Conlang Random Thread

[akam chinjir]

So at this point, I think I’m a bit stumped… Does anyone else have any ideas?

Matthew Gordon has both a book and a handbook chapter (with a free online draft) called "Syllable Weight," they're both about this stuff. One of the lessons is that stress assignment and minimal word constraints (as well as tone linking and poetic metre) can be sensitive to different sorts of syllable weight. Like, a coda fricative might count for some purposes, but not for others. I don't remember the details, but it's possible this could solve your problem very cleanly.

Another thing you could think about is having word-final consonants be extrasyllabic (that is, not part of a syllable). That would help ensure that a word final CVC syllable wouldn't attract stress; but I'm not sure if it would be reasonable to let an extrasyllabic consonant count towards your minimal word constraint (and don't remember if Gordon talks about that issue).

[bradrn]

So at this point, I think I’m a bit stumped… Does anyone else have any ideas?

Matthew Gordon has both a book and a handbook chapter (with a free online draft) called "Syllable Weight," they're both about this stuff.

Thanks! I’ll read through those then, if I manage to get access. (Theoretically, Cambridge lets my university get access to its documents, but I haven’t yet managed to do it successfully.)

EDIT: Somehow completely missed your link to the free online draft, so I’ll just use that if I need to. But yep, I tried using Cambridge, and sure enough it gave me an error when I tried to log in through my university, so that option won’t work.

One of the lessons is that stress assignment and minimal word constraints (as well as tone linking and poetic metre) can be sensitive to different sorts of syllable weight. Like, a coda fricative might count for some purposes, but not for others. I don't remember the details, but it's possible this could solve your problem very cleanly.

I did briefly wonder if I could do this, but I immediately dismissed it as being completely implausible. It would amazing if I this turns out to be attested though — it would be pretty much exactly what I need!

Another thing you could think about is having word-final consonants be extrasyllabic (that is, not part of a syllable). That would help ensure that a word final CVC syllable wouldn't attract stress; but I'm not sure if it would be reasonable to let an extrasyllabic consonant count towards your minimal word constraint (and don't remember if Gordon talks about that issue).

I’ve heard of syllables being extrametrical, but not individual phonemes. If your other suggestion doesn’t work out, I’ll definitely consider doing this.

[Imralu]

Has anyone ever posted a sentence from their conlang into Google translate and see what language it guesses it to be?

Zwida i yu wa i lu.
It is important that you be there.
→ Hawaiian (WTF!? L and w are the only consonants there that are in Hawaiian!)
No translation suggested.

I ndudi yu ha wa i lu.
It doesn't matter if you're there (or not).
→ Hawaiian
Translation given: I drove it yu ha wa i lu.

EDIT: Oops, that's bad my conlang. Here's a correct sentence:

Ndudi e yu ha wa i lu.
It doesn't matter if you're there (or not).
→ Hawaiian
Translation given: Let's do it again.

Ma i zye zyu na i he bye.
Why should I leave?
→ Haitian Creole
No translation suggested.

Hide i mba u nyu i hugo zyi huzye nga.
That's the house that my uncle owns.
→ Chichewa
Translation given: This is a great idea for you.

Na i lwe u lu mba zyi lazye wo.
I sleep in your mother's house.
→ Xhosa
Translation given: Are you aware of this issue?

Na i mu zyu wa i le nga.
I know that you love me
→ Hawaiian ... again!?
Translation given: It was mu zyu wa in the na.
Because as we all know, nga is the Hawaiian word for na!

So, I have learnt some Hawaiian: Nga ndudi means "Na drove it."

[bradrn]

So at this point, I think I’m a bit stumped… Does anyone else have any ideas?

Matthew Gordon has both a book and a handbook chapter (with a free online draft) called "Syllable Weight," they're both about this stuff.

Thanks! I’ll read through those then, if I manage to get access. (Theoretically, Cambridge lets my university get access to its documents, but I haven’t yet managed to do it successfully.)

EDIT: Somehow completely missed your link to the free online draft, so I’ll just use that if I need to. But yep, I tried using Cambridge, and sure enough it gave me an error when I tried to log in through my university, so that option won’t work.

One of the lessons is that stress assignment and minimal word constraints (as well as tone linking and poetic metre) can be sensitive to different sorts of syllable weight. Like, a coda fricative might count for some purposes, but not for others. I don't remember the details, but it's possible this could solve your problem very cleanly.

I did briefly wonder if I could do this, but I immediately dismissed it as being completely implausible. It would amazing if I this turns out to be attested though — it would be pretty much exactly what I need!

I eventually managed to find a copy of that Syllable Weight book, and it turns out that what I want is not only attested but actually relatively common! Certainly, in the sample of languages Gordon gives, I easily managed to find several languages (Aguacatec, Aleut, Buriat, Huasteco, Hupa, Iraqw, Karok, Khalkha, Koasati…) which use a ‘CVV(C) heavy’ criterion for stress, but a ‘CVC and CVV(C) heavy’ criterion for minimal word size. In fact, this is not only allowed, but actually expected given the rest of my conlang’s phonology: most consonants are obstruents, all of which are allowed in the coda, which according to Gordon is very highly correlated with a ‘CVV(C) heavy’ criterion for stress, and additionally, in his sample it is very common for weight requirements to disagree between stress and minimal word requirements, with minimal word requirements very often taking codas into account.

So, putting it all together, here’s what I have of my Phonotactics and Stress sections in my grammar so far:

Phonotactics

All syllables have a CV(C) structure. Any consonant, including the glottal stop, may occur in either the onset or coda, and any vowel may occur in the nucleus. Additionally, all (phonological) words must minimally have a CVC or CVː structure; any (grammatical) words which are smaller occur as clitics attached to the preceding or following word.

Stress

Stress is assigned regularly to one of the first two syllables of a word, based on weight criteria. If one of the first two syllables of a word has a long vowel, then that syllable is stressed; otherwise, the first syllable of the word is stressed. Clitics at the beginning of a word are extrametrical, i.e. they are ignored when determining stress.

Does this look plausible?

(Admittedly, it does look a little bare, but I’m not quite sure what else I could possibly include…)

[bradrn]

Has anyone ever posted a sentence from their conlang into Google translate and see what language it guesses it to be?

I already tried this with my most developed conlang last time this was posted, but I thought I might try again with some of my other conlangs.

Firstly, an older conlang:

Kaqexa maq ansü gu cähüs. Xat kimisin yäcqüpqexa. Amasqexa qewyem siwyem na ansü cekyem en. Qew cek itkaqesi.

Based on the diacritics and overall look, I guessed that it would infer Turkish. And indeed I was almost correct: it decided it was Azerbaijani. (It gave the ‘translation’ The letter is a joke. for Xat kimisin yäcqüpqexa. Real meaning: ‘It was me who cut the bush.’) Interestingly enough though, when I typed in the last sentence, it suddenly decided to switch to Kurdish (Kurmanji) instead.

Now, my current conlang:

Methaŋ qetlaag wiilets bal. Metshulh bey suqeg ndil? Tlii ndeqis ŋal suqeg bal. Ndil bey bal lhiise? Thaŋ qaŋeth fawetl.

Google Translate clearly had absolutely no idea what to do with this one: as I typed, it vacillated between Arabic, Dutch, Gujurati, Xhosa, Arabic (again), Turkish, and finally Arabic. And, each time it switched to Arabic, it ‘helpfully’ put the textbox in RTL mode. It didn’t even bother trying to find a translation for this one, although every now and again it gave a few words — who knew that bal was Turkish for ‘honey’?

Finally, a very old one — the oldest fully-developed conlang for which I have a sample text:

Vepolah zi “Vatipola tole nag vati-iula pondoni”. Vefaya luy polah lezi.

As I type it in, Google tells me it’s Chinese (translation: VE spicy children "v ATI spicy), before guessing Slovenian, Hindi, Croatian, Chichewa and finally ending in Croatian again.

As it turns out, I also found a slightly younger conlang with a bit more text, so let’s try that while I’m at it:

Žogin’gonve hošole ekogonve. Sen abo belnan. Leki ilak goš ika eniznan. Zemiyka eniznan. Žogindeyve hošole ekodeyve. Za akole ablaegonan, nekole ablakogo. Le na kaliyahgo.

I’m guessing that Google Translate will guess some Slavic language, based on the diacritics. Let’s check… Yep, it says Slovenian when I start typing. But then it says Finnish, then Hindi, and then Croatian for most of the text, before finishing by telling me it’s Kurdish (Kurmanji).

[Raphael]

In one of my naming languages, "kirg" means "hand", and "zi-" is a plural prefix, but I haven't got a word for "human" (or, more accurately, "member of the species to which the speakers of the language belong") yet. Would it be plausible to use "zikírg" as the singular of "human", and "zizikírg" or maybe "zizkírg" as the plural of "human"?

[Raphael]

Unrelated to my previous post - since I only have rudimentary naming languages, I can't really play the current game, but I tried my one short simple sentence

Shúkrishóht trechichichízárp plek

and Google Translate left the words Shúkrishóht trechichichízárp unchanged, but "recognized" plek as Dutch for place.

The sentence really means "The Spirit of Wisdom created the World (literally, the "hundred hundred hundred places") in an act of pottery." The word "plek", however, does not mean "place"; it's the completed past action prefix "pl-" and "ek", "to potter/do pottery".

(In modern times, "Chichichízárp" has been shortened to "Chízárp".)

[Yalensky]

It's always fun to play the Google Translate game. I tried my translation of Schleicher's fable into Calintese (which begins Máfis raùccosgo. Heyéa craùrmava máfi arìtea rauccún, xi é bièdilei ilèi treàulá, é nóelei ilèi nostá, égo nóelei amattú grieccìleigo..) and Google Translate called it Corsican. It gave up on translating anything though, except for the first two words which were translated as "more hoarse". The word corresponding to "hoarse" is indeed "horse"--it came so close!

Putting in only the first line of the translation gets Portuguese instead of Corsican and "Raffish mafis" instead of "more hoarse".

[din]

So, out of curiosity, I just put the first sentence of a little story I wrote in my conlang Tormiott into Google Translate.

It thought it was Bengali, and translated the entire thing (even though I'm quite sure none of these words mean anything to anyone who speaks Bengali):

Tormiott:
Sca somarsim nigir, stach littir liamar nach lima argair melis, porh sieiadamar cantarhian—porh ogid panteio cgoponoddol edgon ma na me uerancua.

"Bengali" according to Google:
If you do not like it, you will not be able to read it.

What it actually says:
On a warm summer's day, a young man lay down in the grass, looking up at the sky, trying to forget about his work, trying to take a break from building his brother’s house.

[WeepingElf]

Charming.

[Raphael]

Would it be plausible for a language to have onomatopoeic words for things with which the ancestors of the speakers of that form of that language have been familiar for a long time before the language got that form?

I'm asking because two of my naming languages have onomatopoeic words for "rain", and one has an onomatopoeic word for "drum". A while after I came up with that, I started thinking

'That's nonsense! People might have onomatopoeic words for a concept as universal and independent of location and technology as "rain" at a point in their history when they're just evolving language and coming up with words for things for the first time, but not many thousands of years afterwards! Similarly, people might use an onomatopoeic word for "drum" for a while after they've invented the drum, but not much later! People who've used language for a long time will only coin onomatopoeic words for things that are new to them, like an animal that lives in an area to which they have just migrated!'

So, do my worries make sense?

[bradrn]

Would it be plausible for a language to have onomatopoeic words for things with which the ancestors of the speakers of that form of that language have been familiar for a long time before the language got that form?

I'm asking because two of my naming languages have onomatopoeic words for "rain", and one has an onomatopoeic word for "drum". A while after I came up with that, I started thinking

'That's nonsense! People might have onomatopoeic words for a concept as universal and independent of location and technology as "rain" at a point in their history when they're just evolving language and coming up with words for things for the first time, but not many thousands of years afterwards! Similarly, people might use an onomatopoeic word for "drum" for a while after they've invented the drum, but not much later! People who've used language for a long time will only coin onomatopoeic words for things that are new to them, like an animal that lives in an area to which they have just migrated!'

So, do my worries make sense?

I am admittedly far from knowledgeable from this area, but that doesn’t sound too implausible to me. Remember, practically all languages have some variant of mama for ‘mother’, and baba for ‘father’ (although they occasionally get reversed).

[Pabappa]

There might be a language out there somewhere in which the inherited word for rain fell together with something less polite, maybe a term for private parts, and then the word for rain got replaced by a word similar to "splish". So it *could* happen, but I suspect even in such a situation, a more likely replacement would be some other water-related word, not necessarily an onomatopoeic one. Or maybe a word that arises naturally becomes more prominent because it just happens to sound wet .... I've done this with /pəs/ for "spring" which turns into a generic word for water in many descendant languages.

I also technically used an onomatopoeia for raindrop too ... not that you'd know, though, because at the time I coined the word I felt that raindrops sounded like /dlit/ ... and the word transforms into /dʷis/ to fit the phonotactics of the language.

[Nortaneous]

Would it be plausible for a language to have onomatopoeic words for things with which the ancestors of the speakers of that form of that language have been familiar for a long time before the language got that form?

I'm asking because two of my naming languages have onomatopoeic words for "rain", and one has an onomatopoeic word for "drum". A while after I came up with that, I started thinking

'That's nonsense! People might have onomatopoeic words for a concept as universal and independent of location and technology as "rain" at a point in their history when they're just evolving language and coming up with words for things for the first time, but not many thousands of years afterwards! Similarly, people might use an onomatopoeic word for "drum" for a while after they've invented the drum, but not much later! People who've used language for a long time will only coin onomatopoeic words for things that are new to them, like an animal that lives in an area to which they have just migrated!'

So, do my worries make sense?

the English word "drum" is a relatively recent loan. it's also possible that a word for "drum" could be a generalization of [onomatopoeic] "X type of drum" (and similarly for "rain")

[missals]

'That's nonsense! People might have onomatopoeic words for a concept as universal and independent of location and technology as "rain" at a point in their history when they're just evolving language and coming up with words for things for the first time, but not many thousands of years afterwards! Similarly, people might use an onomatopoeic word for "drum" for a while after they've invented the drum, but not much later! People who've used language for a long time will only coin onomatopoeic words for things that are new to them, like an animal that lives in an area to which they have just migrated!'

If we can find any non-creole language in the world today with onomatopoeic forms for basic lexicon, then this theory is incorrect.

And we do find such terms. Quite a few West African and Bantu languages have a seemingly onomatopoeic term for 'food' or 'eat' - Chichewa nyama, Efik unam, Esimbi ɛnyimi, Hausa nama, Lingala nyama, Swahili nyama, and Zulu inyama. Compare the imitative nom in English ("nom-nom-nom!").

There are also languages with seemingly onomatopoeic terms for common animals, like cats, e.g. Mandarin māo, Yaeyama mayaa, Shan mǎew, Lao mǣu, Ancient Egyptian mjw.

And there are definitely onomatopoeic terms for excretion in various languages, too, e.g. Vulgar Latin *pīssiō and its descendants. And there is at least one word for a musical instrument in English that's onomatopoeic in origin: tom-tom.

I think the degree to which a language will use imitative and onomatopoeic forms for lexical items will depend on the speakers' particular culture of language use and traditions of creative linguistic expression, and on how common and well-integrated ideophones are in the given language.

[Raphael]

Thank you for the feedback, everyone!

If we can find any non-creole language in the world today with onomatopoeic forms for basic lexicon, then this theory is incorrect.

And we do find such terms. Quite a few West African and Bantu languages have a seemingly onomatopoeic term for 'food' or 'eat' - Chichewa nyama, Efik unam, Esimbi ɛnyimi, Hausa nama, Lingala nyama, Swahili nyama, and Zulu inyama. Compare the imitative nom in English ("nom-nom-nom!").

There are also languages with seemingly onomatopoeic terms for common animals, like cats, e.g. Mandarin māo, Yaeyama mayaa, Shan mǎew, Lao mǣu, Ancient Egyptian mjw.

And there are definitely onomatopoeic terms for excretion in various languages, too, e.g. Vulgar Latin *pīssiō and its descendants. And there is at least one word for a musical instrument in English that's onomatopoeic in origin: tom-tom.

I think the degree to which a language will use imitative and onomatopoeic forms for lexical items will depend on the speakers' particular culture of language use and traditions of creative linguistic expression, and on how common and well-integrated ideophones are in the given language.

Ah, thank you, so I guess I can keep those words as they are.

[Richard W]

If we can find any non-creole language in the world today with onomatopoeic forms for basic lexicon, then this theory is incorrect.

And we do find such terms. Quite a few West African and Bantu languages have a seemingly onomatopoeic term for 'food' or 'eat' - Chichewa nyama, Efik unam, Esimbi ɛnyimi, Hausa nama, Lingala nyama, Swahili nyama, and Zulu inyama. Compare the imitative nom in English ("nom-nom-nom!").

That seems to be in the mama category. I can add Northern Thai mam mam 'din-dins'.

There are also languages with seemingly onomatopoeic terms for common animals, like cats, e.g. Mandarin māo, Yaeyama mayaa, Shan mǎew, Lao mǣu, Ancient Egyptian mjw.

i wouldn't rule out cats being fairly new when these names were given. And the first four could all have a common origin - Shan and Lao obviously do; it's the same word in Thai. Li implies it is Proto-Tai in his handbook, but I can't rule out the name just spreading through the dialect continuum.

And there are definitely onomatopoeic terms for excretion in various languages, too, e.g. Vulgar Latin *pīssiō and its descendants. And there is at least one word for a musical instrument in English that's onomatopoeic in origin: tom-tom.

If there's competition between words for a meaning, I can see onomatopoeia giving a a word the edge. Tom-tom seems to be a word for a new type of drum, which is where technological churn can allow new words in, again with the possibility of competition between words.

[missals]

That seems to be in the mama category. I can add Northern Thai mam mam 'din-dins'.

Perhaps so, but I don't see how that necessarily excludes them from being imitative at the same time.

i wouldn't rule out cats being fairly new when these names were given. And the first four could all have a common origin - Shan and Lao obviously do; it's the same word in Thai. Li implies it is Proto-Tai in his handbook, but I can't rule out the name just spreading through the dialect continuum.

All of that may be true, but it isn't relevant to Raphael's question:

Would it be plausible for a language to have onomatopoeic words for things with which the ancestors of the speakers of that form of that language have been familiar for a long time before the language got that form?

Cats are clearly no longer new to Chinese, Lao, and Thai speakers, and yet they have an onomatopoeic name. The fact that it may be a holdover from when they were new presents us with a possible origin for an onomatopoeic term for a familiar thing - retention from an earlier stage of the language when the thing was unfamiliar. It's a different question to ask "Is it possible or likely for languages to innovate an onomatopoeic term anew for a familiar, non-novel referent - and use it as the primary word for the referent - when the language already has an existing non-onomatopoeic word for that referent?"

[Moose-tache]

Evolution of the word "drum" in Conlangic:

Pre-Conlangic: /gaugau/
Early Conlangic: /gouwa:/
Classical Conlangic: /jo:a/
Middle Conlangic: /dumdum/
Early Modern Conlangic:/dundo~/
Late Modern Conalngic: /do:Do/
Contemporary Conlangic: /bANbAN/
etc...

[Raphael]

Evolution of the word "drum" in Conlangic:

Pre-Conlangic: /gaugau/
Early Conlangic: /gouwa:/
Classical Conlangic: /jo:a/
Middle Conlangic: /dumdum/
Early Modern Conlangic:/dundo~/
Late Modern Conalngic: /do:Do/
Contemporary Conlangic: /bANbAN/
etc...

Fun!

Thank you.