If natlangs were conlangs

[Linguoboy]

For weird cases to mention for fun, I'd suggest using fils (/fis/ 'son(s)' in singular and plural, /fil/ 'threads' plural of fil), distiller /distile/ (cf. regular briller /bʁije/), second /səgõ/, or cinq /sæ̃k/ (cf. regular il convainc /kõvæ̃/, blanc /blɒ̃/, but note cinq did have the standard reading /sæ̃/ before a consonant until a century ago or so).

It still does in most Cajun varieties. Even better, it commonly appears as /sæ̃z/ before a vowel. This is sometimes generalised to quatre as well, e.g. quatre ans /katzɑ̃/. And fils irregularly loses its final /s/ in expletives, e.g. /fidgɑrs/ "son of a bitch", /fidpoto/ "son of a gun". In addition to second, some varieties also have /g/ in secret.

[Kuchigakatai]

It still does in most Cajun varieties. Even better, it commonly appears as /sæ̃z/ before a vowel. This is sometimes generalised to quatre as well, e.g. quatre ans /katzɑ̃/.

Quatre /katz/ before a vowel-initial word is a general colloquial French feature, also present in Montreal/Quebec City/Paris.

I wonder whether cinq /sæ̃kz/ before a vowel is similarly widespread... It might be, but I don't know.

[Pabappa]

It still does in most Cajun varieties. Even better, it commonly appears as /sæ̃z/ before a vowel. This is sometimes generalised to quatre as well, e.g. quatre ans /katzɑ̃/.

Quatre /katz/ before a vowel-initial word is a general colloquial French feature, also present in Montreal/Quebec City/Paris.

I wonder whether cinq /sæ̃kz/ before a vowel is similarly widespread... It might be, but I don't know.

I remember in the very early days of the ZBB someone ....maybe gsandi? .... posting that it was common in Quebec to say "cinques enfants" etc, and that in France anyone saying that would just be laughed at.

[mèþru]

I would like to see a similar critique as with Australia and the US as to Israel (don't actually do it though if yo plan on going on into modern times, it will get heated)

[Kuchigakatai]

I never stop being amazed by those moments when I somehow get to correctly use a word in English without knowing what it even means.

Some minute ago I was just writing something about a group of items looking cozy together (so to speak) when for some reason the verb "huddle together" came to my mind. If you had asked me the minute before what "huddle (together)" means, I would've told you I didn't have the faintest idea. But now the verb had popped up from somewhere in the statistical darkness of my brain. And then, I looked it up and the feeling I had of the meaning was correct, meaning something like "getting into a group/crowd together".

It happens to me a lot with the less common Germanic verbs, since obviously I can practically never guess what they could mean judging from Spanish.

[bradrn]

I would like to see a similar critique as with Australia and the US as to Israel (don't actually do it though if yo plan on going on into modern times, it will get heated)

I don’t know too much about Israel’s pre-1948 history. And of course writing about Israel post-1948 (and even some time before) is tricky, because you’re virtually certain to offend someone no matter what you say.

I never stop being amazed by those moments when I somehow get to correctly use a word in English without knowing what it even means.

Some minute ago I was just writing something about a group of items looking cozy together (so to speak) when for some reason the verb "huddle together" came to my mind. If you had asked me the minute before what "huddle (together)" means, I would've told you I didn't have the faintest idea. But now the verb had popped up from somewhere in the statistical darkness of my brain. And then, I looked it up and the feeling I had of the meaning was correct, meaning something like "getting into a group/crowd together".

It happens to me a lot with the less common Germanic verbs, since obviously I can practically never guess what they could mean judging from Spanish.

Are you absolutely sure that you have never seen ‘huddle’ before? The most likely explanation I can think of is that you saw the word once but forgot about it, and then you happened to remember it again just now.

[Kuchigakatai]

Are you absolutely sure that you have never seen ‘huddle’ before? The most likely explanation I can think of is that you saw the word once but forgot about it, and then you happened to remember it again just now.

I'm sure I've seen it many times. It's just that if you had asked me what that word meant, or to give you an example sentence right after I woke up at 8 a.m. today, I would've told you I didn't have the faintest idea. But when writing that message in another website the word popped up from deep in the ignored statistical English in the back of my memories/brain.

It amuses me because I just can't believe this thing sometimes, using words correctly even though I don't consciously know them just because I've been exposed to a lot of English. It's as if my brain pulls words from its subconscious depths based on its experience / statistical language regarding a specific topic (in this case talking about crowded groups).

[bradrn]

I find it interesting how in Tongan, the absolutive case-marker is ʻa, while the ergative case-marker is ʻe. If Tongan were a conlang, I would be criticising it for lack of creativity here.

[bradrn]

Imagine, just for a moment, a conlang where, say, /fr.ħʁs.lm.ʕrf.tn.nk/ means ‘I’m glad to make your acquaintance’, and /tk.ks.tstː/ means ‘you took it away’. Sound completely implausble, right? Maybe this could be some extreme version of Klingon? Well, both of those are apparently real Shilha Berber phrases. Yes, I know Berber languages are well-known for their vowelless syllables, but this just seems a tad excessive.

[Kuchigakatai]

Imagine, just for a moment, a conlang where, say, /fr.ħʁs.lm.ʕrf.tn.nk/ means ‘I’m glad to make your acquaintance’, and /tk.ks.tstː/ means ‘you took it away’. Sound completely implausble, right? Maybe this could be some extreme version of Klingon? Well, both of those are apparently real Shilha Berber phrases. Yes, I know Berber languages are well-known for their vowelless syllables, but this just seems a tad excessive.

I imagine, based on what little I know of Moroccan Arabic, that those are realized with some schwas at the surface, even though there might be good justification behind analyzing them without schwas phonemically. Moroccan Arabic has a tendency to realize /CCC/ three-consonant nouns as [CəCC], and /CCC/ three-consonant verb stems in the past tense as [CCəC] (so, with inflectional suffixes, [CCəC-C], [CCəC-V], [CCəC-CV]...). Although even then, IIRC Moroccan Arabic sometimes does have genuine instances of things like [tktk] and the like.

[bradrn]

Imagine, just for a moment, a conlang where, say, /fr.ħʁs.lm.ʕrf.tn.nk/ means ‘I’m glad to make your acquaintance’, and /tk.ks.tstː/ means ‘you took it away’. Sound completely implausble, right? Maybe this could be some extreme version of Klingon? Well, both of those are apparently real Shilha Berber phrases. Yes, I know Berber languages are well-known for their vowelless syllables, but this just seems a tad excessive.

I imagine, based on what little I know of Moroccan Arabic, that those are realized with some schwas at the surface, even though there might be good justification behind analyzing them without schwas phonemically. Moroccan Arabic has a tendency to realize /CCC/ three-consonant nouns as [CəCC], and /CCC/ three-consonant verb stems in the past tense as [CCəC] (so, with inflectional suffixes, [CCəC-C], [CCəC-V], [CCəC-CV]...). Although even then, IIRC Moroccan Arabic sometimes does have genuine instances of things like [tktk] and the like.

You might think so (I did as well), but apparently not: according to this, ‘over 88% of the 846 utterances were produced with no voiced schwa’ (although they do occur sometimes, particularly at the end of phrases), and it looks like there weren’t any voiceless schwas either (though the author does comment that in general it’s difficult to prove/disprove the presence of voiceless vowels). So these really do look like true vowelless words, without any epenthetic schwa (at least most of the time).

[Kuchigakatai]

http://madenkha.net/holy_bible/OT/35_Khabqoq.htm

It surprises me how messy the Syriac script looks. I would actually dislike it if it was a conlang. (That's the book of Habakkuk from the Peshitta in the link.)

I have much the same feeling towards the Avestan alphabet, incidentally used around that time. I guess there's something to the aesthetics of writing systems in that place and time that I just don't like.

[bradrn]

http://madenkha.net/holy_bible/OT/35_Khabqoq.htm

It surprises me how messy the Syriac script looks. I would actually dislike it if it was a conlang. (That's the book of Habakkuk from the Peshitta in the link.)

I’ve always liked Syriac (specifically ʾEsṭrangēlā — Maḏnḥāyā and Serṭo aren’t nearly as nice), but now that I look at an actual sample, I do agree that it’s remarkably messy. I think that’s just from all the dots though; if you removed them it would look much nicer. e.g. a sample with dots (from your link):
ܒܲܙܲܚ: ܘܥܲܠ ܟܠ ܟܲܪ̈ܟ݂ܝܼܢ ܓܵܚܹ̇ܟ: ܘܲܡܩܲܒܲܪ ܥܲܦܪܵܐ
and a sample with less dots (removing the vowels, I think):
ܒܙܚ: ܘܥܠ ܟܠ ܟܪܟܝܢ ܓܚܹܟ: ܘܡܩܒܪ ܥܦܪܐ

I have much the same feeling towards the Avestan alphabet, incidentally used around that time. I guess there's something to the aesthetics of writing systems in that place and time that I just don't like.

I actually quite like Avestan — I think samples like this, this and this have quite a nice aesthetic. But my favourite script from that time period is probably Mandaic:

[Kuchigakatai]

Yeah. Someone elsewhere pointd out to me that it looks best as unpointed Estrangelo, and I'd agree.

It's kind of interesting to see the whole area turned to these largely cursive scripts (Syriac, Book Pahlavi, Avestan, Mandaic, Arabic) after having been using (or alongside) scripts with clearly separated individual letters (Imperial Aramaic / Hebrew, Inscriptional Pahlavi, Old North Arabian, Old South Arabian). You could say the Nabatean script is kind of in the middle of the two styles too, with letter shapes that appear pretty joinable but are nevertheless often separated.

[aporaporimos]

The messiness of the East Syriac script is because, before inventing vowel pointing, they used ad hoc diacritics to distinguish homographs: two dots for plurals and certain less-common verb forms, a single dot above or below to distinguish various pairs. The single dots don't represent anything in a systematic way, as far as I can tell: they just took two words that were spelled the same, and assigned dot-above to one of them and dot-below to the other, and so on with every problematic pair. Then they decided to also use dots to indicate vowels, while keeping the old diacritics (even though they're not really necessary when vowels are written). The result is Too Many Dots.

West Syriac (Estrangelo/Serto) just borrowed Greek vowel symbols, which looks a little nicer, but unpointed texts are still the most attractive. I'm learning Syriac now and pleasantly surprised to find that reading unpointed texts isn't that hard, on the whole. I'm still picking up the system of diacritic dots; the only ones I know well are two dots for a plural noun, and a dot above for an active participle, both of which are very frequent.

[bradrn]

Northeast Ambae: Well, overall, I this looks like a very well thought out and realistic language. But, really, you cannot have a demonstrative used only when talking to idiots!

…all right, all right, I exaggerated a little bit. But not very much, I’m afraid. Look, here’s the grammar:

Use of the form ge is always accompanied either by pointing with the index finger, or indication with the eyes, eyebrows and a tilt of the head, to demonstrate the location of an object. It is used when indicating the location of an object upon request from the addressee, and is generally expressed with some force, suggesting a meaning along the lines of, 'it's there, stupid, are you blind!'

Also, I think you should revise your orthography. If you have a stop inventory containing /ᵐb t ⁿd k ᵑɡ/, it doesn’t sound too plausible to romanize it as ⟨b t d g k⟩. Surely no native speaker would accept that! (And in fact, the author of the grammar does admit that ‘speakers more literate in English and/or Bislama than their native language seem to have … reservations about this orthography’.)

[Travis B.]

Also, I think you should revise your orthography. If you have a stop inventory containing /ᵐb t ⁿd k ᵑɡ/, it doesn’t sound too plausible to romanize it as ⟨b t d g k⟩. Surely no native speaker would accept that! (And in fact, the author of the grammar does admit that ‘speakers more literate in English and/or Bislama than their native language seem to have … reservations about this orthography’.)

Is that a typo, or do they really write ⟨g⟩ for /k/ and ⟨k⟩ for /ᵑɡ/....?

[Pabappa]

It's real. The PDF https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4db6/e ... bb1f06.pdf confirms that it isnt a typo since the author remarks on how odd it is. Perhaps there was a recent sound shift that made two phonemes switch places, though I suspect the orthography is fairly recent and that it was designed for the phonology the language has today.

There's also a "labialized labiovelar nasal", which he represents as IPA /mʷ/, and spells as mw. I dont know what that means. Some Oceanic languages have done shifts like /kʷ/ > /pʷ/ but that doesnt explain this.

edit: hmm, it seems /mʷ/ has an allophone /ŋmʷ/. i guess thats what he meants by labiovelar.

[Travis B.]

I was wondering, because otherwise writing /ᵐb t ⁿd k ᵑɡ/ as ⟨b t d k g⟩ is, in itself, not that odd..

[Richard W]

It's real. The PDF https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4db6/e ... bb1f06.pdf confirms that it isnt a typo since the author remarks on how odd it is. Perhaps there was a recent sound shift that made two phonemes switch places, though I suspect the orthography is fairly recent and that it was designed for the phonology the language has today.

Look at Table 2.1 in the PDF. While most dialects have [k] v. [ᵑɡ], there are two that have [ɣ] v. [k]. It looks like a chain shift ᵑɡ > k > x > ɣ.