If natlangs were conlangs

[Xwtek]

A fruit in a conworld can be named after a race, that is also a name of its language

Aha. But I think this person called their ethnicity "Han". The guy who did Korean also called their ethnicity Han. You two need to sort this out.

That's called exonym. It's based on malay word menteri. Later, it's absorbed into Portuguese Mandarim. The meaning is restricted to Chinese one, because Chinese was prominent at that time.

[Seirios]

though [affix -like] seem[s] to have a slightly different meaning? It looks to me like you can only call things that aren't actually birds 'birdlike', e.g.?

Yep, that's the problem. For some reason English chooses not to resort to an elevated, or should I say high register, suffix like -oid for the meaning of "being similar to". Just imagine what if birdlike, childlike, snake-like were ornoid, paedoid, ophioid. That'd be insanity

[Seirios]

A fruit in a conworld can be named after a race, that is also a name of its language

Aha. But I think this person called their ethnicity "Han". The guy who did Korean also called their ethnicity Han. You two need to sort this out.

They did. The Mandarin one decided to say it came from a (now devoiced) voiced initial so they just added a diacritic to make it Hán and called it a day. While the Korean one decided that was enough for distinction. Even though the Mandarin person had already decided that tonal diacritics are all dispensed of outside textbooks and dictionaries. And even though the Korean person can't bother introducing any tonal distinctions because they have already done away with them so Hán is Han in Korean anyway.

[Seirios]

For reduplicative ablaut, it has the general pattern (back-vowel, front-vowel) whereas the universal says that such ablaut goes (front vowel, back vowel).

doesn't Manchu also have this?

Speaking of Manchu, it really doesn't make sense for *five out of six* vowels to be back, a colourful array of /u/ /ʊ/ /ɤ/ /ɔ/ /ɑ/. No -- just making the sixth the frontest of front and the commonest of common, /i/, wouldn't really do. Nor does it make sense or distract people to suggest a vowel harmony system, because somehow of these, /ɤ/ is the sole "front" vowel, /ʊ/ /ɔ/ /ɑ/ are "back", and /i/ /u/ are "neutral". First, hello? Second, good luck drawing the line among /u/ /ʊ/ /ɤ/ =_=

[mèþru]

Even worse, both ethnic terms are spelled exactly the same as each other in both languages, so that the confusion can occur even among native speakers!

(yes, I know that IRL context and exonyms are used in each for disambiguation)

[akam chinjir]

Even worse, both ethnic terms are spelled exactly the same as each other in both languages, so that the confusion can occur even among native speakers!

I'm not sure what you mean by spelling in this context, but in Mandarin hàn 漢 and hán 韓 are pretty clearly distinct.

[Salmoneus]

Philippine, Formosan and other northern Austronesian languages: why all these filthy Conlang Trigger Systems? That's not how real Austronesian Alignment works! Get educated!

[Xwtek]

Philippine, Formosan and other northern Austronesian languages: why all these filthy Conlang Trigger Systems? That's not how real Austronesian Alignment works! Get educated!

What?

[Pabappa]

See viewtopic.php?f=4&t=291 .

[Kuchigakatai]

From: http://verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=292#p10189

Swahili has a loan from Arabic, ila, but also very commonly uses the word isipokuwa literally meaning something like "if it is not", "when it is not", "where it is not"

i- = class 9 subject prefix, "it"
-si- = tense-neutral negation used with relative syllables, "not"
-po- = relative syllable for class 16 referring to places and times "when", "where", "if" (only means "if" in the negative)
-ku- = meaningless syllable occurring in short verbs in some verb forms - prevents -po- from taking the stress here.
-w- = "be"
-a = meaningless final suffix found on all native verbs when not replaced by another suffix such as -i in the negative present tense or -e in the subjunctive.

I'd like to focus on the meaningless morpheme added due to a morphophonological constraint (to prevent -po- from taking word stress). It's so great. It reminds me of something about the related language Xhosa, where imperatives of short verbs are prevented from becoming monosyllables by an equally meaningless extra morpheme (which longer verbs do not get). Good conlangs.

Even worse, both ethnic terms are spelled exactly the same as each other in both languages, so that the confusion can occur even among native speakers!

I'm not sure what you mean by spelling in this context, but in Mandarin hàn 漢 and hán 韓 are pretty clearly distinct.

He's talking about Korean. Many Korean speakers do not pronounce 漢 differently from 韓, and they're written the same in Korean. It's not much of a problem as they're used in compounds, so hanja 'Chinese characters used in Korean' has 漢 ("漢字") but hangugeo 'the Korean language' has 韓 ("韓國語").

[BGMan]

Swedish - what's up with your phonology? You don't get to just invent a new IPA symbol just for your own language! Also what sound is it anyway - saying it is unpronounceable for foreigners is a cop-out that doesn't explain anything! Plus way too many vowels, especially front rounded!

I don't think even the author themself knows how to pronounce it. All the recording I've come across sound exactly like either [ʂ] or [x], even though the author insists it's neither of those.

That sound? Yeah, it sounds sort of like [h] + American English "r" jammed together. At least, judging from how the robot on Google Translate pronounces it. I wouldn't understand how it has any relation to "sh", though.

But judging from Danish, I guess we're supposed to believe they have weird speech impediments in that part of the world.

[Xwtek]

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away.

[M Mira]

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away.

Well there were those chariot people who introduced them to iron metallurgy... Did I forget to mention that most the Eurasian languages derived their "wheel" or "chariot" from the same word?

[Zju]

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away.

Wait, whaaaat? I thought this was a joke.

*hljak
iron, iron instrument

An areal word in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It's difficult to determine in every case whether the commonality was due to borrowing or inheritedness, or to determine the source. Compare Proto-Tai *ʰlekᴰ (Thai เหล็ก (lèk)), Proto-Hmong *hluwᶜ, Proto-Mien *hrɛkᴰ, Proto-Balto-Slavic *geleź-, gelēź-, gelēźa- (Latvian dzelzs, Russian желе́зо (želézo)) and perhaps Proto-Vietic *k-rac (Modern Vietnamese sắt).

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... etan/hljak

*geleź-, *gelēź- n (Derksen 2008:555) or *gelēźa- n (Kim forth:3)
iron

Possibly related to Proto-Sino-Tibetan *hljak (“(cast) iron”), though the direction and exact details of the borrowing are obscure.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... 93%C5%BAa-

[M Mira]

Explain why the word iron in Proto Sino-Tibetian and in Proto-Balto-Slavic are related. They're 5000+ km away.

Wait, whaaaat? I thought this was a joke.

There were quite a few inventions that spread like wildfire, like bee keeping: English "mead" is cognate to Japanese mitsu "honey, nectar".

[akam chinjir]

There were quite a few inventions that spread like wildfire, like bee keeping: English "mead" is cognate to Japanese mitsu "honey, nectar".

Also Mandarin mì 蜜 (< Baxter/Sagart OC *mit), as I'm sure you know.

I've always been a fan of mare ~ mǎ 馬.

[Xwtek]

The be + past participle construction in Standard Average European doesn't make any sense. What does past tense have anything to do with passive voice? It's like when Japanese starts using "-ta desu" to mark passive voice. In fact, sentence like:

He is actually killed.
He actually killed.

Has almost exactly the opposite meaning. If I were the conlanger of English, I would make a sentence like:

He actually killed

A passive present tense. And the passive active voice that sentence like:

He did actually kill.

[Xwtek]

If you think -o is unnaturalistic, wait for Mpi tone system. Mpi has 6 tones, but only 3 tones allowed in noun, and in verb, only the rest of tone is allowed.

[Richard W]

The be + past participle construction in Standard Average European doesn't make any sense. What does past tense have anything to do with passive voice?

If supplying voice from context, then for a transitive verb, active is the expectation for a present sense, while passive is the expectation for a past sense. I don't think this is a SAE phenomenon; it seems to work for Thai, in which a noun phrase composed simply of noun + verb can generally be interpreted using that strategy.

[Zju]

Are there any more examples of ancient wanderwörter?