passable, but some words are so reified in my mind that even lookalikes carry unwanted connotations.
who? (“?” not) = námó (I keep hearing nani)
what? (“?” not) = názá (Názáreti Jézus)
dog = gadór (csador Oh no! or csahol I'd prefer to go with that one)
I know it sounds and is dumb, but I can't concentrate when I look at my language and I can still see the anime references and Hungarian words in my mind. I don't want to throw out Hungarian entirely, but I'm still afraid people will pick up these accidental collisions of my languages. How can I minimize the number of those collisions?
There are infinite coincidences between languages. You should see all the nonsense people post at [linguistics.se] trying to posit links between random languages because of a single similar word. I think this is a problem you just have to get over yourself, because there will always be coincidences for someone.
@curiousdannii I think some concrete examples would calm my soul (a bit)
@KeithMorrison As a native speaker of Russian language I know that there is no word "talik" in Russian language.
@KeithMorrison Maybe it is very rare but I really didn't hear it...
@VictorVosMottorthanksMonica, "talik" is a technical term coined by Russian researchers in the 1940s to describe unfrozen ground in a permafrost region, that they derived from tayat'
These sorts of coincidences are somewhat inevitable. Just try to accept that there's a limited number of ways to arrange sounds in your language, and some will sound similar to words in other languages.
When I was trying to learn Hungarian, I came across a number of words that reminded me of words I knew in English and other languages. Some examples:
repülőter "airport" / re-polluter
csillag"star" / ceiling
és "and" / es "it is"
a nap "the sun" / a nap
a bolt "the store" / a bolt
öt "five" / otto "eight"
I also had a recent case on the CBB where I posted my conlang Atili's word for "citrus" zilu, and immediately got asked if I borrowed that word from Kankonian (another conlang) tzelua "citrus." I hadn't. CBB thread
Then there is the fairly well-known case of the Mandarin filler phrase 那個 / 那个 nèige, which sounds to many English speakers like a racial slur. See this posting on the Chinese language stack for more details: Very frequently used word in Mandarin that sounds like "nica" or "nigah"
French "seal" (the animal) is phoque, and it sounds exactly what you'd think it does to English speakers. When I took French and we learned the word, the teacher started rolling his eyes even before stating the word because he knew what was coming from a classroom of kids.
Toki Pona borrows "bibitte" from Canadian French, a colloquial term for bug or critter. But in Toki Pona's very strict phonology, the word becomes "pipi", which sounds like French's childish word for pee. Such is life :)
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1427 | Is there a set of sound change rules that undoes Grimm's law?
Zompist has a Sound Change Applier that comes with some example rules:
[sm]//_#
i/j/_V
L/V/_
e//Vr_#
v//V_V
u/o/_#
gn/nh/_
S/Z/V_V
c/i/F_t
c/u/B_t
p//V_t
ii/i/_
e//C_rV
Is there a set of similar rules that would "undo" Grimm's Law sound changes?
Define categories for aspirated and unaspirated voiced stops, voiceless stops, and fricatives:
A=ḅḍġǵ
U=bdgɠ
V=ptkƙ
F=φþxẍ
(I’m forced to use strange characters for each of these phones due to the one-character-per-phone restriction of SCA².)
Then Grimm’s law can be reversed as follows:
U/A/_
V/U/_
F/V/_
(As far as I can tell, PIE had none of /ɸ θ x xʷ/. If it had, Grimm’s law would of course be impossible to undo as it would have caused mergers. Luckily, this does not appear to have been the case.)
That's excellent
Well, PIE itself probably did have /x/ and possibly /xʷ/ (though the latter was more likely voiced /ɣ ~ ɣʷ/): they’re normally written h2 and h3 when reconstructing (with subscript numbers which I can’t type on my phone). But they were lost before Grimm’s law happened, so the (pre-)Germanic stage that’s relevant here didn’t have them.
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1904 | How to ensure a NATO-esque spelling alphabet works?
I thought my conlang would need a NATO-esque spelling alphabet. In my current sketch, they are words borrowed from Korean and few other languages. They are to serve as mere spelling alphabets, and not to have any meaning in my conlang. (And sorry for changing the phonology and orthography again)
Spelling alphabet
IPA
Origin
Meaning
AGAŠI
ɑ gɑ ɕi
Korean "아가씨"
madam
ÄGUGGA
æ guk kɑ
Korean "애국가"
anthem
CÌNAMI
t͡sɯ nɑ mi
Japanese "津波"
tsunami
ČIČARÌM
t͡ɕi t͡ɕɑ ɾɯm
Korean "치찰음"
sibilant
EIGO
e i go
Japanese "英語"
English
ÈRINI
ə ɾi ni
Korean "어린이"
child
GIRÈGI
ki ɾə gi
Korean "기러기"
goose
ISUNŠIN
i sun ɕin
Korean "이순신"
Yi Sunsin
ÌMGÌGSÈN
ɯm gɯk sən
Korean "음극선"
electron beam
KARSENTÈR
k͡xɑɻ sen təɻ
Korean "카센터"
garage
LISSÌNÈR
lis sɯ nəɻ
English "listener"
-
MINARI
mi nɑ ɾi
Korean "미나리"
dropwort
NAPOLI
nɑ po li
Italian "Napoli"
Naples
OSAKA
o sɑ k͡xɑ
Japanese "大阪"
Osaka
ÖSAMČON
ø sɑm t͡ɕon
Korean "외삼촌"
maternal uncle
PAULA
pɑ u lɑ
German "Paula"
Paula
ROMEO
ɻo me o
English "Romeo"
-
SAMAGÜ
sɑ mɑ gy
Korean "사마귀"
mantis
ŠIGTAGPO
ɕik tɑk po
Korean "식탁보"
tablecloth
TEGAMI
te gɑ mi
Japanese "手紙"
letter
URETAN
u ɾe tɑn
Korean "우레탄"
urethane
ÜSSARAM
ys sɑ ɾɑm
Korean "윗사람"
elder / senior
At first glance, this seems to work well, especially for the syllables are distinctive per alphabet. But how can I ensure this? Is there a caveat I've overlooked?
I would have thought that, more or less by defintion, a "nato-esque spelling alphabet" would use words from the language it's being used to spell; those words would have meanings normally; and the semantically-nulled, spelling interpretation requires context.
The best way is to do the same thing they did in real life: test it! Record yourself spelling something out with these words, distort it and add some static, then see how well you can make out the words. (Or better yet, see how well someone else can make out the words.) See if any of the words sound too similar, or if you could shorten some of them without causing a problem (the NATO one has several one-syllable words).
A NATO style phonetic alphabet needs three things:
The words have to be clearly distinct from other words in the list.
The words should ideally be short with uncomplicated sounds.
The words should be unique enough that if you know the alphabet, you don't need to actually hear the entire word to know what it is when transmitted over a bad radio connection or in a noisy environment.
Give you an example: let's say you have a patrol out in a city and they report having come under fire from a building, and for whatever reason they don't use grid coordinates but instead give you the street address. This is what you hear over a bad radio connection:
"...number fife niner tree lima (static) -dia papa (static) -erra (static) -arlie alpha (static) -ovem- (static) india."
If you know the alphabet, you wouldn't have much of an issue decoding that even having only received fragments of the words: they're reporting the building as 593 Lipscani. This works because none of the words share a sequence of the same syllables, or nearly the same syllables, in the same order.
So looking at your word list, you have "OSAKA" and ÖSAMČON. You have both words starting with two similar sounding syllables, and both are three syllables long. That can cause confusion over a bad connection.
Your word list should also keep it simple as possible for non-native speakers. The first phoneme is obviously the most important as it represents the required letter, but the rest should be as "basic" as possible, using sounds that are as common in multiple languages as possible to make it as easy to pronounce by as many different speakers as possible.
Going to the NATO alphabet, take "whiskey". You need it to represent "w", but the actual phoneme /w/ isn't present in many languages, thus you don't see that phoneme present in any of the other words. Someone speaking who doesn't have that phoneme in their language doesn't even have to worry about trying to pronounce it: if you hear "viskee" or "hwiskee" or "isskay" or something, it doesn't matter because you know what word they are trying to pronounce, thus what letter they are indicating.
And that works for all of the words. "Quebec" is often pronounced "kwa-bek" by English speakers, but is properly "kay-bek". Doesn't matter, it's distinct enough from all the other words that the receiver knows that word it's supposed to be.
ADDENDUM
You should also consider if you expect people with assorted accents and/or dialects and/or other first languages to be using this alphabet. "OSAKA" and ÖSAMČON provide the example here again. The speaker and listener may not differentiate between those two initial vowels; their own language may pronounce them the same, or they may not have one or the other, or neither. So that's why you need the words representing them to be as different as possible. Consider, in the NATO alphabet, "KILO" and "QUEBEC". If you pronounce the latter properly, both have the same initial consonant but there is absolutely no way to confuse the two words, and thus what letter they represent. Similarly, in my accent, the initial sounds in "ALPHA" and "OSCAR" aren't that different, but the words are so distinct there isn't a problem in determining if I mean "A" or "O".
To extend on Keith Morrison answer:
Split up all the words per syllables and put them in a spreadsheet program. Sort alphabetically and manually go through to validate that there's not a repetitive sounding written patterns.
Then go over sounds in a similar manner.
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1700 | How can my conlang say "hot/cold" without ambiguity?
I'm creating a conlang for worldbuilding, and I'm building vocabulary for basic physical adjectives such as "long/short", "heavy/light", and "hot/cold". The major speakers of this conlang are angels, whose "duties" are to teach people science. As such, I imagined this conlang would have no chance of miscommunication. I thought one way of achieving it would be to let the said vocabulary very literal to the human perceptions. Here's the sketch:
Length:
Though one might think the human vision can measure distance between objects well, it actually doesn't measure that; it actually measures the angular distance between them, and angular distance is a dimensionless quantity.
Fortunately, there is an unexpected feature of human vision that measures the actual length of something; it is the wavelength of the perceived light, which is expressed as the hue of a color.
And thus I decided to say "long in length" as re (from "red"), and say "short in length" as wi (from "violet").
Time:
Though humans can perceive the flow of time, humans don't have a direct sense to measure the length of a duration. Yet there is an unexpected sense that has something to do with time. Our hearing can perceive the pitch of a sound, which is physically the frequency – the reciprocal of the duration of a cycle.
And thus I decided to say "high in frequency" as hi, and say "low in frequency" as lo. Of course, these refers to frequency and not to time. To refer to time, or to flip the dimension of a quantity in general, replace the positive vowels to negative; lô for "long in duration" and hî for "short in duration".
Mass:
Okay... This is where things get exotic. There is absolutely no perception measuring mass; this fact can be seen by going to the outer space, where there is no g-force to create weight.
Yet there is a physical quantity involving mass that we can perceive by some means. It is pressure, which we perceive by the pressure of the atmosphere, subtracted by the inner pressure of our body.
And thus I decided to say "high in pressure" as mo (from "atmosphere") and "low in pressure" as wa (from "vacuum").
So how I say "heavy in mass" and "light in mass"? Since the physical dimensions – length, frequency, and pressure – form a basis, I can combine the words created so far to indicate multiplicative combination of dimensions, like this:
rehi "fast" / wilo "slow"
rehihi "high in acceleration" / wilolo "low in acceleration"
rere "wide in area" / wiwi "narrow in area"
rerere "big in volume" / wiwiwi "small in volume"
reremo "strong in force" / wiwiwa "weak in force"
rereremo "high in energy" / wiwiwiwa "low in energy"
rererehimo "strong in power" / wiwiwilowa "weak in power"
remolôlô "heavy in mass" / wiwahîhî "light in mass"
mowîwîlôlô "dense" / warêrêhîhî "sparse"
Temperature/Electric current:
And this is where I have a problem. As for temperature, our sense of heat doesn't actually measure temperature. It actually measures the transferred heat per time, which is power.
Electric current is even more troublesome. Does anyone know what sense we use when electric current passes through one's body? The sense of pain maybe?
I supposed that, I should employ some other physical quantities to refer to them. For instance, if I meant ra (from "ignorance") for "high in entropy" and said no (from "knowledge") for "low in entropy", "hot in temperature" would be rereremonô and "cold in temperature" would be wiwiwiwarâ. What would be the best options?
Your length idea is nice in theory, but our eyes don't work that way. Our photoreceptors are sensitive to a range of wavelengths, and can only determine the specific wavelength seen because we have three slightly different kinds which respond differently to different ranges of visible light. Also, I'd have used "tenor" and "bass" as the basis for the frequency pair. "High" and "low" are only metaphorically terms for frequency, their literal meaning is for height.
Well, you should not confuse entropy and temperature, they are different physical concepts. Temperature is, like pressure, an intensive property that is independent on the size of the system. Entropy, on the other hand, is an extensive property like volume that doubles when you double the size of the system. So when your conlang is aware of those physical concepts, it should have different terms for both of them.
Specifically, entropy and temperature are conjugates with respect to energy (temperature is energy per unit entropy and vice versa), in exactly the same way as pressure and volume. Which seems to be what OP is doing with his names for hot and cold.
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1828 | Is it natural that different quantities with the same physical dimension are distinguished by adverbs?
My conlang is very literal to human perception, and I continued building vocabularies for physical quantities.
Though in a previous question, I brought an exotic trick to describe length (namely, give "red" for "long" and "violet" for "short"), I eventually found that, the presence of multiple eyes should exactly measure the usual length between two spatial points. Simple geometry and trigonometry; the distance between the two eyes and the four angular distances should give the said length exactly.
I took this further. Perhaps my conlang should use the same words when the quantities have the same physical dimension, only differentiated by the following adverb. This idea would be demonstrated in English like this:
high = long up / low = short up
deep = long down / shallow = short down
far = long in front / close = short in front
wide = long between / narrow = short between
Does any natural language do this?
Sure. Not to the extent that you're doing it here, but English uses "far away", "far down", "far up", "far apart", and so on to indicate physical length in different directions. (Not just "far", either: "a long way away", "a long way down", etc.)
Things that have the same dimensions in a physics sense but not in an intuitive sense don't generally work like this, just because most people don't consider them the same: you can measure color (well, some colors: not white or magenta, for example) in meters by referring to the wavelength of light, but to non-physicists there's no obvious connection between color and length. But this isn't necessarily an issue for a conlang.
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1819 | Is it plausible to set onsets and codas to be entirely different consonants?
Though I thought I confirmed the consonants of my conlang (ѲКМНПҀСТФЦЧШ), eventually, I found that I'm in disfavor of the syllable composition of CVC if the "C"s were meant to be arbitrary consonants. So while keeping CVC, I decided to add more consonants to act as codas. Namely approximants, or ВЙЛР to be exact. To give their exact pronunciation in IPA, Ѳ [θ], К [k], М [m], Н [n], П [p], Ҁ [ʡ], С [s], Т [t], Ф [f], Ц [t͜s], Ч [ʈ͡ʂ~t͜ɕ], Ш [ʂ~ɕ], В [w~v], Й [j~ʝ], Л [l], and Р [ɻ].
I wanted to take this further. Namely, ѲКМНПҀСТФЦЧШ should act only as onsets, and ВЙЛР should act only as codas. But is it plausible that onsets and codas are entirely disjoint sets?
Take Korean for comparison. It has ㄱㄲㄴㄷㄸㄹㅁㅂㅃㅅㅆㅈㅉㅊㅋㅌㅍㅎ as onsets, and ㄱㄴㄷㄹㅁㅂㅇ as codas; there is an intersection.
I won't say it's plausible, but I won't say that it's implausible, either.
It would probably be analyzed more as CV, with the the "V" being either a pure vowel or a "diphthong" ending with the appropriate approximant. You might also allow a nasal coda, actually representing a nasal coloring on the vowel or even pre-nasalization of the next consonant, which sort of thing isn't unheard of. Cyrillic itself moves the palatalization marking from the consonants to the vowels to keep the number of symbols down and avoid diacritics, but it's still the consonants that bear the brunt of the change. Only if you like the idea though, don't feel obligated.
I don't know natural languages with that feature (when I exclude languages whose phonotactics is strictly CV¹, thus having C- as onset and -∅ (nothing) as coda) but I don't consider this feature unplausible.
The described feature can be useful to you conlang in several respects
enables word segregation in a stream of sounds: Any coda/onset pair marks a word boundary
adds flavour and style to your conlang and makes it more unique
Try it out.
¹The existence of such languages is disputed, for a discussion see https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/27194/9781
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1500 | Is it possible to have consonant followed by Uvular sound
I am thinking of creating a language that has a sound system a little similar to Latin, with a guttural feel like German. The people who are going to speak this language are harsh and sound annoyed at all times. At the same time, they are very much attached to their roots; they perform little to no interaction with other races. So there is little influence of foreign languages on theirs.
I thought the sound /q/ would be great here, but the consonant clusters are too hard for me to pronounce. Hence, I am finding it difficult to form words. I am wondering if there is any kind of rule in syllable structure that helps or obstructs this kind of sound system building.
Are you asking for examples of sequences like /tq/ or /tʀ/? Or are you asking about ways to avoid having those sequences?
More like how should I use them to make the language more naturalistic, rather than making it stand out in oddish way. Also, if you have some tips on making the language more guttural that would be helpful too.
I'm afraid I'm still not quite sure what you're asking. Are you asking how natural languages use uvular sounds? If so, which uvular sounds? /ʀ/ acts rather differently from /q/ (like how /r/ acts rather differently from /t/).
You are almost there, I am asking how do I make a natural-sounding language using Uvular sound. Plus, what vowels should be dominant.
Uvulars can absolutely go in clusters. As some examples, Georgian წყალი (ts'q'ali; "water"), Arabic القراءة (alqira'a; "reading"), or Inuktitut ᖃᓂᐅᔮᖅᐸᐃᑦ (qaniujaaqpait; "syllabics").
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1976 | How do you figure out sentence structures in a conlang (or even when natlangs emerge)?
For example, the different types of language:
Pidgin
Creole
Standard natural language
Conlang
It seems we could create a stepping-stone map going from pidgin -> "stereotypical natlang" somehow. Somehow there is a process of creating the language, which is very murky / blurry to my mind currently. The easy part is phonetics/phonology, and lexicon. The super hard part is the sentence structures, in my experience so far.
Side question, are any "natlangs" (what you'd think of as a natural language traditionally) actually conlangs? Like Sanskrit? Was it made up by an individual or small group? What about Korean or Tibetan, I know those writing systems were supposedly created by one person (same with Armenian if I remember correctly). Or is that just writing systems, not the language constructed?
I have been working on a conlang for at least a year, having mostly developed a lexicon and basic rules for simple noun and verb phrases (seen in that link's website). I have played a lot with sentence structures, absorbing as much as I can from the Chinese Grammar Wiki "sentence patterns" / templates, and my knowledge of English. I don't know Chinese well, it will take me a few years to learn it enough to move it into working/long-term memory.
I am still stuck on mostly mirroring English words and sentence patterns, because that is most familiar. I have made this language maximally isolating/analytic, sort of like Vietnamese/Chinese, where everything is its own word (no conjugations or inflections or anything). Even past/future tenses are words, as is pluralizing, etc..
My question is, how do conlangers iterate on their sentence structure? To me, it seems like you must first start speaking a prototype version of your language, then expanding/refining its sentence structures as you feel what works and what doesn't. This would inherently require memorizing your lexicon of at least a few hundred words, and starting to try and "think" in terms of your language.
Can you paint a picture of how I might go about creating sentence structures and formalizing the grammar, without knowing things in advance, so I can make a bit more progress?
How do natural languages handle this? Or, since no one knows, how might they have evolved to their current state of complexity, in what sort of phases or steps? A conlang might seem to be a microcosm of how a natural language develops, sped up in time and developed by an individual or small group instead of a relatively large community.
How do you figure out sentence structures?
Create some arbitrary sentence structures, perhaps based on some other language (like English). Say 10 types of sentences, or 10 features of sentences.
Try and speak and understand what you're saying (as a solo conlanger) using those structures.
When it doesn't make sense, refine? That is where it become super fuzzy to me... How do you refine your sentence structures?
I get caught up in the process of testing out sentences using my rules, and not wanting to memorize my language rules without them being finalized. So somehow I need to try and speak, but evolve the rules as I go. Whereas in a natlang in today's world, the rules are pretty much set in stone in advance.
How do you create rules which are flexible and evolving, and not set in stone at first, and still make process in producing an understandable language?
P.S. if you have any books or papers which are relevant here, please add a comment, I would love to take a deeper look.
I say this on most of your questions, but the answer is really, really, to learn at least one language that is not English. Then you'll get used to some of the different ways of structuring sentences and how they can vary, instead of just copying what English does.
This line of research (following the Bickerton trail) seems interesting, the transition from "protolanguages" to "true" languages.
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1716 | The pros and cons of having the same word be a noun, verb, and/or adjective at the same time?
I have this burgeoning principle of "let all words be in a base form such that the base form means the abstraction behind a noun, verb, and adjective". Then you realize a word into one of those 3 with a suffix. I actually have a 4th kind of word, essentially a particle. So in my word list spreadsheet I am starting to map out how a base word can be realized into multiple forms, such as this:
The "manner" column is an adjective/adverb/determiner/pronoun sort of thing, and the "fusion" column is a preposition/particle sort of thing. Only have like 50 particles so far, but 4k base words (4k rows in the spreadsheet).
Notice how several of the words fill out 2 or 3 of the middle 4 columns. This is because, at least in English, there is a relevant concept in that word form. Like "certainty" is the noun, and "certain" is the adjective.
However, I am not sure this is the best idea, wanted to run it by you to see the pros and cons, and measure it against natural languages at a high level, specifically one aspect of it, described below.
The pro is that we have short words with only a single syllable appended as the suffix for each of the 4 word forms. The con is the following... Not all nouns/objects are the same type of thing. Not all adjectives/manners are the same type of thing. Not all actions/verbs are the same type of thing. Let me explain.
Certainty is like the "state of x", the state of being certain. It is relative to the adjective.
Propagation is either the "propagate event" itself, the "propagate result", or the "propagate process". It is not the "propagation state". Also, it is relative to the action, not the adjective like certainty.
Multiplication is either the "multiply process", or the "multiply result". Relative to the multiply action. So it is kind of similar to "propagate".
Frailty is a derivative of the adjective frail, and is like the "state of x".
Substance is the base noun, and substantial is derived from that. Substantial is like "substance containing".
Explanation is like "the explain result". Explanatory is "capable of being explained" or something like that.
I have others such as "ambush" (the action, and the noun, being the "event of ambushing").
Here is some more:
A "dig" is an action, and the place that was dug (in English). This is like the "dig result".
Leniency is dependent on the adjective lenient, and is like the "nature of being lenient" or something. The action seems like it could be "to be lenient", but then it is the action of being lenient.
Convergence could be a noun for converge, and convergent the adjective. But convergence is like the "function or nature of converging". And convergent is like "converge-able".
So needless to say, the structure of the actions/verbs, objects/nouns, and manners/adjectives/etc. are not the same across words. However, there are some standard ways we can perceive things related to the underlying concept, and so it at some level makes sense to have things like 3 words in around the concept of "converge", filling 3 of the 4 roles. In other cases, there is only 1 role filled, in others, 2. Maybe it's possible to fill all 4 roles, I'm not sure yet.
But in any case, essentially, this is filling the roles with arbitrary meanings, there is no pattern to it. That means essentially you have to memorize each case (so for converge, each of the 3 uses must have the meaning memorized, because "convergence" is the "nature of x", not the "x result" or "x event", etc.). There are at least 5 noun structures I've outlined here, but I have at least 30 cases marked out. So a noun might be any one of the 30 possibilities. Likewise, an action might be "being x" or "making x" or "doing x", so there's a few possible action categories as well. Same with adjectives.
So it seems that there is no way around this, other than to not use this pattern. That is, forget about having the 4 forms of words with their short suffix, and assigning them seemingly random/arbitrary meanings related to a central concept. Instead, just be straight and say "converge nature" or "converge result" or "converge event", when talking nouns, and same for verbs/adjectives. I think with this approach you would no longer need suffixes because every word is only ever a noun or verb or adjective, not more than one. But at the same time, I think that latter approach might be more verbose, and you would have things revolve around one of the 4 categories, and then the other related words would have to have at least an extra word (since this is an analytic style), since it would be building off of the reference word (whether its a noun, verb, adjective, etc.).
So I am wondering, and hence the question. Is it okay to have this arbitrary assignment of meanings to the 4 slots? English does this, for sure. But is it a bad thing? A learner must already memorize all 4k words, but now there is potentially 4x more words (1 in each slot) that they would have to memorize. Instead of just memorizing "x event" or "y nature", which feels more low-level and reusable, and so less to memorize.
Basically, is it bad to have this sort of arbitrary assignment of meanings to these categories? Or is it possibly a good or natural thing? I am not so sure. What are the pros and cons, and how does it compare to natural languages?
Here are a list of some more nouns, and their adjective or verb derivation:
chat (the chat object)
count (the count result)
security (secure system/framework)
diagnosis (diagnose result)
invocation (invoke event)
turn (turn event)
sneak (sneak event)
opposition (oppose force)
repentance (repent process)
ignorance (ignore state)
membership (member state)
jiggle (jiggle action)
clarity (clear feature state)
frivolity (frivolous essence)
innocence (innocent nature)
diligence (diligent essence)
gallop (gallop event)
marvel (marvelled thing)
revocation (revoke result)
undulation (undulate event)
slit (slit result)
commit (commit object)
Interesting, Mundari: The myth of a language without word classes
Now and then, I keep noticing this distinction of different noun structures since I read your post!
Yours is an impressive insight! Nouns do lump together random/evolved combinations of "noun structures" and I had never really thought about it until reading here: neither in English-speaking life, nor in learning other languages, nor in conlanging.
I take that as significant. Like I have heard statistics about hairs and things in peanut butter which I wouldn't choose to eat, say: and since I have been eating them, apparently they're not so bad. No harm, no foul. Similarly, most days I must see 1,000 objects in colors I can distinguish by color: they're "brown." If we have not needed to disambiguate these noun structures all the time, then apparently we do not need to disambiguate these noun structures all the time. In the same lumping spirit, I will continue mixing metaphors: you've unearthed a big ugly dragon with a "live and let live" attitude.
If you're doing an Ithkuil kind of conlang and need to leave nothing unsaid, then I might recommend a variety of noun suffixes instead of just one?
If you're not, then you get to choose which details you want to talk about and which can remain ambiguous. Instead of equipping each noun to disambiguate noun structures by itself, when you DO need to make such a distinction, let multiple words lend a hand like you did here in English. If you find you're making the same distinction all the time, you'll already have the noun structure insights to choose how to distinguish words on a case by case basis.
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1729 | How to get rid of "for" and "of" when making a conlang coming from English, aiming toward Chinese?
I have learned about serial verb constructions, and I am looking into Leonard Talmy and his theories of translating between and among Chinese/English. I have seen a few examples where "for" is used in the English, but obviously nothing (even close) to it is in Chinese, it's completely different. I haven't yet been able to wrap my head around how to get rid of the idea of "for", as in "I will wait for you", or "I want it for my friends", or "the main thing is for you", "let those eyes droop down for just a little longer", etc.. amongst a million other more complex examples.
How does Chinese do away with "for"? What patterns can I go by? I can see how "to" is made into the verb "arrive", so there is a 1<>1 mapping between English/Chinese in that small aspect. And "up" is "ascend" and "down" is "descend", etc.. But what about "for"? How can I get rid of "for" when creating my conlang so it doesn't feel like it's a direct port of English?
Same with "of", I can't find a verb for that one, or an equivalent construct in Chinese. So not sure what to do when essentially translating to Chinese. (Which will help when building the conlang, to give it a flavor of Chinese).
The only example I've found of "for" so far is in The Linguistic Encoding of Motion Events in Chinese:
But it is not enough to go off of.
Some useful resources referenced in Equivalence in Translation Theories: A Critical Evaluation.
"I will wait for you" without for: "I will await you"
If you don't want your conlang to be a reskin of English, I recommend not trying to find "the Chinese equivalent of this English word". Words don't match up one to one between languages. Instead, think about the actual meaning behind each English phrase, and other ways to convey that meaning: not the words but the meaning they're being used to transmit.
"To", for example, means a dozen different things in English. Some of those are translated with a verb meaning "arrive" in Chinese. Most aren't. Translation isn't as simple as just find-and-replacing each word with its direct equivalent. The "to" in "to like" means something entirely different from the "to" in "to the store" and it's a historical accident that English uses the same word for them.
"For", similarly, can convey a lot of different things. In the sentence at the end of your question, it indicates that what follows is the duration of the event (rather than, say, how long it took before the event happened). Latin conveys that by putting the time in the accusative case for a duration and the ablative case for the span during which it happened. Some of your other examples use "for" to indicate the beneficiary of the action. Latin indicates this with the dative case, while Lingála adds an applicative (a modifier that adds an extra argument to a verb).
Other examples in your question use "for" to indicate the the recipient of something being transferred (also the dative in Latin, the word's position in the sentence in Lingála) or to change a one-argument verb into a two-argument verb (Latin uses prefixes or switches words entirely; Lingála would use another applicative). Since they mean fundamentally different things, it's really just a coincidence that English uses the same word for all of them. Other languages generally do not.
"think about the actual meaning behind each English phrase, and other ways to convey that meaning" where can I find out more information on how to do that, it takes a lot of work and there's a huge number of possible ways to say the same thing, so I don't know how far to take it or how to scope it down some. Or if there are standard patterns to translating or if it's a free-for-all.
I reckoned with 2 versions of "to", and some other stuff, but learning how to think more generally to "translate" will definitely be a mario-kart boost in terms of figuring this stuff out.
@Lance My main piece of advice is the same one I've given before: study another language, ideally taking live classes with a native speaker. Then you'll have another point of reference to work from, and some experience with the actual process of translating.
Arg, I don't have the time to fully learn a new language, there's gotta be another way. I will remember that though, maybe one day in a few years I will have time to study Chinese. It's a lot to learn a new language! I want to learn Chinese, but the fact that I have to learn and memorize at least 3000 characters and then also learn how to use the tone system is a major barrier to entry :]
@Lance Unfortunately there's no real shortcut to it. It's a problem in academic linguistics as well: many theories of syntax were written by English-speakers and end up assuming that all other languages are just English in a fancy hat. But you can get a good foundation with just a semester or two of classes; learning from a native speaker will be a lot more effective than Duolingo or studying from a book.
"For learners of Chinese, it takes about ten years to get this level [translator-level], maybe eight years for very dedicated learners" https://www.hackingchinese.com/become-chinese-english-translator-like-one/
@Lance Don't worry, you don't need to become fluent for conlanging purposes. Working as a translator requires deep, thorough knowledge of many aspects of the language and culture, but an introductory course will get you experience with the process of translating in much less time.
Thanks, good to know. In the meantime, I am going to try and find a book on translating, how to be a good translator in general. Haven't found anything, looked a few hours here and there. Maybe bible translation is the best bet.
@Lance Fundamentally, being a good translator requires knowledge of multiple languages. I'm not sure you'll find any way around that.
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1652 | How to structure sentences to be able to distinguish between verbs, nouns, and adjectives etc.?
In my budding conlang called Tune, I have "base" words which start and end with a consonant, either 3, 4, 5, or 6 sounds, with 1 or 2 vowels. Examples:
tun ("tune")
tunan ("tunahn")
torvan ("torvahn")
twin ("tween")
(where each Roman/Latin letter has a specific sound associated with it).
I was initially thinking of having these "bases" mean simultaneously a noun, a verb, and an adjective. Basically they would mean the full range of possibilities of that concept. Then you would append a -a to make it an explicit noun, append a -i to make it a verb, and a -u to make it an adjective. But the problem with this is that every word now is at least 2 syllables. I noticed that at least in English, most words are 1 syllable, if I were to guess, most words in regular English conversation are:
1 syllable (50%)
2 syllables (25%)
3 syllables (15%)
4+ (10%)
Just a feeling there, but the feeling is many words are simply 1 syllable. I would like to make most words one syllable if possible. But that means ditching my idea of the suffixes potentially.
So I'm wondering, if every word starts/ends with a consonant and is one or two syllables, how will you be able to tell which is a noun, verb, or adjective (or determiner/etc., if it's similar to English or Chinese in structure). What do I need to do to make sure I don't run into complex problems down the road when the language gets more vocabulary? It seems like some sort of fixed sentence word order with word "slots" would be required, but I'm not sure what the possibilities are. Can you outline some things I could do if I get rid of the suffix (or only use it in some cases) to make sure I can effectively include nouns, verbs, and adjectives without confusion? I am not sure what to imagine in trying to solve this.
If I make it so all words fit these patterns (start and end with consonant, 3-6 sounds long), and each word can be used as a noun, verb, or adjective "noun modifiers" (or adverb for verb modifiers), then I could do like buffalo buffalo buffalo... sentence, if there are no suffixes to distinguish in the common case. I am just not sure if I need to fix the word order or something like that.
It seems hard because:
The tree-y tree treeified treeily.
The [adjective] [noun] [verbed] [adverb]
If tree was written/pronounced dip ("deep"), then:
dip dip dip dip.
That could mean anything. So it seems like you need in certain context to add the suffixes, but I'm not sure what the possibilities are. The suffix system might have it be:
dipu dipa dipu dipi.
Which would make more sense, but then we are at 2-syllable words for everything again.
What I'm considering doing is the following. Making each "base" mean the most common frame of reference (noun vs. verb vs. adjective), and then the suffixes turn it into the other forms. So the most common reference for a "tree" (base), would be the tree as a noun, not treeify (verb). Then there is "walk" which is most commonly considered an action, but could also be a noun, so the default base means the verb, not the noun in that case. But some cases are in between like "calm" (to calm or the calm?), so those perhaps always distinguish with the suffixes -i or -u. But maybe you are allowed to add the extra information to specify if desired or to disambiguate, but otherwise you can use the base form to mean the most common form of the concept.
I know an English speaker who drinks drinks made of orange oranges. Some might also fish for fishy fish, or cut out a well cut cut. Somehow they get by. My favourite example from my native (Swedish) Swedish is the sentence "En bar barbarbarbarbar bar en bar barbarbarbarbar". Somehow most people manage to understand it if I say it slowly with the right intonation. I guess I'm just trying to say people can manage language tasks which seem impossible to an outsider, though I'm not at all sure how this is done in practice.
As an aside, I suggest writing down a definition for each class of word nonetheless. For example, that does the root for tree mean when it is used in a verb? Is it "to stand like a tree" or "to grow"? Does the root for "eat" become the noun "food" or the noun "eater", or both depending on context? The choices you make here are where the personality of your language and conculture can shine :)
I guess what I was trying to say with my previous comment is: speakers of the language will think of these as different words -- derivational morphology as opposed to inflexion. And derivational morphology can afford to be irregular.
There are plenty of languages that require explicit marking on certain categories of word. In Latin, for example, all nouns need to be marked with case and number, and all verbs need to be marked with TAM and person. This means that all nouns and verbs are polysyllabic; Latin-speakers just spoke faster to compensate for the longer words. Esperanto famously works this way, with -o for nouns, -a for adjectives, -i (or some others) for verbs. Or you can change something inside the root to indicate the category; in Akkadian, parās- is a noun, pāris- is an adjective, purus is a verb, all from the stem P-R-S (along with a good dozen other patterns).
(Well, technically all Latin nouns and verbs are sometimes polysyllabic. Occasionally the ending combines with the stem and makes a single syllable: falc + -s = falx "sickle", da + -ō = dō "I give". But forms with different endings still end up being multiple syllables: falcī "for a sickle", dare "to give".)
There are also plenty of languages where there's no explicit marking on these parts of speech, and you have to rely on syntax to know which is which. In English, pretty much any word can be used as a verb. And the fairly-rigid syntax means this is seldom an issue. "Index this file by tomorrow" is unambiguous that "index" is the verb and "file" is the noun, and vice versa for "file this index". Some languages require the verb to be the first phrase in the sentence, or the second, or the last. In toki pona, the first phrase in a construction is always the subject, then the predicate (separated by li), then the object (separated by e).
Apart from adding syllables, you could use word order in combination with with prosody (tone, emphasis, pausing...) and other pronunciation differences.
Some brainstorming examples for you to remix:
nasalize the vowel for an adjective; one tone (even without being a tonal language, like English uses tone for questions, sarcasm, emphasis, etc.) marks nouns; do neither for verbs
mark a verb by saying its first consonant distinctly: hold it for nasals, eject it for stops; do the same with the final consonant for nouns; mark an adjective by stressing it
words are nouns by default; the final word in an utterance is always the verb; a word with a short pause {before, after, within} it is an adjective
the noun is tun (unvoiced, unaspirated), the verb is dun (voiced, unaspirated), the adjective is tʰun (unvoiced, aspirated)
let one vowel never appear in nouns; make all adjectives verbs
In my own work I have "bases" like you had in mind. I know nouns come after declension particles and verbs come after conjugation particles. The only morphological change in the language is to mark an adjective: say the first vowel twice.
If you don't want to introduce another syllable, have your markers be final consonants, so you get e.g.,"tunant" is a noun, "tunans" is a verb., "tunansh" an adjective, etc. You may have to jigger things to keep the final cluster pronounceable, or have multiple final consonants that serve the same role (e,g., using "-d" or "-t" to match the voiced/unvoiced last vowel of the root).
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1703 | How do languages distinguish formal and casual noun phrases?
It turns out that it appears Chinese has about 100 "base" (1-character) words for various foundational animals, and then the rest of the animals are combinations of those bases (or other adjectives):
hippo: river horse
lemur: fox monkey
giraffe: long neck deer
etc.
I am doing similarly for other areas of the lexicon (games/sports, plants, rocks, etc.). So I have stuff like this:
antelope: even-toed ruminant
wren: hole-dweller bird
emu: camel bird
ibis: wading bird
etc.
I am still stuck on the problem of figuring out how to distinguish common noun phrases vs. formal noun phrases. I tried asking how Chinese does it but I still don't get how Chinese distinguishes between the two. Like, how do you say "long neck deer" but not mean "giraffe"? Likewise, how can I say "the wading bird caught a fish" and mean the generic/casual noun phrase "wading bird" which is not the same as the formal noun phrase "wading bird [ibis]".
How do some natural or conlangs handle this? Oh, in Chinese, the name for "gorilla" is "large monkey" and chimpanzee is "black monkey". But gorillas can be black, and chimpanzees can be "large". So how would you say "large monkey" and not mean gorilla, or black monkey and not mean chimpanzee? How does this work?
The only way I can see this working is by doing something like a prefix particle meaning "the noun phrase next is a formal phrase", so "formal large monkey" means gorilla, but "large monkey" is just a large monkey. But that would mean to talk about things like dogs and cats you have to prefix every word with "formal", "the formal curly-haired dog [poodle]" or "the formal hairless cat". I don't think that is ideal, but not sure. So wondering how other languages (natlangs and conlangs) can handle this situation.
How do you use the terms of the formal noun phrase in a casual way?
I'm thinking of doing this:
smale kalime markat - small black monkey - bonobo (formal)
smal kalim markat - small black monkey - (generic)
Adding the -e to the preceding words so they are like joined in the formal case.
What you seem to be describing are "idioms" -- phrases that mean something different from the literal meaning of the words.
BTW, 'hippo' is short for 'hippopotamus', which is Greek for 'river horse', so it's not just Chinese. In German it is also called 'Flusspferd' -- river horse.
Greek compounds puzzle me: why not potamippos?
@AntonSherwood See discussion at https://latin.stackexchange.com/q/1966/406
In English, we use stress. Think about how you say "greenhouse" versus "green house", or "redwood" versus "red wood": English doesn't allow two stressed syllables in a row within a lexical unit, but it's just fine if they're in different units.
Also, different syntactic options. A "whale that is blue" is unambiguously about its color, not its species, because "blue whale" (the species) is a fixed phrase that cannot be rearranged.
This works mainly through context. That is a bit difficult to give examples for without actual context:
Situation: a (very) large aquarium with whales of different species. If you say "the blue whale eats a lot more krill than the humpback", then it is clear that the "blue" is not an adjective, but part of the phrase "blue whale". If there was a blue whale and a green whale, then it would be different.
Situation: you're in a zoo at the gorilla enclosure. "This large monkey is the alpha male" -- should be obvious if your term for gorilla was "large monkey". If it's not obvious, you could ask "Do you mean large monkey or large monkey?"; but this would only happen infrequently. Otherwise the terms would change over time to be less ambiguous. If you're in front of the chimpanzee enclosure, it would be obvious that large was an adjective (unless agorilla was also there and had taken charge of the tribe).
Situation: your in front of a row of houses. "I like that green house" is obvious, as there's no greenhouse. Even if you say "that green house is full of plants" there is no scope for misunderstanding. If there was a greenhouse visible, that would change, and again if it wasn't obvious (eg if there was also a green house with many plants), you can ask for clarification.
A lot of language use is contextual (which is why isolated sentences are often ambiguous, since they are lacking context), so I wouldn't worry too much about making your own language too precise and unambiguous. Just look at toki pona, which is so vague that you can not really use it without actual context.
If you're using language out of context (eg an encyclopedia article), then you need to define initially what it is you're talking about, thus providing context. "The blue whale is a species of whale that eats krill. Blue whales live in the oceans." -- it is clear that in the second sentence you're not using blue as an adjective. Imagine writing a toki pona Wikipedia article about apples: kili is fruit, so you need to be more specific. kili sike? That's round fruit, which could still be anything. But if you are in an apple orchard, then talking about apples is a lot easier.
In addition to what @Draconis say, many of the compound names don't make sense grammatically unless they are read as a unit. A river horse could not be interpreted as "a horse that is river", it wouldn't make any sense. You could get an ambiguity if you referred to one as a horse of the river, but riverhorses are safe to talk about.
These sort of compounds are common in other Germanic languages as well, and are generally distinguished by stress. In Germanic languages outside English, we typically indicate this altered stress in writing to a much larger degree. In Swedish, the word 'flod', meaning river and the word 'häst', meaning horse, nicely combine to 'flodhäst', which is what we call hippos.
This is sort of similar to your suggestion of a special form of adjectives used only in formal phrases! If you don't want a special verb form, which might feel a bit contrived, you could instead use different constructions, just as we do when we combine two nouns. Maybe adjectives normally come before the noun, but are placed after it in case of formal phrases?
The special forms for adjectives are interesting though!
A horse cannot be river, but river horse could mean, for example, a horse trained to tow barges on rivers.
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2052 | Pros/cons for grasping/groking/using novel concepts, new made up words (sound sequences) or multi-word terms composed from simple words?
I am back to thinking about how one could best represent the plethora of concepts from the human perspective. Whether we should invent new words (which are basically arbitrary sound sequences, using the conlang phonology), or we should combine multiple simple words into terms?
The example that quickly comes to mind is human names, contrasting English names (John, Jim, Jane, etc.) with stereotyped Native American names (Black Horse, White Cloud, etc.). English names (from a layman perspective) are meaningless, while these Native American names are composed of meaningful words (though they lose their meaning when being used for identifiers like this).
What is easier to grok, or easier to use in conversation when you are talking to someone and they don't know the term set you are going to be using (like when you are teaching someone something new)? On one hand it seems easier to compose simple words into longer phrases (like the Native American example), or like we have "magnetic resonance imaging" instead of calling it "foobarbaz". In English we have a mixture, we invent new words like "tylenol" or "proton", which aren't part of everyday speech. But then we have like "dwarf star" or "computer science" instead of "xiamakan" and "isholang" sort of thing.
In English, animal names (bear, coyote, etc.), human names, place names (Africa, Asia, etc.), rock names (granite, lapis lazuli etc.), religions (judaism, islam, taoism, etc.), and many other things use words which aren't part of the basic lexicon. But other things like the examples I mentioned above are multi-word terms from simpler concepts. Often times the word in the native language means something simple though, like "jew" comes from "yehuda" which means "praised". So we have the "praised people" and the "submitting people" (islam).
What are the pros and cons of both approaches?
Like I mentioned, to me it seems easier to use simpler words composed into longer terms than to make up arbitrary words (even if the word technically has a useful etymology, for layman's sake it is a meaningless set of sounds). But then on the other hand, calling a "wolf" a "large tooth animal" and a cat a "pounce animal" might not be descriptive/identifying enough for practical communication. I'm not sure if you can go completely one of these approaches over another, or you need a mix.
Having arbitrary words/sound sequences like "proton" and "muon", not to mention the name of Chinese and Arabic named cities coming from English, means the size of the vocabulary grows to hundreds of thousands of words, if not millions. Which makes me desire using a small set of say 10k base words, and combining them into terms, of which you can get to millions of terms as well, but using simpler words as a foundation.
This is a big choice to make for a conlang, should you limit the size of your vocabulary to a smallish set of words (closed set, like 10k words, not talking toki-pona level minimalism), or should you allow arbitrary new words to be formed (open set)? If it's not an easy answer, how would you go about conceptualizing the choices to be made here?
One thought I had is to use arbitrary new words for the most basic things that you can observe (dog, cat), name, or recognize as a valid pattern (for example, mathematical "groups", calling them groups is confusing, but calling them "groupon" or something might be better). Then you can add more arbitrary words as necessary, but keep it to a minimum if possible, and instead opt for combining words into multi-word terms.
That would work for animals. So some animals get their own word (horse, dog, cat, deer, etc.), but others get built off those (hippo = river horse, giraffe = long neck deer, which are two Chinese examples). Things which it would help to think of them as their own pattern not based on anything else, you give a fresh new word (proton, electron, etc., but those could be called "positive particle", "negative particle" too, instead). Other concepts you map to multi-word terms. But I just am confused on how I can better think about what approach to take in the grand scheme.
With math jargon in particular, I find it particularly hard to understand new concepts because they invent new words. "Abelian group" for example, when they could just say "commutative composition groupon" or something. But commutative is also a complex concept, so it's like you would have an expression "groupon where you can combine the two elements in any order", or "order independent element combining groupon" :). That's where it gets tough, what would lead to better understanding in the end?
It seems that having a short term ("abelian group") would be best in some cases for learning, as long as there is a way to easily look it up and see "groupon where you can combine the two elements in any order" or some more primitive definition quickly. Not sure if there are other ways of looking at / solving this conundrum. Clearly, when you become versed in the topics, having a short reference is most helpful (abelian, for example). But it's definitely hard to get over the hump when you hear new words, that's for sure too.
Could you get away with calling an abelian group a "cloud nine stack"? Meaningless basic words used to reference it, would that be easier than a made up sound sequence?
The example that quickly comes to mind is human names, contrasting English names (John, Jim, Jane, etc.) with stereotyped Native American names (Black Horse, White Cloud, etc.). English names (from a layman perspective) are meaningless, while these Native American names are composed of meaningful words (though they lose their meaning when being used for identifiers like this).
Well, they have a meaning—the meaning is "this person I'm talking about". For another example, look at ancient Greek names. Usually these consisted of two noun elements stuck together, which were often meaningful: Demosthenes "people-strength", Xanthippe "yellow-horse". But Xanthippe doesn't necessarily have a yellow horse; that's just her name. And the pieces of these names can be inherited; the child of Demosthenes and Xanthippe might be Demippos, "people-horse". This makes no sense literally, but perfect sense if the meaning is "descended from Demosthenes and Xanthippe".
On one hand it seems easier to compose simple words into longer phrases (like the Native American example), or like we have "magnetic resonance imaging" instead of calling it "foobarbaz". In English we have a mixture, we invent new words like "tylenol" or "proton", which aren't part of everyday speech. But then we have like "dwarf star" or "computer science" instead of "xiamakan" and "isholang" sort of thing.
"Proton" isn't just a meaningless coinage, though; it's made up of meaningful elements in Greek. For technical terms, English doesn't really like making compounds, which is why next to "computer science" you have "linguistics". Other languages have a more transparent compound there, like Swahili maarifa ya lugha "science of language" or German Sprachwissenschaft "speech-knowledge-making".
One thought I had is to use arbitrary new words for the most basic things that you can observe (dog, cat), name, or recognize as a valid pattern (for example, mathematical "groups", calling them groups is confusing, but calling them "groupon" or something might be better).
Mathematicians don't seem to have any difficulty with it.
That would work for animals. So some animals get their own word (horse, dog, cat, deer, etc.), but others get built off those (hippo = river horse, giraffe = long neck deer, which are two Chinese examples). Things which it would help to think of them as their own pattern not based on anything else, you give a fresh new word (proton, electron, etc., but those could be called "positive particle", "negative particle" too, instead).
"Hippo" comes from "river horse" in Greek. "Giraffe" comes from "flute-leg" in Persian. We just didn't need to come up with our own names for these because speakers of other languages had done it already. For the particles, English just really likes Greek and Latin coinages for its technical terms; "proton" is literally "first-bit" and electron is "electricity-bit".
With math jargon in particular, I find it particularly hard to understand new concepts because they invent new words. "Abelian group" for example, when they could just say "commutative composition groupon" or something. But commutative is also a complex concept, so it's like you would have an expression "groupon where you can combine the two elements in any order", or "order independent element combining groupon" :). That's where it gets tough, what would lead to better understanding in the end?
I can't think of any name that would get someone to grok groups (or commutativity, or…) without just learning the axioms, and then working with them until they've internalized the concept. At which point, you want a relatively short name so you can talk about it easily.
But it's definitely hard to get over the hump when you hear new words, that's for sure too.
Is it really the word that's the difficulty? "Group" is a common English word that most people know; the group axioms (and everything that follows from them) are a lot harder to learn than the name.
Could you get away with calling an abelian group a "cloud nine stack"? Meaningless basic words used to reference it, would that be easier than a made up sound sequence?
Sure; mathematicians love coming up with bizarre names for things. One method of analyzing Schubert polynomials has recently been dubbed "pipe dreams". But the name "Abelian group" makes it clear that you're talking about a specific type of group, and "cloud nine stack" doesn't.
I think I've decided in the conlang to make each "complex" word have a backing "basic multi-word term". For example, having all of the geologic periods or archaeological cultures as complex words is ridiculous for a newcomer, it is too much to try and push down their throat. But perhaps as an expert it makes it easier. So for example "ordovician" gets "water life explosion" as it's basic backing term.
Then in conversation, you can first mention the "water life explosion" period, "which we call the ordovician period". Then you resay the basic one a few times more, and keep calling it ordovician just after, then slowly migrate to the complex word for future discussions, falling back to the basic term, which also has a backing prose definition, if necessary, or encountering new people.
@Lance Most people learning introductory German also don't need to learn the terms for "pre-Cambrian" and such. Only geologists and paleontologists care about those.
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1817 | How do atomic languages handle breaking down and sequencing complex English noun-phrases?
Along the lines of How do languages which have adjectives after the noun work with complex phrases? (my last question), I am wondering now more about compound English words and how to break these apart and somehow "reverse" the order of things (though not necessarily reverse, because I'm not 100% clear yet on what I want totally, still unclear to me so far).
Basically I am thinking of phrases like this:
carefully planned meeting
crazy beautiful
insanely tricky puzzle
If I try and straight ahead "reverse" these, I first have to break them down into more atomic units. So first, before reversing, I do:
care full [like] plan [past] meet [flow]
crazy beauty full
insane [like] trick [like] puzzle
Not perfect, but seems close enough. Then I try and go about reversing it (to make the adjectives trail after the head noun or element):
flow meet past plan like full care
full beauty crazy
puzzle like trick like insane
It would be perceived sort of like this:
[flow meet] [past plan] [like full care]
[full beauty] crazy
puzzle [like trick] [like insane]
To me, this doesn't make any sense, and feels really hard to grok. Is it just because it is unnatural to me? Or do languages do it like this? Or am I doing it wrong and real or constructed languages do it differently when they do the "adjectives last" approach? How exactly do they do it when these words like "beauty-full" are compound words which need to be split up, and somehow also rotated in the phrase?
How do you know what should feel natural? Meta-question, can I train myself to feel new ways of doing things are natural? The english way, where we have nested structures chained together like [[a, b, c], [d, e, f]] just "feels right" for some reason, and I'm not sure it's purely based on my upbringing.
Another simpler example to demonstrate the point is, -ed past tense. A word like "walked". Does it become [past] walk or walk [past]? Which part of English should be reversed and which shouldn't basically? I have been thinking about it in terms of a URL structure, how would I do that. Would it be one of these?
/past/walk, where it's first scoping you down to an abstract past, then to a more specific action (general -> specific)
/walk/past, where it's filtering the walk to a more specific walk, but really going specific -> general in terms of terminology.
I can't tell which one would be more appropriate, if the goal is to make a hierarchy of sort of "filtering" like this (a website even).
https://yourvietnamese.com/learn-vietnamese/vietnamese-adjectives/
The answer to your meta-question is to learn another language. Taking even a semester or two of classes in any non-English language (or better yet, a non-Indo-European one) will help you conceptualize different ways that grammar can work.
I wonder if it ever occurred to you that in other languages words like “beautiful” or “tricky” can consist of just one morpheme (cf. their English one-morpheme synonyms “nice” and “sly”) and that reversing the order of the attributes doesn't necessarily mean reversing the order of all the morphemes in the attributes? Just check the grammar of Swahili in which adjectives together with numerals, as well as possessive and demonstrative pronouns follow the noun and in which most of the grammatic features are expressed by prefixes, not by suffixes as in English.
What is an "atomic" language?
Sorry I probably meant analytic, "atomic" means everything is an atom, a word in this case.
Meta-question, can I train myself to feel new ways of doing things are natural? The english way, where we have nested structures chained together like [[a, b, c], [d, e, f]] just "feels right" for some reason, and I'm not sure it's purely based on my upbringing.
First and foremost, the answer to this is to learn another language. The best (really, the only) way to get used to non-English ways of structuring language is to see how other languages do it differently. Ideally, take classes from a native-speaking instructor for a semester or two (it'll be a lot easier and faster to absorb than Duolingo or the like). If you're looking for something distinctly non-English, Mandarin and Japanese are popular enough that you can find classes for them everywhere.
There's been an unfortunate tendency in linguistics since its earliest days to assume that the way English structures things is "logical" or "natural" and the way other languages do things is "strange" and "unnatural", which is absolutely not the case. If you grew up speaking Japanese instead, Japanese sentence structure would "feel right" and English would not. The field of linguistics as a whole is still in the process of recovering from this assumption.
To me, this doesn't make any sense, and feels really hard to grok. Is it just because it is unnatural to me? Or do languages do it like this? Or am I doing it wrong and real or constructed languages do it differently when they do the "adjectives last" approach? How exactly do they do it when these words like "beauty-full" are compound words which need to be split up, and somehow also rotated in the phrase?
Even staying entirely within the bounds of English, we sometimes do structure our compounds this way, thanks to all the syntax we borrowed from French. In English you can say either "beautiful" or "full of beauty"; "prettier" or "more pretty"; etc.
So instead of "extremely beautiful", we can say "full of beauty to an extreme". Instead of "careful movement" you can say "act of moving with care". The fact that the "after" forms of modifiers require prepositions is just a quirk of English grammar; other languages use this structure by default, and don't need any extra words to mark it.
Another simpler example to demonstrate the point is, -ed past tense. A word like "walked". Does it become [past] walk or walk [past]? Which part of English should be reversed and which shouldn't basically?
English puts the past-tense marking after ("walked"), but future-tense marking before ("will walk").
Ancient Greek does the opposite, with past-tense marking before (the augment) and future-tense marking after (the sigmatic future).
Latin puts all the tense marking at the end.
Swahili puts all of it at the beginning.
Lingála puts it on both ends, what linguists call a "circumfix".
Akkadian puts it in the middle of the word, changing out the vowels while keeping the consonants the same (an "infix"). English sometimes does this too: run vs ran.
Mandarin generally doesn't mark tense at all. It's a quirk of English that tense marking is required on every verb; many other languages don't require this (but may require something else: Turkish requires you to mark how you know the information).
Every permutation of this exists somewhere in the world. I really do recommend studying another language to a basic level to get a sense of what's possible.
I second that. Just go on Duolingo and start Hawai'ian, for example. That is fairly easy (Latin alphabet) and gives you a good idea how other languages work.
"There's been an unfortunate tendency in linguistics since its earliest days to assume that the way English structures things is "logical" or "natural" and the way other languages do things is "strange" and "unnatural"" - wait, what? I genuinely don't understand how people can do a serious linguistic study of multiple world languages without coming away with the impression that English is a nonsensical mess. And I say that as a native English speaker!
@KarlKnechtel There's also the unfortunate tendency of early linguists to extrapolate from English and maybe French to the entire world, without looking at any other ways of doing things. Look at works like the famous Metaphors We Live By and you'll find claims that are trivially disproven if you ever look outside Standard Average European…which the authors unfortunately didn't. (Such as the claim that "with" for accompaniment and "with" for instrument are identical in every language, disproven by languages as exotic as Russian and Latin.)
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1499 | How important/useful is it to derive words from smaller parts in a conlang?
In a similar light to How do conlangs/natlangs have prefixes suffixes and not get them jumbled up? , what is the use or purpose of deriving words from smaller parts in a conlang, generally speaking? It appears that natural languages evolve to do this out of necessity, reusing parts and attaching things to parts to extend them ("ex-" extend, extra, extravagant, "inter-", etc.). But is it really necessary? What advantages does this provide us in language?
The only advantages I can see is that it occasionally can give use some clue as to the words meaning. But it will never give us an accurate definition of the word's meaning. So why even bother is my main question?
For example, you might have bi- meaning two, so you have biannual (2x per year) and biweekly (every two weeks (why not twice a week? another story lol)). So given you know "weekly" already, you might be able to guess that biweekly means twice a week or every two weeks or something. But even with bi-, you might not have an accurate guess. For example, bible, biography, billing, all start with bi, yet don't mean two.
Which brings me to my second point. Often times you have words which have the same spelling as the prefix (assuming we're talking about English), but which don't have any relation. Beneath, Benefit. Bell- (war), belligerent, bellyache, bell itself. There are better examples out there. So this seems like, more than adding a degree of helpfulness, it actually adds more to the confusion overall. In the end you need to memorize the meaning of every word, and then you can backtrace/recover the meaning of the "etymological parts" from the definition of the whole. But then it's like, if we're building a conlang, what is the purpose of deriving words from smaller word parts? Other than to resemble natural languages and their evolutionary dirtiness perhaps, I guess.
It seems that you would be better off just picking random words to mean different things. Especially for foundational concepts. So instead of "inter-x" like "internet" and "interconnected" and "interwoven", you would just have "foo", "bar", and "baz" (no ba- prefix lol). So there is no relation derived from simpler parts, thus removing the confusion. But does this make it harder to learn a language? That is, do the prefixes/suffixes (as in these English examples) actually aid in understanding/memory in some way or sort? Maybe there is some benefit after all, I am not sure.
How important/useful is it to derive words from smaller parts in a conlang?
Sandhi in Sanskrit (for combining words) seems related to this question in some way, is it necessary to do such a thing in a conlang though?
Spelling is sometimes problematic where pronunciation is not: be-neath and bene-fit are different in that respect, similar to uni-form and un-interesting. In spoken English they are not confused, only in written.
All languages have some way to combine atomic units to make more complex or elaborate meanings. Sometimes the result is considered a single word; sometimes it's not. But the underlying principles are the same either way. The advantage is that it lets you express concepts that you don't have atomic words for.
The problem you're seeing is, most of your examples aren't formed within English. They're formed within other languages and then borrowed into English. "Belligerent" is a perfectly regular formation in Latin, from words meaning "war" and "carry". But in English it's pretty much opaque and has to be learned as an indivisible unit. If you look at a regular formation within English, like "uninteresting", you probably have no difficulty at all realizing it means "not interesting", and "interesting" means that it "interests" you. (The fact that "interest" is then made up of "inter" and "est" isn't an English thing, it's a Latin thing.)
English is also fairly unusual among the world's languages in that it doesn't like using regular English compounds for new technical terms (and will instead apply Latin or Greek compounding rules and then borrow the result into English). Most languages are more transparent in these sorts of compounds.
"English is also fairly unusual among the world's languages in that it doesn't like using regular English compounds"
Only reading this did it occur to me that I really have internalized a bizarre thing as normal. Without very specific resources, it would seem almost impracticable, let alone desirable, for people to go find foreign words which their fellow speakers would not use whenever they wanted to make new words for their fellow speakers to learn.
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1965 | Spectrum of personal names and how they may overlap with real words across languages?
In English, we have names like Matt, Mark, Luke, John, etc.. These are actual words too in English (ignoring spelling, just the sound):
mat: floor mat
mark: a mark on the wall
luke: luke warm
john: toilet
There are probably many others in other languages (Chinese, Spanish, conlangs of various sorts, etc..).
I would ask how do we tell these apart from regular words, but I feel like I've asked that already and it comes down to context and where the word fits into the sentence. But we don't have names like the F-word or SH-word, though Dick is a real name (surprisingly!). So even swear words can be names, not sure why we don't avoid that one. Rich is a name, Lance (my name, a dagger-like knife), they are "things" of various sorts.
I never associate my name Lance with the dagger, unless I am thinking of what it means in other contexts.
So what is the spectrum of how languages handle names (conlangs or natlangs). Are there any that keep them a disjoint class of words (i.e. completely separated), separated from "regular" words? Are there any where it's even more intense than English, and every name in some lang is a "real" word? What are some example languages and names, and where I can perhaps find more information on those? Is there ever severe problems with names mapping to real words (like Dick) in other languages?
Would it be a problem if even extra common words like "the" or "is" are names (assuming English, but in any language)?
See this question and its answers on linguistics.se
Note that john and dick almost certainly come from the personal names.
it's a minor point, but a lance isn't a knife of any sort, it's a type of spear
Remember that names are given by people. Nobody wants to name their child "The" or "Is" because it'll just create confusion and problems for them. But even if there is a homophone ("Iz" short for Isabelle is not unknown), context generally makes it work.
Toki pona draws a strict division between "official words" (the lexicon) and "unofficial words" (names), with differences in how they can be used, but this is not especially naturalistic. I'm not aware of any natural language that works this way.
In most languages, names are just a subset of nouns. Even in English, think about how many nicknames are just words. The same is true for nicknames in most of the languages mentioned below, even if they have different systems that are more common for personal names.
In Swahili, many names are just words. For example, the name Zuri is just the adjective for "good" or "kind". However, names generally take the "class zero" gender marker (used for names and kinship terms); if you were describing a good person, you'd call them mzuri instead (with the class-one gender marker).
In Ancient Greek, most personal names were created by sticking two roots together. At first, these combinations generally made sense, but that wasn't a requirement: the child of Demosthenes ("people-strength") and Xanthippe ("yellow-horse") might be named Demippos ("people-horse"), using half of each parent's name to create something nonsensical on its own.
In Latin, there was a very limited supply of "standard" personal names, most of which had clear etymologies (Decimus "tenth", Spurius "bastard") but some of which didn't (Gaius, Aulus). But people went beyond this "standard" set all the time, using other nouns and adjectives.
In Akkadian and Egyptian, names tended to be full sentences, ideally ones that mention a god somewhere in them. "Nebuchadnezzar" is Nabû-kudurri-uṣṣur "may Nabu protect my firstborn"; "Ankhesenamun" (Tutankhamun's wife) is Ꜥnḫ-s-n-jmn "she lives for Amun". These would be trimmed down to the first couple syllables for casual use, and we also find names that are just single descriptive nouns or adjectives.
English is a bit of an outlier, in that most of our names have been borrowed from other languages for reasons of prestige, concealing their meaning. But it's far more common in general for names to be meaningful words or phrases. In fact, outside of English and a few other languages, it's common to develop folk etymologies of foreign names: the Hebrew name Moše (> English "Moses") likely comes from Egyptian msj, which was very common in theophoric names, but it's also got a folk etymology within Hebrew (where people are used to names making sense).
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1486 | How to handle the "key" *focusing* words in a Conlang, like the, me, we, here, this, etc.?
So I have a burgeoning conlang that I've been playing around with, still stuck on the word portion (it has been several months). But every now and then I can take a little breather and work on some sentence structures. Today is one of those days.
It turns out, I have boiled words down to one or two syllable words (which gives about 150k possibilities before compound words take shape). But there are 42 words which just seem special for some reason, and I have made them into the only 2 letter words in the conlang:
bo,you
da,here
de,of
di,there
do,i
du,by
fa,this
faya,these
fi,that
fiya,those
fe,than
fu,sure
ga,ouch
go,it
gu,but
he,hey
ka,a
ke,okay
la,the
me,what
mu,just
na,no
pe,why
pa,then
pi,if
se,when
ta,at
te,who
tu,to
ve,how
vi,and
vu,or
we,where
wo,we
ya,yes
ye,cheer
zo,they
xo,should
ko,could
po,would
so,so
I can probably remove should/could/would from the list, and the expressions "hey" and "yeah", and yes and no. But that leaves us with basic logic (and/or), and the pronouns, and this/that, here/there, the question words (who what when, etc.), and "at", "of", and "the" and "a". That's mostly it.
I am thinking of making ma mean "I", and then maya mean "we" (-ya being a pluralizing suffix). But I haven't seen this multi-syllabic form of pronouns in other languages, so I feel like I'm going out on a shaky limb. Any inspiration in this regards?
But pretty much every other concept other than these I treat as 1 of 4 things: noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. But these last ones, they seem different. Especially the pronouns.
How else can these be handled and dealt with outside of the English paradigm? Not only in terms of where they exist in a sentence (or as part of a word variation), but if they are multisyllabic and/or built out of smaller parts, and/or are conjugated to have plurals or other forms. Are they always treated so specially in languages, or in some languages are they no different than nouns or verbs? That's the main crux of my question. How else can these be dealt with outside of English, treating them as more primary-focused "objects" than tangential "pronouns" or "determiners", etc.
Also sort of tangential, I am wondering why we have so many variations of "I" (me, my, mine, myself, I, at least!). Where can I find more information on why these exist, and how other languages treat them? Do other languages have more, or fewer, forms than these 5? Why or why not?
Side note, it is extremely hard to search the web for "how do other languages handle I", since it's only one letter, google is like Psht! remove it from the search param and find nothing haha.
All the syllables in your example are CV and all vowels and consonants happen to be the ones found as single letters in English. This is perfectly fine, I just thought I'd alert you to this in case you would like more possible single syllable words :)
"treating them as more primary-focused "objects" than tangential "pronouns" or "determiners", etc." I really don't know what you're trying to say here. Can you [edit] to explain more?
Wikipedia is a good place to start, and several languages such as Japanese and Chinese have dedicated pages for their pronoun system. Japanese, as it so happens, has the structure you seek where suffixes make pronouns plural: 'Watashi' means 'I', while 'watashi-tachi' means 'we', etc. For many other languages, like Swahili and Arabic, there are good sections on pronouns in the Wikipedia pages for their grammars.
It's worth noting also, that many languages don't use pronouns as much, or use them in a different way than English does. You could for instance use verb forms to convey who is doing the verb (like Spanish does to some extent), modify the nouns to signal that they are being possessed, and so on.
Are they always treated so specially in languages, or in some languages are they no different than nouns or verbs? That's the main crux of my question. How else can these be dealt with outside of English, treating them as more primary-focused "objects" than tangential "pronouns" or "determiners", etc.
See Vietnamese, it almost does not have personal pronouns, using kinship nouns instead (one can imagine such a language can lose whatever pronouns remain and then we'll have a completely pronoun-less language).
Also check signed languages, their concept of pronouns is interesting (and not just personal pronouns).
Also sort of tangential, I am wondering why we have so many variations of "I" (me, my, mine, myself, I, at least!). Where can I find more information on why these exist, and how other languages treat them? Do other languages have more, or fewer, forms than these 5? Why or why not?
Of course, fully inflected languages usually inflect the pronoun, and often the possessive as well - e.g. in Slovak, you 6 cases for the pronoun, 6 cases times 3 genders times 2 numbers (=36 forms) for the possessive (in 1st and 2nd person, the gender is marked for the possessee, but in the 3rd person, for the possessor and the possessive does not inflect, to make things more interesting).
In Hungarian, the inflection of personal pronouns is turned head over heels - it is the agglutinative suffix that is inflected by the pronoun. E.g. the dative suffix is -nek (simpifying a bit), but the dative of én (I) is nekem.
Then there are languages with a 4th person (obviative) to mark "less important (than 3rd person)" entities in a sentence.
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1483 | How to create words which will be unambiguously parsable in a conlang?
Right now I am working on this, a list of words to translate into the conlang. At first I started by manually deriving the words from Hebrew/Arabic/Sanskrit/Greek/Latin/English/Spanish, but then found it to be too tedious and time-consuming, so I started just randomly assigning many of the words to a set of precomputed words which fit a specific pattern. The patterns are (c = consonant, v = vowel):
cv (2 letters, like "do")
cvc (3 letters, like "bol")
ccvc (4 letters, like "gran")
cvcc (4 letters, like "bord")
ccvcc (5 letters, like "start")
cvcvc (5 letters, like "tekal")
Everything except the 2-letter words is a "base" word form, which starts and ends with a consonant. Then there are these rules:
suffix -a: make it into a noun
suffix -i: make it into a verb
suffix -o: make it into a "feature" (modifier/adjective)
suffix -aha: make noun into plural
suffix -iha: make verb into continuous (like "-ing")
suffix -iho: make verb into past tense (like "-ed")
suffix -ihi: make verb into future tense (like "will x")
suffix -oho: make feature into an adverb (like "-ly")
Then you can start combining words to make more complex words. There are things like -tion (capturing the result of action, written as xom by itself), or -er (the person performing the action, written as pum by itself). So you have for example:
meki: create
mekixoma: creation
mekipuma: creator
This seems all fine and well, with little ambiguity so far. But then I start running into trouble with the following I think.
prefix na-: meaning not.
nav: number 9 (happens to start with na-, but not prefixed with na-).
fod: "fold"
rod: "path" or "road"
So you can have the word phrase "ninefold path" as <navo> (feature/adjective) <fodo> (feature/adjective) <roda> (noun), or navofodoroda.
All is fine and well so far. We separate the words with their POS tag basically.
But now say we add a word like vofod (cvcvc), which isn't derived from "fold" (fod), but means voice. And say we want to say "without voice path", that would be the same then! navofodoroda. So now there is ambiguity!
Darn, how do I avoid this? I already have a pretty strict word-formation structure/system, but it seems to break down even then. I don't get how to avoid such ambiguity.
Perhaps I could put constraints on what letters can be used to create words, but that seems like a nightmare, how do I know what to prevent and where? In that case, no word other than na could start with or contain na-. But that seems quite restrictive, I don't know. Do other natural languages do such a thing (or conlangs)?
If I do that, how many different ways am I going to have to put constraints on word structure, and given what? What are the key words that will restrict other word formations? I have no idea if this is the right track to go down... Any other suggestions?
It is like fourier analysis, it has the word four in it, but it doesn't mean "four" the number. Somehow you are able to tell what it should mean. Or "dominican republic", you have the name "dom" (dominic), but don't think of this as containing it. And the word 'republic' which contains "re" and "public", but it has nothing to do with re + public directly. What are some other examples like this? I can't think of many? Or "nineveh" (assyrian empire), does not mean "nine" + "veh". But we don't have a same word "nine+veh" that means something else, so we never encounter this problem I'm solving. Hoping for some guidance on how to solve this.
Is there a reason you can't put spaces between words? (so "navo fodo roda" and "na vofodo roda" would be distinct)
@Richard I guess that is one solution (doh), but I was going for like the greek thing where they prefix a- to mean not, or english un- or dis-. How can I make it work without separating the words so I can get those greek-derived-like English words?
https://conlang.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_self-segregating_morphology_methods
I figured it out! A special reserved word to act as separator (toward the end of this section of text).
Many languages use prosody to indicate separation between words. In English, for example, almost all words have a single primary stress in them. So when you hear another primary stress, you know there's been a word boundary; this is how you can tell the difference between "greenhouse" and "green house". In Latin, similarly, every word has a single ictus, which appears at a well-defined position following certain rules. Given a stream of syllables in Latin, the ictus will tell you unambiguously where to divide them into words.
Many languages also have explicit marking when nouns are combined into larger noun phrases. This might be a case marking, like in Ancient Greek and Sumerian, or it might be an extra word (often called a "particle"), like in Japanese and Swahili, or it might be a phonological change, like in Akkadian and Egyptian.
Finally, natural languages always have a lot of redundancy in them (which is a feature, not a bug). Most arbitrary strings of phonemes are not meaningful, and in general, changing the grouping of phonemes in a sentence will not produce a meaningful result. (For example, "meaningful" has meaning, "me ningf ull" does not.)
Side note, Sumerian's not the best example for case marking because it attaches to a phrase rather than a word. But I wanted to highlight different ways of doing it.
It may worth to have a closer look at Lojban. It has a lot of devices implemented to ensure that any legal stream of sounds can be uniquely parsed into words and that compound words can be uniquely split into components. This is done by ascribing special phonotactics to each part of speech, and by adding devices like spoken quotation marks.
Lojban does not prevent semantic ambiguity, however: it allows the speakers to be deliberately vague or ambiguous in what they say.
Interesting! Can you describe briefly what these features look like with a few examples, as relevant to this question (like how Lojban would solve it)? I am going to look through the wiki but it seems vast and I don't know if I will encounter what you are describing without a full studying of its features.
When you can read German, the German Wikipedia article on Lojban gives you a good glimpse on Lojban: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban
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1491 | How long do words get in other languages, and how hard are long words to say or read?
So I have a list of basic words in my budding conlang. I would like to construct compound words now, like we do with Latin/Greek in English (e.g. "hyacinthoides"). One word I can create in this conlang is "third fingered abnormality":
saloyowizitxihawinanoyotxa
That is 12 syllables(!) How do I tell if these compound words are too hard to say and/or remember? There is a word separator, -wi-, in that word, so you can tell how it is spliced together. Another option is to use hyphens, but I love how in English we have these long chemical/other names which are one word no hyphens, and I want to do similarly.
I tried asking about the languages with the longest words (like Latin/Greek in English), but it seems to come down to aggutinativity. Then what is it like speaking an agglutinative language with very long words in a long sentence, is it easy to understand? How about reading comprehension, is it also easy to read? Finally, what are some examples of languages which aren't agglutinative that have long words with as many syllables as my word above?
I think Sanskrit may be a close contender for long words. This list also helps.
'internationaliseringsstrategier' is a perfectly valid word in Swedish, and would not raise an eyebrow if uttered in normal conversation or in the news. And it's just the first that comes to mind. It has 12 syllables, if I'm not mistaken.
The complexity of a pronouncing a word does not depend on its length, but more on its phonological structure. Even long words in a language you are familiar with will be quite easy to pronounce (provided you can remember them), whereas short words in languages with a very different phonology could be much harder.
In agglutinative languages you have the equivalent of a sentence or phrase in one word; that is essentially the same as writing a sentence in English without spaces and saying that -- this should not be any more difficult than saying the sentences in the 'normal' way.
The compound word in your language is only hard because to people not knowing the language it is a meaningless collection of letters. If you had "thirdfingeredabnormality", this would be easy to say for any English speaker, as you can make sense of groups of letters. If I gave you "Dreifingrigebesonderheit" (an approximate German translation), it's still easy for me (as I speak German), and you might find it easier (even if you did not speak German yourself) because there is some resemblance to English morphemes.
So, to summarise, it's familiarity, not length, which is the main factor in determining how difficult something is to pronounce. And reading comprehension of long words is fine, as long as you can make sense of their components, just as you make sense of the words in a (long) sentence.
For non-agglutinative languages: German forms compounds by simply joining words together (possible with linking morphemes), where English links them but keeps spaces or hyphenation. This is rarely taken to extremes, but you can form quite long words. One infamous example is the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, the "captain of the Danube steam boat company". You could easily expand it to refer to his daughter, the Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänstochter, etc. Any German speaker would immediately understand the meaning of those words without difficulty.
To use a personal example, there's a village in northern Québec called Kangiqsualujjuaq. Many English and French speakers look at that one for a long time and stumble over it, not sure how to begin. After a while exposed to Inuktitut and how its syllable structure works and what its morphenes are, even those of us who don't speak the language would be able to rattle off [kaŋ iq su a lu ju 'aq] without any issue.
Be careful to distinguish the words of the language and the orthography - the latter can sometimes obscure the former¹. If the German orthography spelled it Donau Dampfschifffahrts Gesellschafts Kapitän (perhaps with some additional spaces in the second word) , the end result would be the same, it would just be more readable (cf. scriptio continua). Similarly English could equally well write it Danubesteamboatcompanycaptain and still be called English as we know it. This is just a convention and as a conlang author, you are free to pick one.
Though, if we dive deep enough, we find the very definition of "word" somewhat unclear and fuzzy - is the French qu'est-ce que four words, or just a simple single interrogative pronoun/particle? (that could be written kesk in some con-orthography)
Word stress can be helpful to determine what are the word boundaries, but then you have e.g. Slovak where stress falls on prepositions (and yet we do not call them inflectional prefixes); languages without word stress (above mentioned French, or Chinese); short "words" are often unstressed; there are clitics; there are exceptions (English Baghdad).
Modern Chinese (pǔtōnghuà) takes it to the extreme: the language is written without word boundaries, there is no word stress, there is an extremely limited number of syllables and almost each of them is a meaningful morpheme (often unrelated to the word it forms). E.g 中国 - 中 means "central" and 国 "country". Yet, 中国 means "China" - one word or two? Then, 共产 means "communist" - one word or two? (共 is "common,together" and 产 "produce"). And 党 is "party". Is then 共产党 (communist party) one word, two words or three words? And what about 中国共产党 (Communist party of China)? Why cannot we say it is one word?
¹ Although written languages are generally considered somehow "inferior" or "derived", I do not think that by today this is entirely valid - written languages have their own life, their own rules, ecology and sociolinguistic standing, ever since near 100% literacy. Just consider how much communication (including this one) is predominantly in written form.
Good points on not obscuring based on orthography, that is useful to think about. I appreciate the insight.
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1495 | What is the variety of ways one can deal with absorbing words from different languages in a conlang?
The conlang I am working on has very strict rules on word formation:
They must start and end with a consonant
They can only have single vowels between consonants (which can be in consonant clusters).
They can't end in h, w, or y (since they don't make a highly distinct word-ending sound.
The only use a smallish subset of consonants (missing the "th" sounds, the retroflex sounds, etc.).
End word with vowel to convert it into a noun/verb/adjective (convert it into speakable form).
But, I want to be able to talk about other languages in the conlang, hence the tone guide. That will make it so you can say the "j" in "measure" even though that is not in the consonant inventory. And other sounds as well. And you should be able to pronounce any sound from any language. But that's about as far as I want to go.
I don't want to allow you to use any word from any language in a sentence necessarily (at least I don't think so as of this time). So if you have a word with the "harsh h" sound like in Hebrew/Arabic, you need to do some slight transforming of it before it fits into the language. Likewise, it only supports 5 vowels in the main language, although you can say 15+ vowel variations to cover all languages when speaking about other languages. However, the "e" sound in English "pet" is, for example, not in the vowel inventory, so you might have to change it to "peyt" (like Spanish accent) or something along those lines.
The question is though, how would you absorb new words into the language? What is the process? Say I give a guide to someone to learn this language. They go out and speak it in front of friends. They are out to a sushi dinner. Now they want to say "maguro" or "sashimi" (well, it turns out these words fit well into the language, sort of). But imagine these words didn't fit in, what would they do? There must be rules of some sort to guide the transformation of any word, is that correct? How do natural languages do it, or a few of them covering the different approaches?
Basically, I am wondering if it would be better to "borrow" the word (morphing it slightly), or just come up with a completely new word and map it to the foreign word.
I would like to control exactly how each word/meaning is sounded out. So sushi would be like "sushim" as the base (start and end with a consonant, single vowels in between), and "sushima" as the food, etc.. (end with vowel to convert into speakable word from base word). But what about more complicated words like "hannukah" with the harsh h (I am pretty sure it has a harsh h, correct me if I'm wrong), or some french word with the guttural r sort of sound, or "crouch" with the compound vowel sound. Basically, wondering what sort of things I should put into place so you can use words from other languages quickly and painlessly, yet they still fit into the language paradigms/rules.
Another example would be proper names like the store Macy's, or Outback, those words don't fit directly into the conlang, so how would they be transformed or redone?
If you want to be strict, coerce them into your phonological rules.
Macy's: that would fit as macys; if /y/ is not a vowel, then macis
Outback: start with a consonant, so use one that is not too pronounced, such as /h/: hotback [*]. Also drop the /u/ from the diphthong. Or use hatback if your /a/ is pronounced more open (in that case hatbeck might work better). Looking at Elopa below, you could also use holdback to approximate the English pronunciation.
It will look strange, but not to speakers of your own language.
Here are some examples of country names from toki pona (leaving out the ma signifier):
Amerika: Amelika
Africa: Apika
Europe: Elopa
Egypt: Masu - if you can't coerce it, come up with a new word
Canada: Kanata
Grenada: Kenata - sometimes you might end up with identical forms for different places/people: that's not a problem, happens in natural languages as well.
Greece: Elena - you can also use the 'local' name for a country as a starting point.
[*] This is similar to Spanish speakers sometimes adding an initial schwa sound when words start with a consonant when speaking English.
Masu for Egypt is in fact coerced, the source is Arabic al-masr and it is put quite straightforward into Toki Pona.
@jk-ReinstateMonica Thanks, didn't know that! So it's like Elena.
There must be rules of some sort to guide the transformation of any word, is that correct?
If you believe in optimality theory (OT), this comes down to the constraints on valid words in the language. For example, "must begin with a consonant", "can't include /θ/", and "must end in a consonant other than /h/" are all constraints. But the language would also include constraints like, say, "don't insert an /h/" (to keep /h/s from appearing in random places). And the relative ranking of these constraints would determine what happens to foreign words.
For example, maybe "must begin with a consonant" outranks "don't insert an extra /ʔ/". So given the choice between letting a foreign word start with a vowel (violates the first constraint) and inserting an /ʔ/ at the beginning (violates the second constraint), speakers would choose the second option. Why an /ʔ/ rather than any other consonant? Well, maybe "don't insert a /q/" outranks "don't insert an /ʔ/" too, so inserting /ʔ/ is preferable to inserting /q/.
According to optimality theorists, every language includes a vast, near-infinite set of these constraints, with a strict ranking, and speakers will unconsciously modify words to comply with them. One advantage of this explanation is that the same constraints are used for native words as for foreign words, so you don't have to invoke any special machinery to make it work.
If you don't believe in OT (i.e. you prefer rule-based systems over constraint-based systems), you'll generally have a set of repair rules that are invoked whenever a word violates a language's phonotactics. These rules are specific to each individual language, and their goal is to fix all the violations. If your phonotactics don't allow /ħ/, for example, you might have a repair rule that says "replace /ħ/ with /h/". If your phonotactics require consonants at the start of a word, you might have a repair rule that says "insert /ʔ/ before an initial vowel". And so on.
This explanation has the advantage that it clearly explains why all languages seem to have their own idiosyncratic repair rules, which aren't generally necessary for native words. For example, all Swahili words must end in a vowel. When a foreign word doesn't, an /i/ is generally inserted. An optimality theorist would say this is because of some special constraint that's never needed for native words, while a rule-based phonologist would say there's just a repair rule that inserts that /i/. (Māori and Japanese similarly usually require words to end in a vowel; Māori inserts /a/, Japanese inserts /u/. So this doesn't seem to be something universal.)
You can look at how it is done in real languages. What typically happens is that the word is phonologically morphed to match the phonotactics of the adopting language.
Japanese provides some obvious examples. The form of a Japanese syllable is stereotypically (C)V(n): Consonant or Consonant+y plus a vowel, with /n/ as the only final consonant. So what does Japanese do with English?
ice cream > aisu kurīmu
mansion > manshon
pray > purei
Inuktitut (some dialects) also does the same thing:
coffee > kaapi
Ottawa > Aatuvaa
To use the last example, Inuktitut only uses the vowels /a, a:/, /u,u:/, and /i,i:/. and there's no /w/. "Ottawa" is normally pronounced [ˈɒt ə wə], so ['a:t u va:] is actually pretty close: if I used it while speaking English, must people would either not hear the difference or assume I was pretending to speak with a comedic German accent by replacing the /w/ with a /v/.
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1477 | Are there languages that don't prefix verbs with "to be" or "to do" in continuous or progressive aspect and the like?
I am working on a conlang and wondering how we can rework the "continuous" aspect, like present continuous, looking for how other languages implement such a grammatical verb feature. Some examples in English are:
The boy is laughing.
My parents are always making me go to school!
Chinese seems to have:
现在 - xiàn zài - now
此刻 - cǐ kè - at the moment
目前 - mù qián - at present, currently
As in one example:
他现在过得怎么样?
Tā xiànzàiguò dé zěnme yàng?
How is he doing now?
But I don't speak Chinese yet, still working with English. What are 2 or 3 examples from some other non-English language which have the continuous aspect _without the verbs "to do" or "to be" around them, like we have in English?
I would like to say:
He eating.
He wearing clothes.
Why do we need the "to be" as in is in there to make it sound right in English? Is that just an English quirk? Are there languages that have it exactly like I've written? Or even better, where the -ing is itself also a separate word/particle, like in this pseudo-gloss:
He eat <ASP.continous>
I think Chinese has continuous aspect separate, but not sure about the "to be" part preceding it.
Are there languages which do continuous aspect very differently than even these 2 approaches I've described? For example, maybe they have a new word instead of a "to be" form prefixing the main continuous verb, or perhaps they do something else entirely.
I guess I could also ask the same for the perfect aspect, if there are languages which don't precede verbs with "to have" in this context.
"I have always guided him".
Wikipedia seems to have plenty of counter examples.
Note that continuous aspect is kind of optional. Many languages don't express it at all by default, though there are always means to express it when emphasised or needed. Here's an example from a natural language (German):
Er geht zur Schule "He goes to school" (habitual)/ "He is going to school" (continuous); depending on context.
Er geht gerade zur Schule "He is going to school right now" (continuous aspect emphasised through the adverb gerade, here translated as "right now".
In this example there is no special gramatical form for the continuous aspect, it is only highlighted by use of an adverb. Note that gerade also works in other tenses, like
Er ging gerade zur Schule, als ... "He was going to school, when ..."
English has two main ways of indicating the tense/aspect/mood/etc of a verb.
Mood (a real event vs a hypothetical, etc) is indicated by a word at the very beginning of the verb phrase: can, should, might, may, etc. Future time is also indicated this way ("will"). Past vs non-past doesn't get an explicit marking here, but the next verb after this point in the sentence changes its form, so syntacticians generally say there's an invisible element which exists in that position and tells the next verb to change its form. This position in the sentence is generally called "T", for "tense".
Aspect and voice, on the other hand, are indicated by auxiliary verbs in between "T" and the verb: it was written, it was being written, it had been being written. This position in the sentence is sometimes called "Aux", for "auxiliary".
Some syntacticians claim that this is universally true. All languages work like English and have a "T" position and an "Aux" position and the "Aux" position is used to indicate aspect and voice. According to these syntacticians, if a language doesn't indicate aspect with an auxiliary, it's because there's actually an invisible hidden auxiliary, it's there but we can't see it. You may have run into these claims before.
Many other syntacticians, though, think this is stupid. Because many languages really don't seem to have auxiliary verbs for aspect like English does. In Latin and Ancient Greek, for example, it's marked directly on the verb:
Currebam "I was running", cucurrī "I ran"
Ἔφευγον "I was running", ἔφυγον "I ran"
Other languages, such as German (see jk's answer for examples), don't have any explicit marking for this sort of aspect distinction at all.
Still others use something other than an auxiliary verb. Egyptian uses a preposition:
jw.f ꜣtp ꜥꜣ.f "he loads up his donkey", jw.f ḥr ꜣtp ꜥꜣ.f "he is loading up his donkey"
Ḥr is a preposition literally meaning "on", derived from a noun meaning "face" or "surface".
If you don't go for the "every language actually works exactly like English" theory (most linguists nowadays don't), I suspect English is in the minority here. Auxiliary verbs for aspectual information show up in some other non-English languages as well, such as Lingála, but most languages either put the marking directly on the verb, or don't mark it explicitly at all.
Would T vs Aux be similar to models with VP and vP? And on the other hand, Minimalism would posit TenseP, ModalityP, VoiceP, AspectP etc?
@curiousdannii Pretty much. The particular version of minimalism I've studied proposes CP > TP > AuxP (or alternately PerfP, ProgP, PassP) > vP > VP.
Latvian language uses verb conjugation to indicate "to be" and "to do". In fact, many perceive "to" as a separate concept in English, i.e. they don't perceive "to be" as a unit, which it clearly is.
Examples:
Es skrienu. I run.
Es skriešu. I am going to run.
Es skriedams. In middle of a run, I am.
Es skrēju. I did run.
Es kļūšu par skrējēju. I will become a runner.
Es vēlos būt skrējējs. I want to be a runner.
Analysis of the last example:
Es (I) vēlos (wish to) būt (to be) skrējējs (a runner).
Different examples:
Es mācīšos. I am going to study.
Tu mācīsies? Are you going to study?
Mēs mācīsimies! We are going to study.
Ja mēs mācīsimies, tad tu mācīsies un es mācīšos. If we are going to study, then you are going to study and I am going to study.
Analysis of last example:
Ja (if) mēs (we) mācīsimies (will study), tad (then) tu (you) mācīsies (will study) un (and) es (I) mācīšos (will study).
And this one represents exactly what I mean.
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1332 | How do you remove the confusion in a conlang when creating and distinguishing nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles?
I am trying to implement a conlang and am confused how we as humans are able to distinguish nouns, verbs, adjectives, particles, etc. in a sentence. I get that word order is a factor, as well as the nebulous idea of context. But word order seems so flexible, I don't see what I need to do when creating a conlang in terms of how to structure nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles, to make sure you can understand the sentence. What are the key techniques or procedures to follow in designing this? So you can clearly tell what is a noun, verb, adjective, or particle. How do we even do this in regular natural languages? I don't understand. And I don't know how to search for this in Google to learn more about how we resolve the sentences meaning without having clear and unique patterns that clearly separate nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles from each other.
Some of examples on why it's confusing.
I see the big black oak tree.
The tree is the noun, and big black oak are modifiers on the noun sort of thing. So you could say they are adjectives or "features" of the tree.
I see the big.
But here big is the noun, like The Big, as in something big, in which you are invoking a lot of context in your listeners mind. Or
I see the black.
Here black is the noun, like all you see is darkness.
In these sentences, there is no change in the structure of the words, but they take on different roles in the sentences. That is, big can be an adjective or noun (or even a verb!) without adding a specific prefix or suffix to that base.
I can't come up with a science on why we are able to properly interpret these sentences. In my conlang, I am thinking that, in order to make it easier to interpret, I would have special endings on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles. So you would have the equivalent of:
I see-ami the big-azi black-azi oak-azi tree-ali
In this sort of system, every verb would end in -ami, every adjective with -azi, and every noun with -ali. I keep on thinking I need such a system in order to make the sentences comprehensible. I would use this structure in addition to a strict word order to make it so sentences are comprehensible. So what I keep thinking I need, in summary, is:
Specific endings on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles, to distinguish them easily.
Strict word order in sentences, so you can easily tell what is in the adjective place, in the noun place, in the verb place, etc.
But the problem is, this is not how natural languages work! Even in English which has a somewhat strict word order (even though you can be quite flexible with it if you want), like I demonstrated above, you don't have specific endings on words, and you don't have a super strict 100%-of-the-time word order. (English has some word endings like -ing and -ly and such, but these are not even consistent 100% of the time)
In addition, I am looking across a few languages, and nouns, verbs, and adjectives in each language might be allowed to all start or end with vowels or consonants, and might all have endings which are the same. That is, there isn't even a pattern which clearly separates nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles into separate categories based on the word's morphology! For example, let's use English. You have these words.
Bully. (Noun, "A mean sort of person", ends in -ly)
Clearly. (Adjective, ends in -ly)
Sully. (Verb, "to make dirty", ends in -ly)
Some rules are more strict, like I can't seem to find any adjectives that end in -ed, which is used for past-tense or state sort of verbs, created, acted, iced, etc. But this -ly ending can go on any type of word. Same with other endings, like -ing.
Bring. (Infinitive verb, ends in -ing)
Clearing. (present participle verb, ends in -ing)
Ring. (Noun, or verb, ends in -ing)
Amusing. (Adjective, ends in -ing)
All kinds of other examples exist (of prefixes and suffixes) where they are used across nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.. In many other languages too.
Other words, which I'm using in English but might come from other languages, are nouns which have all sorts of endings.
Man. (Noun, ends in consonant n)
Joy. (Noun, ends in consonant y)
Dao. (Noun, "the Way", ends in vowel o)
Glee. (Noun, ends in vowel e)
Rabbi. (Noun, ends in vowel i)
Then same for verbs:
Assign. (Verb, ends in consonant n)
Play. (Verb, ends in consonant y)
Echo. (Verb, ends in vowel o)
Free. (Verb, ends in vowel e)
Ski. (Verb, ends in vowel i)
And same for adjectives:
Green. (Adjective, ends in consonant n)
Happy. (Adjective, ends in consonant y)
Latino. (Adjective, ends in vowel o)
Eerie. (Adjective, ends in vowel e)
Pakistani. (Adjective, ends in vowel i)
So this basically shows, at least for English, there is no relation between the word ending and whether it is a noun, verb, adjective, etc.. So it makes me think in my conlang, I don't need to add the constraint of having nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles have different endings to make them distinguishable. Somehow we are able to tell the difference in sense of these words based on some other nebulous thing, like context or meaning/semantics during the flow of speech.
The question is, how do I use these facts when constructing a conlang? Can I pick any "base" word and attach any ending on any part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, particle)? And will the language still work? How can I tell if it will work and not be confusing? What do I do when developing the conlang to test if it is confusing or not how I have structured words?
Without having the conlang completed and working, (while it is being developed), as I try to generate example sentences, it seems like it would lead to pure confusion not having more rigid patterns in the words to distinguish nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles.
How should I be thinking about this to make some progress? I am stuck on the step of how to create words in different parts of speech, and place them in an order in sentences. I have created a pattern for how word "bases" are defined (i.e. they have to start and end with a consonant), but that is even limiting, I would like it if some can start or end with a vowel too...
How should I conceptualize the differences between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles, so I can generate words that flow together into a sentence but aren't confusing? It seems that adding specific word endings would remove the confusion, but what else will remove the confusion so I don't need to do that, and I can be like English in that words of various parts of speech can have any vowel/consonant start or end the word?
Ah interesting, this is exactly what I was thinking when originally trying to start distinguishing things. https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/452/are-esperantos-part-of-speech-endings-actually-beneficial?rq=1
Note that in your example of "I see the big black oak tree." vs "I see the big.", we also know the meaning of "big" from word order. Specifically, they're SVO, and the last word in the object is the noun.
@Richard - But even English doesn't have to enforce SVO; consider that Yoda can be understood, even though he seems to use (mostly) OSV.
Fundamentally, parts of speech are lexically determined. What this means is that in general, there is no way to find the part of speech of a word knowing only the word itself. You have to memorise it separately for each word.
A good way of seeing this is to observe that two languages may assign different parts of speech to exactly the same word when it is borrowed from one language to another. For instance, boil is a verb in English. But when it was loaned into the Papuan language Komnzo, it was borrowed as a member of the Komnzo class of ‘property nouns’ (Döhler 2018). There is nothing inherently ‘nouny’ or ‘verby’ about the form or function of this word; you simply have to memorise that boil is a verb in English and a property noun in Komnzo. And this can even happen within a language: the English word release, for instance, is both a noun and a verb.
So, if word classes cannot be reliably distinguished based on their form or their semantics¹, then what is the difference between different parts of speech? The answer is simple: parts of speech specify the environments in which words can be used. For instance, consider this sentence:
I saw the _____.
This sentence has a gap in it. You can make a grammatical sentence by filling this gap with nouns: I saw the dog, I saw the cat, I saw the chair, I saw the release, I saw the idea. (Note that, even though the last example doesn’t really make sense, it still counts as it is a grammatical sentence.) On the other hand, if you try this with a non-noun, the result is ungrammatical: *I saw the sit, *I saw the eat, *I saw the is. So we can use this example to give a definition of a noun: a word which makes a grammatical sentence when preceeded by I saw the.
This definition can be made a lot more general though: a noun is simply a word which can follow a determiner. What is a determiner? Well, you could define it as something which can precede a noun, but that would be circular. Instead, simply note that there are a fixed set of 20 or so words which can occur in such a position: a, the, one, some, much, many and the like. A determiner is then just one of these words. Determiners are thus a ‘closed class’: a part of speech which has a fixed number of words, and into which no more words can be added. Note that each language has a slightly different set of closed classes, though there are similarities: articles, numbers, adpositions and adjectives, for instance, are often closed. (Komnzo unusually has verbs as a closed class, explaining why my example of boil above was loaned as a noun rather than a verb.)
But you can go further. English nouns can be used after a determiner — but there are several other environments in which nouns can occur. They can take the plural marker -s: dogs, cats, chairs, releases, ideas. They can also modify another noun: dog leash, cat collar, chair wood, release method, idea food. (The last few examples are a bit contrived, but illustrate the point well enough). So, you can use this to define nouns in English: English nouns are that word class which can be used after a determiner, take a plural marker, and modify another noun. Or, to put it another way, if you find a word which can occur in all these places — why then, that word must be a noun!
So, to answer your question ‘How should I conceptualize the differences between nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles?’: conceptualize it in terms of morphosyntactic environments (the fancy name for what I’ve been talking about). A word class is distinguished by the environments it can occur in: if you know what word class a word occurs in, then you know in which environments you can use in, and vice versa.
I will use one final example to illustrate the point. Consider the well-known example sentence:
The gostak distims the doshes.
From this sentence, I can tell that gostak and dosh are nouns, while distim is a verb — even though I may never have seen these words before. Why? Just look at the environments:
Gostak occurs in the environment ‘the ____’. Thus we know it is a noun.
Dosh occurs in the environment ‘the ____’, and also takes the suffix -s. Thus it must be a noun.
For distim, we can look at the position of the word in the sentence. It occurs between two noun phrases; this is obviously sufficient to make up a complete sentence. Any word with this property in English must be a verb.
(Further reading: François’s analysis of Hiw word classes is a particularly illuminating example of these ideas. I highly recommend reading through this paper for a detailed discussion of how word classes can be defined with reference to syntactic environments.)
¹ Well, this is a slight lie. There are clearly semantic distinctions between word classes such as nouns, adjectives and verbs. Also, I vaguely remember that there are some languages in which some parts of speech do have phonological correlates, though I can’t remember their names. My point is that neither of these are particularly reliable ways to determine parts of speech, which should ideally be defined using only morphosyntactic criteria.
Also, do remember that different languages don't have the same set of word classes. The classic example is whether or not a language has adjectives.This is the conlanging stx, not the linguistics stx though, so you can play with dropping others and see if it fits the nature of your conlang.
So then if it is determined by morphosyntactic environments, what do I do now? How do I define morphosyntactic environments, how many do I need, how many does a typical language have or conlang start with, etc.? Should I ask another question for that? Basically, there's no pattern to the structure of the words is what you're saying, so how do I shape the words now?!? What criteria so I use? I'll take a look at that paper for now.
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Which-popular-languages-are-grammatically-flexible-yet-lexically-rigid-and-vice-versa-and-what-is-a-brief-example-in-those-languages
@LancePollard Different languages use different morphosyntactic environments, but typical ones are: ‘can head noun phrase’; ‘can modify noun phrase’; ’can head predicate’; ‘can modify predicate’; ‘can act as clause adjunct’; ‘can take case-marking’; ‘can take agreement affixes’; ‘can take TAM affixes’. (That Hiw paper I linked has some more good examples.) But basically, it will depend on the structure of your language: work out the basics of the syntax and morphology without worrying too much about word classes, then have a look at which environments are available for different words.
@LancePollard I would also note that a ‘morphosyntactic environment’ is basically just a fancy way of talking about a ‘place where words can appear’. This is why it is inherently language-dependent: each language has different syntax and morphology, so each language has different positions available for words in their syntax and morphology. Word classes are then determined by the places in which they are allowed (with semantics playing a secondary role); once you’ve figured that out, you can basically start assigning words to word classes willy-nilly.
@LancePollard As for your Quora question: well, I’m not on Quora, but I can try to give a quick answer here. Firstly, François uses the term ‘grammatically flexible’ to indicate a word class which can occur in many different environments, and uses the term ‘lexically rigid’ to mean that there are many words which can be used in multiple word classes. These terms are not yet widely-known linguistic terms, though arguably they should be! [1/2]
@LancePollard [2/2] Languages which are gramatically flexible yet lexically rigid are the subject of François’s paper: they’re particularly common in Oceania, for instance. These languages allow each word class to be used in many different environments, but most words only belong to exactly one word class. English is an example of the reverse: each word class is severely constrained in where it can occur (gramatically rigid), but there are very many words which can occur in more than one word class (lexically flexible).
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1895 | How to handle modifiers within modifiers in noun phrases?
I asked How does Chinese handle the -ing and -ed in common names, like "Black-bellied whistling duck"? in an attempt to learn better how analytic languages deal with complex noun phrases like:
Black-bellied whistling duck
Black-capped warbling finch
Black-striped woodcreeper
Black-throated blue warbler
Chipping sparrow
These are all "proper names" for birds in English. By having the -ed and -ing, it is constructing adjectives which are applied to the final noun. Modifiers within modifiers, essentially. I am still unclear how Chinese deals with them, but that is beside the point.
In the conlang I am working on, the "base" word form is a noun-verb-adjective all at the same time, and you suffix this "base" word with -a, -i or -u to make it those, respectively. But it's starting to get cumbersome with this approach (it seems), because to do the above would be basically (using this word list):
veg balin leg wisal mek barvaza
black belly contain whistle make duck
But really this is composed of (as english demonstrates) modifiers within modifiers (the -ing and -ed being modifiers on the modifiers). So I was thinking of:
vegu balin legu wisal meku barvaza
Here, the -u "compiles" the previous unsuffixed things into a modifier/feature/adjective (whatever you want to call it). Then the -a tells us the final noun.
Would this be unambiguous or would it lead to ambiguity? What are the pros and cons you can see with this, where does it break down?
Basically, I am still struggling figuring out what is a word-within-a-word and what is just a word, sometimes it seems to be 3 levels of nesting:
[big [black [belly -ed] [whistle -ing] duck]]]
I was thinking of somehow capturing this nesting, but then you would have to end with like 3 words at the end saying essentially "remove parenthesis remove parenthesis remove parenthesis" haha, and that would be hard to understand when communicating (and speaking).
So what do you think of my approach, will it break down or have ambiguities that you can see? If so, what is an example and how might you resolve it? This language is highly analytic (I think of it as "atomic" where everything is a word, like Chinese or Vietnamese).
To elaborate further, sometimes these phrases are composed of many "compound words". The only example I have is "skilled circumciser" (I was looking at Jewish tradition words, sorry).
skill -ed circumcise agent
[skill -ed] [around cut] agent
skill -ed around cut agent
kasal legu sok kratu zeka
But "around cut" (or "circumcise"), that is a verb really, but I am making it into an adjective. So it feels incorrect to me what I'm doing, I feel like I should make it a verb, but then people would maybe hear:
skill containing around, CUT agent
Which is kind of non-sensical... But still, I am confused. Looking for some guidance.
I'm wondering if I can do without the -u and just do:
veg balin leg wisal mek barvaza
Would that make sense? Seems like Chinese might do it like that more.
Another example:
מְנוֹרָה
menorah
7-armed candelabra
7-armed candle holder
7 arm contain candle hold tool
xab lim leg lazup rug tula
Related, about Sanskrit.
In Sumerian, the first noun of a phrase is the "head" (the thing the others are modifying), and the end of a phrase (whether it's one word or multiple words) is marked with a clitic that indicates its role. (The clitic for "noun modifying another noun" is =ak.)
For example:
simug nanše=ak=ra
smith Nanshe=GEN=DAT
Or with brackets:
(simug (nanše)=ak )=ra
(smith (Nanshe)=GEN )=DAT
to Nanshe's smith
Adding in more layers isn't a problem:
mu ensik ŋirsu=ak=ak=še
name governor Girsu=GEN=GEN=TERM
With brackets:
(mu (ensik (ŋirsu)=ak )=ak )=še
(name (governor (Girsu)=GEN )=GEN )=TERM
for the name of the governor of Girsu
In general, a new noun acts as an open bracket, and a case marker acts as a close bracket. This works just as you'd expect with multiple modifiers:
udu gu=a sipad=ene=ak=am
sheep consume=PART shepherd=PL=GEN=be
Bracketed:
(udu (gu)=a (sipad=ene)=ak )=am
(sheep (consume)=PART (shepherd=PL)=GEN )=be
these are the used-up sheep of the shepherds
In Lingála, modifiers are tagged with the gender of the noun they modify. Since Lingála has at least fourteen genders in the literary dialect, this tends to eliminate any ambiguity.
Numbers in the glosses indicate gender marking, from 0 (personal names and words for family members) to 15 (actions).
e-lamba y-a m-pembe
7-garment 7-of 9-whiteness
a white robe
n-tina y-a li-kambo li-ye
9-cause 9-of 5-problem 5-this
the cause of this problem
e-pai y-a n-zete y-a bo-moi
7-place 7-of 9-tree 9-of 14-life
the location of the Tree of Life
ma-koki m-a ∅-yo m-a mw-ana w-a li-boso
6-right 6-of 0-you 6-of 1-child 1-of 5-front
your rights as the firstborn child
This can still sometimes cause ambiguity, when there are multiple nouns of the same gender in the sentence:
m-buma y-a n-zete e-ye
9-fruit 9-of 9-tree 9-this
the fruit of this tree or this fruit of the tree
Does "this" attach to "tree" or "fruit"? In this case, it's almost certainly the former; if you wanted to indicate the latter, you could put "this" right after "fruit". As a result, the ambiguity isn't really an issue in practice.
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1732 | What languages prefer the shortest sentences?
I read somewhere that Chinese prefers short sentences while English prefers longer ones. I don't have great examples of this, yet.
This is particularly problematic in legal texts where an English sentence can be hundreds of words or a long paragraph, making it tricky to translate into Chinese (somehow). I am listening to the Tao Te Ching, which appears to be composed of very short sentences, yet offers great insight.
What languages prefer the shortest sentences, and compose meaning out of extremely short sentences?
What languages prefer short sentences. And which compose meaning out of extremely short sentences?
(I tried to make it into short sentences, but it feels awkward with that conjunction in English beginning the second sentence.)
I tried to make it into a short sentence. But it feels awkward. With that conjunction in English. The conjunction which begins the second sentence.
Wondering how short you can get and still be expressive.
Wondering how short you can get. And still be expressive.
What languages (natural or conlang) use short sentences mostly? What are the general patterns for it or where to look for more info?
I would like to learn how to write in English with short sentences, like the Tao Te Ching. Or even in the conlang I'm working on. To have short sentences everywhere. But not quite sure how that would look/feel/work.
In English it feels like a mixture of short and long sentences is the most poetic and expressive and beautiful sounding, but I'm guessing that's probably just a quirk of English somehow. So curious what the possibilities are for expressive, beautiful statements, rich with meaning, yet concise and to the point.
From the Tao Te Ching:
Once upon a time, those who knew the Way, were a mysterious and subtle people.
Transient yet profound.
Tranquil yet utterly unfathomable.
Since they are inexplicable, I can only tell what they seem like:
Cautious, as if wading through a winter river.
Wary, as if afraid of their own neighbors.
Grave, like the courteous house guests.
Elusive, as of melting ice.
Pure and natural, as of unchiseled gems.
Wide and open, as of a deep valley.
Yet mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water.
Who can remain tranquil amidst troubled airs, that calmness may flow from within?
Who may remain at peace eternal, that motion would yield birth to nature?
For those who follow the Way, fulfillment has never been their aim.
Only as they are forever unfulfilled, can such freshness be ever renewed.
Is it some sort of poeticness that is happening here, or can any language have shorter sentences like these and have it be the norm?
I don't necessarily think it's the language per se, but more the genre. You can write short (and long) sentences in any language. With conlangs, toki pona is a bit of an exception, as it deliberately limits how long sentences can be.
Part of the problem is that English can glue sentences together with colons, semicolons and coordinating conjunctions. Most of those periods in the translation you provide would probably be semicolons if this were a native English text, especially the ones after the colon
Division into sentences is a bit arbitrary. This works best for written languages. Separators are required.
I read somewhere a claim that more insular communities use simpler sentences. You don't need relative clauses as much if all your interlocutors already share most of your context.
This question is really difficult to answer, because sentence length is a tricky beast. We usually measure it in words or tokens (which is words + punctuation marks). There are languages that can put much information in one word, like Greenlandic, a polysynthetic language. Such languages have short sentences in this measure.
The second problem is that sentence length is dependent on factors like genre, the existence of prescriptive style guides and personal preference of the author or speaker. Some prefer extremely long sentences, others prefer to produce aphorisms and proverb-like statements.
So I'm afraid there is no general answer, but my bet for a language with short sentences (measured on some carefully translated common text, to eliminate genre/preference as good as possible) is a polysynthetic one like Greenlandic.
P.S. Although average sentence length on a multilingual corpus seems to be a low hanging fruit, I did not find any papers on that in a very quick and dirty search.
Yeah how to speak in proverb-like statements :)
@Lance This is possible! A learned style is required. Some languages do this. Adinkra symbols can give inspiration.
That depends on how you characterize "short". While Greenlandic, like other Inuit languages, may have fewer words than an equivalent English sentence, the number of phonemes in that sentence can be the same or significantly more.
@KeithMorrison: Indeed, there are other measures for sentence length, like characters (in a writing system), phonemes, and ultimately bits (in the sense of Kolmogorov's Minimal Description Length).
@jk-ReinstateMonica, Exactly. Inuktitut, for instance, has a lower data rate than English because there is a much lower number of potential syllables, so on average it will take more phonemes to transmit the same amount of information.
@KeithMorrison When you mean information per second with "data rate" there is an outstanding result by Coupé et al.: The data rate is about 40 bit/second independent of the language chosen, see https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/36301/9781
@SirCornflakes, that paper points out that it is how fast those syllables are spoken which even it out. Languages that are more information dense tend to be naturally spoken slower than languages which have to deliver more syllables to get that same information across.
Since speech is the foundation of language, I'd say that information per time is the natural way to look at information density and all other ways of looking at ID are only proxies for that. It is partly a matter of convenience, and partly the lack of proper data (what is the natural speech rate for highly dense scientific language in a scientific article?) that makes us use the proxy measures.
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1476 | How do you handle the distinction between "modifiers" (adjectives and adverbs) and "determiners" in a generic way?
I am working on a conlang and am trying to better handle the distinction between adverbs, adjectives, and determiners. Adverbs modify verbs (and other things), and adjectives modify nouns, but determiners aren't typically said to modify anything. But in my perspective, for my conlang, I would like to treat determiners as a form of "focusing modifiers", essentially focusing the context of the the following phrase in some way (i.e. "the tree").
Currently I have the general rule:
i: Precede the verb with this
a: Precede the noun with this
u: Precede the modifier chain with this
However, it doesn't seem like it will work now that I think of it.
For example:
I will super quietly run quickly.
That really is a bunch of adverbs to the verb run, some coming before and some coming after. I think I am going to enforce the modifiers coming before the thing they are modifying.
I will super quietly quickly run.
But the problem with this is, quiet and quick are adjectives, they are already modifiers before being turned into adverbs! In my lang, it would be something like this:
a me i will u super quiet quick i run.
But am I going to run into problems with this? Should I be adding particles/distinguishers between adjectives and adverbs or something like that (both are modifiers...)? I.e.:
a me i will u super-ly quiet-ly quick-ly i run.
Or is it possible to completely know unambiguously that u <a> <b> <c> ... i <verb> means a, b, and c are all verb modifiers, while u <a> <b> <c> ... a <noun> means a, b, and c are all noun modifiers? Are there any cases where you would blend together noun and verb modifiers in some way, causing this system to break down? Specifically like in a more complex sentence? I haven't thought of any.
I quickly saw the super fast car drive recklessly.
That would become something like:
[a] me [u] quick [i] saw [u] the super fast [a] car [u] reckless [i] drive
So it seems you always have a sequence <verb modifiers> <verb> <noun modifiers> <noun> <verb modifiers> <verb> etc.
Terminology fix: What is called "determiner" in this question is not what usually named so in modern grammars. A modifier of an adverb may be called intensifier but usually it is lumped under the label adverb as well.
For determiners, look at this question on [linguistics.se]: https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/12994/9781
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1344 | Where can I find resources about lingua scinter?
The Lingua scinter is an ideolanguage created in 1931 by Gaetano Viveros. It is the abbreviation for "International scientific lingua based on Latin and Greek". www.europalingua.eu
Here is the only thing I found about this language.
Are there examples, grammar, vocabulary or any other document on the Internet?
Edit: I forgot to mention this (50$!) book on www.iberlibro.com "Elements of GRAMMAR for INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE. Part 1 (only, but ALL PUBLISHED:) INTRODUCTION and PHONETICS."
With the following description:
In the first 13 pages, historical notes on the attempts of universal languages (Esperanto, Volapük, Universal, Romanal, Novual, Occidental, Panlingua, Romano-Germanic), with a lot of space to the Congress of Linguists in Geneva (1931), and to Giuseppe PEANO's INTERLINGUA, which he takes as the basic idea to define the rules of the SCINTER LANGUAGE (SCIentific INTERnational): preliminaries for the formation of words and prephrases by means of the Latin vocabulary, and phonetics. Finally, the definition of the concept "grammar".
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1424 | Can a toki pona vocative phrase go before an adverbial phrase?
If I wanted to translate an imperative phrase: "Dad, eat quickly!" I can say
tenpo lili la mama o moku
However it seems a bit odd to me to put my vocative mama in the middle. It seems more natural to me that the vocative clause go towards the beginning of the phrase.
I might try
*mama o tenpo lili la moku
But I am not sure that this is right. It is my impression that o marks the verb, moku, in place of li rather than marking the noun, mama. And if the sentence were "Dad eats quickly", I'm quite sure
*mama li tenpo lili la moku
would not be grammatical.
Is there a common easily understood way to put the vocative noun at the front of the sentence? How do toki pona speakers usually structure imperative sentences with an adverbial phrase?
You're right that a 'la' phrase can't be inserted in the middle of a sentence: it always precedes a sentence, providing additional context (or a conditional). This is the only way I've seen used in the community. And by way of concurrence, from pu page 23, "[la] allows you to link two sentences, or link a fragment to a sentence."
There are a couple answers to your example that are idiomatic in common toki pona.
mama o moku kepeken tenpo lili.
Dad, please eat using little time [quickly].
kepeken can be used to describe usage of more abstract ideas and isn't just for physical objects.
o pali e sitelen sina kepeken nasin pona.
Complete this drawing using simple methods [simply].
The second answer is a bit more literal about "adverbial phrase," and comes in the form of a modification on moku. This usage is less idiomatic in spoken and written toki pona, but I do see this form from time to time.
mama o moku pi tenpo lili.
Dad, please eat quickly.
Just like content words can be used to modify a head noun, content words can also be used in the same way to modify a verb. Where 'moku' is 'eat', 'moku lili' can be 'eat only a bit of'.
In general, one of these two methods will suffice. It's sometimes also possible to incorporate into a 'la' phrase preceding the rest of the sentence, but it's not always straightforward for a reader to comprehend, because it can easily be misunderstood as a conditional instead of an addition to context.
(I'm not an active tp speaker, so this is not based on my experience of usage, but just from the official book)
You could split it into two sentences (as suggested in lesson 17 of TLoG):
mama o pali e ni: tenpo lili la sina moku
"Dad, do this: eat quickly"
This has the advantage of having the addressee at the front, and it keeps the overall structure simple, which after all is a guiding principle of toki pona.
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1364 | Does My Conlang, After Looking At My Grammar, Meet the Qualifications For a Legitimate IAL?
At the end of this question I will provide a link to the grammar in question.
I have created an Auxlang that I call Ulimi (because ulimi porridge is simple. It's a stupid pun). I have also got a grammar for it. No, it's not ridiculously long like some official grammars of the English language, but I tried to keep it simple for people/the layman learning it.
I need to know whether my IAL is developed and simple (maybe objective enough? most likely not, but I don't know how to fix that rn) enough to be an effective IAL. You can also tell me if it needs more development (and in which areas). For example, I might be taking for granted things as a native English speaker which ultimately narrow its employment.
My Goals for the language are these:
I want the Grammar to be complete enough that you only have to translate it into the language from which someone is learning Ulimi. For example, Person A speaks Tagalog and wants to learn Ulimi. Pretty much all that needs to happen to get the Ulimi grammar in Tagalog is translation. I.E. No extra rules need to be specified to learn from that language specifically. There may be some additional clarification, however, since Japanese, for example has both topic and subject, and English has only the latter.
I understand that there may be smaller languages where this is necessary, but otherwise that is how I want it.
I want Ulimi to have very few facets to its grammar and for those facets to be most common in the worlds major and mediate languages. For example, SOV, NA, VA, [I have a lot of tenses, so everyone should see some tenses native to their tongue], and Common Phonemes. Also, having Non-Gendered words should make it easy for people learning from any language (I think).
I.E. a good IAL, lol!
Here is the link where you can comment on the Document; I want NO arguments in the suggestion boxes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nSRCpz9TwSGmys31Tayd7UpoTKRn3pERyn4TLH6pEWo/edit?usp=sharing
Welcome! It's clear you put some work into that grammar, nice! The answer to "I need to know, realistically, what needs to be specified or revised" is a bit subjective though and depends on what your goals are. If you would tell us more about what you want to achieve, your question would be easier to answer.
@EdvinW Will do!
This can't be answered objectively - you can do whatever you want. However remember there are 7000 languages with almost zero true universal grammatical features. Your first goal does not sound realistic.
I agree with @curiousdannii. Also, English does have topic: it's typically marked by position in the sentence.
I'm not good at SE so I don't know if it would be sanctioned, but could you guys at least give your opinions? I will implement that which I deem important and try to see the importance in these things as objectively as I can. I'm not emotionally attached to my Lang. I just want to improve it.
I see you have found a better place to seek suggestions: https://www.reddit.com/r/auxlangs/comments/muz7nj/come_help_me_develop_my_ial/
There's no international bureau of aux langs, so there aren't any "qualifications" for "legitimacy" that your conlang can meet. Sorry. The only real marker of success is whether people start using it.
This question cán be answered objectively; but you're going to have to define your terms. What constitutes "legitimacy" and "effectivity" among IALs? Basically, we'd need to understand by what measure you want us to measure your IAL. For example, am I to measure your invented IAL against the most obscure IAL project you've never heard of or am I to measure it against English, which is the most legit and effective IAL ever, in the entire history of the planet? And by what particulars do you wish us to measure it by?
Also: what ìs it with IAL inventors and "gendered" words? Do they not realise that very many of the worlds language families actually use gender systems? In nominal as well as pronominal systems. Be ware of your own language's (or worse, political) biases!
@elemtilas Simplicity of phonology, How large the English bias is, whether it would be better than English, possibly?
I would like to say that global objectivity in the grammar is a particular, but maybe something close to that instead. maybe "global majority congruence" in grammar might be good to shoot for.
I am not biased by my language or politics in the gendered thing. I just saw that so many languages don't use genders, and it seemed pretty easy to have a language without them, so I said to myself "one less grammar aspect to have!"
UPDATE! Check the link again because I changed it.
Yet so many language do... and I found it ironic that your language's name derives from Swahili, which has loads of genders (all those noun classes are, like we find in Spanish or German). Anyway: I'll take a look at the link, but ideally you should be doing the work of editing your question to make it answerable in the mean time!
I have a better place to ask these questions now. Stack Exchange is overly strict.
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1416 | Would a "Common Denominator" phonology be too simple (or even non-existent)?
Many languages have sounds that are very hard to pronounce to certain speakers.
For example, the French "R" sound is hard for English speakers. What if we have a language that accepts many variations of a word so that it's still accepted even if it sounds a little different?
Another example, Japanese phonology does not distinguish between L and R. This video shows how incredible it is.
I think this is a similar concept to how languages can change how many things you can notice, even colors can be hard to distinguish if you don't have a word for it.
But if you're coming from a language that does distinguish between the sounds, it will be easier for you to pronounce words of a language that doesn't distinguish it. I think that the Japanese L/R sound is easy because they don't care which one you pronounce, it sounds the same to them.
However, I know it might cause the language phonology to be too simple, which will cause very long words. I have not studied every single language in the world. But is really that bad if we are to create this "combined phonology?"
It is indeed possible to create a non-trivial ‘lowest common denominator’ phonology. I know because I made one myself a while ago. For consonants, I took the 10 most common segments from PHOIBLE disregarding voicing distinctions:
/m n/
/p t k/
/s h/
/l j w/
Vowels are much easier: /a i u/ is suitably lower-common-denominator, and is widely attested.
It is worth noting that /h/ is not phonemic in a couple major world languages, namely French and Spanish (though in some dialects of the latter it's a word-final allophone of /s/).
There are both natlangs and conlangs with extremely simple phonologies.
For natural languages, Central Rotokas holds the record for the smallest attested inventory of consonant phonemes (6).
For a conlang, you may want to look at Toki Pona with an inventory of 14 phonemes: 9 consonants and 5 vowels. Toki Pona has some speech community and is more than just a Plansprachenprojekt.
These examples show that languages with extremely minimal phonologies are feasible. Yes, words and phrases become longer, but this is compensated by a higher speech rate.
With fewer phonemes you can be more careless (ie faster) with pronunciation, as there is more redundancy -- you need to distinguish between fewer elements. Hence the faster speech rate. Don't worry if you slur your vowels if /a/ and /e/ are the same anyway...
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1623 | Are there any languages with a vertical consonant distinction?
Are there any languages which distinguish consonants exclusively by manner of articulation instead of place of articulation and such, akin to a vertical vowel system?
Do you mean something other than the usual meaning of "matter of articulation"? For example, in the usual meaning, [t] and [s] are consonants with the same place of articulation (alveolar), but different manner of articulation (plosive vs fricative)
No, I mean (I think) the normal meaning of manner of articulation. E.g. Fricative/Approximation/Nasal/Plosive and so.
Then, for example, English is such a language, as it distinguishes the aforementioned [t] and [s], two consonants with same place but different manner of articulation.
Ah, I meant exclusively by manner of articulation. I will edit the question to avoid ambiguity.
I don't know of any, and I wouldn't expect to find any.
From an information-theory point of view, consonants tend to convey much more information than vowels. I can't think of any natural language that has more vowel phonemes than consonants, even if you include tone as a property of the vowel (rather than of the syllable); there are just a lot more possible ways to obstruct an airflow than to let it go through, so there's a much larger space for the phonemes to occupy without crowding each other and becoming difficult to distinguish.
Vertical vowel systems take some of the information load from the consonants and duplicate it on the vowels. If vowels before labialized consonants become rounded, now you have a bit more redundancy there, and you don't have to worry as much about distinguishing labialization on consonants. This is most useful when each consonant is conveying a lot of information, like in Ubykh, with its 84 phonemic consonants and 3 phonemic vowels.
A "vertical consonant system", presumably, would take some of the information load from the vowels and duplicate it on the consonants. But in natural human languages, this isn't very useful—the consonants are already carrying a lot more information than the vowels are. Over time, I would expect this to simplify into only marking the information on the consonants—and now it's just a normal consonant system, not a vertical one any more.
I am not aware of any natural language with that feature, and I quick-checked that Damin hasn't it either.
But you can certainly construct such a language, there are enough different manners of articulation to make up a sufficient consonant phoneme inventory.
No, but it is possible. You can go from /m n p t k s w j/ to /n t ts s j/ like that: /w/ > /m/ > /n/, /p/ > /f/ > /h/ > nothing, /k/ > /kx/ > /cç/ > /tʃ/ > /ts/
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1599 | What are artlangs?
I often hear the term artlang applied to some conlangs (e.g. Toki Pona). What does it mean? How would I determine if a conlang I am creating is an artlang? What are some examples of artlangs?
According to Wikipedia, an artlang is a conlang made to be aesthetically pleasing or to be part of a piece of literature. Some notable artlangs include Toki Pona, Quenya, and Klingon. Klingon was created to be part of a work of literature, specifically Star Trek. Quenya was created as part of Tolkien's Middle-Earth worldbuilding project. Toki Pona was an experiement in minimalism and the conclusions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
About Quenya, per Tolkien, the "‘stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows".
And yet many characters' names changed.
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1466 | Looking for a conlang I once encountered
I am looking for a conlang I once encountered. Sadly I lack specific and reliable info, but I'll dump what I can recollect.
It was built from simple semantic units (syllables?), with the latter developing and specifying the meaning of the previous. Perhaps there was even more structure, in the grammar or how the syllables were initially arranged. In this regard it seems quite similar to Ygyde.
I think it had a concise and pretty name, possibly starting with D. When searching I came across Damin, but that is obviously not the one.
It was no toy project. It seemed like the author had put a lot of effort to it and the work was still progressing. He claimed the language was to be ideal in some sense, as if he was reconstructing a primordial universal language or if the current languages were to converge to this one. But I don't think it had any speakers, or any significant number of them.
I failed to find it through search engines and through public conlang lists. I looked into engineered languages at Wikipedia and I can tell I am not looking for Toki Pona, Loglan, Lojban or Ithkuil
Was it perhaps Dunia?
thanks, that looks quite close. unfortunately it is not the lang, and surely not the source i read before. the original was more extensive (it felt quite overwhelming). i think the author was not anonymous and that there was even a bit of his biography. and his attitude was less pragmatic and more mystical
as a follow up, Mirad is also very similar. and more importantly, i've acquired an insight that there are loads of conlangs out there and that whatever my mystery lang was, it was not unique in any of its attributes
I just came across an old bookmark leading to Dama Diwan and it is my mystery language! complete with the claims of minimality, optimality, construction through divination, ...
... case closed
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1632 | What uncommon letters are there?
I have made an alphabet, but I think that I need to add more letters. I don't want to invent random letters.
Is there a letter that doesn't exist in most other languages?
My language's alphabet has 16 consonants and 5 vowels, but I think that I need to add a new letter like ñ or ç, but I don't want to add a letter that exists in common languages.
Is there any list of uncommon letters?
(My conlang's alphabet doesn't include b, g, v, y, z).
You should study a little phonetics; you don't seem to understand the difference between a phoneme and a letter, or an alphabet and a phonology.
So you want a letter that doesn't exist in other languages, but don't want to invent one? I think it would help if you clarify what you're looking for exactly. For example, why do you want a new letter? Do you already have a sound picked out for it?
@Draconis I want to invent a new letter, but I don't want to invent. I need a letter to pick a sound.
@Fmbalbuena But surely if you don't want to invent a new letter, it needs to already exist.
@Draconis I can't invent, but I need a letter that exists in some languages, but not in most common languages.
There are hundreds of "letters" that exist in some languages but not all. There's really no way to narrow them down to make a short list to suggest to you.
If you're looking for letters that are obscure but still used somewhere, the Case Variants of IPA Letters table can be a good resource. This lists IPA symbols that someone's invented a capital form of, which usually means they've been integrated into the orthography of some language (used somewhere), but are still an IPA symbol first and foremost (not too common).
@thesmartwaterbear I wouldn't call it uncommon; it's on every standard English keyboard, after all. It just comes down to whether you call it a "letter" or not.
Unicode is basically a list of characters that you can use on computers. The code charts offer a full list; if the rest of your alphabet is Latin-based, the various combining marks offer unlimited flexibility, and Latin Extended-B through -G offer many rarely-seen characters, including some never used in actual languages and some only used in long obsolete orthographies.
Making more interesting orthographies can be quite fun and make a conlang jump off the page. I quite encourage the use of ñ and ŋ for the nasal sounds normally associated with them, ʒ or ȥ instead of zh, even ƿ or ȣ for w. But while the first four letters don't really need explanation, the last two would probably make more sense in some sort of historical context.
I'd recommend picking your sounds and then finding appropriate letters for them, instead of the other way around, unless you have a historical reason in world otherwise. I'd also think about goals; if this is a language set in a setting where the writers use the Latin alphabet, most such alphabets use one or two diacritics and often diphthongs where Latin's alphabet doesn't cover it. If this is just for fun, it's a balance of interesting and visually attractive versus ease of understanding versus ease of typing. ñ isn't that far away on any normal system, and any of the other characters is a simple alt-xxxx sequence on Windows. But characters like ȥ, ƿ and ȣ noticeably stand out for me on this system, like they're being pulled from a different font. Your font selection may be limited if you go beyond Latin Extended A, and some other people may have a harder time seeing the characters (though that could be overstated; I'm seeing them on a fairly default Windows 10 box, and up-to-date Linux and MacOS boxes should display pretty much everything but the latest additions as well.)
@thesmartwaterbear There's no need to add this comment to every answer, and I hardly see where it's relevant to mine.
Well, the number of letters that do not exist in any languages (or better, their orthographies) is potentially unbounded. As for uncommon letters, you might want to look into scripts used only for one (or few) languages, such as Armenian or Georgian, or uncommon diacritics, such as some Slovak and Czech letters (ř, ť, ď, ň, ľ, ĺ...) or Vietnamese for a diacritical explosion. But generally, if you want your language to be consistent and aesthetically pleasing, you should perhaps avoid mixing letters from different scripts (but there are exceptions, e.g. common transliteration of Old Church Slavonic into Latin script uses ь ъ and they fit the orthography nicely); or using diacritics haphazardly, or adding new letters just for its own sake - there should be some (perhaps unstated, perhaps not outlined in all the details) reason behind the orthography.
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7 | unique agglutinative root system?
The language of The Old Ones is described as "an agglutinative speech
with root systems utterly unlike any found in human languages" (H.P.
Lovecraft, "The Shadow Out of Time", Chapter 4). What techniques
could a conlanger use to devise a unique root system for an
agglutinative language?
A better question would be whether the language of the old ones is actually unique and unlike natural languages.
In my opinion, it reflects, if anything, more on Lovecraft's lack of linguistic understanding than anything about the language of the Old Ones, since the roots in human languages get pretty damn ridiculous, so it's really hard to imagine something "utterly unlike any found in human languages". You would have to design a phonology produced by speech organs completely unlike those of humans to approach this.
Where I to tackle this, I would go for a system not unlike Arabic, but where the root is constituted of a set of vowels instead (with maybe "consonant harmony"?).
Alternatively, Mark Rosenfelder's Kebreni has roots where vowels are swapped around a whole lot, and I doubt that metathesis as a base derivational system exists in any human language.
Generally, I'm not sure designing something literally outside the boundaries of what the human mind can handle is by definition possible, which is what Lovecraft truly was after in his poor description attempt.
I'm not entirely sure what Lovecraft meant by "root systems", but whenever you want to do something that human languages don't or rarely do, a good first step is looking at language universals. The traditional ones, however, as set out by Joseph Greenberg, were more about syntax and only a little about morphology, which roots would probably fall under depending on what you want to do with them. Still, we can use the same techniques. We can look at what some real languages do with roots and try to figure out what they don't do, and then do that.
Roots in most languages are pretty static. They have to be, because they carry the majority of semantic content for a word, so they have to remain recognizable. Some languages, though, have morphology that alters what we would think of as the root in Western languages. In many Semitic languages, such as Arabic and Hebrew, roots are combinations of consonants, usually three but sometimes two, and inflect by changing the vowels. In Arabic the consonants k-t-b are a root that has to do with books and writing. The singular word "book" is kitāb, the plural "books" is kutub, "booklet" is kutayyib with a suffix, "writer" is kātib, and the verb "to write" is kataba.
Some languages also have infixes, which are affixes that are added inside the root instead of being added to the beginning (prefix) or end (suffix). Tagalog, for example:
For example, the verb takbo (meaning to run) + the infix um can be made into the word tumakbo, which equates to the simple past tense past tense ran.
(From http://talktagalog.com/tagalog-verbs-grammar-prefixes-infixes-suffixes/)
In the Arabic example, some of the morphology was inflectional, meaning it added some extra meaning to the original root--making a plural, for instance. Some was derivational, meaning we added something to the root that created a new root word--making "books" from "book" is inflectional, but making "book", "writer", and "to write" from the root k-t-b is derivational. So one possible meaning for "root system" is a system of derivational morphology, and a "unique agglutinative root system" would be a unique agglutinative system of derivational morphology. Speakers tend to regularize morphology over time, but derivational morphology is a little more resistant to it than inflectional: in English, nobody uses "whom" anymore, but we still preserve irregularities like "in-vincible" vs. "un-beatable" vs. "a-sexual". So with derivational morphology, you have a bit more freedom to concoct a weird, wild system without having to simulate a bunch of lazy peasant speakers who can't be bothered to keep using your fancy inflections.
Anyway, hopefully this gives you some ideas for how to create your own system.
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11 | Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?
In toki pona, compounding multiple words together is possible. For example:
tomo: room/box/structure/home
telo: water/fluid
tomo telo: bathroom
It also allows compounding three words together:
tomo pi telo nasa: a bar
kiwen mun laso: blue moon rocks
This is where the official grammar stops, and the official stance is that larger statements are ungrammatical. However, I am wondering if it is common in practice for people to compound more than three words.
Suppose I wanted to say “the broken yellow dome hut.” The official grammar would have me say something in a full sentence:
tomo sike pakala li jelo.
However, despite the rules of grammar, do people ever say:
tomo sike pakala jelo.
Or include other compounds of many words with pi?
(Note: I am not asking whether this is grammatical according to official rules. I am asking whether colloquial toki pona permits this.)
Who says "toki pona" in lowercase is acceptable? Perhaps that's the convention when writing in Toki Pona itself, but in English it should be capitalised as any other language name is.
@curiousdannii well... toki pona speakers, in practice, write it that way :-Ъ
In general, we don't want to make descriptions so long and complicated as to be difficult to follow. That is more important than exact word count, in my experience (as an admin of the "toki pona taso" group on Facebook). For example, if someone mentioned a "poki kala suli pi telo ala", I wouldn't find that at all strange as a description of an empty aquarium. However, if someone spoke of an "ilo sona lili pakala laso", I'd probably have to read it a few times to figure out what they're talking about (in this case I'm thinking of a dysfunctional blue laptop). So compounds with "pi" tend to have a bit more leeway because that groups the words together somewhat, making it easier to decipher. But shorter, simpler descriptions are generally preferred, and in practice this usually does turn out to be three words or less.
Some of the coffee circumlocutions are rather long like "telo wawa pimejo seli", but in practice you can find shorter ones sufficient in the context
There is even a Reddit about the question: Toki Pona coffee.
Yes, but when this happens, you have to consider two possibilities:
This is really a content word followed by many, many modifiers
A particle has been omitted.
For the toki pona parse I wrote, I have an arbitrary cut off of something like 5 modifiers.
telo kala seli jelo waso wawa kulupu soweli jan li suli.
The beasty, familial, powerful, bird-like, yellow, hot, fish water is big.
(that doesn't really mean anything, it just makes the parser blow up)
http://tokipona.net/parser/L?i=C
In the corpus of public texts, heads followed by 4 or more modifiers almost never legitimately happen, unless someone forgot a necessary particle.
That said, they are valid, e.g.
mi jo e soweli lili lili lili lili lili lili lili lili lili lili lili lili.
I have a small...small animal.
(I do think this would be more appropriate as a comment somewhere, but sigh)
As the others have pointed out, the primary reason for a rarity of noun phrases beyond three words is due to an increasing difficulty to understand the phrase with each added modifier, however it is my hypothesis at least that this may only truly apply to written communication as opposed to verbal.
Though I have little experience verbally communicating with toki pona (I can't find much anyone who wants to learn in my vicinity TT^TT), it isn't hard to imagine that the aid of body language, and vocalization, perhaps among other things, could make longer strings possible, without being too difficult to grasp.
The only thing beyond that is how reasonable the phrase is. I think in jan Masiju's example, whether using verbal or written communication, my brain would always break at "waso".
I don't know if it's "pu" (official) or not, but the whole point of toki pona is that it's very simple/minimalist so the idea is not to say any more than is absolutely necessary to describe something so I would think it would be discouraged. 'coffee' is generally translated as 'telo pimeja wawa'(dark water/liquid of strength/energy).
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18 | Are constructed languages intellectual property? Do they ever stop being IP, once people use them?
Are conlangs intellectual property? Can they be copyrighted?
The second question is a little more complicated. Does a certain level of public, common usage cause a conlang to become public domain, even when the language was created by a select group?
I know there has been some debate over the Klingon language regarding this, especially since there are a few people who were raised with Klingon as a secondary natural language. But I'm not certain about its legal status.
For the purposes of location, consider the US generally. If a state is needed, in California.
Relevant post from Sci-Fi & Fantasy SE - info from a directly involved party about a court case involving the Klingon language.
Possible duplicate of What legal aspects should one consider when creating a constructed language?
@Sai That question asks, "If I'm about to create a new conlang, should I consider any existing patents?", which isn't what I'm looking for here.
I think Láadan was an attempt to build a proprietary conlang. It hasn't helped it to spread.
@LuísHenrique I've interviewed Suzette Haden Elgin, author of Láadan, and she didn't say anything about wanting it to be proprietary. To the contrary, she was all for it getting broader adoption. http://podcast.conlang.org/2009/04/interview-with-suzette-haden-elgin/
Relevant: LCS about Paramount claiming copyright on Klingon: https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/18/are-constructed-languages-intellectual-property-do-they-ever-stop-being-ip-onc
The history of Loglan and Lojban may interest the OP.
The short answer is that there are no mechanisms in place by which one could credibly copyright, patent or otherwise secure ones language. Works you create about the language (such as a grammar document or a poem) of course fall under the same copyright laws as any other works of their kind and as such generally belong to you, but your language as of now is just as copyrightable as English.
For a long answer, I recommend watching this talk by Sai (founder of the LCS) about exactly this topic.
So then, for example, suppose you decided to write a poem in Sindarin. There would be no issues with publishing it as your own work?
There is nothing legally enforcable stopping you from doing so, but it’s still plausible that the tolkein family would sue you just out of principle. How that would go is of course in the air. There’s very little precedent (only some lawsuit regarding klingon)
@celticminstrel The LCS' position would be that if you write an original poem in Sindarin — not quoting any text of JRRT, just using the language — then it's 100% yours. We are likely willing to defend that position in court.
Everything you make up is your intellectual property, but that does not mean you could decide who gets to use it and how. Programming languages are actually quite similar in this regard. We need to distinguish several concepts about a conlang:
name
dictionary
grammar
texts
Inventing and naming the language, effectively means you are entitled to decide what counts as $language and what does not. You probably could even register a trademark for it in some jurisdictions. You cannot stop people from extending the dictionary or deriving a dialect, but they could probably not legally call it $language without your approval. They could still use a slightly different name even incorporating the original one, e.g. "$dialect of $language", and you could do nothing about it. (For instance, Commonmark initially was called Standard Markdown and was renamed after protests from the author of Markdown and coiner of that term, but this happened out of courtesy not out of legal obligations, and variants with names like Github Flavored Markdown or Markdown Extra remain unaffected.)
The dictionary most likely is subject to database laws which differ significantly between jurisdictions and can be rather strange. I remember a case where it was legal to read, manually type and publish a copy of a printed phone register, but the redistribution of a computer scan was prohibited. It's best to treat the word list as public domain.
The grammar is much like an algorithm in mathematics. That means it usually cannot be patented or otherwise protected.
Texts in or about the language are of course still copyrighted intellectual property of their authors. The inventor or maintainer of the language has no say in this.
At first I thought this seemed pretty comprehensive, but then I realized it doesn't even touch on constructed writing systems... (Still a useful answer though.)
You are right. I assume conscripts are mostly subject to the same laws that apply to typefaces and fonts, which differ significantly among jurisdictions. In some cases they border on logos, e.g. the popular emblem of the Klingon Empire might never make it into Unicode proper while the normal pIqaD letters some day may.
No trademarks for language names in the US. Decided by the Lojban v Loglan case.
I would say yes. If for example you own the copyright to a dictionary and a grammar guide for words that you made up, then people can only use those words within the "fair use" guidelines of copyright law. So they could write an original poem using your language without your permission, but would need to provide citations to your copyrighted works. But no one would be able to read or understand the poem unless they also had access to the copyrighted works, which would quickly stifle any use of the language. If you want as many people as possible to learn and speak your language, then the fastest way to disseminate the language would be by releasing all materials into the public domain so that they are freely accessible to everyone.
Can you please [edit] this to add some quotes and references to back up your argument. :)
I should add that I am not a legal expert by any means. If you really were concerned about copyright and fair usage of your works, you should consult a lawyer for legal advice.
But the case of Loglan vs. Lojban is a good example. Loglan was copyrighted, which spurred the creation of Lojban instead.
That was a trademark allegation, not copyright. And the result of that case was that the trademark was invalidated. IIRC the decision to split names was part of a settlement.
Also, fair use (in the US) does not require citation to the original. It's polite and standard to do so, but not a part of the legal fair use factors.
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19 | Is the Klingon alphabet inspired by Tibetan alphabet?
Is the Klingon alphabet inspired by Tibetan alphabet?
Because they look similar..
Considering this question is a rehash of another question on SX, I'm inclined to say it's chance resemblance — and not a very high one at that. It is very highly plausible that it was designed by a non-linguist at Paramount (if I understand correctly) at a time when there was no easy way of finding out about Tibetan even with the budding Internet of 1992 when the aforelinked article was published in the HolQeD journal of the KLI. The article specifically says:
More recently we’ve been treated to a different alphabet, (often incorrectly attributed to Michael
Okuda, scenic designer for Star Trek: The Next Generation™), one which corresponds to the phonemes of
Klingon as described by Okrand in The Klingon Dicitionary. While the characters themselves are easily identifiable from background displays on Star Trek: The Next Generation™ (assuming one has access to video
equipment and a reasonably large television screen), there has never been an “official” release describing
the particular relationship between individual glyphs and specific sounds. As Okuda has indicated (HolQeD
1:1, 11) all Klingon background displays are composed for appearance, not communication. And yet, an
unofficial letter to a Klingon fan group from an unnamed source at Paramount resulted in the following
alphabet: [...]
“no easy way of finding out about Tibetan”? If I wanted a chart of Tibetan characters at that time, I'd go to the Bodhi Tree bookshop not far from Hollywood (I think I got some linguistic material there in 1984, though I've forgotten what) or to the appropriate department of a university library.
@AntonSherwood the root of the issue isn't in finding a chart of Tibetan characters, but actually getting to selecting Tibetan characters to be the source of the script and going after a chart of them in the first place.
So someone sees a sample of Tibetan writing on, say, a prayer wheel in National Geographic, and thinks hey that looks cool and exotic. Farfetched? I don't think so. It needn't be something that would certainly happen. In a parallel world it's inspired instead by a poster at an Ethiopian restaurant.
According to this answer on Science Fiction and Fantasy Stack Exchange, no. The author draws from the official Klingon language website, saying:
"...the producers called on professional linguist Dr. Marc Okrand to create authentic speech for the Klingons. His task was to make their language as alien as their ridged prosthetic foreheads, while still remaining pronounceable by human actors and consistent with the battle cries from the first movie.
Dr. Okrand did not base Klingon on any particular language, but drew on his knowledge of how language works to construct a wholly new language."
This seems (and I've looked at the page in question) to only talk about the language itself, not the alphabet or script used to write it as shown in the question.
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91 | What does xorlo do, and is it an official part of the Lojban language?
I've noticed that many speakers of Lojban use xorlo, which is a modification branching off the base language, but finding explicit information about it is difficult. What does it do?
I also know people are generally using it by consensus, but is xorlo an official part of the language? What happens to the original text, The Complete Lojban Language?
xorlo is an official part of the Lojban Language. The Complete Lojban Language does not contain information about xorlo, and is no longer guaranteed to be entirely accurate. The Committee for Developing Lojban (BPFK) voted 11-0 to include xorlo in the official record as a part of the Lojban language. The proposal is not finalized until the BPFK declares their work finished, but it is extremely unlikely to change, as it has become an integral part of how the language works conversationally.
In essence, xorlo changes the meaning of two particle articles in lojban: lo, and le.
lo as an article used to indicate that you were talking about a set of objects which are truthfully what you claim they are. Nothing about them indicates that they would be anything else. For example, "lo jgena" meant "some things that are, to our best perceptions, knots."
Now, it doesn't say anything about perceptions, or the truthiness of what it is. It just means "any or some." It becomes the most generic article you can use in lojban, in place of anything else, because it is vague. "lo jgena" now means "any/some knot(s)," without qualification or ulterior statement about veracity.
le as an article used to mean "some things I have in mind, which I am describing." For example, "le jgena" meant that you had some knots in your head. The change to le is very minor in this context, and its pure meaning hasn't actually changed. The only difference is that it now exists only to be used when you have specific images of something in mind. Now, if I tell you "le jgena," you know I mean something more specific.
Is the difference sort of like that between "a" and "the"? Indefinite vs. definite articles?
@heather That's a close analogue, if "a knot" and "the knot" weren't necessarily singular.
Some says (e.g. this article) that xorlo also changed the semantic of constants (making them plural) while keeping the variables singular.
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156 | What significant traits are found in conlangs and not in natlangs?
Recently I encountered the acronym ANADEW, which I found to mean A natlang's already dunnit, except worse. Pondering a comment from Logan R. Kearsley where he speculated that "... it's mildly positive in naturalistic circles, since if a natlang already does it, you know you're justified in using it." I began to wonder what did not eventually fit in the ANADEW concept.
I gather that Lojban might be unique in its strong attention to being logical, as explained in two excellent answers to What makes lojban such a “logical” language?. If it is not unique, at least it still is something that I don't thing any natlang has as a strong point.
In the short time that this site's been open, it has struck me that conlangs might be improvements in one way or another over natlangs, yet despite their diversity, they haven't matched the diversity, and utility, of natlangs.
So, what I'm wondering is, other than Lojban and its "logic" is there some other significant traits that some human conlang has which is not found in a natlang somewhere?
I wouldn't consider using never-before-heard sounds as significant, though that's been mentioned in another question. I would have considered having a super minimal verb set significant, as in Kēlen, except that, well ANADEW, or in this case maybe better.
Full disclosure, I am not a conlanger, likely never will be. Nonetheless, I find many fields interesting, and created languages is one of them. With that in mind, please excuse some of my oversights or misconstrued concepts.
There are a broad range of answers possible here and it would be impossible to list everything. In general, it is rather easy to come up with a feature that does not seem to occur in natural languages: simply take a feature every language appears to possess (for example: phonemes, verbs, hierarchical syntax that can be described with syntax trees, a very large amount of words) and reject it. Then see what you can do with the language. This leads to so-called Engelangs, short for “Engineered Languages”.
Alternatively, one can from the ground up decide to build structure from a different “philosophy”, e.g. build on predicate logic, or stacks (the CS concept), or… well, whatever you can think of that can organize information, really.
To make an example, there is Ithkuil. Ithkuil does not strive to be a naturalistic language. Instead, its goal is to allow for unambiguity. Among the things it does to provide that are a range of grammatical inflections not found in any natural language - too many to list, but one example I can make is its case system. In most natural languages, case is something of a helper to syntax. Case marks words for their syntactic roles and thus helps create the structure necessary to understand a sentence. In Ithkuil however, case marks semantics. The sentence “I hit you” in ithkuil would require different cases for “I” and “you” depending on whether e.g. I was a volitional actor, or whether the hitting was an unavoidable circumstance, or an accident, or mediated by someone else… While traces of such systems are found in natural language, none get even close to the extreme of Ithkuil.
Finally, an interesting anecdote is the Conlang Trigger System, a novel way of structuring languages employed in naturalistic conlangs (i.e. ones striving to be mistakable for natural languages). The trigger system developed from misunderstandings of the way certain Austronesian languages (such as Tagalog) work. It’s a perfectly plausible system… just not actually attested in natural languages. I believe there’s a nice writeup on the whole topic, but cannot find it right now.
From the description, Ithkuil fits in the even worse of ANADEW, as you said "traces ... are found in natural language..." Triggers, seems possible, if there is a conlang that uses them successfully, as opposed to the proposition that they could be used to create a conlang.
Trigger systems have absolutely been used in conlangs - they’re pretty much a staple. The important point is that they’re not attested in natural languages but still appear to be perfectly plausible systems that could exist, but just don’t seem to.
That, then, does fit what I was looking for. Something as significant as the "logic" of Lojban. What human language could do, yet so far has not. That it "seems" natural/plausible and still never happened is even better.
Whilst I also think that this question is too broad as you could argue that almost all conlangs that weren't created to be "naturalistic" have some feature never before seen in a natural language. Wikipedia talks about many a priori languages which, by definiton, contain features not based on existing languages. With that being said, here are some of my favourite (perhaps less well known) philosophical languages that are vastly different from all natural languages.
Pasigraphies
A pasigraphy is a constructed writing system which aims to be intelligible to all people. Unlike other writing systems, pasigraphies generally only exist in written form and cannot be spoken. Some notable pasigraphies include
Characteristica Universalis by Gottfried William Leibniz
Leibniz ws one of the earliest proponents of a universal pasigraphy or "alphabet of human thought" assigned "charactaristics" to objects so that they would be able to be manipulated by means similar to algebra.
Real Character by John Wilkins
The most successful of Wilkins' many philosophical languages and one of the first to gain popular attraction, Real Character is an ideographic system that uses the combination of different symbols to form new concepts.
Blissymbolics by Charles K. Bliss
The most successful pasigraphy to date, Blissymbolics is fundamentally similar to Real Character and are now mainly used to teach people with speech and physical disabilities.
(Examples of Blissymbols stolen from All Things Linguistics)
Transcendental Algebra by Jacob Linzbach
Inspired by Leibniz's Characteristica, Transcendental Algebra was created to accompany Edgar de Wahl's international auxiliary Occidental and allows for the "algebraic manipulation" of facts to calculate truth.
I feel like this list wouldn't be complete without a shoutout to Solresol (not having words seems pretty un-natlang-y to me)
The first three, especially the third, seem like simplified Egyptian. Using a "new" writing, even when tied to a new language doesn't seem ground-breaking to me. Nordic priests were combining symbols to make different meanings thousands of years ago. The runes had shapes suggestive of the object that held the meaning for that rune, they had associated numbers that were used to create meanings. I don't know, but have been lead to believe that Chinese characters are created by compounding meanings and thoughts. These don't seem "new" so much as simplified or modernized. I can be wrong, of course
iirc Egyptian Hieroglyphs are logophonetic (the glyphs either mean what they look like or represent a phoneme) and Elder Futhark is an alphabet. If anything you could compare Real Character and Blissymbols to Oracle Bone script, but Oracle bone still couldn't exist without a spoken language (old chinese)
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452 | Are Esperanto's part of speech endings actually beneficial?
I was wondering if they really serve any practical advantage.
For one, what they mean depends on what the innate part of speech of the root is, which isn't marked except through the part of speech endings. For instance, attaching the verbal suffix -i to an adjective gives a different meaning than attaching it to a noun.
Further more, Lingua Franca Nova has a rather novel method of marking mart of speech: its own derivational morphology. Unlike Esperanto's affixes, LFN's affixes often transform a specific part of speech into another (or sometimes just leaves it the same). In this say, suffixes that derive nouns are automatically mark the noun for part of speech without the need of an additional affix that serves no other purpose.
But of course, I'm not exactly fluent in the language myself, so I'd like an opinion from people who do actually know and use this language. Are the part of speech endings really useful or are they just a convoluted way to derive new words?
"Necessary" is a pretty loaded (and impossible to properly answer) question when it comes to language. There's really no linguistic basis to assess whether a certain attribute is necessary for a language, so this question is pretty much entirely opinion-based. I'm voting to close for that reason.
You do have a point, but that wasn't really what I was getting at. I re-worded the question to ask if there is any advantage to this system, which is more what I had in mind anyway.
I suppose the wording is somewhat better, but I still feel it's too opinion-based. Additionally, for what it's worth, Esperanto part of speech markers are used as derivational morphemes, so it's unclear what differences between it and Lingua Franca Nova you're citing.
For those unfamiliar with Esperanto POS suffixes,
-o noun
-i verb (infinitive)
-a adjective
-e adverb
For example:
sano - health
sani - to be healthy
sana - healthy
sane - healthily
Since Esperanto has free word order, having POS markers allows the differentiation between the following phrases:
ĝoje knabino ludas - a girl plays happily
ĝoja knabino ludas - a happy girl plays
Esperanto and LFN have a very similar affix system, however unlike LFN, Esperanto root words have no innate part of speech, so there is no way of "adding" a verbal suffix to a noun or an adjective. Rather, you would be changing the nominal/adjectival suffix to the verbal one and forming the verb based on the root word. Knowing the POS of any given word makes understanding unfamiliar words a lot easier, which is very advantageous for an auxiliary language.
With that being said, in EO poetry, nouns often drop their -o ending for aesthetic reasons.
Berlino sen vi estas urb' (urbo) sen harmoni' (harmonio)
Estas trista, trista, amasloĝej' (amasloĝejo)
Between EO and LFN's, there is no "better" affix system. They are just two different ways of doing the same thing.
Yes, have Esperanto roots have an inherent part of speech. Just look at the use of the -il suffix. Some nouns take it, some don't. For example, brush and to brush are bruso and brusi, but comb and to comb are combilo and combo. And you see this everywhere. Martelo doesn't need the suffix, but segilo does. Bruso and martelo are nouns, so they can turn into verbs with the -i suffix, but combi and segi are verbs, so they need -il to become nouns. At the very least, its inconsistent.
The inconsistency here is with the -il- infix and not with the POS marker -o, which broso, kombo, martelo and segilo all have. Whether or not a noun takes an -il- infix is explained quite nicely in this answer and many words can have both (tranĉi>tranĉo>tranĉilo). Roots don't have an "innate part of speech", but some forms of the root would have existed before others. The whole purpose of adding a pos marker to every word is to remove the initial form of the word from its root.
I'd be glad to discuss this further in chat :)
@as4s4hetic I largely agree with your answer, but the idea that Esperanto does not have inherent parts of speech is simply false. Certain affixes behave differently depending on the part of speech of the root (-igxi and -igi being the biggest offenders there). I speak Esperanto myself, and as far as I know, even the Akademio acknowledges that roots have an innate part of speech. I don't think this is much of a problem with Esperanto -- the POS affixes still help with derivation and free word order -- but denying it doesn't really help much.
@Sparksbet I agree with what you said and I agree that different roots have different original forms, but I was under the impression that adding affixes to a word was moreso based on the kind of ~general semantic class~ of the root rather than a "default part of speech" since assigning a pos to each root seems difficult to me (e.g. would colours be adjectives or nouns?)
@as4s4hetic I'm not sure what the difference between each root having a 'general semantic class' and a 'default part of speech' would be, functionally. Seems to me like just different ways of describing the same thing. As for whether colors are adjectives or nouns, Plena Ilustrita Vortaro de Esperanto seems to say they are adjectival (it helpfully lists the default POS/semantic class of a root first before continuing to describe the meanings of various derivations from that root).
@Sparksbet I created a chat room if you want to keep talking there (because I'm quite interested in this topic but the comments section isn't really the right place to talk)
POS markers are markers, same as syntactic position, both derived morphology and otherwise.
In a noisy environment it may be helpful to mark things more than once, so if someone couldn't figure out the POS from context, the roots normal POS class, or syntax, they can infer it from the POS suffix.
This guy has some additional criticism of the POS markers.
I've no familiarity with LNF, so I wouldn't know how that differs or not.
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459 | What's a good starting place to work on vocab?
Obviously, generating a lexicon is very time-consuming, and there's so much that needs to be done, I often find myself suffering with analysis paralysis, because I just can't decide where to begin.
Word frequency lists don't help all that much, because there's an inverse relationship between how useful a word is and how common it is. The most commonly used word in English is 'the', for instance. If you just made words for the 100 most commonly used words, you wouldn't really be able to make that many sentences, which would make it difficult to work on the grammar.
I've seen some people use the Swadesh list, but I fail to see how that is useful in any way since the list was arbitarily chosen rather than thought through. And besides, it would require you make words for things that are highly unlikely to ever be mentioned, such as a word for 'louse'.
The Conlanger's Lexicon suggests you work by categories, so that that way you can at least form complete sentences, even if this does limit you to writing about one topic. Of course, there's still the problem of which list to begin with. He just lists the categories in the book alphabetically.
Are there other methods to use? And yes, I know about word-generating programs, but those spit out stuff that's much lower quality than stuff generated by hand. And besides, my conlang will have a highly productive word-derivation system, so I don't need that many roots (when I'm writing down lists of words, often times I just write what I want the compound word to literally translate as, though I rarely go back to fill it in because I never get to the words that would comprise the compound).
I've mostly been looking at frequency lists and the Conlanger's Lexipedia, but I would like to know if there was a better way.
louse is on the Swadesh and LJ lists because, except for some of us lucky moderns, there are lice wherever there are humans. I remember a line from a time travel story: “Imagine being so sick that you don't have lice!” But a story could legitimately have no need to mention them, just as we've probably read novels that never mention fingernails.
I have started a conlang branch, Term, where we gathered 4,000 words/concepts in English which we felt were foundational to the English language. It doesn't seem like there are tons more words needed that are missing from the list, found here. But as a note, I am going to try and whittle this down to about 1.5k words in the future potentially (similar to how there are about 1600 Chinese syllables), but then it starts to feel like Toki Pona territory, so not sure the balance yet.
Start with children's vocabulary. A search of the web will give many links of words children should learn and at what age. With them, you can build an "everyday" vocabulary in your language.
If you're new to conlanging and want to start an entire language from scratch: I would recommend reading The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder. It's a fun read and is very helpful to a new conlanger, and helps you know what to create for your purposes, how to do this, and gives you a good understanding of basic linguistics.
For creating vocabularies from scratch: A common practice is to begin with a list of roots and expand outwards, usually using some kind of derivational morphology. The words you're going to want to begin with, besides words that come up in your grammar, which I think should be close to done by the time you start building a lexicon, are the basic concepts. Things like man, tree, water, eat, do, green. One famous example of such a list is the Swadesh list. The way I made my vocab for my first language, Simean, was by coming up with roots for the concepts on this list and using morphological rules to expand that list.
Another alternative, though one I don't personally use, is to simply translate things and make up the necessary words as you go along. Even so, I'd start with the Swadesh list to get a good grounding in terms of what your language feels, looks, and sounds like.
It depends very much on the purpose of your language.
The generic advice is: Create the words and sentences you need for your purpose.
When you want to draw a map of a fictional world, create a system for naming geographical features. When you want to name fictional people, create a system of given names. When you want to have some dialogues, mottoes, or set phrases: Create just them.
When you are aiming at an international auxilliary language, create a system of derivational morphology first, then fill in stems and roots and function words. At some time, you will go through some dictionary and think of a word or expression for every dictionary entry. The risk of doing it too early is ending with a relex of the starting language.
BTW, the comment by @The Mattbat999 also has good advice: before creating words, think of the sounds of your language (phonology) and of allowed combinations of the sounds (phonotactics).
In the language learning area there's a list of the essential 625 words that are required to speak a language reasonably fluent; those might be a good starting point.
You will probably want to look at the list and decide which words should have a similar form (eg the colours), but if the main issue is what lexical items to cover, then that should get you started.
Honestly, what order you build your vocabulary in doesn't much matter, as long as it remains internally consistent when it comes to your conlang's semantic and morphosyntactic rules (and frankly, even those can be retconned).
Thus, different conlangers will build their vocabulary in different orders, and it really doesn't much matter which words you choose to coin first. I personally most often coin new words as I need them for translations (similarly, I flesh out my grammar as I encounter grammatical concepts I can't translate well in translations). I'll either find quotes to translate on my own, participate in conlanging challenges on /r/conlangs, or work on something like the Conlanging Syntax Test or, yes, perhaps a Swadesh List (or one of the improved alternatives, such as the Leipzig-Jakarta list -- there are a great number of such "concept lists" collected at CLLD-Concepticon).
Yes, these choices are incredibly arbitrary, but frankly, there isn't any way of choosing what words to coin first that isn't arbitrary. So just pick something arbitrarily and get started!
When I started creating my language I started with whatever words I thought would come up regularly (a, the, as...etc) then I would take a book, flick to a random page and translate what was there, creating the words as I went.
The advantage of this method is that if you are creating a language for a specific genre then you can use books from that genre to get a more useful vocabulary for what you are looking for.
Just as a side note, the words you put in parentheses are rather typical to English and its relatives. They are not found in all languages, and the two first are maybe absent in most. You don't have to go further than the Scandinavian languages, which are rather close to English in many ways, to find there is no separate definite article similar to English 'the'.
As mentioned by @Sparksbet the Leipzig-Jakarta list comes in very useful (especially if you use conworkshop as there's a lexibuild list for it). If you want something more comprehensive that has the basics that is actually useful I would try using this google sheet for the universal language dictionary. It already has words listed in categories to make things easier! Atlernatively the Globish list is a decent starting point, though it was not designed for this purpose.
If the speakers of the language are not your average humans of Earth, first make/find some texts that are suitable for the speakers: narratives, what happens during a regular, boring day, what happens in the market, at a restaurant, when traveling, making food, at the doctor's etc. Have a look at travel dictionaries for ideas.
Start with very short texts, no more than a paragraph. (The following paragraph would work for many an ordinary human in the West in the current era:) "I get up in the morning. I have breakfast then leave for work. At midday I have lunch. I go home in the early evening. I have dinner with my family. Finally, I go to bed."
Then figure out how to do the most frequent words (you might have 'em all covered already. But which set you need will vary. If for instance, you don't want articles, make a DO NOT-wordlist: the word you don't want (like "the") followed by what you do instead. This is very handy for future translations.)
After the most frequent words, do the remaining nouns and verbs. Whether there are adjectives and adverbs and many other word classes will depend on the language, so wait a while with those.
Later, pick one sentence and expand it to a paragraph: "I sleep alone in a bedroom. The bedroom has a floor, a ceiling, several walls, a bed, a window, a door, a light, and an alarm clock. The dog sometimes gets in during the night and also sleeps in my bed." Expand the other sentences in the first paragraph before you expand anything in the second paragraph. This will give you the words needed for daily life quite quickly.
Be wary of translating things that are the wrong tone and age at an early stage, like medieval tales or older if your speakers are of the modern era, or specific religious texts if your speakers don't do that religion.
For instance, if you translate the Babel-text early you risk having a word for an outdated technique for joining bricks (and a word for non-fired bricks) before you have a term for "to eat", "to speak", "to go"...
Write a text/narrative, small or big, in your starting language. Then as you go through it create each element that may arise which does not exist in your language.
In the beginning it will be a painstaking process, but as you continue it will provide useful insight on exactly which words you need to add.
a general rule to remember —
Anything you create or use out of dire need, will be more difficult to lose track of.
I suggest using a combination of word lists, etymologies, synonyms, generators, and babbling to yourself aloud to find inspiration (just ignore the weird looks you may receive; they just don't understand :P).
In my conlanging spreadsheet program Der Spracherfinder, I suggested 500 words sorted by categories of related words (e.g. hand and foot are under the anatomy section). Furthermore, I added selectable descriptors for each word to better define it, these being noun, verb, particle, etc. I also added a box to describe the etymology / derivation of the word if any at all.
The paradigm behind this is the conlanger can focus on related words and how they may morph into new words. This method was my attempt to merge the best of word lists, etymology lists, and parts of speech.
I hope this is helpful, and good luck on your conlanging adventures!
Also, you can use this wordlist (A Conlanger's Thesaurus). It is really helpful to create a basic word list.
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493 | Why do I have such a problem with my conlangs being ugly?
This is a perpetual problem I have and I find it quite annoying. Yes, I know its kinda subjective, but that doesn't change the fact that, to me at least, my conlangs are always hideous.
For a recent example, my most recent conlang has agglutinating pronouns. For instance, the word for 'I' is 'ta' and the word for 'we' is 'tai' (pronounced like 'tie', minus the aspiration of course). That's not too bad. The issue is when I add the nominative marker -s: 'tas' and 'tais'. To me, 'tais' just sounds hideous.
In past I think it was because I used the voiceless velar fricative far too often. But even if I don't include the phoneme my language sounds hideous, and artificial to the point that its sounds robotic. Though the latter is probably because I have a hard time NOT making conlangs 'logical'.
There are of course nice-sounding conlangs out there, and even natlangs, but I just can't seem to imitate the sound of any other language for some reason, and I don't get why. And I specialize in phonology, so I don't get why I can't get the sound right. Even if my conlang has the exact same phonemes, allophony, intonation, and phonotactics as a natlang, it will sound completely different and I can't figure out why. I mean, how can I screw up the latter? What am I missing?
There's no accounting for taste? No one else can explain why you think a perfectly normal string of phones sounds "hideous".
Then... don't use that word?
What you need is to adjust your phonotactics. Since you mention it in your question you apparently know what they are, but you aren't using them to get the sounds you want.
You say you find "tais" to be hideous, but you don't explain why, so let's say you don't like the way that a diphthong sounds in a closed syllable. (If this isn't the case, take this as an example for whatever the problem is.)
Once you've located the problem, you have to determine how to eliminate it by making rules for new phonotactics. You can think of lots of ways:
The diphthong becomes a monophthong: tais > tas, tis or tes in a closed syllable (tas might be problematic since it creates ambiguity with the singular). Or, alternatively, two monophthongs: tais could be [ta.is] instead of [tajs]
A new consonant could be placed to separate the diphthong: tais could transform into tayis, maybe taus could be tawus (based on a simple rule of adding y before a front vowel and w before a back vowel)
The diphthong could monophthongize and simple color the next consonant: tais could be pronounced [taɕ]. You could create a pattern with other consonants, e.g. tait > [tac], taid > [taɟ]
Even if some of these options are problematic in your case (maybe you don't want to "contaminate" your agglutinative language), you could still retain the phonemes /tajs/ and just have some of these options as allophones of it (so e.g. [e] or [e:] could be an allophone of /aj/ in a closed syllable, [ɕ] could be an allophone of /js/)
What you need to do is just determine what sounds ugly to you and create phonotactic rules that cover whatever the problem is.
Its primarily the 'ais' ending. I don't mind 'tai' and I don't mind 'tas', but 'tais' just sounds... not right to me.
Yes, I was suggesting that you try to figure out what i the phonotactics you disliked so you could remove it. I suggested diphthongs in closed syllables (e.g. ais, aus, ois, eus). If it's really just the ais ending and nothing else, the answer is simply to replace "ais" with something else
The epenthetic consonant idea could be done backward: say the plural morpheme is not /i/ but /wi/, and the [w] vanishes only when the [i] is final.
The obvious point is: Design your conlang for pleasantness.
Several conlang inventors had clear ideas about pleasantness: Zamenhof liked the sound of the Italian language and designed that into Esperanto; Tolkien liked Welsh (designed into Sindarin) and Finnish (designed into Quenya).
So "taste" different syllables and sounds, "taste" combinations of them, and than set up strong phonotactic rules forbidding ugly sounds. Whenever your morphology tries to introduce an ugly sound, think of a remedy:
Change the morphology
Apply some transformation that removes the ugly sound (this also adds irregularity, naturalness, and flavour to the language); for detailed suggestions see @b a's answer.
I think getting at a list of pleasant sound combinations (and a list of ugly ones to be avoided) is the difficult part of the program, getting rid of them once you know them is the easier task.
I have a less sophisticated explanation. Tastes change with exposure, so any new language sounds less pretty.
Also, what sounds right or pretty, after you've gotten used to a language, are words that follow the phonotactic rules.
I'm skeptical of the idea that some sounds are apriori prettier or more pleasant. Cellar door sounds good because it is a perfectly ordinary bit of English phonotactics, a language Tolkien was obviously familiar with.
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501 | Is it possible to make a declension system that DOESN'T limit what nouns can end in?
This has always been a conundrum for me. I like how grammatical case frees up word order, but hate how it puts a limit on what nouns can end in. Years ago someone told me of a natlang that uses 6 declensions, one for each vowel and the 6th for nouns that end in consonants. This allowed nouns to end in any phoneme in the language, though from my own research only plurals were allowed to end in -u. Sadly, I haven't been able to find that language again.
Such a language, if it were to exist, would make it abnormally important to remember each noun's declension class, because what would be the nominative for one noun may be another case entirely for a different noun.
I find it annoying that I can't find that natlang again. I think it was a part of the Slavic family, but I'm not sure. I think it was spoken like somewhere around Eastern Europe or the Caucus mountains.
Are you excluding the trivial options of only having prefixes or infixes?
Russian?
The natlang sounds like Latin, it has indeed 6 declensions with the described features. However, I'm not sure that it allows any consonant as a final for a noun, at least I can't recall any Latin nouns ending in -b, -d, or -g (stems, yes, but it is like urbs, urbis, laus, laudis or grex, gregis)
Ignoring the lost natlang, I'll just answer the title question:
There are several possibilities to let nouns end in any phoneme of the language and still have case inflections:
Most simple: Have a zero ending in the nominative singular
Base your inflection on prefixes (like in Bantu languages) or infixes (like in Semitic languages)
BTW, inflections with thematic vowels (like in Latin and Greek) aren't particularly difficult to remember, because the thematic vowel is easily recognisable throughout the whole inflection paradigm.
PS Many natural languages have only a restricted set of allowed phonemes at the end of a word. Classical Greek is an extreme example of this kind of restriction, but also German has Auslautverhärtung aka final devoicing: Final consonants are always devoiced. This feature does not show up in writing but only in the spoken language.
There are some languages with unusually irregular plurals or verbal forms, but I don't think any language has something quite as stark as what you're demanding here. Mostly because, as you point out yourself, a system that basically makes it impossible to recognize what case a noun is in unless it was previously learned by rote would be so taxing on the mind that it would inevitably regularize to at least some degree within a few generation (French verbs in middle/old French had a very high degree of root alternation, which are now greatly reduced, and English strong verb tend to regularize too).
However have you considered a system of vowel/consonant harmony? I don't think consonant harmony is a widespread feature in any natural language, but for conlanging, the sky's the limit. This would create endings that are affect by the last sound(s) of the root and increase the options.
Here are some possible solutions to this problem that haven't been listed already.
mark case with tone or another suprasegmental feature
case disfixes
have a large class of indeclinable nouns
achieve free word order via noun classes and agreement
1 Case Tone
Maasai marks case with tone. It's predominantly VSO, but frequently uses VOS order if the object is more topical.
2 Case disfixes
Some languages like Alabama (Muskogean, North America) delete phonemes in a root to indicate pluractionality (plural subject/plural object/multiple repetitions), basically verbal number. You can repurpose this feature for case.
Here's a strawman example in a 3-case language (direct, oblique, and genitive).
direct case: unmarked
oblique case: delete the final phoneme
genitive case: delete the final 2 phonemes
Suppose chopal means house.
house chopal
to/from/&c the house chopa
the house's chop
3 have a large class of indeclinable nouns
You can have a fair number of nouns that don't decline at all before the declension system breaks down completely.
Indeclinable nouns can end in whatever you want them to.
This might work well if your language has optional prepositions or postpositions with the same meaning as certain cases so that the role of an indeclinable noun can be clarified if necessary.
4. noun classes and agreement
Some languages such as Swahili have many noun classes and require verbs to agree with their arguments. Many Bantu languages like Swahili have agreement with direct objects as well, but don't require its usage in all situations.
You can also achieve the same effect with obligatory clitic doubling, such as in Macedonian. The idea is that you must have a pronoun referring to various verb arguments (such as the direct object) even when a full noun phrase is present. Clitic doubling is more effective at disambiguating sentences if you have more noun classes or more grammatical numbers.
Any declensional system that involves suffixes will limit "what nouns can end in", because nouns can only end in the declensional terminations of that language!
Even if you maximise by disallowing repeats, you can come up with say eight stem formations and say eight cases across four numbers. If you make each of these 256 forms "unique" (such that -am never repeats) that's 256 possible syllables.
English has something like ten to maybe fifteen or more thousands of syllables. The number of distinct monosyllabic words in astounding. This source lists hundreds if not several thousand.
I don't see how it could be possible to both create a reasonable declensional system and do anything but limit what nouns can end in.
Any solution to this query will involve something silly like having tens of thousands of discrete morphological forms for nouns. One for each possible syllable. Or, the equally silly notion of restricting the number of valid syllables to, say, 256, thus equalling the number of nominal case endings.
It's worth noting though that English (and IE languages in general) is on the higher side of syllable complexity.
In my opinion, the obvious first step is having a base form (be it nominative, accusative, ergative, absolutive or intransitive) with a null ending so that the root form with all its final sound variety actually shows up and can be identified.
Second, instead of attempting to find a declension pattern for each possible final sound, group them together. For example, you might have one (or many) declension groups that include words ending in consonant clusters; their feature may be that the ending tacked on always begins with a vowel to ensure a pronounceable syllable. On the other hand, you might decide to group together words ending in Vs, Vz, Vd and Vt (V = vowel sound) and have all their declension patterns be Vt + ending. These strategies reduce the potentially very high number of patterns to a more managable set – and are likely to have happened in natural languages anyway.
Finally, I would like to point out that Finnish and German are each rather close to what you have in mind. While native Finnish words can only /t, s, n, r, l/ or a vowel, loan words from other languages do not necessarily abide by this rule and newer loans have resisted change to fit Finnish phonotactics somewhat. In declensed forms, an /i/ is added between stem and ending to turn it into a fully allowed syllable. In German (subject to terminal devoicing) there aren’t any restrictions on final sounds that I am aware of. Indeed, declension is usually very simple being made up only of a sometimes optional filler-e plus a case-marking consonant so declension is not as complex as found in other languages.
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663 | Finding inspiration for letter forms?
I believe I've mentioned before on here how I struggle to come up with forms for letters.
I've tried to solve this by looking at other systems. Despite the diversity in our world, I've found it surprisingly hard to find a multitude of systems to draw from.
The problem is: writing systems have different factors that can influence their design. Syllabraries tend to have more complex characters than alphabets, because they don't have to write as many of them to spell out a word. And besides, they need a wider diversity of symbols anyway. Logographic systems are no different. Also the medium makes a huge difference. The aesthetic of one script may not be too practical to replicate using a medium it wasn't intended for.
I've found this all divides up writing systems into multiple different categories based on design. This means that if you stick with a certain medium and type of writing system, you won't have much to go off of. Like, if you look at alphabets, all that really seems to be out there is Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Korean. And if you look at cursive scripts, you only really have two options: English cursive, and Arabic, which is technically an abjad. And of course if you want a logographic system, the only living logographic system (aka, the only one to see use in a world where literacy was normal writing was part of every day life) is Chinese. Beyond that, all you have to look at are long extinct logographic systems that were all made to be carved into stone. Or cuneiform, which used some rather odd tools and medium to write. How many systems do you know of that were written in clay, and were always stamped rather than drawn?
I can't come up with forms that really look overly different from the few alphabets currently in use. Worse yet, most of them are closely related to each other! It seems like every symbol possible has already been used in a writing system somewhere.
The only thing that has really helped me is I've noticed that most lower-case Latin letters are built from a limited number of shapes: a circle, loop, short line, long line, long line with a loop, and a dot. Sadly, I can't really come up with any practical letter forms that don't use these shapes. They're pretty simple and basic.
You're missing a lot of natlang writing systems in your brief summary there, see this map. Many of them might be classified as 'cursive'.
I'm not sure what you're really after here... if you limit yourself to 2D writing there really aren't any basic elements other than dots, lines, curved lines, and loops (rounded or polygonal). But there's an infinite variety of ways to combine them.
Are you sure there are no other cursive scripts? Arabic may be the only script with only a cursive form, and Latin (plus its sibling Cyrillic) alone in having a large catalog of script typefaces, but I'd be amazed to learn that no other major script has a running form.
By the way, here's a set of simple glyphs that I'm not using, big enough for a syllabary. https://bendwavy.org/wp/?p=1986
After all, there is a limited number of shapes that one can draw with reasonable effort. You can measure the effort for writing a character in a writing system by the number of strokes needed. For alphabets, there should be no more than 5 strokes, for a syllabary maybe 7 or 8.
But there are more shapes available than you may think: For a relatively recent (in terms of writing systems) invention, you can look at the Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics having a distinct look from other writing systems.
The different Indic writing systems are also a good source of inspiration: While sharing a common set of characters and common principles, the letter shapes are always different in the various Indic and Indic inspired (like Thai or Khmer) scripts.
And it is still possible to invent a new and distinct writing system from scratch: Tolkien's Tengwar shows clear external influences (from Indic scripts and from Francis Lodwick's Universal Alphabet) but is clearly distinguished from both sources of inspiration.
The question basically provides the answer.
Consider the primary writing (and reading) conditions the conscript was hypothetically developed and employed in.
This obviously includes the affordances and constraints of medium and tool, but contents (accounting data, prose, correspondence, legal announcements, religious scripture etc.), environment (e.g. humidity, lighting, movement) and, of course, physiology of the writers and readers also play important roles.
This will not be constant over times and places, too, so you get natural iterations and bifurcations that may later remerge
(like how the printed bicameral roman script is a combination of uppercase letters made mostly for stone carving and lowercase letters evolved from pen/quill writing).
This way you get the directions of writing pages, blocks, lines, words and characters.
You get preferences for straight or curved, squared or circular, open or closed, flat or serifed, hanging or standing, leaning or upright, connected or separated, stacked or juxtaposed … strokes and shapes.
The frequency of use often determines the simplicity and distinctiveness of a glyph: the busiest ones tend to consist of the fewest basic shapes, often just a single one (like o).
Naturally developing alphabetical letters (and digraphs) also have a tendency to somehow resemble the phonetic features of their corresponding sounds.
This is true for roman lowercase letters for instance, though slightly different for other languages: while three bands (with ascender and descender) are available, vowels are restricted to the central band, sonorants are usually short as well, while fricatives and stops are longer (cf. sonority scale and length hierarchy of the syllable).
Most orthographies avoid pairing big or complex characters, but often use a simple and a complex one (e.g. ck); or they employ complex ligation with utterly different compound glyphs.
Word or syllable starts and ends may be marked stronger (or weaker), e.g. descending y and wider w as allographic variants of i and u at the end in English, which may also lead to canonically contextual, positional forms like roman long s or greek σ and a lot of letters in cursive arabic.
That means the possible positions of a letter shape its glyph and the possible glyphs of a letter influence its adoption for certain positions.
In other words, the goal should not be to invent something distinctively new but to design something plausible.
In order to construct a realistic and suitable writing system, these are some things you should consider before you think about how you want it to look:
Could your needs be served by a writing system in existence realistically? For example, if you're creating a Slavic language, you could easily use the Cyrillic or Latin scripts (cf. Russian, Czech); there's no need to design a new script.
What do geographically or lexically similar languages use as their primary scripts? Finnish uses the Latin script as a result of Swedish influence, even though Swedish is not related to Finnish linguistically.
How does the language intersect with the culture of the people speaking it? Although Serbian and Croatian are technically the same language, they typically use different writing systems because Serbians tend to be Orthodox (Cyrillic-associated) and Croatians tend to be Catholic (Latin-associated). Conversely, Cantonese uses the same script as Mandarin despite not being the same language due to geographical and political similarities.
When did your language and its script split off from its ancestors, and how were they written? Despite Greek not being a Semitic language, it had a close proximity to the Phoenicians and thus borrowed their alphabet. But if your language came more recently, perhaps you should base it upon a more recent alphabet such as Greek itself, or even the Latin script (as with Lisu).
How strict is your language phonologically, and what semantic effect does changing vowels or consonants have? Arabic uses an abjad in part because the consonants provide the actual base meaning, while vowels change various minutiae, while Japanese (in part) can use a syllabary because it's very restrictive with syllable structure. On the other hand, Georgian uses a full alphabet because it has so many consonant clusters, which can't really be expressed concisely in a syllabary or abugida.
Then you can consider how you want it to look. You can give something a more cursive or angular appearance while still basing it off of something relevant. This also gives it more of a unique flavor even if you're using an existing system. This is something you could do for a Phoenician-based system that doesn't look like Phoenician (crude, but you get the point):
You should additionally think about the direction in which your script is supposed to be written - letter forms can change based on that. They tend to lean right in an LTR script and vice versa, and be either thin and tall or confined to a square for a vertical script (like traditional Mongolian/Uyghur and Chinese hànzì respectively). Also, vertical scripts don't often have completely open bottoms or tops of characters like LTR scripts might.
In a fantasy world, where you're relying less on historicity and looking more for inspiration, you kind of just need to look at different scripts applying the sort of aesthetic you want, then alter them and perhaps combine them together into a whole system. If you enjoy neat and somewhat simplistic scripts with varying letter heights, you could combine inspiration from Latin and Armenian. For loopy, natural-looking scripts, take a look at Georgian and Greek. There are tons of different writing systems across the world, and I guarantee you'll find inspiration somewhere if you look.
My reply is going to look a lot sillier in comparison, but I suggest taking inspiration from the shapes of a large collection of items. I've seen conlangs use alphabets inspired by mushrooms and flowers, but you could try constellations, animals, fruits, street signs, soda brand logos, anything to get you inspired. Here's my silly attempt using emojis for example.
Once you've drawn say 50 symbols, you can start filtering out the ones that look too different or those which just wouldn't be natural to write using a pen, brush, quill or whatever your fictional society uses. Try writing words using these symbols and you'll see which ones are too tricky to write and need simplifying, and which ones are too close to tell apart.
1. Erosion
I like the emoji suggestion above, but I have a similar suggestion, and that's to start with simple line pictures of the things represented. In other words, follow the same kind of evolution that produced today's "Roman" alphabet. It's been known to happen that way, independently, more than twice (proto-Canaanite, Linear A, and Mayan).
Take simple little line drawings and then erode them until you have just a few manageable strokes per letter (or syllable, or whatever).
2. Cloud, Stars, Light, and Shadow
Another source of inspiration is to watch the clouds for useful patterns, or connect the dots of particular stars, or look at interesting light patterns filtering through curtains at night (for example), or watch the interplay of light and shadow under trees (for another example). Sometimes you'll get a GREAT and unexpected source of inspiration.
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693 | Conlang where the initial consonants of words have meaning?
A lot of languages, both natural and constructed, mark things like part of speech, gender/noun class, tense, and what not with suffixes. But what about prefixes?
I think that would make more sense for a head-first language. But the issue with just adding vowels to the beginning of all words makes things look repetitive, and also adds an additional syllable.
An alternative would be to have the initial consonant instead be a prefix. Though this would mean that every root in the language would have to start with a vowel (unless the language was very liberal with initial consonant clusters).
I don't know of any language that does this. Its common for languages to have the rhyme of a word mean something, but I've never heard of the onset of the word meaning anything.
And yes, I'm aware of the 'consonant mutations' of the Celtic languages, but those are triggered by agreement. They can't indicate anything on their own, as far as I know.
I'm not saying that all conlangs have to be like natlangs, but in my experience, there's some things that languages do where there's a very good practical reason why they do them. If you come up with something that no natlang does, there may be a good reason for that. Humans for example seem to favor placing the subject of the sentence at the beginning. If you say try to place the verb first, you end up with a lot of weird problems. Of course, there are verb-initial languages, but they're rare and tend to feature very exotic grammars (Tagalog comes to mind).
Affixes can be more than one phoneme... think of the English prefix dis- which can attach to words which start with both vowels and consonants.
What's your actual question here? Whether there are any conlangs with lots of prefixes?
Many languages mark things like those you mention at the beginning of a word. Noun class in Swahili and the other Bantu languages comes to mind. It doesn't require all roots to begin with a vowel; the prefixes also include vowels (as in Kiswahili).
Russian has prepositions (not prefixes) such as в, which are pronounced as part of the onset of the following word (and it does sometimes cause initial consonant clusters), in addition to case. There's no reason why a conlang couldn't have the same as a prefix for gender, case or tense.
You might also want to look at the WALS chapters Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology, Position of Case Affixes, and Position of Tense-Aspect Affixes for lists of languages that have these features as prefixes.
In Bantu, prefixes not only mark noun classes (and thus adjective agreement), they also do most of the inflection of verbs.
The closest in design is John Wilkin's Philosophical language. The words are formed according to a scheme not unlike Dewey Decimal Classification: Every letter of a word adds some more specific information to it. In this scheme, the first letter already carries a lot of information (giving the basic factorisation into classes) and the additional letters add specifics.
In the conlang "Ro", each letter represents a specific thing. The first letter is a clue to the meaning of the rest of the word.
For example,
gebrac means an inch, and the first syllable "ge" means measurement.
radac means boy, and the first syllable "ra" means person.
The initial consonant can therefore change the meaning since each letter has a meaning.
rebec means think,
ribec means remember, but
zibec means repeat.
Do you have a link/reference for this language?
@OliverMason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ro_language
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697 | Examples of the combination of 2 independent symbolic scripts
I am looking for examples real or con, of two foreign symbolic scripts being made into a hybrid language/script.
In my case I wish to see about making a hybrid 15th century Aztec-Chinese Hybrid language. (I know its not realistic)
I was thinking that the influence of a Chinese Empire in exile in the Americas would influence Aztec to take on the simplification of their character to be more based on simple strokes like chinese.
I.e. Chinese began as pictographs that evolved into today's simple stroke based script, Would Aztecs combine Chinese symbols with their own, adapt theirs to be more chinese?
I doubt the influence of Aztecs would inspire Chinese to have more complicated and colorized pictographs
The obvious comparison to make here is to Japanese, as it's a real-life hybrid script and is currently the only non-Chinese language to use them. However, it's important to consider that Japanese did not have an existing writing system when Chinese characters were brought over, and for quite a while the Japanese elites wrote strictly in Classical/Literary Chinese, even after the evolution of hiragana (which were more often used by women).
Given that you have actual Chinese people in this exiled empire you describe, they will almost certainly be writing in Literary Chinese but speaking some form of vernacular (the specifics of which will depend upon where in China they've come from), so it's possible that Chinese characters will be repurposed to write Nahuatl, particularly if the Chinese become the dominant group in the area. Or it's possible that the opposite will happen, particularly if the Aztecs are the dominant group, and the Chinese will begin to write their language (be it Literary Chinese or their spoken vernacular) using the Aztec script.
The idea of the Chinese script influencing the Aztec script but the opposite not being likely seems to be based on some misplaced ideas about simpler characters being inherently better and more likely to catch on -- which script becomes dominant is more likely to be influenced by the sociopolitics of this situation rather than any inherent qualities of the script. Also be sure to keep in mind that different scripts are better for different writing materials -- will the Chinese be able to continue to produce the kinds of paper, ink, and brushes they're used to in the Americas? These are the sorts of things you need to research, ponder, and decide for yourself.
While I think you're right about the socio factors, remember that the Manchurian script didn't overtake Chinese, despite the Manchu people ruling China for almost three centuries. So it's never simple!
The Manchurian script was invented far later than hanzi, in 1599, and Manchu elites were often Sinicized and used Chinese characters extensively even prior to the establishment of the Qing dynasty. Literary Chinese was viewed as the language of the educated throughout East Asia -- another socio factor influencing things.
Let's look at some real world situations of contact of writing systems
It happens that a few characters from another writing system are borrowed into an existing writing system. Examples include
Latin borrowing the letter Y and Z from Greek
Koptic: Basically a Greek alphabet with 6 character borrowed from Demotic Egyptian
Icelandic: Borrowing þ from Germanic runes
Sometimes, a writing system is just restyled after a foreign writing system, an example is the reformation of the Cyrillic script by Peter the Great.
Sometimes, several writing systems coexist and form a complex mixed writing system. This is the case in South Korea and Japan, where Chinese characters are mixed with either Hangul or Hiragana and Katakana.
You can pick from this list what you like most.
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752 | Is there any easy way to find out how multiple unrelated languages express the same concept?
As any linguist (and anyone who knows unrelated languages, probably), not all languages express things the same way. Worse yet, its not possible to express everything logically, so all languages are forced to rely on something arbitrary to express certain concepts.
I try to find out how other languages do things, but I rarely meet with any success. Most dictionaries I find online assume you already know the language, which of course makes sample sentences useless.
It seems like the only way to find out how a language does anything is to know it. This means that as a conlanger, its nigh impossible to make a conlang that doesn't in some way resemble the languages you know. This can obviously be quite a problem if you're monolingual, as most Americans are. I'm not monolingual, but even I have a problem avoiding Euro-centrism since the only other language I know well is German. Yeah, German does some things differently, but its not that different from English since the two are closely related. They tend to overlap more often than not.
Is there any convenient way to get information on specific things in languages without just having to learn half a dozen unrelated languages?
Okay, this is definitely not a professional answer (therefore I comment), but I find it quite informative to just browse Wikipedia and read stuff about languages (depth-first link traversal). There's often a good overview of concepts as well as specific languages.
I think a reasonable method - anyway, less time consuming than learning several languages - is to look at the way one own's language expresses complicated concepts. And then trying to create different expressions. For instance, Banin has the idea of "owl in a hood" - a person in the wrong place, ate the wrong time, for the wrong reasons (derived from falconry - you put a hood over a falcon's head, not over an owl's), Mark Rosenfelder has some other ideas here - https://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html - at the section on Some guidelines for not reinventing the English vocabulary.
Unfortunately not.
There are a few concepts (like colour terms or kinship terms) that are regularly studied in linguistic typology and where one can find a lot of publications including high-level overviews including a lot of unrelated languages.
For the most concepts, there is nothing comparable available. Maybe one can find studies (e.g., from translatology) comparing a certain concept in a pair of languages or a small group of languages, but those languages tend to be the well-known big ones (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese).
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755 | Why are compound words in Volapuk hard to parse while compound words in Esperanto are not?
Of all the criticisms you see of Volapuk, one the most pervasive is that it can be difficult to parse some of the longer compound words. Which is pretty obvious. With all words being CVCVCVCV... and prefixes being (C)V and suffixes V(C), it stands to reason it could be hard to figure out where the root word is amongst the long list of affixes.
But why doesn't Esperanto have this problem? Is it just because the roots are easy to recognize (if you're already familiar with a western European language)? Or is it that Esperanto has somehow managed to avoid the need to form words with long chains of affixes. If so, why was making long-winded compound words necessary in Volapuk but its hard to find a reason to in Esperanto?
Note that I don't know Volapuk, and I only know the utmost basics of Esperanto. I've never actually used the language at any point in time. But I've seen more examples of affix-heavy words from Volapuk than I have from Esperanto (the only Esperanto example I even know of is 'malsanulejo').
In Esperanto its systematic prefixes+word stems+suffixes+endings is more a way for active expressiveness, rather than agglutinativeness, as 5 word parts like in mal-san-ul-ej-o is probably indeed above the average. My very non-professional impression is that agglutinative languages will have like Finnish (or Volapük) have less CC, tiring / requiring pauses. Esperanto picked kun (not kon) for 'with' for the presence of words like konduto, konfuzi etc,
The thing about malsanulejo is that it's a word you that you will, in practice, learn and use as a unit. The fact that it is formed from 4 parts (plus -o, which isn't worth counting as a separate part since all nouns have it) is, in practice, merely a way to help people learn the word. It seems to me that compound words that you didn't learn during the early learning process are usually made of only two parts that you did learn during that process (including compounds of compounds like malliberej-kontrolisto). But I don't know Volapuk so can't compare to it.
Esperanto phonotactics was never as restrictive as Volapük's. Its prefixes (including prepositional prefixes) are mostly not CV but CCV or VC, and its stems often enough begin or end with consonant clusters. So morphological boundaries are often easy to tell.
Moreover Esperanto initially avoided stem endings for multisyllabic stems that might be ambiguous with suffixes. Hence banquet becomes bankedo, not banketo, for fear of ambiguity with bank-eto "little bank".
Esperanto initially did pursue agglutinativity aggressively, and I'm not sure that it was less enthusiastic about doing so than Volapük. But malsanulejo is indeed exceptional for Esperanto.
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850 | What is the meaning of this Toki Pona sentence?
I found a sentence written in order to prove that Toki Pona is a complete language. As far as I know it is a foolish nominal sentence.
What is the English translation?
pona sona pi (wawa pi ma Lipija) poka toki lawa mute pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Atilanisi.
I finally got an answer from the author. The sentence meant:
pona sona pi (wawa pi ma Lipija) poka toki lawa mute pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Atilanisi.
The influence of Libyan power on the election of Atlantis' vice president.
The closest translation was "The strength of Libya beside many commands of vice president of Atlantis" by jastako.
Here's a word-for-word translation for what I understand.
pona sona was in fact pana sona: influence (idea sending)
wawa pi ma Lipija: Libyan power
poka: on, about
toki lawa mute: elections
jan lawa nanpa tu: vice president
ma Atilanisi: Atlantis
Suggestions
Feel free to explain how you would have translated that phrase into toki pona.
John Clifford's (Facebook)
kama pi wawa pi ma Lipija pi wile pi jan mute pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Alansi.
Mine
pana nasin pi wawa pi ma Lipija tawa wile kulupu pi jan lawa nanpa tu pi ma Alansi.
A rough, non exact translation could be something like this:
The good folklore (the strength of Libya) near [probably "are part of"]
many thoughts of second director/general/Vicepresident of Atlantis.
It's weird, I know. If there's any verb there, I can't see li anywhere. I think toki lawa ("talk of head/mind") means to think, but in the official book of Toki Pona, to think is also just toki.
It sounds weird but thank you for this answer.
I think the first few words should be translated "the good folklore of the strength of Libya." The parentheses are just there to avoid parsing it (pona sona pi wawa) pi ma lipija which would be something like "Libya's good folklore of strength" (relying on your translation since I didn't look up all the words, and I'm not sure where some of them come from)
Libya's good folklore of strength about many thoughts of Vicepresident of Atlantis. sounds better indeed
@Blincer My thoughts were that that was specifically the wrong parsing, but I can't give a better translation and this one doesn't make much sense to me either
Whatever it is, it sure sounds like an interesting language :D
If I were to translate, I'd say
The intellect of (the strength of Libya) the many head advisers of the second director of Atlantis...
Reasoning:
"pona sona" - goodness of knowledge (intellect/sensibleness), good knowledge-wise (the intellectually adept)
jan ni li pona sona - this person is intellectually adept (brilliant / intellectual)
"wawa pi ma Lipija" - power/strength of Libya
"poka toki lawa mute" - many head/main talking sides/companions (the many head advisers)
"jan lawa nanpa tu" - second head person (second director/ruler/president)
Some issues I have with the phrase:
Incomplete
The phrase doesn't have a "li" phrase, or verb phrase, as was mentioned, making it, as far as sentences go, incomplete, which doesn't give much any clues for context. Personally, I generally parse sentences like this as a reduced form of "ni li ...", but that's also given conversational context (really "conversational subject li...").
E.g
jan Sanato: "jan o! jan sina li kama anu seme? ike a!"
jan Mikanle: "o awen! o!... a, kama!"
.
Johnatho: "hey! Is your guy coming or what? He's terrible, eh!"
Mickanley: "Just wait!... oh look, here he comes!"
Of course, either way, I can't say if there is any official basis for such a parsing.
Addressing other suggestions:
It was suggested that the parenthesis are to ensure the "wawa pi ma Lipija" isn't mis-parsed separately, however, I don't think this is the case for two reasons:
Unconventional
I have never come across round brackets being used in this manner in toki pona, and it doesn't seem likely since, it would be too confused with the more standard use of round brackets (holding a phrase that isn't part of the sentence, but clarifies it in some way). More likely if this were the case, square brackets or commas would be employed.
Unnecessary
Brackets wouldn't be needed for this purpose since one could not parse "pi wawa" seperately from the subsequent "pi ma Lipija". The reason for this is that "pi" cannot be followed by a lone word, in this case "wawa".
[ pona sona pi [ wawa pi [ma Lipija ] ] ] - The intellect of the power of Libya
[ [ pona sona wawa ] pi [ ma Lipija ] ] - The strong intellect of Libya
To say "Libya's something of/concerning strength", it would likely be structured "pona sona pi ma Lipija pi ijo wawa" or "pona sona pi ma Lipija pi wawa ijo", the second being a bit more on the mark ("concerning strong things" vs. "concerning the strength of things"). Although we translate "pi" as "of", "pi wawa" cannot be used to mean "of strength", and would rather be grammatically incorrect.
The previous translation translates "pona sona" as "the good folklore" and "pi poka" as "near".
Like jan Kipo, I can't quite see where "good folklore" came from, given the basic definition of the words as well as their structure in the sentence, but I can't say if it would really be accepted I guess (*tilts head 90°). For "good folklore", I'd probably use something along the lines of "sona kulupu pona", or perhaps even "sona mama pona".
As for "pi poka", it is conventional to translate it to "near", though, I would shy away from that translation in favor of "of a side(noun)" since I would more use "pi poka pi" for near, though I'm again unsure if it'd be acceptable. If so, in this case though, it's a bit 50/50, since there's no other head noun besides "poka" to clarify. If you wanted "side person (adviser/companion)", you'd more likely say "jan poka".
Thank you! I have uploaded the translation given by the author as well as some comments.
I don't know what the person who wrote that sentence intended, but pona sona or sona pona, the proper order, is usually translated as 'wisdom'. I also wouldn't use toki lawa to mean think. That's usually part of pilin (mi pilin e ni: = I think/feel this:). I would use toki lawa as demand/command, as in a way of saying somebody is speaking with authority, and expecting their order to be followed. jan lawa li toki lawa. li wile e ni: wile ona li kama pali. A boss/leader gives an order. He expects his wishes to be done. "Atilanisi is not even acceptable in toki pona either because "ti" is considered an 'illegal' syllable. If that is intended to say 'Atlantis' it would be something more like 'Alansi'. According to the transliteration rules, the most prominent consonants are used, replaced for similar sounds if neccesary (g becomes k, r becomes l or w, d becomes t, j becomes s), & the rest are dropped if deemed not necessary. Sometimes letter pairs are reversed to make a CV syllable as in the case of Israel (Isale). The 'el' becomes 'le'. You are also generally discouraged from using more syllables than the original word. As far as the meaning of the sentence, I would translate it as "The wisdom of (strength of Libya) beside much/many Orders/commands(?) of vice president of Atlantis."
I finally obtained the answer and you are the closest one proposing "The strength of Libya beside many commands of vice president of Atlantis.". The actual translation is "The influence of Libia on the election of vice president of Atlantis.".
Well, it’s not a grammatical sentence and the context doesn’t provide any clue about how to fill it out if it’s an abbreviated one. Not ure where “folklore” came from (well, ‘pona sona’ but how?) and the rest is is a single noun phrase that I cannot render into English in an intelligible way, though it does apparently belong to the assistant chief of Atlantis.
I have no suggestions about how to fix it.
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893 | Is Slovio effective as an international language?
I know that Slovio is not very popular but if I write or speak in this language, will I be understood by Russian or Ukrainian as their website says?
If someone has experience to share, it helps me to decide if I should learn this conlang.
http://www.slovio.com/
See also https://conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/784/is-there-any-evidence-that-learning-a-zonal-slavic-conlang-can-help-conversing-w (unfortunately, still without an answer)
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897 | Are Interslavic and Neoslavonic the same conlang?
I read that Interslavic and Neoslavonic merged into a single language.
All three projects collaborated closely with each other from that time, and in 2011 Medžuslovjanski („Interslavic”) was chosen as a common name. Fruits of this cooperation were, among other things, a common dictionary, a common news portal and a common wiki.
I wonder why there are two websites:
Interslavic – Medžuslovjansky – Меджусловјанскы,
interslavic language tutorial with the domain name "neoslavonic.org".
Is there any difference in the grammar? If so, which one is the most popular?
Depends on how you look at it; the Interslavic page does say (as you have noticed) that:
All three projects collaborated closely with each other from that time, and in 2011 Medžuslovjanski („Interslavic”) was chosen as a common name. Fruits of this cooperation were, among other things, a common dictionary, a common news portal and a common wiki.
-- History of Interslavic
Thus, historically speaking, they are two different projects (plus a third one) that have coalesced into one, and are now one project with some internal variation. The websites are continuations of their individual parent projects, as each team retained its independence from the new fused project.
A few years ago (about 2) these two projects united into the single one called Interslavic (2-nd version). So, since then it's a common project with unified grammar.
Before it they were slightly different.
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910 | Sciences in toki pona
I managed to translate a lot of things but I'm stuck on a word.
How to say "physics" (knowledge of the nature) in toki pona? A proposition for "nature" would also be appreciated.
linguistics: sona toki
geology: sona ma
medicine: sona pimejo
mechanics: sona wawa
quantum mechanics: sona lili
...
I did not find any solution on https://glosbe.com/en/mis_tok/.
sona lon. science of existence
What evidence do you have that this is used by people in the Toki Pona community to refer to physics?
The tp community does not use physics a lot, that is why I asked a question :)
It might be sona pi ijo tawa —knowledge of moving things— or sona pi ijo ante —knowledge of things that change.
I think "pona tawa" is enough but it describes cinetics which is only a part of physics.
pona tawa is "peace in movement". I think you'd rather say sona tawa for "cinetics".
Yes I misspelled that ;)
Shouldn't this be sona pi ijo tawa and sona pi ijo ante? Since it is the ijo that moves and changes rather than the sona.
Yes, I think adding the "pi" word makes the phrase easier to understand. I have updated my answer. Kudos to you!
sijelo is "body, physical state", so you could use sona sijelo; physicists would probably like sona ale or sona ali, "knowledge of everything" :)
Great suggestion but I feel "sina sijelo" works better for medicine. Moreover, "sona ali" is overconsideration.
I agree with the point about medicine; my sona ali suggestion was somewhat tongue in cheek. But then, you trade simplicity for precision in toki pona, so I would still see it as a valid choice in the context of sciences.
To capture all of physics, perhaps "sona pi pali ijo" or simply "sona pali" (a knowledge of action). I prefer the former, since persons may tend to think only of human action with the latter, which may translate to "behavioral science", whereas the former is a bit more precise.
Physics is a general field that focuses on the behavior of things in our universe, finding explanations for their actions and the interactions that occur between things. The term is also a little more precise than "sona ijo", since Physics doesn't (correct me if I'm wrong) really answer questions like 'what structure a thing has', but would rather more specifically answer 'how did the thing's structure come to be'.
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946 | Is latino sine flexione dead?
Latino sine flexione is a variant of Latin created by Peano in 1903. As far as I know it was used in scientific literature but since forgotten.
I found this site and a few discussions on Duolingo but not a single speaker.
A quite complete grammar can be found here.
Is this wonderful project dead?
Note: I posted the same question here and was suggested to "address a different community".
First I was - hm, what - I've never heard about it, than I've opened Wiki and realized that it's Interlingua ) but it shouldn't be confuse with the other, more famous Interlingua )
It is Interlingua de Peano that is different from Interlingua that you may think of.
no, I'm aware that there are two, I meant this one exactly. Never liked it though )
For what reason?
it's basically a Latin without cases and conjugations. As a native Russian speaker who learnt Latin in school LSF sounded compared to Latin like a Bulgarian to Russian - similar but "frozen".
Inflexions are replaced by prepositions, would you say English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguez… are frozen?
the thing is that LSF felt too much like Latin to me, I've never have the same problem with any Romance language since they went quite far away from Latin. But I did have the same feeling with Bulgarian.
Let us continue this discussion in chat.
It is obviously not completely dead, there is at least one blogger posting short news items in Latino Sine Flexione here http://nuntios.blogspot.com/search/label/Latino%20sine%20Flexione
I don't know whether there is a functional speech community for this language left.
EDIT: There is another life sign of Latino sine flexione: Someone created a LaTeX package for it!
Thank you for sharing the blog!
As an adjunct to this answer, I came across what I think must be LSF in a Duolingo forum. Sòmebody out there is using LSF!
I am working on its revival: https://acproil.github.io :)
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965 | IPA for Voiced Velopharyngeal Stop?
A conlang I am working on contains the nasal syllabic consonants [m̩] and [n̩] fairly frequently. It seems like it would be a natural step for the language to develop what I would call a voiced velopharyngeal stop occurring before those syllabic consonants are used some of the time, to add emphasis. This stop is formed by stopping air from flowing into the nasal cavity with the velum while the mouth is in position to form the following consonant, and then releasing it into the nasal cavity. Think of it as trying to make a “g” sound through your nose only.
Ex: [ĩɲ'tⁿn̩] => [ĩɲ't̚?ⁿn̩], where the ? represents the consonant in question.
Note: This is not a glottal stop, though that sound can occur as well in this language.
I have been trying to transcribe the language with the IPA since it helps specify pronunciation of the weird vocabulary of sounds, but I cannot find a symbol in the IPA that represents this sound, even though it seems to me fairly plausible for a language of this type.
The closest I have found is the symbol for a velopharyngeal fricative [ʩ] in extensions to the IPA. However this still is clearly distinct from the sound I am describing. Additionally, it appears to only occur as a speech defect and never as a proper consonant in a language.
What is the best way to transcribe this specific sound using the IPA? Is there an allotted symbol that I just could not find? What would be the best way to go about phonetically transcribing the sound if there is no exact symbol in the IPA? Is there a better approximation than [ʩ]? Additionally, what about the unvoiced counterpart?
I apologize for any mistakes in my use of the IPA, I am still learning.
What I think you meant to ask is to create a stop consonant by stopping air flowing through the nasal cavity while the mouth is open, then releasing it only through the nose while the mouth is closed.
The problem is that having no airstream block in the mouth can mean one of two things: producing an oral vowel, such as /a/, or making no sound at all. There isn't a plosive-like sound for stopping air flowing through the nose, as there is with the mouth (in multiple places). The way you can test this is by producing a sound like /aãaãaãa/, in which you are repeatedly stopping the nasal airflow, and yet the vowel sound remains continuous because there is no stop of air in the mouth. So a stop created solely by blocking the nasal passage is impossible.
The example you give for this sound is [ĩɲ't̚?ⁿn̩], where the [?] is supposed to represent the unknown sound. This has a [t̚] with the diacritic for no release after the consonant, and a nasal release [ⁿ] after it. However, there can't possibly be anything between [t̚] and [ⁿ]. The [t̚] means that when the consonant ends, you are still blocking both oral and nasal airflow, and the [ⁿ] means that you are releasing nasal airflow while keeping oral airflow closed. There is no articulation possible in between these: if there were an oral release, the diacritic on [t̚] would have no meaning, and there could no longer be a nasal release [ⁿ] after it. The only possibility is to add another consonant, or extend the [t] as a long consonant [tː], which continues to block all airflow.
Going through your definition, nasal release seems to fit (another possibility that fits just as well is a pre-stopped nasal, if the nasal consonant is supposed to be more prominent than the stop):
This stop is formed by stopping air from flowing into the nasal cavity with the velum
Stopping airflow is a property of a stop consonant. A stop consonant stops the airflow in the mouth as well as the airflow in the nasal cavity. (Stopping only the airflow in the nasal cavity is impossible here, as explained above.)
while the mouth is in position to form the following consonant
Simultaneous articulation is possible, but it depends on what the following consonant is. If the following consonant is in the same place of articulation, that means there's no change.
and then releasing it into the nasal cavity.
Releasing the stop only in the nasal cavity means producing a nasal sound. Nasal release (and nasals in general) would continue to block the airflow in the mouth, but allow it to pass through the nose.
I think you’re misunderstanding the explanation. When I say “the mouth is in the position to form the following consonant” I am referring to the n or m, therefore air is stopped in the mouth and nasal cavity, then released only into the nasal cavity. The sound is the opening of the velopharyngeal port. The nasal release in the IPA may be repetitive, but it’s there to precisely specify as much as possible what happens at the question mark.
@Qeyol Nasal release itself (as well as nasal consonants or vowels in general) is the opening of the velopharyngeal port
Yes, but in this case there is enough pressure behind it that it makes an audibly distinct sound from the “n” or “m”. So I feel the nasal release marking is insufficient.
@Qeyol Is this conlang meant to be pronounceable by humans?
Yes. It’s tricky coming from English because it has an exotic variety of sounds, but certainly doable. The consonant I’m talking about is very easy to make, think of it like making a “g” sound through your nose only.
@Qeyol Could it be the velar nasal (Wikipedia includes an audio sample)?
No. In a velar nasal the velum is against the tongue blocking airflow into the mouth. Here the velum is against the back of the throat blocking airflow into the nose. Try this: 1) make a “m” sound and hold your mouth in that position, 2) stop airflow into the nasal cavity by pressing the velum against the back of your throat, 3) build up some pressure, 4) release the air with the velum into the nasal cavity to form an “m” consonant again. The sound of the release is what I am trying to describe. You can do the same for “n”.
I think I would transcribe this as a kind of pre-stopped nasal where the stop part is velar, like /ᶢn̩/ (and possibly implosive, if I understand your description correctly). Ordinarily, you’d expect it to be homorganic with the following nasal, or influenced by the preceding one. So this seems pretty unstable, in that I don’t know quite how a natural language would get here and stay here. I’d try to reinforce it with another phonological feature, allow an epenthetic vowel, or maybe take it as an opportunity to turn it into a click, for example, in words that lose an initial vowel and end up with this cluster at the beginning of a word/morpheme.
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1002 | How does one write an easily decipherable language?
I'm writing a book about humans finding alien writing off-planet, which is why I want to know how—without referencing known human languages like the Rosetta Stone does—it may be deciphered.
Does it help to have children's books that teach aliens to read or spell, linguistic books with diagrams of alien phonology or morphology, or a Rosetta Stone with alien languages or dialects?
Related: How are languages deciphered?
It's easier if there's a rosetta with a known language, or a live alien to interact with (see this). If it's just unknown writing it can be impossible to decipher (see this or this). Maybe books with clearly identifiable illustrations could help, or video recordings etc.
This is somewhat addressed in Dragon's Egg.
I seem to remember an H. Beam Piper story called "Omnilingual" that addressed this very issue.
John Cowan bowdlerized modernized “Omnilingual”. http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/omnilingual.html
@melboiko: I'm surprised you didn't mention the Voynich manuscript in your comment. Loved the video you linked to, though! And just the other day I was reading about Linear B, so it was a pleasant surprise to find a link to Linear A.
It may be impossible.
All successful real-world language decipherments—Linear B, Egyptian, Hittite—have involved connections with other known languages. Linear B (Mycenaean) is closely related to Classical Greek, for example; Egyptian is related to Coptic and a bit more distantly to Hebrew and Arabic; Hittite is a distant relative to the whole Indo-European family.
Even if you only look at the writing system, figuring out Linear B involved connecting known place names like "Knossos" with words that were more common in inscriptions at Knossos than elsewhere. Ventris's biggest breakthrough came when he hypothesized that Kober's ??-C₄V₂-C₂V₂ might be k-no-so, which gave tentative values for C₂, C₄, and V₂, and extrapolated from there.
With an alien language, we have no idea what names they used for places. We don't have any loanwords or names transcribed in other languages to compare against. We don't know if they use anything resembling phonetics to communicate—or if their language is even fundamentally based on recursion like ours is.
But…
Maybe humans and Thulians have never made contact before, but the Borean language is known, and an ancient Borean imperial decree—translated into Thulian—is found in the excavations.
Maybe Thulian and Borean are part of a language family—that hints to the linguists that Thulian might use a stack-based syntax (or whatever other weirdly inhuman feature you like) just like Borean does.
Maybe there's some old Thulian technology stored in Area 51, taken from a crashed spaceship; it contains records of an early Thulian attempt to figure out human languages (maybe even a rudimentary grammar of English written in Thulian).
Maybe they can find a live Thulian, or, failing that, an artificial intelligence of some sort, which can give them real-time feedback—a native speaker is orders of magnitude more useful than any inscriptions can ever be.
Maybe Thulian is related to some obscure Earth language(!). There used to be contact between Earth and Thule, which stopped millennia ago, and Thulian shares a distant ancestor of Etruscan/Sumerian/Pirahã/your favorite real-world language isolate. (Though be prepared for a lot of strong linguistic opinions if you decide to weigh in on the Pirahã controversy!)
Maybe universal grammar (in whatever form you like) is universal even across planets, and Thulian still has recognizable levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax.
None of these on their own would make decipherment easy—but the more you add, the easier it gets. At some point, it becomes possible, and that's what matters for a story.
I'm going to assume that the aliens' language is intentionally easy to decipher and that they are actively trying to allow other species to piece together the meaning of what they produce. I'm also going to assume that these are written or written-ish artifacts and what they look like might differ from how the aliens actually communicate in person.
I don't think the semantic content of individual signs is going to be obvious or easy to infer, but you can keep their overall number low.
One can have conventions in the orthography that make the grammatical structure really obvious.
One can have no irregular inflection and encode the parse tree directly in the orthography.
( and ( possible ( ( not have ) ( and [ Change Word ] ( not ( can predict ) ) ) ) )
( possible ( ( encode directly ) [ Tree Meaning ] ( in [ System Writing ] ) ) ) )
The example above consistently marks non-predicates with Capitalization and uses brackets to mark compounds where the meaning of the whole compound is pragmatically inferable from the meaning of its constituents but not directly implied by them.
Another idea is to make the thing that humans discover a computer or some other kind of interactive piece of alien technology.
It would be easy for humans to test their hypotheses about how the aliens' language worked if the computer was capable of answering questions formulated in the language or if the program would attempt to correct mistakes and either show the corrected response or prompt the user to pick a corrected response before answering.
There have been serious attempts at this by NASA: the Pioneer Plaque and the Voyager Golden Record. The intention is for them to be received by aliens, who will be able to use them to find out about human culture (and then hopefully won't come over to subjugate us with their superior technology!)
They use lots of universal physical and mathematical quantities as references, and with the understanding that any sufficiently advanced society will be able to identify them. For example the molecular structure of hydrogen, and a diagram of the solar system.
So one key element for easy decipherability would be to have texts available describing something universally known across the universe.
Another would be to have a simple writing system. Hangul is based on the positions of the vocal tract, which would be an aid for deciphering. It is somewhat complicated by combining multiple symbols in blocks, similarly to Egyptian hieroglyphs.
A simple grammar like toki pona would help to quickly discover regularities in the language. There are separators between the verb and the object, and there is usually only one verb per sentence. Complex sentences are broken down into a sequence of multiple sentences. Even without understanding the words, it is easy to identify the syntactic structures.
Texts could be formulaic in structure. One clue that helped decipher German messages encoded with the Enigma machine was their fixed structure, and the fact that they always ended in the same phrase, "Heil Hitler" -- that served as a useful anchor point when trying to work out the code. If your alien texts also have a similar structure, then you could use that to identify greetings or other formulaic expressions.
The most difficult aspect would be the vocabulary, especially abstract words, or polysemous words (ie words with multiple meanings). For this simple texts, or even encyclopedias and (monolingual) dictionaries would provide a good entrance point.
Most human languages follow certain quantitative regularities, which we now know about. There has been some work on the Phaistos Disc which concluded that if it is a text in an unknown language, it is most likey to use a syllabic writing system, ie the symbols stand for syllables rather than letters. This can be derived from the frequency distribution of the symbols. Of course it might not be a text -- my pet hypothesis is that it is part of a board game :)
In short, there are a number of aspects you could take into account for this. With what we know about languages and their properties nowadays, it should be quite convincing for a space mission to have a linguist as part of their team who could work on deciphering any foreign languages without too many problems. Of course it would also depend how close the alien culture was to human cultures. Language is only part of the puzzle.
It is even almost impossible for human languages. For all successful decipherings of historical writing systems some kind of clue was needed in the form of a related extant language or dictionaries and/or bilingual documents with one already known language.
When a human group wants to leave something long-term decipherable, maybe they can prepare some teaching materials with rich illustrations to convey the gist of their language. Later readers may come up with some artificial pronunciation for their script not unlike Egyptological pronunciation.
Throwing in aliens makes it even more difficult: Even when the aliens follow the procedure outlined above, will humans be able to understand the graphical representations and pictures they use? Their body parts and their home environment may be very different from ours.
"Omnilingual" was mentioned in comments, and there's your answer; assuming you have two technologically and scientifically advanced cultures, there are universal constants that can be used as a basis that historical examples on Earth didn't have, and thus we can't use to decipher old languages. The story used the discovery of the Martian periodic table as the clue that allowed the breakthrough because there is only one periodic table; chemistry and atoms are the same everywhere. To use an example inspired by that story, if you see something like "frazzlump + frazzlump + bork = blarg", and "frazzlump" is the first entry in the table and "bork" is the eighth, you know "blarg" probably means "water".
That's only if Earth and Martian science are both unbelievably similar. Humans survived until a century ago without a periodic table of elements, and might discard it as a relic of history in another century; why should we expect martians to have one in the exact same order?
And that objection was brought up in the story and rejected for the exact same reason: the atomic structure and chemical properties of hydrogen or oxygen doesn't change from planet to planet. If you're going to organize them, say by increasing atomic mass, or number of electrons, or whatever, they are going to be in the exact same order.
Chemical properties don't change, but science of them does. Why are aliens going to make a list of elements ordered by the number of protons in an atoms? Maybe on Mars they order them by number of subatomic particles that humans haven't yet discovered? Maybe aliens don't know or care about atomic mass? Of course this depends on what the aliens are like in the OP's fiction, but I don't see any logic in pretending this measure is universal, when it isn't even universal among human cultures
Long before you'd get to that level you'd be dealing with protons, neutrons, and electrons. And even as we've discovered more subatomic particles, it hasn't changed the periodic table. And yes, it is universal in human cultures when they've reached that level of scientific progress. There is only only periodic table. If you say there are others currently in use...prove it.
Fire, water, earth, air is one totally different method... scientific progress isn't a one-direction line that inevitably reaches some destination, and ordering matter by protons isn't the apotheosis of all knowledge
"assuming you have two technologically and scientifically advanced cultures." No scientifically advanced culture is going to operate on the principle of "fire, water, earth, and air". And I'm still waiting for that different periodic table.
@KeithMorrison, a quibble: Mendeleev started with atomic mass, but found that he had to tweak the order to make everything fit; possibly because of errors in the values then accepted, but also the only stable isotope of element 27 (cobalt-59) is heavier than the most common isotope of element 28 (nickel-58). (There are other examples involving elements that were probably unknown to Mendeleev.)
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1118 | How can I add irregularities to a morphological paradigm?
So, I'm trying to make something with a naturalistic feel, even though the current phonetic system distinguishes about 38 phonemes... Let's say I'll tackle this later.
I have issues with grammar... I want to use Proto-Kartvelian as a root source but make a language that has Indo-European grammatical structure. So... When I tried making noun declensions I generally end up making something that turns into agglutinitive suffixes... E.g. if we have a masculine noun ending in -o, I simply use consonants after the -o to express cases, then change the -o to -a for plural and repeat. E.g. -o/ -og/ -ot/ -om/ -ol vs -a/ -ag/ -at/ -am/ -al...
It is too regular. How do I change certain things so that it looks less artificial, but still maintain some logic... I need advice.
That can't fit in a simple answer. To add natural-looking irregularities, read textbooks about historical linguistics and sound changes; get used to see languages as historical processes. Lyle Campbell's manual is a good start. If you're a fantasy fan, try to check out what Tolkien did about the evolution of Quenya and Sindarin and the irregularities thus generated.
If you want it to be I-E and not agglutinate, you need declensions and conjugations full of paradigms, which should partially but not sufficiently overlap, so that a given root can represent a totally different noun or verb in several inflection classes. Like the perfect tense in Latin.
You might find this question and its answers and this one, too to be of relevance.
One possibility: perhaps your "-a- for plural" derives from an ancient word for "many" that was of a different declension, having different endings, so you could posit:
S -o / -og / -ot / -om / -ol
vs
P -a / -az / -asis / -amis / -ay
Another possibility: the historical importation of a foreign declension pattern into words of certain classes, which practice later infects native words of other classes either in whole or in part.
Consider the Latin words that have Greek declension and extrapolate from there.
A third possibility: the later "regularisation" of ancient defective words actually introduces an irregularity. For example, your modern word for "mob" might be an ancient plural form of "person", so you could posit:
S -a / -ag / -at / -am / -al
vs
P -a / -az / -asis / -amis / -ay
Introduce sound changes.
For a simple example, say that the sequence -om- becomes -um- in all situations at one point in the language's history, and -at- becomes -it-.
This would (using your examples) mean that instead of
-o/ -og/ -ot/ -om/ -ol
-a/ -ag/ -at/ -am/ -al
you'd have:
-o/ -og/ -ot/ -um/ -ol
-a/ -ag/ -it/ -am/ -al
Now introduce another one: in the case of back vowels (o and u), if they're followed by a voiced stop, the stop becomes devoiced.
-o/ -ok/ -ot/ -um/ -ol
-a/ -ag/ -it/ -am/ -al
So, irregularity but obviously still based on what was originally a completely regular system.
ADDENDUM:
One thing I should have noted is that the two sound changes only effect the affixes, but that's not how sound changes work. Once you take into account what the affix is attached to, you can introduce even more irregularity.
Now let's introduce two masculine nouns, say minano and nukugo. Under your original system they'd be:
minano / minanog / minanot / minanom / minanol
minano / minanag / minanat / minanam / minanal
nukugo / nukugog / nukugot / nukugom / nukugol
nukuga / nukugag / nukugat / nukugam / nukugal
After the first sound change:
minano / minanog / minanot / minanum / minanol
minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
nukugo / nukugog / nukugot / nukugum / nukugol
nukuga / nukugag / nukugit / nukugum / nukugal
Okay, no problem, still sort of regular, no difference between the two nouns, the only change has been to the affix.
And after the second:
minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
nukuko / nukukok / nukukot / nukukum / nukukol
nukuka / nukukag / nukugit / nukukum / nukukal
Now add a third sound change: If you an unvoiced consonant between two identical vowels, that consonant is dropped and the vowels become one lengthened one
minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
nuuko / nuukok / nuukot / nuuum / nuukol
nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal
Okay, now we have a situation where you've got nuuum. Let's suppose the phonotactics of your language don't allow vowels that long or the same vowel repeated that often, and if that situation ever arises, that third vowel is replaced by a glottal stop followed by a schwa (that I'll write as 'e).
minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
nuuko / nuukok / nuukot / nuu’em / nuukol
nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal
Final sound change: if a word final -t or -l is preceded by -ku- or -ko-, the vowel is dropped.
So here's the final outcome of the two words:
minano / minanok / minanot / minanum / minanol
minana / minanag / minanit / minanam / minanal
nuuko / nuukok / nuukt / nuu’em / nuukl
nuuka / nuukag / nuugit / nuuam / nuukal
The first has remained pretty regular, the second not so much.
"Indo-European grammatical structure"—I presume you are referring to the highly inflecting state of most ancient languages. This will be quite an undertaking, given that Sanskrit nouns have eight cases and three numbers and several declension classes, given the complexity of the Ancient Greek verbal system. Study those systems to some detail and than decide what you want to take from them.
Also look at derivative morphology: There are common verbal prefixes among Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, and Germanic (at least), and there are common methods to form compound nouns. Also several means to create nouns from verbs or verbs from nouns go far back in time and can be reconstructed for the protolanguage.
I wish you a lot of fun and good look with you conlang project!
I once heard it said that Greek had no regular verbs.
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1189 | How long do I need to influence language development?
Taja is a language with Verb-Subject-Object word order. However, emperor Kai wants to always be the first, so, he wants all sentences where he is the subject to have a Subject-Verb-Object word order.
Obviously, people at the court follow this rule. Farmers in a remote region probably not that much. If Kai dies a few years later and his successor goes "Stop this stupid word-order thing" this would be forgotten quickly.
If, however, Kai lives long enough (or his successor also likes it this way), other nobles would start to require their servants to put them first as well, eventually even remote regions would pick it up. Finally, it becomes part of the language.
How long does this need to stay in effect until language development integrates it into the language? Such that even after replacing monarchy with democracy, the "Subject-Verb-Object" word order is still used when the subject is a person, and the speaker wants to express his/her respect?
Update:
Let me answer the questions in the comments.
First of all, Kai is not planning to systematically change the language. He is just pleasing his ego. So while he will punish people who do not do it (if he notices), he is not going to start a large-scale education program.
If the emperor is the object of the sentence, the sentence stays as it is. So "peasants must pay taxes to the emperor" stays unchanged.
What is the equivalent Earth date for technology?
agricultural, probably medieval.
How physically and demographically large is the country?
An entire continent. Think about the Roman Empire.
How much trade is there with other countries?
I haven't given this one any thought. I guess less trade helps, so, let' say very little.
How strong is/are the religious influences (a big deal with language)?
weak to medium
How effective is the collection of taxes and the dispensation of justice?
Things are quite organized, however, this is a personal spleen of Kai. A judge (or policemen) in a remote province is very unlikely to sentence/imprison someone for not following this.
Sorta depends how flexible their culture is with wordsmithing in the first place.
What would happen in the sentence "peasant pay taxes to the emperor"?
@L.Dutch-ReinstateMonica Something along the lines of "to the emperor the taxes the peasant pays" I'd imagine.
@TomO'Daighre, that's not "subject-verb-object"
There's not enough information to give an objective answer. What is the equivalent Earth date for technology? How physically and demographically large is the country? How much trade is there with other countries? How strong is/are the religious influences (a big deal with language)? How effective is the collection of taxes and the dispensation of justice? As written, I don't believe you could objectively choose the better answer between "tomorrow" and "a thousand years."
Well, it all depends on how strong is the language wedded to the VSO order. Languages exist on a spectrum, with isolating or almost isolating languages (such as English or Mandarin) relying very very strongly on word order, to fully synthetic languages (such as Latin) where word order is for all purposes free. For example, the usual word order in Romanian is SVO, but any of the six possible choices is not only allowed, but widely used in artistic writing. (Being a pro-drop language helps, and having fully functional verbal conjugation and sufficiently functional nominal declension helps too.)
The point being that in Latin or Romanian, where word order is mostly a matter of style, such a change can be decreed overnight and implemented in a few years tops. In a language like English, where "the application describes the map" and "the map describes the application" mean different things, you cannot force a conversion to "describes the application the map" without a lot of effort, sweat and treasure.
@L.Dutch-ReinstateMonica -- I thìnk the OP perhaps made a slight error here as I think in such a language word order wouldn't really matter: the issue wouldn't be fronting the grammatical subject so much as fronting the highest ranking honorific.
Assuming emperor Kai puts a strong pressure on his subjects, having the change permanent would be a matter of one or two generations. Once one generation is brainwashed and use naturally the new form, and that there is no backward trend (emperor Kai's death penalty may be a strong incentive to avoid such trend), consider that adoption should stay.
This however assumes that language is mostly spoken and not written (or you need to change writings as well), that teachers are supportive of Kai and teach the new proper way of speaking to all, etc.
Dunno about the writing part. Typically documents, books, etc. are required to follow the rules of grammar more precisely than casual conversation is. In addition, we (that is, on our Earth) don't rewrite existing books just because language or rules change.
@CarlWitthoft Stalin was very fond of rewriting history, including in books. But more casually, old re-published texts are often adjusted to stay comprehensible by modern users, as the language evolves naturally.
Oh, you may not want to change the old books. Let them remain incomprehensible, just like the dark old times they describe. See a heart-breaking example in The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success by Geoffrey Lewis. (The link goes to Amazon, but with enough dilligence...)
Control the schools and the culture
Education and culture are critically important to language development. Children of immigrants generally speak the local language, including the local dialect and slang, even if their parents struggle with it. If you can control the schools and the culture, you can force a new speaking style. It's tough to know exactly what this would look like without knowing the technology level of your world, but since you want a timeframe, let's say 50 years. That works out to one or two generations (one generation in the modern world is between 19 and 31 years).
Education
Require that "Modern Taja" be used in all schools and forbid the use of "Traditional Taja" in education. Send all teachers to mandatory continuing education classes about how Taja is to be written and spoken. Rewrite all educational materials. Emphasize the importance of education and build schools in areas with poor literacy rates.
Culture
It sounds like not everybody in your world attends formal education, even with the expanded schools. The king should sponsor great cultural initiatives, including theaters in the cities, the publishing of books, and traveling theater groups that venture deep into the country. In every instance, emphasize Modern Taja and either don't use Traditional Taja or only have the dumb country rube characters use it.
Several studies (example) emphasize the importance of what a child's friends and parents speak in determining how the child speaks. If Modern Taja is all that someone has seen in school and culture for her entire life and it's primarily what her parents have seen for their entire lives, Traditional Taja will sound really weird.
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1243 | 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.
2 and 3 — toki pona. 1 and 3 — esperanto.
Well, in Esperanto biology is biologio but mathematics is matematiko
I don't know Esperanto and frankly I don't like it. I prefer artlangs but not only a priori but a posteriori as well. So it was just a guess ;)
No worries. I don't think math is considered a science anyway.
It is considered as a formal science, that is not the topic anyway.
Lojban?
Re: Lojban. 1) Gismu (root words) do not have this property, though fu'ivla (drives words) might. 2) There is a small set of gismu and cmavo (particles), but a potentially unbounded set of fu'ivla which could include words that are four all-intensive porpoises synonyms. Though mistakes like the one in the previous sentence are supposedly impossible in Lojban, which lacks homophones and ambiguous phonology. 3) This definitely, though the grammar is truly unlike any other.
If two words share such an affix but are not “semantically close”, do they fail the criterion? Can two meanings be close to a third but not close to each other?
I don't think the criteria would be broken in this case but it is certainly a thing to avoid. Well, I guess proximity is transitive.
Just in case you haven't seen Rosenfelder's page on the irregularities of Esperanto: https://www.zompist.com/kitespo.html
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.
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.
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