If natlangs were conlangs

[Travis B.]

Mesopotamia is well-known for having had frequent flooding historically in particular.

[Linguoboy]

Mesopotamia is well-known for having had frequent flooding historically in particular.

It's a big part of the reason why they have a civilisation. Flood control and irrigation were primary concerns of Mesopotamian polities, just as they were in early China (and arguably continue to be up to the present day).

[Travis B.]

Mesopotamia is well-known for having had frequent flooding historically in particular.

It's a big part of the reason why they have a civilisation. Flood control and irrigation were primary concerns of Mesopotamian polities, just as they were in early China (and arguably continue to be up to the present day).

The same is true of Ancient Egypt as well. (Building the pyramids is just what farmers did in their spare time.)

[zompist]

Everywhere I see desert, I see a native culture utilizing agriculture. Even Atamaca desert. Isn't the point of desert is you can't easily grow a plant? The only place I see a culture without agriculture in desert is Australia and South Africa. Southwestern US is partial answer, because you can get both Apache and Pueblo in the same place. Gobi desert is also partial answer because people there is herding instead.

For both Akangka and malloc, this map of land use in Iraq may be useful.



The pink areas are "desert", but suitable for grazing. Only the yellow areas are barren for everything. Also note that a region is still useful to pastoralists even if it's grass during only part of the year. (Also that 8000 years ago the climate may have been more favorable.)

(I'm not sure what happened to the Shatt al-Arab marshes in this map. Maybe it was made at the time Saddam had turned them into desert.)

[Pabappa]

Marshes can count as wasteland from a human perspective. Ive seen that map a long time ago....brings back memories. I remember drawing all over the atlas it was in. But I don't remember the title.

[linguistcat]

Also as someone who lived in a desert most of my life, desert soil has a lot of nutrients and as long as you can get the water to the crops, agriculture goes pretty well. Having plants that are drought- and sun-tolerant also helps, whether those are naturally adapted to the desert or bred for those traits (or in modern times, GMOs).

[Zaarin]

So, English, how do you differentiate yourself from other conlang? /ʍ/? Are you serious?

Uh, /ʍ/ really isn't that weird, and not many English dialects still have it anyway.

[Ares Land]

French: yes, we know, having some irregular sound changes adds verisimilitude. But almost all your derivations are inconsistent and your only excuse is some vague nonsense about 'dialects' and 'analogy'.

[Xwtek]

So, English, how do you differentiate yourself from other conlang? /ʍ/? Are you serious?

Uh, /ʍ/ really isn't that weird, and not many English dialects still have it anyway.

But that phoneme is so out of places, Why isn't English has another voiceless liquid?

[Ryusenshi]

Why isn't English has another voiceless liquid?

Many linguists analyze this [ʍ] as a combination of two phonemes, /hw/. In any case, there is a similar consonant [ç] as in huge, which similarly results from a combination /hj/. The notion of "liquid" is fairly vague anyway; most resources I find consider /r/ and /l/ to be liquids, but not /w/ or /ʍ/.

[Richard W]

Why isn't English has another voiceless liquid?

Many linguists analyze this [ʍ] as a combination of two phonemes, /hw/. In any case, there is a similar consonant [ç] as in huge, which similarly results from a combination /hj/. The notion of "liquid" is fairly vague anyway; most resources I find consider /r/ and /l/ to be liquids, but not /w/ or /ʍ/.

Old English did have a series of /h/ + resonants, or voiceless resonants; /ʍ/ is the sole survivor. I suspect it's been stabilised by the alternations [xw] ~ [hw] ~ [ʍ]. Treating /hj/ as a consonant cluster misses the fact that the /j/ is strongly associated with the following vowel - treating the 'y' in 'Hyundai' as a consonant is a lost cause in English.

[bradrn]

This came up in a discussion of Salishan orthography in the Conlang Random Thread, but I was urged to copy it over here. So:

That's a standard Salishan orthography; it only occurs in <t̓ᶿ> because there's no /tθ/ in the language, only /tθ’/. The Salishan language with the actually weird (aka stupid) orthography is Saanish (SENĆOŦEN), which (almost) only uses capital letters.

Oh yes, I completely forgot about Saanich! That has to be the weirdest Latin-script orthography I know of! For those who aren’t acquainted with the sheer bizarreness (is that a word?) of Saanich orthography (a.k.a. SENĆOŦEN), here are some details:

• All capital letters, except <-s> for some reason
• Stroked letters ȺȻꝀȽŦȾ (yes, T is stroked two different ways!)
• Comma for glottal stop (why? good question)
• Acute accent used with A/Á, C/Ć, K/Ḱ, S/Ś for no apparent reason (e.g. A and Á are the same, except the latter is used after post-velar consonants (what sort of language distinguishes palatal, pre- and postvelar?)) EDIT: palatal/pre/postvelar turns out to be the Americanist terminology for palatal/velar/uvular, which is indeed somewhat common.

Resulting in the following easy-to-read text:

SI,SI,OB BE₭OȻBIX̲ ,UQEȾ. ,ESZUW̲IL ELQE,. ,ESTOLX ELQE, ESDUQUD ,ESXEĆBID ȽṮUBEX̲ ELQE, ŚÍISȽ ,ÁL,ÁLŦ.

(That weird triangle X thing should actually be X with line below.)

Oh, and according to Wikipedia, Saanich uses regular metathesis for aspect. All in all, it makes the rest of Salishan look positively sane… which is an impressive achievement. (I do wonder sometimes why Salishan got all the crazy stuff… extreme polysynthesis, weird orthography, nounlessness, occasional vowellessness…)

[Zaarin]

Using a comma for the glottal stop is even worse than Tlingit's decision to use a period.

[bradrn]

Using a comma for the glottal stop is even worse than Tlingit's decision to use a period.

Well, it looks like there are actually three separate orthographies, all of which use period for the glottal stop! One orthography using it is bad enough, but how other people thought it was an idea good enough to copy is beyond me.

On the other hand, using a period is at least somewhat logical, unlike using a comma. I just wonder how they separate their sentences…

(Of course, then there’s Squamish, with its use of 7 for glottal stop. Let’s not talk about that one please.)

[Whimemsz]

Using a comma for the glottal stop is even worse than Tlingit's decision to use a period. :shock:

Well, it looks like there are actually three separate orthographies, all of which use period for the glottal stop! One orthography using it is bad enough, but how other people thought it was an idea good enough to copy is beyond me.

On the other hand, using a period is at least somewhat logical, unlike using a comma. I just wonder how they separate their sentences…

(Of course, then there’s Squamish, with its use of 7 for glottal stop. Let’s not talk about that one please.)

I don't see what's bad about that, it's easy to see and distinguish from punctuation marks, and looks like a glottal stop character.

[bradrn]

I don't see what's bad about that, it's easy to see and distinguish from punctuation marks, and looks like a glottal stop character.

(I assume you’re talking about Squamish here.)

There isn’t anything bad about that per se, it’s just that it’s a bit weird to use a numeral in the middle of a word as if it’s a letter. At least many of the Chinese romanization systems (which often use numerals for tones) accept that a numeral isn’t really the same as a letter, and try to distinguish it by e.g. keeping it at the end of a syllable, or making it a superscript.

And if we’re talking about using numerals for tones, I have got to mention the Zhuang 1957 orthography. I’m not quite sure what happened there, but whoever created it may not have been entirely sane. See, they heard that numerals were a good way of representing tones, but they didn’t like the idea of mixing letters and numbers. So they — wait for it — made typographical variants of each number to use specifically as tone letters! That is, they used ƨзчƽƅ (capitals ƧЗЧƼƄ) instead of 23456. The effect is somewhat pretty:

Bouч bouч ma dəŋƨ laзƃɯn couƅ miƨ cɯyouƨ, cinƅyenƨ cəuƽ genƨli bouчbouч biŋƨdəŋз. Gyɵŋƽ vunƨ miƨ liзsiŋ cəuƽ lieŋƨsim, ɯŋdaŋ daiƅ gyɵŋƽ de lumз beiчnueŋч ityieŋƅ.

You can definitely see where the tones are, and what they are, but it’s a bit less direct than writing something like this:

Bou4 bou4 ma dəŋ2 la3ƃɯn cou6 mi2 cɯyou2, cin6yen2 cəu5 gen2li bou4bou4 biŋ2dəŋ3. Gyɵŋ5 vun2 mi2 li3siŋ cəu5 lieŋ2sim, ɯŋdaŋ dai6 gyɵŋ5 de lum3 bei4nueŋ4 ityieŋ6.

At least it’s better than the current Zhuang orthography, though. When they got rid of the weird tone letters, they decided to copy Hmong and replace them with normal letters. So the current situation with both Hmong and Zhuang is that an arbitrary subset of letters represents tones, without any external indication of this except memorisation. So you get words like (in Zhuang) mwngz /mɯŋ˧˩/, hwnj /hɯn˥/, max /maː˦˨/ where the last letter represents a tone.

[zompist]

And if we’re talking about using numerals for tones, I have got to mention the Zhuang 1957 orthography. I’m not quite sure what happened there, but whoever created it may not have been entirely sane. See, they heard that numerals were a good way of representing tones, but they didn’t like the idea of mixing letters and numbers. So they — wait for it — made typographical variants of each number to use specifically as tone letters! That is, they used ƨзчƽƅ (capitals ƧЗЧƼƄ) instead of 23456. The effect is somewhat pretty:

Bouч bouч ma dəŋƨ laзƃɯn couƅ miƨ cɯyouƨ, cinƅyenƨ cəuƽ genƨli bouчbouч biŋƨdəŋз. Gyɵŋƽ vunƨ miƨ liзsiŋ cəuƽ lieŋƨsim, ɯŋdaŋ daiƅ gyɵŋƽ de lumз beiчnueŋч ityieŋƅ.

You can definitely see where the tones are, and what they are, but it’s a bit less direct than writing something like this:

Bou4 bou4 ma dəŋ2 la3ƃɯn couƅ mi2 cɯyou2, cinƅyen2 cəu5 gen2li bou4bou4 biŋ2dəŋ3. Gyɵŋ5 vun2 mi2 li3siŋ cəu5 lieŋ2sim, ɯŋdaŋ daiƅ gyɵŋ5 de lum3 bei4nueŋ4 ityieŋƅ.

That's actually pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing that, I had never seen it. My first choice for tones is diacritics that match the tone contour, as in pinyin, but these would be a close second. Regular numerals stand out a lot. That's not entirely bad, as syllables are clearly separated, but I like the way the 1957 numerals fit in with normal letters.

[bradrn]

That's actually pretty awesome! Thanks for sharing that, I had never seen it.

You’re welcome! There’s a lot of strange romanization systems out there…

My first choice for tones is diacritics that match the tone contour, as in pinyin, but these would be a close second. Regular numerals stand out a lot. That's not entirely bad, as syllables are clearly separated, but I like the way the 1957 numerals fit in with normal letters.

That pretty much sums up by feelings about this as well. I did originally try to include something like this statement in my post, but I couldn’t find a way to express it as concisely as you did.

However, my feelings on this topic are a bit more extreme. I really like tone diacritics — they’re nicely mnemonic — and hate all the other systems in varying degrees. If I see a bunch of bou4ma1den2la3bum1cou6 (to take some random syllables), how do I know which tones 123456 are? Yes, I know I could memorise them, but it’s still harder to understand than a nice mnemonic bôumádènlǎbúmcőu where the symbols actually mean something. (And why does the font do that funny thing with ǎ?) Zhuang tone symbols have all the same disadvantages, but blend in with the text, which could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on your point of view. (I think it’s a disadvantage.) And the current Hmong and Zhuang orthographies, which as I mentioned in my previous post use letters which are otherwise unused instead of numbers, are worst — not only are they not mnemonic, they look exactly like regular letters.

The above systems have this to say for them, though: at least they’re not spelling-based. Spelling-based — what is that? Well, it’s where you respell all the vowels to denote the tones. Now, consider the number of finals in Mandarin Chinese… I would try to summarise it, but I can’t, so here’s a quote from the Wikipedia page for Gwoyeu Romatzyh:

Wherever possible GR indicates tones 2, 3 and 4 by respelling the basic T1 form of the syllable, replacing a vowel with another having a similar sound (i with y, for example, or u with w). But this concise procedure cannot be applied in every case, since the syllable may not contain a suitable vowel for modification. In such cases a letter (r or h) is added or inserted instead. The precise rule to be followed in any specific case is determined by the rules given below.

[…]

A colour-coded rule of thumb is given below for each tone […] Each rule of thumb is then amplified by a comprehensive set of rules for that tone. These codes are used in the rules:

• V = a vowel
• NV = a non-vowel (either a consonant or zero in the case of an initial vowel)
• ⇏ = "but avoid forming [the specified combination]"

Pinyin equivalents are given in brackets after each set of examples. […]

Tone 1: basic form
* Initial sonorants (l-/m-/n-/r-): insert -h- as second letter. rheng, mha (rēng, mā)
* Otherwise use the basic form.

Tone 2: i/u → y/w; or add -r
* Initial sonorants: use basic form. reng, ma (réng, má)
* NVi → NVy ( + -i if final). chyng, chyan, yng, yan, pyi (qíng, qián, yíng, yán, pí)
* NVu → NVw ( + -u if final). chwan, wang, hwo, chwu (chuán, wáng, huó, chú)
* Otherwise add r to vowel or [[diphthong]]. charng, bair (cháng, bái)

Tone 3: i/u → e/o; or double vowel
* Vi or iV → Ve or eV (⇏ee). chean, bae, sheau (qiǎn, bǎi, xiǎo), but not gee
* Vu or uV → Vo or oV (⇏oo). doan, dao, shoei (duǎn, dǎo, shuǐ), but not hoo
* When both i and u can be found, only the first one changes, i.e. jeau, goai, sheu (jiǎo, guǎi, xǔ), not jeao, goae, sheo
* For basic forms starting with i-/u-, change the starting i-/u- to e-/o- and add initial y-/w-. yean, woo, yeu (yǎn, wǒ, yǔ)
* Otherwise double the (main) vowel. chiing, daa, geei, huoo, goou (qǐng, dǎ, gěi, huǒ, gǒu)

Tone 4: change/double final letter; or add -h
* Vi → Vy. day, suey (dài, suì)
* Vu → Vw (⇏iw). daw, gow (dào, gòu), but not chiw
* -n → -nn. duann (duàn)
* -l → -ll. ell (èr)
* -ng → -nq. binq (bìng)
* Otherwise add h. dah, chiuh, dih (dà, qù, dì)
* For basic forms starting with i-/u-, replace initial i-/u- with y-/w-, in addition to the necessary tonal change. yaw, wuh (yào, wù)

As far as I know, Gwoyeu Romatzyh is the only system to use spelling-based tone indication. That’s probably a good thing — the world doesn’t need more of this madness…

[akam chinjir]

My first choice for tones is diacritics that match the tone contour, as in pinyin

Though Mandarin is unusually suited to that approach, and really only if you think of its low tone in terms of the contour it gets when spoken in isolation. I mean, if you've just got a marked high tone, a macron is going to confuse a lot of people; and if you've just got marked high and low tones, the acute/grave system is probably as mnemonic as anything else you'd come up with. (Anyway it's won me over.)

[bradrn]

My first choice for tones is diacritics that match the tone contour, as in pinyin

Though Mandarin is unusually suited to that approach

Why do you think this is?

and really only if you think of its low tone in terms of the contour it gets when spoken in isolation.

This is true. But tone sandhi makes everything more difficult, and I think using the isolated form simplifies the romanization. But if you really want to consider it as a low tone, it would be easy to just use a different diacritic like a̱ instead of ǎ, and write words like Pu̱tōnghuà, Guóyu̱, fùyo̱u, li̱xìng instead of Pǔtōnghuà, Guóyǔ, fùyǒu, lǐxìng. (I actually quite like this version, now that I’ve tried it out!)

I mean, if you've just got a marked high tone, a macron is going to confuse a lot of people; and if you've just got marked high and low tones, the acute/grave system is probably as mnemonic as anything else you'd come up with. (Anyway it's won me over.)

This is of course true! I don’t think there’s any need to use the same diacritics for the same tones if they’re in different tone systems. Sort of like how you could use <ā>, <á>, <aa>, <a꞉> for /aː/, but often given the context only one or two choices make sense. (For more on this, see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=43&start=700#p15105 and the ensuing discussion.)