Welcome to !conlangs@mander.xyz! This community is geared towards people who seek to discuss artificial languages or create and showcase their own.
For linguistic memes check out !linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works (Kbin link)
For worldbuilding discussion check out !worldbuilding@lemmy.world (Kbin link) Feel free to discuss the setting of your conlangs in our community, though.
Happy conlanging!
Has conlanging ever helped you understand and learn real languages better?
For me, yes, an example I could use is transforming a generic language using an alphabet, formed using Turkish as the base, and evolving it based on Chinese influences and attempting to adopt logographic styles
This made me theorise on how Chinese works and the absolute role of context, where I could apply it and what not
But what about you?
Lingua Franca Update #1: Orthography, Phonology, and Phonotactics
Yesterday, I submitted a post asking for your help in creating a global auxiliary conlang. With not much interest being shown in the first day of posting, I decided to go ahead and embark on this project alone.
My "north star" when designing the phonemic inventory for the language was striking a balance between usability and accessibility. In my humble opinion, minimalist languages such as Toki Pona excel in the latter but utterly fail in the former. More complicated languages such as Esperanto and Ido tend to do the opposite (they can be quite eurocentric). I believe I have found a happy medium between the two.
The language's consonants (and their graphs) are as follows:
I have chosen to aspirate the
Anyone want to make an lingua franca?
Never made an international auxlang, nor have I ever collaborated on a conlang project as none of my friends are into linguistics. Thought I’d kill three birds with one stone. Who’s in? I’ll probably use Google Docs, LibreOffice, or one of the many collaborative Markdown editors out there.
MIT research finds the brain’s language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on “Star Trek” and High Valyrian and Dothraki on “Game of Thrones.”
MIT research finds the brain’s language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on “Star Trek” and High Valyrian and Dothraki on “Game of Thrones.”
Reverse abjad
Just wandering around Lemmy looking for conlanging communities. Saw this one linked in the sidebar of !worldbuilding@lemmy.world .
I happen to be partial to xenolangs, and the above is a sample of Commonthroat, a language inspired by the sounds my dog makes when he's dreaming. The "Romanization", if you can call it that, is rCFqKqmqn, pronounced /chuff, long rising strong whine, huff, long high strong growl, huff, short low strong grunt, huff, short high weak grunt/, and means egg eater.
The script is read from right to left, and as the phrase reverse abjad implies, the letters are vowels (whines, growls, or grunts) and the diacritics are consonants (huffs, chuffs, or yips). Both tone and volume are significant in vowels.
glossary of words in my toki pona based language
name of language: uá
name meaning: speech, language, talk
writing system: latin, cyrillic (recently added)
there are 9 sounds in total
“a” - like father
“e” like bed
“i” like in “see”
“o” like in “store”
“u” like in “moon”
n “New”
s “Save”
kh, like in “Hat”
“m” - “Money”
Accent means the syllable is drawn out slightly/more emphasis
á - not, no
ae - everything
oé - animal
aí - reptile
uá - speech, talk
óa - good
íe - bad
khéen - using
khái - disgusting
ian - person
iasía - mirror, reflection
iéo - yellow, green
o - to hold, have
kháa - fish
khána - noise
khóm - come
khási - plant
khén - can, possible
akhú - raccoon
khíi - fruit, vegetable
khín - also
khísi - piece, cut
khíen - rock
khó - goop, paste, powder
khon - air, spirit
khúe - color
khúu - group
khué - ear, to hear
áan - to steal
ákhe - to sleep or rest
áso - blue, green
auá - head, leader
ékho - block/square
én - clothing, cloth
ée - cold, ice
séi - fire, hot
úi - big
íi
Hieroglyphic script for my conlang (or it's ancestor technically), Category “Animals and parts of animals”
I lovee the way "dragon" turned out it's so cutee
What is Toaq?
This article explains Toaq's origin and goals to an audience of linguists.
What are some fun or interesting word origins in your conlangs?
This can be both in-universe (like word origins that say something interesting about the society in which the conlang is canonically spoken), out-of-universe (like little hidden references you wouldn't expect people to notice), or even both.
I could mention a million things in my own conlang, but the example that inspired this post was the slang term "3-zo" or "poeezo" /pøːzo/ which basically means "a recurring expense; a person, form, or notice sent for the purpose of extracting this money; or the money so extracted". And this word "3-zo" comes from a clipping of yaPoeezolloeyya /japøːzoʎ.ʎøj.ja/ literally meaning basically "the three animals" — and referring to a set of three institutions that work together to help the rich and hurt the masses.
And this idea of "three animals" taking money from the poor was inspired by the Occitan folk song "Ai vist lo lop", where the description of a wolf, fox, and hare dancing around a tree is commonly taken as a metaphor for the monarchy, nobi
The Bi-Weekly c/conlangs Post #4
Astorí!
As you might be able to tell, as the initial hype for the community has slowed down, we've also started getting behind on the weekly posts. Sorry for that. We'll hope to be able to maintain a somewhat less ambitious bi-weekly schedule. But please keep posting your conlang things here - every post matters (to us)!
The conlangs of the week are the Ancient Language and Dwarvish from Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle (aka Eragon and the following books). Both these languages feature frequently in Paolini's setting and are essential to the worldbuilding and story of the setting. On the other hand, they have often been criticised for their lack of originality and lack of real rules or vocabulary. Instead, there are just lists of translated words or phrases, not even with an explanation on how to pronounce them. (Though it seems that Paolini has actually done some more leg
The Weekly c/conlangs Post #3
toki!
First of all sorry for the delay between the last post and this one, I have been pretty busy last week so I kind of just… forgot. Sorry!
Also, if you have suggestions for a conlang and linguistic feature of the week, please send them to me! I only know so many, so I’m always happy to learn about more, so I can include them in these posts!
This week's conlang of the week is: toki pona! This language was made by linguist Sonja Lang, at first to see how having an extremely small vocabulary would influence the way speakers view things. But the language has quickly grown to have a large community, and even lots of speakers (for a conlang) due to it’s cute nature and ease of learning.
What do you think of toki pona? Do you speak it? Do you think it changes the way speakers will look at things? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!
This week’s ling
Anyone else like charting out how one can separate the words in a sentence by sound?
In most languages it's easy to tell where one word ends and another begins in writing, assuming that one has spacing or interpuncts or perhaps one uses some sort of logography à la Chinese or mixed script à la Japanese. But what about in speech? People will generally not make any sort of clear stop from one word to the next, in fact people will often use reduced pronunciations when they speak.
And this is why it's important to think about the methods that speakers of a language can use to separate words from each other. The process of identifying word boundaries in speech is called speech segmentation, and this process utilizes things like phonotactics and allophony, prefixes and suffixes, syntax, set or stock phrases, common contractions and reduced forms, intonation and pauses, stress and pitch accent, and simply trying to figure out the most logical interpretation of what one has just heard from the knowledge that one already has. Surely among other methods, with multiple methods w
The Weekly c/conlangs Post #2
Sellamat! Kam leitte yu?
The conlang of the week is Sambahsa. Created as an international auxilliary language (IAL) by the linguist Olivier Simon, it was first revealed to the public in 2007. As an IAL, it recognises that a universally "easy" learning experience is near impossible to achieve and therefore tries to concentrate on basing its systems on Indo-European languages, which are of course widely spread. On the other hand, a large amount of vocabulary comes from other language families.
What do you think about Sambahsa? Does it meet its goals? Have you heard of Sambahsa before? Do you think it can succeed as an IAL? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the thread!
Keeping with Sambahsa's Indo-European theme, we want to look at Indo-European features in conlangs. While some parts of the conlanging community shun unique Indo-European features because they
Honestly I think my favorite part of conlanging is making the contractions, clitics, reduced forms, tag questions, fillers, backchannels, the likes
The types of words that might get one's speech stereotyped as "lazy" or "disfluent" or "uneducated" or whatever else if used excessively or in too formal a setting, but which in truth are vital for fluency and listening comprehension.
I dunno, this is just an impression because I don't interact much with the broader conlang community, but I feel like these words often end up being sort of overlooked by many conlangers. I certainly overlooked them for a long time myself. But to me these words make a language feel that much more alive, you know, that different people talk in different ways with different registers.
Do any of you have any interesting thoughts or experiences with these types of words? How are they handled in your own conlangs?
The Weekly c/conlangs Post #1
pe'el!
This week's conlang of the week is: Klingon! The constructed language devised for the strict warrior aliens of the same name, Klingon was first heard spoken in 1979. Klingon is one of the first conlangs to be widely recognised in popular culture, with there even being groups of people learning and speaking the language.
What do you think of the language Klingon? Does it succeed at its goals? Do you speak some Klingon? Was it what first got you into the wonderful world of constructed languages? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!
Keeping in the theme of Klingon, which was designed to sound extremely alien to the audience, the linguistic feature of the week is any feature not existing in a natural, human language.
Klingon was meant to sound extremely alien. This was mostly achieved by picking features and sounds that were exotic to English speake
What conlangs are you learning (about)?
I'll start myself: I've been quite interested in Esperanto recently, and I am thinking of starting to actually learn the language. Esperanto is just really interesting to me, because of its history and size, compared to other conlangs. I don't believe it will become the universal world language, like once was dreamed. And I do think esperanto has quite a few shortcomings when it comes to being an international auxilliary language. The reason I want to learn it is more just for that history and culture.
Conlang Showcase: Ylmunusian
Introduction
Hi all, today I wanna present you my creation Ylmunusian. I've been working on it since 2013, when my previous large conlang died in the fires of a fried external harddrive. That said, back when I started with Ylmunusian my knowledge of conlanging and of where to find resources was... limited, let's say. So looking back now I'm fully aware that Ylmunusian is sorely lacking in some regards. At the same time, I wouldn't call it "bad" either. So yeah, if you wanna comment that certain things are not realistic or anything... knock yourself out but I'm well aware. Still, I'm proud of Ylmunusian, especially because of the scale as well as associated worldbuilding, and still work on it, mostly the vocabulary and translations. The grammar, from my point of view, is mostly "finished". That said, any feedback is still welcome and I will answer any questions below in the comments as quickly as I can get to it. If there's sufficient interest I can also share links to my online di
CONLANGING RESOURCES MEGATHREAD
If you have any suggestions for resources, feel free to share them in the comments, and try to provide descriptions of your resources too. Make sure to also upvote the ones you find useful!