Project Mammoth Hunter - Help me make my first conlang

[quinterbeck]

Hardly any language distinguish [ɨ] and [ɯ]. Otherwise, just say [u], but force the lips to take shape of [i]. (The exact opposite process is used to form [y]). Despite the method of production, it's actually phonetically quite similar. I read that Acehnese associate their back unrounded vowel with German rounded vowel.

That's interesting. When I studied Chinese we were taught to pronounce [ɤ], and I was like "wtf this sounds almost completely like [ø] even though they're supposed to be total opposites!"

Acoustically, the rounded front vowels and the unfounded back vowels fall closer to the centre of the vowel space than their rounding counterparts (which effectively define the edge of the vowel space) and therefore sound less distinct than the cardinal vowels do. See the Acoustics section on the Wikipedia page

[Qwynegold]

Aha, I see.

How is your project going?

[Këkkytir]

Aha, I see.

How is your project going?

Slowly, but steadily :) Btw, sorry for disappearing for so long, real life things happened that ate up my time, so the project will proceed in a much slower pace.

I realized that I can't do anything reasonable without a solid proto-language, so now I'm focusing on it. I've decided on the exact phonetic inventory and syllable structure, and I'm working on the Swadesh list right now (I'll write about this when I find the time). I'm really bad at making up words, so I came up with the idea that certain sounds/phonetic properties could reflect certain general concepts. I think this can help me coining words and make the lexicon more realistic. Once I have the Swadesh list, I can come up with affixes and derive lots of new words from the stems.

[bradrn]

It’s great to hear you’re still working on this! I look forward to seeing what you’ve done when you post it here.

I realized that I can't do anything reasonable without a solid proto-language, so now I'm focusing on it. I've decided on the exact phonetic inventory and syllable structure, and I'm working on the Swadesh list right now (I'll write about this when I find the time).

This is exactly what I do as well! Although I would note that every time I try, I end up making the protolanguage so complicated that I never end up making any descencents… make sure you don’t fall into that trap!

(And by the way, the Swadesh list probably isn’t the best list to be working from. I can’t remember where I first saw this criticism, but it has many words which may not be relevant for a conlang (e.g. ‘louse’) and doesn’t include many other important words (e.g. ‘run’). But I will admit that I don’t have any better lists.)

I'm really bad at making up words, so I came up with the idea that certain sounds/phonetic properties could reflect certain general concepts. I think this can help me coining words and make the lexicon more realistic.

I’m not sure this is realistic at all. Generally speaking, this sort of rigid sound-meaning correspondence doesn’t occur much in natlangs (apart from some generic concepts like the bouba/kiki effect). When it does occur, it usually comes from previous compounds which have been transformed through sound change.

On the other hand, if you find that this is the best method you have for creating new words, then you don’t have to stop doing this. It should be fine as long as you don’t actually put something in your grammar like ‘all words with /ɯ/ in them relate to physical actions’.

Once I have the Swadesh list, I can come up with affixes and derive lots of new words from the stems.

This is definitely a good method. Along the same lines, in his Conlanger’s Lexipedia, zompist recommended using compounding for the same purpose. Since your goal is to make all the words on the Swadesh list, you may find compounding more useful than affixing in your case, since you don’t have to create any new morphemes to be able to use compounding.

[akam chinjir]

This is exactly what I do as well! Although I would note that every time I try, I end up making the protolanguage so complicated that I never end up making any descencents… make sure you don’t fall into that trap!

Me too, I'm not sure I've ever made substantial progress on anything that wasn't primarily supposed to be a protolanguage, or even just a source for borrowed vocabulary.

[Këkkytir]

It’s great to hear you’re still working on this! I look forward to seeing what you’ve done when you post it here.

I realized that I can't do anything reasonable without a solid proto-language, so now I'm focusing on it. I've decided on the exact phonetic inventory and syllable structure, and I'm working on the Swadesh list right now (I'll write about this when I find the time).

This is exactly what I do as well! Although I would note that every time I try, I end up making the protolanguage so complicated that I never end up making any descencents… make sure you don’t fall into that trap!

Thanks! I'll try not to make such a mistake :)

(And by the way, the Swadesh list probably isn’t the best list to be working from. I can’t remember where I first saw this criticism, but it has many words which may not be relevant for a conlang (e.g. ‘louse’) and doesn’t include many other important words (e.g. ‘run’). But I will admit that I don’t have any better lists.)

I agree. That's why I'm working from my own revised "Swadesh list" (I also included most of the LCK's additions). It's not a big thing, really, but I think it'll be sufficient for basic communication purposes.

I'm really bad at making up words, so I came up with the idea that certain sounds/phonetic properties could reflect certain general concepts. I think this can help me coining words and make the lexicon more realistic.

I’m not sure this is realistic at all. Generally speaking, this sort of rigid sound-meaning correspondence doesn’t occur much in natlangs (apart from some generic concepts like the bouba/kiki effect). When it does occur, it usually comes from previous compounds which have been transformed through sound change.

On the other hand, if you find that this is the best method you have for creating new words, then you don’t have to stop doing this. It should be fine as long as you don’t actually put something in your grammar like ‘all words with /ɯ/ in them relate to physical actions’.

Well, there certainly are traps to watch out for, so I'm trying to make this system as flexible and subtle as possible, so that it doesn't hurt the aesthetics of the language. There are good examples for this pattern in hungarian and, as you said, it usually happens when a widespread older root is obscured by sound changes and divergence in meaning.

Once I have the Swadesh list, I can come up with affixes and derive lots of new words from the stems.

This is definitely a good method. Along the same lines, in his Conlanger’s Lexipedia, zompist recommended using compounding for the same purpose. Since your goal is to make all the words on the Swadesh list, you may find compounding more useful than affixing in your case, since you don’t have to create any new morphemes to be able to use compounding.

That's a great advice! I had no idea how useful compounding can be at the beginning. It'll certainly make things much easier for me.

[bradrn]

Once I have the Swadesh list, I can come up with affixes and derive lots of new words from the stems.

This is definitely a good method. Along the same lines, in his Conlanger’s Lexipedia, zompist recommended using compounding for the same purpose. Since your goal is to make all the words on the Swadesh list, you may find compounding more useful than affixing in your case, since you don’t have to create any new morphemes to be able to use compounding.

That's a great advice! I had no idea how useful compounding can be at the beginning. It'll certainly make things much easier for me.

Just a note on this: if you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you read the Lexipedia. It has so much useful information on compounding and other methods of word-formation, and this is incredibly useful for building up the words of a language.

[Bob]

Hello everyone,

I'm a beginner conlanger and I'm looking for some help with my first conlang. If you're interested, you can find the details below.


Kilikili

So, how far did you end up getting with this? Is there some website now where we can see the finished project? Want any help from me? I'm also working on a caveman conlang right now, the Pakuni dinosaur conlang.

[Këkkytir]

Hello everyone,

I'm a beginner conlanger and I'm looking for some help with my first conlang. If you're interested, you can find the details below.


Kilikili

So, how far did you end up getting with this? Is there some website now where we can see the finished project? Want any help from me? I'm also working on a caveman conlang right now, the Pakuni dinosaur conlang.

Not too far, unfortunately, but at least the project is still going. I won't be able to do much until the end of April, but then I hope I can finish the extended Swadesh list. There is no website for the project, you can read everything here, in this topic.

A caveman conlang sounds great! It seems like we have similar goals with our respective conlangs, so there'll be lots of common topics we can discuss, if you'd like to. But postpone that until April.

I've got a question you can probably help me with: how can I make a conlang appear archaic? My naive idea was a very simple grammar (maybe even lacking some basic features) compensated with the use of idioms and figurative language. Plus words that describe the natural environment, flora and fauna in detail. I also intend to use today's siberian languages as inspiration (both phonetically and grammatically; you can read my ideas on the phonetic inventory above).

[Pabappa]

Im not sure there's a good way to make a language seem archaic or close to nature without requiring the reader to learn the whole language. you could have 500 words for different types of berries, and no word for cellphone or computer, but to the average reader, those words will all look the same anyway.

[bradrn]

I've got a question you can probably help me with: how can I make a conlang appear archaic? My naive idea was a very simple grammar (maybe even lacking some basic features) compensated with the use of idioms and figurative language. Plus words that describe the natural environment, flora and fauna in detail. I also intend to use today's siberian languages as inspiration (both phonetically and grammatically; you can read my ideas on the phonetic inventory above).

I would say that there’s no such thing as an ‘archaic’ or ‘primitive’ language: the languages spoken thousands of years ago were almost certainly as complex as the languages which are spoken today. (In fact, some of the most complex languages in existence are spoken by some of the most ‘primitive’ societies, to the extent that the term is appropriate: e.g. the phonology of Khoisan languages, the morphology of Pacific Northwest languages, the semantics of Dyirbal, the morphosyntax of various Amazonian languages etc.) The only obvious difference I can think of is in the lexicon, which — as you have noticed — will probably focus on terms most relevant to your society.

[Bob]

...

I've got a question you can probably help me with: how can I make a conlang appear archaic?

...

Oh, I only get on here once a year maybe for a few months or less, so I might not be on here by April. So just post your stuff, tag me and private message me, and give me a year or two.

Archaic? Well, one thing about me is that my conlanging style seems unique.

Oh, you should do whatever you want, conlangs to me are just about doing some reading you otherwise would not do and then making some great thing. Conlanging is a fickle friend, though: I've put a solid 14 years into it and produce masterpieces at the drop of a hat, now. But because I have my own style, despite me trying to explain my conlangs, few seem to like them.

14 years! I even have a BA in Linguistics from a top American university, Michigan State University. And I've lived many years living and working overseas, from urban to rural locations.

Yet I continue. Though usually once every one or two months for a few hours, these years. But then for a couple months each year especially, recently, as my main study thing.

Any idea you'd have would sound good to me. Suit yourself. Pakuni in the tv show was a lot like what you describe and then most of Edgar Rice Burroughs' pseudo-conlangs are like this, the Tarzan one and the At the Earth's Core ones.

I've expanded out Pakuni so it's more like the languages we know for grammar and vocabulary, though. Where it's "caveman" or hominid is more in reflecting hunter-gatherer and ethnographic texts like Native American myths that talk about the old times.

I want to do more with the Siberian Languages but haven't gotten to yet. I've been doing some these years with Mongolian, Manchu, Korean, and Japanese from every era and on every level, though.

Well, briefly, the challenge of making a language from before writing is that writing began only about 2500 BC and they only wrote about certain things and didn't explain everything. When I work on Pakuni, I draw from 10 or more years of unique research into the world's oldest writings and their writing systems as compared with readings into the archaeology of prehistoric humans and or hominids. I'm an expert on all 48 or so known logographic writing systems, maybe the world's first and only, at least in some respects. And they're also the oldest writing systems of the world.

But just get a book or two and work that into your conlang and that will be enough. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want. Just as long as it's not exactly like English, it's a conlang. A language is such a complex thing, it's up to you how much you want to put into it. It seems a lot of people on this zompist bboard like to make huge conlangs that are very fleshed out. I make very short ones with a few sample sentences, or do sizeable expansions of what are likewise simple conlangs made for famous movies, tv, or books.

...

There's also academic literature or informal discussion about what language might have been like way back when. I've heard a little bit of it. It's all very speculative and maybe totally wrong.

...

Another thing I do with Pakuni is look at what words are short and common in natural languages, from across all time and places, and then ask myself what these words would be for Pakuni. So I've made short words for various sorts of stone tools. ( Even though the show implied most of the time that they only had sharp sticks. But I expand the concept of the language to apply to multiple physical cultures from hominid and human prehistory, just to give me more to work with. )

...

But there's also a literature, maybe, or at least informal discussion among scientists regarding rare linguistic typological features today that might have been more common in the past. Like Ergativity. Then there's also the academic literature on animal languages.

Me, though, I think animals and plants actually have languages just like us but that it is impossible for us to decipher them. So I think whale songs and bird songs are the tip of the iceberg. So I don't think humans invented languages. But I'm not really into it so maybe my ideas here are goofy. Note that I do a lot with prehistory but my specialization is the comparative study of logographic writing systems. So "animal language" is a bit removed from that. Did you read "Micro" by Michael Crichton? That book seems to imply that animals are more like humans than we usually think.

One of my specialties is actually decipherment and the comparative study of decipherment. Of languages and also somewhat of codes.

I specialize even in the study of things that people don't know or can't know. I suspect a lot of the things we think about things we can't know or can't know much are wrong. Like if people who have certain brain damage know what's going on or how much really young children understand and how. Or what all the writings were like that will never be found or might yet be found. And this has been very useful and insightful research of mine.

[Bob]

...

I've got a question you can probably help me with: how can I make a conlang appear archaic?

...

So I'm an expert on Human and Hominid Prehistory, actually, but a non-professional one with a BA in Linguistics and years of intense research without publication.

And my ideas contrast a lot with what's in the academic literature.

...

Myths and folklore contain traditions of uncertain but sometimes probably vast antiquity regarding humans of the past. I value these a lot.

Otherwise, I think humans before 2,500 BC were a lot like us, mostly, but also not like us.

The world of most of the past, maybe before 1500 AD, was just one big jungle and forest filled with tons of very large and unfriendly wild animals. The oldest writings reflect this. In many ways, the world we know is very very different.

World population was low and population densities were also low. Archaeologists say that generally prehistory was filled with groups of maybe 10 people each, most of the time, outside of yearly festival gatherings, until agriculture and civilization. They ate better than us and had much more free time.

...

Then the other big thing to know about prehistory is that we have evidence from the earliest writings starting about 2500 BC and then from as recent as myths told by Native Americans in the 1920s, we have evidence that in prehistory there was "mythic thinking". Where myths and folklore match up for worldview approaches between, say, Native Americans and Sumerians probably is a reflection of what worldviews were like in 20,000 BC. And then compare Australian Aboriginal myths with those of Africa and guess how far back that might take you.

The problem with this is that myths are hard to understand well without extensive study. I've done that but it's taken many years and a lot of good fortune. And the people that write books about it, even professional scholars? They often get it really wrong because they lack a dedication to comparative anthropology and sufficient wide-reading and university- and self- training.

So I can't convey that in a few sentences. I try in the writings I put on my websites and in my facebook posts to convey what I find in the old myths.

But if I could do a little toward it, I would say that the old myths portray the whole world as known to their ancient peoples, and their ancestors, in analogies and symbols. Everything is just all wrapped together. And there's also "random" elements like inspirations from dreams and "visions". To start to untangle it, then, you need to read a ton of ethnography and a ton of myths and all sorts of things like this. "What might this part of the myth be talking about?"

All the interpersonal and community problems we had today, they had back then, but maybe paid a lot more attention to, and drew on traditions of doing so. They also paid a ton more attention to the vast jungle world around them and how all nature changed during the course of the year, the decade, the century, the millenia, etc. See, this is how they got their food, avoided getting bitten by poisonous animals, or eaten by giant monsters, and attented to the loftier things of existence.

And their average life expectancy is a thing of great speculation. But if I had to present a serious guess, I would say that on average humans and hominids lasted until about 80. But maybe all the ancient writings are influenced by the effects of agriculture or being written by the richest. A lot of Third World people today, though, live to about 30.

In Herodotus, clever and dear readers, hearers, he relates that the King of Egypt once received an oracle from the gods that he was to live only one more year. So, to defy the oracle he spent the next year, day and night, in hunting and merry-making with his friends, that the year might be as two years. Yet within a year, he died and the oracle was fulfilled.

I don't remember what I think was Herodotus' point but his work has a theme that oracles cannot be defied. Perhaps Herodotus implied that the King of Egypt there was being impious.

And the ancients are unanimous that it is not the long life, necessarily, but the good life to which we ought apply ourselves.

...

But then, when mythologies are compared from all the furthest corners of the planet, what was human and or hominid thought like before that? And what variations might have existed? Only by vast and careful research can we merely speculate and hope to be able to esteem our speculations as we ought.

And there is much that can be known just from what is available in writing in the world's modern and historic languages. And more yet to be discovered through travel.

And still, the vast bulk of human and hominid thought and beliefs are just lost and irretrievable. Which makes surviving myths that much more the valueable, yet also misleading.

...

And the great Sphinx presiding over all this is actually Writing and its limitations and abilities. To study what is written and compare it with what might be reality, I have done much of this over the decades. It is a most necessary, yet rare, yet troublesome undertaking.

But to all who say that we'd all be better off without writing or that I have wasted my life in studying in-depth all 48 or so known logographic writing systems and their writings, or that ignorance really is bliss, I would say that they are quite wrong. "You get what you put in." The world should be so happy that I have done all this work for them and should want there always to be scholars of this topic.

But there still is the sobering thought that it is really only because of recent advances in technology and other things, probably, that anyone can study in-depth and make detailed mechanical comparisons of all known logographic writing systems. The Romans let Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Cuneiform sink into oblivion and the Chinese likewise had let Oracle Bone Script Chinese and Bronze Script Chinese sink into oblivion. And by the 500s AD, China had printing. And maybe no one will do similar studies as I have done or I will not see "my equal" in my lifetime. But I realized all this sort of thing might happen when I decided on this specialization as a scholar of language science, and I chose it anyway. I even likewise have ended up not yet going into a career in academia.

[Bob]

( Actually, at one point I think I say that I'm maybe the first and only person to study all 48 known logographic writing systems in-depth and compare them all. That was a mistake. Actually, I've studied a great many or most of them in-depth and used that in complex and unique comparisons. But not all. For example, about 6 I just recently discovered. And then maybe some of the other ones I haven't studied in that much depth, the previous 42. But I forget. ... Anyway, statements like that you have to account to me not thinking it all through enough or maybe not remembering everything exactly. There's professional scholars who have studied a few of them in some depth, and maybe done more. Still, a lot of things about my studies seems unprecedented to me, and I have combed the scholarly literature of even hundreds of years. [ And along those lines, the 1800s had a lot more neat things to say about comparative logographic writing system studies than afterwards. Though maybe also goofier and more wrong things. Enthusiasm. ] )

[Këkkytir]

Thanks for your insights and great advices, Bob! I wish you well with your Pakuni conlang project!

I'm impressed by how much you've achieved in the study of human history, languages and writing systems. I too believe that enthusiasm and devotion towards the subject (and of course, hard work) is an essential element in all great scientific results. I hope I, too, can become an expert in my respective field of study one day (which is, by the way, combinatorics).