#conlang thoughts

[spocks-kaathyra]

WAIT okay I don't know how to word this at all but basically the way we perceive speech sounds is through like. different frequencies are amplified or dampened by the ways we shape our vocal tract and we hear those differences in like which frequencies are louder and which frequencies are quieter and that's how we recognize different phonemes. or something. so if like aliens have a different hearing range and/or differently shaped vocal tracts they could have an entirely different phonemic inventory than human languages??? like shrimp colors but it's alien phonemes???? this might seem like a really obvious realization but like those guys could be distinguishing vowels based on formants we can't even perceive!! their hearing range could start above 5000 hz and they wouldn't be able to hear the difference between any of our vowels!! enough with giving klingon uvular plosives or whatever to make it sound ""exotic"" that shit should be UNPRODUCIBLE with a human vocal tract and UNPERCEIVABLE with human ears!! no wonder they need universal translators when your ears could be physically unable to distinguish between alien phonemes??? sorry I'm realizing that this really is an incredibly obvious thought just couched in overly technical language but I'm excited about it nonetheless. spock's surname is unpronounceable bc it's got a bunch of consonant clusters? NO it actually has secret vulcan phonemes distinguished by differences in frequencies above the human range of hearing so u can't even perceive it correctly let alone pronounce it. cardassians have a hearing range significantly smaller than humans so they physically cannot understand most human languages...

#shrimp colors alien phonemes......... #I. understand why we conlang within our physical limits as humans but it's a fun thought experiment idk #I love u phonetics 2 class. #narcissus's echoes

[velaraffricate]

so I've been working on my latest conlang, irkan osla (or just osla for short), for a bit now and would like to showcase its writing system in this post! osla has a syllabic alphabet, not too dissimilar to korean hangul, where letters are stacked according to certain rules to make syllable blocks.

osla's syllable structure is (C)(C)V(V)(C), here's how the stacks work for each type of syllable:

all letters have small, wide, and tall forms depending on their position in the syllable. here are all the letters with their IPA value and romanization:

and here's an example text! i translated parts of the minecraft end poem into osla. maybe i'll make another post just focusing on the grammar when it's more developed. the poem says in english:

What did this player dream? This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.

Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind? Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.

this post is getting long, so under the cut you'll find a "sans-serif" version as well as the poem in osla and its gloss if you're also a linguistics nerd and wanna know what's going on under the hood (the roman numerals stand for the 3 noun classes)! thanks for reading!

The way regular people would write something quickly on a piece of paper with a regular pen is an aspect of creating neographies that I feel is often overlooked, so I developed this sans-serif version that people would probably be more likely to use when writing their shopping lists or diary entries:

And, finally, here's the poem translation:

pak oṇḍul phan wimbakis?

DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN what dream-PST.3SG.I?

pak oṇḍul lümaṇiuṣerothi han buloni an wimbakis. kaṣkhaothi han nilothi an. wimbakis, run sëmamkis. wimbakis, run xokthakis, han bumxokthakis. zöga an wimbakis.

DET.I.SG.PROX play-AGN sunlight-II.SG.DAT and tree-II.PL.DAT of dream-PST.3SG.I. Fire-II.SG.DAT and water-II.SG.DAT of. dream-PST.3SG.I, that create-PST.3SG.I. dream-PST.3SG.I, that hunt-PST.3SG.I, and PASS-hunt-PST.3SG.I. shelter of dream-PST.3SG.I.

ṭauraka, run kaak samare? run glutsüna flia?

know-NP.3SG.I, that 3SG.I.ABS love-NP.1PL? that universe kind?

imba ethamo, khaṣiŋli an ka’am hu’aŋni pitë, glutsüna ṣaraka, ti.

some time-NOM.III.PL, noise-ACC.II.SG of 3SG.I.GEN thought-NOM.III.PL through, universe hear-NP.3SG.I, yes.

#i hope the quality of the images isnt too unbearable :') #if you wanna write something with this script go for it and tag me!! but pls dont take it for your own projects and all that #i actually didnt notice its similarity to hangul until after i was done lol #id actually developed a completely different alphabet first but thought it was too boring #and like ngl i am literally so happy with how this came out lmao its so pretty and fun to write #definitely my 2nd if not most fave writing system ive ever developed for my clongs #(also btw technically not all small versions of consonants would actually be used #only those that appear in clusters. but i put them there anyways #like theoretically you could forgo all the wide and tall letters and block structure and just write the small letters in a line #like a more traditional alphabet. but this is more fun) #also hi if david peterson reads this i will literally die thx ily #i just realized universe in the last sentence is supposed to be accusative fml!!!!!!!!!!! always gotta doublecheck my cases man ah man whyy #conlang #conlangs #my conlangs #irkan osla #neography #conscript

[bismutharts]

i am definitely getting into toki pona. let's hope i also study for upcoming exams

this is part of my project to make a zine a day in april

#toki pona #bis arts #art #zine #my zine #1 sheet zine #8 page zine #conlang #thoughts #handmade zine #physical art #zines #zinepril #aprine

[logorrhea5mip]

The modern usage of neopronouns is unimaginative

Using them just for different gender expression than the usual he/her binary is fine, but why stop there? If we opened the (genius) idea of using new pronouns, we should do something more creative with it. I will give two examples, but by no means is this a complete list.

Lets say I have a trans friend, Bob, and I am talking about one of our silly middle school adventures, for example escaping rabid dogs. In the sentence "[pronoun] helped me up the tree as I barely escaped the grey mutt's jaws" using she feels weird, and using he feels weird as well, since at the time Bob was Eve. Both fail to convey all the needed information, and I wouldnt know which one to use. But if there was a pronoun which told the whole thing in one word (was F, now M), it would work perfectly.

Or, the pronoun could convey another meaning entirely, for example, having different words for he(neutral), he(friend), he(idiot), and suchlike.

If you are a conlanger, and want to have a feature in your language that makes it feel alien and strange, please consider having a weird, contrived, multidimensional pronoun system where one word says several things at once about the person. It would make the language strange to English speakers without resorting to the standard 23 tenses or uvular trills, and add to the information density immensely.

#neopronouns #shower thoughts #conlang #linguistics #language #ramblings #not a reblog

[spicyraeman]

I usually don't send two asks in a row because I don't want to overwhelm you. But you just posted about phonology and I was curious and then bam hyperfocus. I found a pretty cool table of gith sounds :

https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=GITH

It looks like there are a few main differences to english:

No W

-Like in french from France. She probably would say "Oo-il" for Wyll. They usually replace the W by a Oo or a V, depending on the sound after it. A "wagon" -> a vagon, but "when" -> ooän. In German you would have the W as a V, because it's already pronounced like that.

There is a type of Th, like in "thin", but not "this".

- I kinda hear the difference but I can't do it. The first one is closer to an s or an f and the second one to a z , I guess? A native english speaker may understand the nuance better.

There is a Zh

- It's the same as the French "j", like in the name Jacques (which could be your frenchsona btw. It's the equivalent of James). In English you add some kind of "d" in your "j". As an example, we visualise Djordan for Jordan. You take that D off, you got the sound. (Insert respectful trans joke here)

The Tl like in Nahuatl

- I can explain this one in english because I can't find the right translation, but you can find how it's pronounced on Wikipedia.

Gh is not silent

- Kind of a guttural G, like in dutch or the scottish gh.

The glottal stop '

- It marks a pause between syllables, while still linking them. Uh'Oh in English, "bu'er" for butter in cockney. It depends of the dialects/accent/language.

Everything is my understanding of this, obv, linguists please don't hate me. I'm just an audhd girly with a multi-lingual environnement and too much time.

Sooooooo Frog'zel is not completely off the table, but I'm sad the R's not an uvular one. It would make it a more "brutal" language. I think she would have some difficulties we see in frenglish. Especially when a letter has several ways to be pronounced, like cat / face or breath/breathe because it's straightforward in gith.

Ergo, she wouldn't have a stroke trying to say "library" like I do. But she would struggle with "throughout", I guess.

I couldn't find anything on tones and accentuations stuff though. I still want her to fight for her life like I do. I shouldn't be the only one suffering here.

I guess it can still change with context and stuff. Like the s in german becomes a sh when it's in front of a t.

I hope I was clear enough. Sorry for any spelling or formatting mistakes, cat fell asleep on my arms in the middle of this. But she's cute so forgive her please.

🫀🚑

You are always allowed to overwhelm me with worldbuilding shit like conlangs (even if this isn’t really a conlang) I live and breathe this stuff and I'm constantly rotating it around in the back of my brain

I cannot express the sheer joy I felt looking at these charts and comparing them to my own and seeing that I've got pretty much the same result! The only strange thing I found was the addition of a b sound, maybe I missed it but I haven’t found a single word that uses that sound (despite Lae’zel’s “bah’s”) Their chart is also missing a p sound but I believe that's due to when the charts were made bc there's only one Gith word that uses it and it was in bg3. Honestly tho, it makes a lot more sense for Gith to have a b sound and no p sound instead of the other way around, there are wayyyy more examples of languages with no p instead of no b (although a language with neither would be fun lol)

The lack of a W was the first thing that I noticed! But there's a fuck ton of languages without it so it makes sense, It doesn’t really fit the feel of the Gith language either. Also, I know in my heart that you’re probably very much right on the Wyll pronunciation but I was joking around with my friends while I was looking through all this stuff and one of them made a German comparison and the thought of the fascist space frogs having a german accent was just too funny to me to pass up

I personally find the Gith language having θ but not ð very fun for their accent! It's kind of a subtle difference but also not? I went through and pronounced a bunch of words with a ð sound with a θ instead and they sound harsher? I guess? It really did give them a more Gith feel honestly

(a little aside but the thought of a “frenchsona” is so fucking funny to me and you’re respectful trans joke got a legit laugh outta me lmao)

Fun fact! English does have a ʒ (zh) sound it's just not associated with a specific letter, it just kinda.. happens in words. All in all, it seems that Gith is relatively comparable in terms of sounds with English. The lack of a w and p/b (debatable) seems like they’d be the biggest ones to come up in everyday speech as far as phonetics goes

Also can I let you in on a little pet peeve of mine? I usually hate when “fantasy languages” use ‘ in their words bc most of the time it's just a cheap way to make it look more fantasy-esc or alien. BUT in Gith, it honestly works? Mostly because it actually is a glottal stop and not just a random “make this word look fantasy” addition

I'm also nowhere near a linguist, just insane about worldbuilding stuff (i have notebooks full of phonetic charts and mathematics on creating solar systems) It's really insightful and interesting to see the perspective of someone with a multi-lingual background tho as someone who only speaks English

I've always seen the Gith language as less brutal and more.. Sharp? I dunno how to describe it really, kinda harsh and pointed rather than guttural or brutal if that makes sense. But yeah if common is English then all the long and short sounds and strange exceptions would be supremely rough especially if you only ever really read it and never truly spoke it

I couldn’t even blame Lae’zel for not being able to pronounce throughout correctly cuz I can’t say that shit right either unless I'm really trying

If you want tones and accentuations you’re just gonna have to have fun and make em up, cuz sadly most fantasy “languages” are just a bunch of made up words with no real rhyme or reason. If I had the brain power to spare it’d be fun to flesh out a real Gith conlang

At least with a full phonetic chart, you can see what sounds the Gith wouldn’t be used to using and find out what words would cause trouble

Also I can forgive any and all misspelling or weird formatting, cute cats aside, cuz I have no clue how anyone could read this jumbled rambling mess lol gratz if you got this far and understood any of this

#asks #long post #christ this really is a mess soso sorry #my sleep schedule is wreaked to hell and back so im running on nothin lol #but conlangs used to be biiiig fixation for me a few years back #so ive got a big mess of knowledge that I haven't thought of in years #but im clutching a straws trying to shake out all that I remember about it

[ionianodyssey]

toki! mi jan Ajo

I started learning Toki Pona this last week as part distraction, part zen soul-searching. And while I can't really form sentences yet, I've noticed how much my thoughts have simplified. It feels really easy and much more natural to break ideas into their basic concepts. It gives a nice sense of feeling like you understand what something is for you.

#toki pona #conlang #language learning #thoughts

[bruneburg]

have you ever forgotten that a planet exists, for years? i had forgotten for years that there was a planet named neptune. until yesterday, where i saw it mentioned and saw a new picture of it where it has rings. and i was like "wait..... a planet named neptune??? is that real??? how did i forget about this". i wonder when i forgot. when is the threshold when my brain went from "contains neptune knowledge" to "does not contain neptune knowledge"?

#6am thoughts #maybe my brain pushed that memory away to make room for song titles and conlang vocabulary #nonart #neptune #am i just getting old or smth #i still wonder if my memory took a hit when i went through crunch while animating for my grad film last year #so many allnighters #oof ouch

[sannehnagi]

Kianni yailaag panutiyagaari ayaak aaniik šooq asayiimbiit gapiissasii agiyailaat.

You do not bury a seed because it looks good in the dirt but because the limbs that branch out will look good across the sky.

#conlang #constructed language #translation #conscript #constructed script #artlang #anni #arhanngi #conlanging #another tumblr text post that I loved #@abyss13warlock #the calligraphy is a much looser style than I normally would do half the vowels are just not marked #but since I am playing with different art styles and am working on my impressionism I thought the calligraphy might benefit #from a similar slapdash style

[theitcharchives]

I can tell I'm doing a good job with the conlang because after leaving it be and coming back to it after months I'm as consternate as if I were reading a natlang manual. Like I guess you do need to be precise for spellcasting but do you really need that many articles

#the answer is yes #do you want to get blown up? that's what i thought #worldbuilding #language #(this conlang isn't for ToC but i might as well use its infant form for the few instances it may come up)

[bolithesenate]

for someone that claimed high and holy that she was not interested in conlangs in the least i sure invest a lot of time of my day thinking about them

#this is specifically about mando'a the dathomiri conlang and the high serennian i've been cobbling together #to a lesser degree about cursive aurabesh #random boli thoughts #star wars

[spocks-kaathyra]

Cardassian conlang (part 1?)

Finally started making my Cardassian conlang and I'm having so much fun already. Get this:

There's a distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, something that occurs in many natural languages. An example is, like, "my nose" vs "my hat". My nose is inalienable because it will always be mine, while my hat is alienable because it can stop being mine. So in languages with this distinction, you'd use different words for "my" in those two situations.

In my Cardassian language, possession is indicated with suffixes attached to nouns and people's names. People are "possessed" in the sense that, y'know, they're your mom or your friend or your orthodontist or whatever. Generally, you'd use the alienable form for people. Your orthodontist might not always be your orthodontist, your friend might not always be your friend. The exception is that you always use the inalienable form(s) for family. Your mom will always be your mom.

So, to use the inalienable possessive for a friend would be to say that they are as close to you as family, that you trust that they will always be your friend. This is often, like, a milestone in dating. To start saying "my girlfriend (inalienable)" marks that your relationship is serious. (Traditionalists will say that you shouldn't use the inalienable form until you're properly betrothed, but kids these days have their own ideas.) In this way, it becomes a pretty straightforward term of endearment (or, rather, grammatical particle of endearment).

Since there's no equivalent in Federation Standard, the translator often renders it as "my dear."

Here's a table of the 10 different words for "my"

So, presuming that the speaker is a man, and the person they're referring to is also a man who they don't have to use the honorific form with...

/alʊk/ - "friend"

/alʊkɬei/ - "my friend"

/alʊkxa/ - "my dear friend"

/ilɨm̥xa/ - "my dear Elim"

#no I don't know what I'm doing but I'm having so much fun hehehe #disclaimer: so much respect to the awesome cardassian conlangs that already exist and the ppl who made them!! #not trying to step on any toes I just thought it'd be fun to make my own :)) #these r the first words I've come up with after settling on a phonemic inventory. which was fun in and of itself #THERE R EJECTIVES !!! ISNT THAT COOL !!!!! also no voicing distinction and nasals r usually voiceless #anyways. honorifics r mostly abt age I think. but also social class and rank probably #I like how the casual forms don't distinguish the speaker's gender. reflects that gender differences r more pronounced in formal situations #cardassians #ds9 #asit #star trek #elim garak #narcissus's echoes #q's cardassian conlang

[velaraffricate]

got a quick question about naturalism... in my wolf proto language, some nouns are default singular (like nohe, meaning night) while others are plural/collective, and you must specify if you mean exactly one (like ɣavaq, meaning mountains or mountain range). since this language is going to heavily borrow from swiss german, would it be unnaturalistic to have some of these borrowings act as a singulative to the native collective nouns? so in the modern language we could have kafá (from *ɣavaq) meaning mountain range and parētsh (from s. german bärg) meaning just mountain.

#ramblings #wolf lang #conlang #progress is slow but i am getting there actually #havent thought about the actual grammar too much yet but ill get there........ #seems like its gonna be a more analytic language actually but we'll have to see

[ttaibhse]

does anybody want to learn toki pona with me

#the conlang with like 120 words #ive thought about it on and off for years......

[conlangprompts]

As we all probably know, passive vocabulary is always going to be larger than active vocabulary. Consequently, with every generation, less and less of the language is passed on. So when less commonly used words become applicable to a situation, the appropriate words will not be used because the speaker doesn't know them, and instead will make up a new word, either by borrowing it from somewhere else, putting existing words in their own language together, naming it after a person or just making up a word out of nowhere. This is of course, only one of many reasons languages evolve over time but since I don't really understand linguistics (despite being fascinated by it) it only just occurred to me and I thought it was neat.

#conlang #worldbuilding #ref #neat language thoughts

[thedrotter]

Re:Kinder Fun fact time!! Did you know? 😊

Yuuichi's theme song (the one that often accompanies his entrances with "Vamos Cantar!"), 新しい夏のナナ, is not in any latin language such as Spanish or Portuguese, despite its lyrics sounding as such. It's actually in Hanamogera, which to put it simply is nonsense speech based on japanese syllables. So the song's lyrics are essentially gibberish meant to imitate the sound of latin music! 😊

It is listed as such in the source site for the song, oo39.com, where the song can be found as "YS068" in the hanamogera category.

Additional fun fact! The song can also be found in Spotify as Vien Nana by Oo39.com themselves alongside a few other select songs from the site. So you can properly enjoy the song on the platform without having to import it from your local files.

Those are the fun Re:Kinder related fun facts for today... Use them to entertain your friends at parties ! ☺️

#re:kinder #not art #now tiny storytime in the tags!!! 😊... #what prompted me to look into this months ago was the fact i genuinely thought it was in spanish at first #AS A SPANISH NATIVE SPEAKER. I HEARD THIS SONG VAGUELY AND WAS LIKE... WOW... i wonder what it says! #because i thought i didnt understand it as i was mostly paying attention to the text or because of my computer's speaker #plugged headphones in and heard carefully... i didnt understand anything. but it sounded just like it i was so confused #for a second i wondered if it was portuguese but there was no way it was because even then i would have known😭 #the magic of knowing either language of spanish (at least latin spanish) and portuguese is it makes the other very recognizable #this was not it looked for the opinions of other latin speaking language people THEY DID NOT UNDERSTAND A THING #and thats how i ended up looking into the source and finding this out 😊 #i was very pleasantly surprised to see it was gibberish because IM NOT SURE HOW TO EXPRESS TO YOU ITS VERY GOOD #VERY WELL DONE GIBBERISH SO WELL DONE IT MAKES A PROPER SENTENCE AT ONE POINT #gibberish so well done it fooled native speakers into thinking it was their own languages . so good im so obsessed with this #i had to share this fun fact eventually somrwhere other than yourjbe comments #and i remembered i could acrually speak here about the game and not only post art of it teehee😊 #so thats your awesome fun fact micht also drop more if im confident in doing so and their validity because theres more tbat are in japanese #and im trying to figure em out watch as i study the inner workings of a language so i dont have to learn how to actually speak it #(i love conlangs so this is a good excuse)

[ash-alder]

Want to learn how to swear in Mahknovchik?

I've been working on a conlang for @breathingxspace for a couple seasons now, and S4 has presented opportunities to develop a bunch of profanity!

Angry with someone?

Call them ne’werkem! (an unproductive member of society)

Or ne'celja! (Useless)

Or maybe say that you think they're ne’khrabroste. (A coward, lit. without courage)

Even MORE angry?

Say they're marzvats promandetion! (an untrained timewaster)

Or angra neftyanye! (willfully-ignorant trash)

Or really go all out and say someone is prom’det ne’celja ne’werkem! (a time-wasting, useless, non-productive member of society)

Angry AND poetic?

Try "Ne’uchit ultod’t oni to tukrasit." (Lit. "they can't teach a child to make art." Fig. they can't do the most basic & obvious things.)

Or say "Britsyaway oni konhae." (Lit. "They shave in the cafeteria." Fig. they are selfish at the expense of society.)

Want still MORE Mahknovchik?

The language primer can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12jSaLXhT_qH4whWAwr5vPFpK2VIwcz5dxDpPixasDXo/edit?usp=sharing

And the dictionary here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13oSzpk5L272fRLrL-l8mo_yUlGA5aOc0zHswPeFsv98/edit?usp=sharing

(Sorry, I haven't written out all the IPA yet. Working on it.)

#breathing space #breathingxspace #conlang #constructed languages #Mahknovchik is a constructed language WITHIN the Breathing Space setting as well #it was deliberately made to be an independent language that could fully express anarchic ideas and thoughts #yes it's Pravic ok #not the Pravic people have already made #but spiritually it's the same thing #The Dispossessed changed my brain