Conlang Random Thread

[mae]

-

[linguistcat]

*p > *h > ŋ happened in some bantu language. but what if it happened in an indo-european language?

*peh3-ti > *ho:-ts > ŋuəs
*penkwe > *heŋk > ŋeŋk > nəŋg (dissimilation)
*h1epi > *eh > eŋ

This could also be useful to me for my catlang based on Japanese.

[jal]

The target language is basically very Welsh-like, so its default is VSO, noun-adjective, etc so I guess that makes it mostly head initial.

Then I'd say going from postpositions (head-final) to prepositions (head-initial) isn't too difficult to imagine?


JAL

[Jonlang]

Aside from Quenya, are there any other notable conlangs with a fair amount of Finnish inspiration? Finnish recently went live on Duolingo and there seems to be a bit of a "cool" language to learn because it apparently sounds "cute" (I've seen the word yksi cited as such). So I've jumped in and had a play at the first few lessons and I must admit I am quite taken with the phonetics of Finnish, after watching some YouTube videos on it. Just wondering if it inspired anyone other than Tolkien?

[zompist]

I just learned that there's a pterosaur named Zhejiangopterus.

The mixture of pinyin, Greek -pter-, and Latin -us strikes me as a little weird, though totally normal for modern taxonomy.

But it made me wonder: has anyone created a transcription system for Mandarin using the spelling conventions of Latin? Or maybe Greek would be better, since you could partially represent the tones.

I think it'd be awful, but perhaps amusingly so.

To get around the fricative problem, perhaps the basis should be Cantonese. Then Zhejiang becomes Tsitgong.

Greek and Latin did have [ŋ], though only as a phone and only before another consonant. A very Greek solution to representing it word-finally would give us Tsitgogg.

[Kuchigakatai]

I just learned that there's a pterosaur named Zhejiangopterus.

The mixture of pinyin, Greek -pter-, and Latin -us strikes me as a little weird, though totally normal for modern taxonomy.

To be fair, Classical Latin regularly adapted Greek -os nouns with -us (ῥόμβος ῥόμβου > rhombus rhombī), so that's the least weird part.

You may enjoy hearing of the Chaoyangsaurus, a late-Jurassic herbivore, if you haven't yet.

But it made me wonder: has anyone created a transcription system for Mandarin using the spelling conventions of Latin? Or maybe Greek would be better, since you could partially represent the tones.

I think it'd be awful, but perhaps amusingly so.

This problem applies to many other similar things in modern Latin too. In general, there tends to be an English-like tolerance of strange orthographic consonant groups in stems, which you're simply supposed to know how to pronounce based on the language of origin.

"Ch" and "sh" are perfectly normal now for [tʃ] and [ʃ], so you can come across e.g. Sheila Sheilae Sheilam Sheilā for the feminine name "Sheila/Sheyla", and also a South American country known as Chilia. Does this make "ch" ambiguous, standing for both [tʃ] and [kʰ]? Yes.

Similarly, some people like [pʰ] for "ph" because that was the classic Attic pronunciation of Greek phi (still in use in Cicero's day), but then they think twice about using it when the "ph" represents an [f] from another language, such as Hebrew. I used to unintentionally prompt this discussion a lot when I formerly called myself "Seraphinus".

I think that, so far, because talking about Chinese things in Latin continues to be rare among today's Latin speakers, there would be a tendency to use straightforward pinyin with Latin endings. So, Lihongus Wang (or Lihomus Wang, or even the English-y Leehomus Wang) for the singer Wang Leehom.

[Ares Land]

But it made me wonder: has anyone created a transcription system for Mandarin using the spelling conventions of Latin? Or maybe Greek would be better, since you could partially represent the tones.

I don't think so, but IIRC, the initial plan for pinyin was to use the Cyrillic alphabet. Which actually makes a lot of sense.


But OK, I'll bite. Here's a modest proposal for Mandarin consonants using the Greek alphabet.

mandagreek.png (22.21 KiB) Viewed 11118 times

I use phi, theta, and khi as aspirates, which is debatable, but fits better than the Modern Greek values.
As you can see, I believe that obsolete Greek letters don't get the attention they deserve. (we could do without, though. Zeta and ksi with a rough breathing would work.)
I made things easier for myself by merging the retroflex and palatal series, but really, why should I bother with the quirks of pinyin?
I'll try and do the vowels tomorrow. The tones can be handled easily I believe, the Greek alphabet's got enough diacritics.

All in all, it looks like the Greek alphabet was better suited to Mandarin. In any case, Greek make more sense. I think Chinese traders only ever got as far as Antioch, and it was Greek-speaking at the time. (Though their language was Old Chinese, which would be quite an interesting exercise too...)

[zompist]

I wasn't suggesting that taxonomists, or present-day Latin speakers, change anything.

I think there's a conlanging opportunity for someone in this, that's all.

On preview, Ars is on the case! Some really neat choices there.

[bradrn]

My attempt at Latin-style Mandarin:

Initials

/m n/ ⟨m n⟩
/p t k pʰ tʰ kʰ/ ⟨p t c ph th ch⟩
/ts ʈʂ tɕ tsʰ ʈʂʰ tɕʰ/ ⟨ts trh tsj tsh trhh tsjh⟩
/f s ʂ ɕ h/ ⟨f s rh sj h⟩
/l ɻ~ʐ/ ⟨l r⟩

Finals:

/ɹ̩~ɻ̩ i u y ɤ je wo ɥe a ja wa/ ⟨-r -i -u -y -eu -ie -uo -ye -a -ia -ua⟩
/ei̯ wei̯ ai̯ wai̯/ ⟨-ei -oe -ae -uae⟩
/ou̯ jou̯ ɑu̯ jɑu̯/ ⟨-ou -iou -au -iau⟩
/in yn ən wən an jɛn wan ɥɛn/ ⟨-in -yn -en -uen -an -ien -uan -yen⟩
/iŋ ʊŋ jʊŋ əŋ wəŋ ɑŋ jɑŋ wɑŋ/ ⟨-igg -ugg -iugg -egg -uegg -agg -iagg -uagg⟩

Erhua is written as in Pinyin.

Tones:

For the tones, I just stole the Greek system: Pinyin ⟨ā á ǎ à a⟩ is written ⟨á ā́ à â a⟩

Sample text:

Simplified: 人人生而自由,在尊严和权利上一律平等。
Pinyin: ⟨Rénrén shēng ér zìyóu, zài zūnyán hé quánlì shàng yīlù píngděng.⟩
Latin: ⟨Rḗnrḗn rhégg ḗr tsîiṓu, tsâe tsúeniēn hḗu tsjhuā́nlî rhâgg ílû phī́ggdègg.⟩

EDIT: Just realised that I don’t use ⟨g⟩ for any of the initials, so ⟨-g⟩ would probably have been better for /-ŋ/ than ⟨-gg⟩. New sample text with that change: ⟨Rḗnrḗn rhég ḗr tsîiṓu, tsâe tsúeniēn hḗu tsjhuā́nlî rhâg ílû phī́gdèg.⟩

[jal]

/m n/ ⟨m n⟩
/p t k pʰ tʰ kʰ/ ⟨p t c ph th ch⟩
/ts ʈʂ tɕ tsʰ ʈʂʰ tɕʰ/ ⟨ts trh tsj tsh trhh tsjh⟩
/f s ʂ ɕ h/ ⟨f s rh sj h⟩
/l ɻ~ʐ/ ⟨l r⟩

I've never put much thought in Mandarin, but seeing the /ʂ/ and /ɕ/, this calls for slavic-style orthography:

/ts ʈʂ tɕ tsʰ ʈʂʰ tɕʰ/ ⟨c č ć ch čh ćh⟩
/f s ʂ ɕ h/ ⟨f s š ś h⟩


JAL

[Ares Land]

More on Greek Pinyin.

Vowels and finals

finals.PNG (30.66 KiB) Viewed 11080 times

The annoying bit is handling /y/ and /u/. What I've come up with is completely arbitrary, but no worse than pinyin I think.

Tone

tones.PNG (13.96 KiB) Viewed 11080 times

I'm using polytonic orthography; in addition, since I haven't used the long vowels yet, they'll represent the high tone.

Sample

切反动派都是纸老虎。
Ϙιὲ ϝᾶντὺγφὰι τω ϻὶ ξῖλᾶυὁῦ.
Qiè fǎndòngpài dōu shì zhǐlǎohǔ.
'All reactionaries are paper tigers.'

I don't know Mandarin, so there are probably mistakes here and there, but still it's not bad, if I do say so myself.

Conworlding.

It feels wrong to do that without some kind of conworlding rationale.
So I found it a place in my alternate Roman history; a face-off between China and Rome is practically mandatory in alternate history anyway!
So this is what the alt-Romans and Chinese come up with in the twentieth century, after making do with unadequate schemes. They wouldn't have thought of using the Roman alphabet: all travel and trade would have been conducted through the Greek-speaking East.

But, for a bit of a challenge, what I should really do is have enough contact between the Tang and the Romans for a transcription to be devised.
The interesting question is, even though the Greek alphabet has very convenient letters for the three stop series of Middle Chinese, wouldn't Greek speakers at the time have been convinced that φ, β, δ, θ and χ had always been fricatives? Or would constant contact with Latin, later Romance speakers, who borrowed these as stops made them aware of the change?
(20th century Romans would know about sound change.)

[zompist]

But, for a bit of a challenge, what I should really do is have enough contact between the Tang and the Romans for a transcription to be devised.
The interesting question is, even though the Greek alphabet has very convenient letters for the three stop series of Middle Chinese, wouldn't Greek speakers at the time have been convinced that φ, β, δ, θ and χ had always been fricatives? Or would constant contact with Latin, later Romance speakers, who borrowed these as stops made them aware of the change?

I really like using the classical Greek aspirates for Chinese aspirates.

So, why wait for the Tang? You've got Han in Turkestan around 100 BCE, and Indo-Greeks in Aghanistan at the same time...

[Ares Land]

Oh, I like that idea!

And besides, I think I could use the ancient Greek aspirates even in Tang times. Some dialects presumably kept these; and Latin/Romance speakers would have noticed the discrepancy anyway, plus if Erasmus could reconstruct something close to Attic pronunciation, I feel justified in having Roman-Greeks do the same.

I don't know much about Chinese diachronics though. Which reconstructions should I use for, say, 100 BC and 900 AD? For the latter, I should perhaps move the date; 900 AD is too late for the Qieyun and too early for the rime table, so we have no contemporary sources for phonology. And as for 100 BC, I don't know when reconstructions for Old Chinese could possibly have been spoken, but I'm guessing the Spring and Autumn period?

[zompist]

Looking at Axel Schuessler's book-- he has 600 CE for Middle Chinese, around 200 CE for Later Han, and Old Chinese, well, before that. Norman notes that a major source for Old Chinese phonology is the Shijing poetry collection, from the 500s BCE.

I don't think a specific 900 CE reconstruction is available, but Middle Chinese should be fine for that.

If you don't have access to Schuessler or any other source of Later Han, Old Chinese might do.

[Ares Land]

Oh, let's check on Amazon if I can... *sees price* *chokes* *dies*

So, we'll use Wikipedia for Later Han, shall we?

It's not going to be very good. I'm not familiar with Old Chinese, or the various reconstructions, or the sound changes, so I'm just going to cobble things together with some help from Wikipedia.

The trouble is that there aren't enough letters. I could handle these with digraphs, but that's not very fun, is it?

So maybe they just use the spiritus asper and spiritus lenis? I'm sort of cheating with ksi, but I don't think it's implausible.
No, the real problem is that while those diacritics existed, they weren't really in common use in Hellenistic times.

But, we said 'Indo-Greek', no? The Brahmi script would be, frankly, a lot better than the Greek alphabet. But the plan was to use the Greek alphabet. So what if they borrowed some Brahmi characters instead?

As for the vowels, I throw my hands up in despair. I'll use:
ι (*i)
η (*ə or *ɯ) (η wasn't doing much, and the sound could be construed as somewhat i-like)
ou or υ (*u)
ε (*e)
α (*α)
ο (*ο)

So, for instance (I'll use the Zhengzhang reconstruction, for no particular reason except that I find it easier)

道，可道也，非恆道也。
*l'uːʔ kʰaːlʔ l'uːʔ laːlʔ pɯl ɡɯːŋ l'uːʔ laːlʔ
λou καλ λou λαλ πηl γηγ λou λαλ
The Dao that can be stated, is not the eternal Dao.

The transcription doesn't handle glottal stops, or length, or the velar nasal very well. I don't think our Indo-Greeks would have bothered either.
BTW, the rhyme and alliteration in Old Chinese is really cool. And it's quite a tongue twister too!

[Kuchigakatai]

I wasn't suggesting that taxonomists, or present-day Latin speakers, change anything.

I think there's a conlanging opportunity for someone in this, that's all.

I got that but I thought it'd be entertaining to mention what people do today in Latin. I suppose you might've known the ch/sh thing, but the ph thing surprised me at the time at least.

Also, although the Shijing collection may have been perhaps put together in the 500s or gone through an important edition at the time (traditionally attributed to Confucius...), it is generally thought the poems are generally older than that. You often see mention of the 8th century BC as the terminus ante quem, and that some poems may date back to the 11th century.

The term "Old Chinese" is overall pretty ill-defined, but for phonology I'd say this is a feature, not a bug, because of the very indirect methods used to reconstruct it. While Shijing rhymes, character phonetic components and occasional borrowings from Indic or into e.g. Austronesian are the main sources of data, most notoriously the Middle Chinese tones of 600 AD are for the most part simply projected back as "consonants" that are part of the coda.

there is not complete agreement on the time ranges assigned to these periods, and the extent to which they are divided into smaller sub-periods. For example, the primary text associated with the Old Chinese period is the Confucian classic The Book of Odes (Shījīng 詩經), a collection of poems believed to date to the mid Zhōu 周 Dynasty (about the eighth century BCE). Some scholars define Old Chinese rather narrowly as the language of the early and mid Zhōu, while others extend it back in time to the earliest oracle bone texts of the Shāng 商 Dynasty (thirteenth century BCE) or forward in time to as late as the Hàn 漢 Dynasty (second century BCE to second century CE) or even through the Wèi 魏 Dynasty (third century CE). For such scholars, it is convenient to sub-divide the Old Chinese period into Early Old Chinese, Middle Old Chinese, and Late Old Chinese subperiods.

Ars Lande: the Guangyun rhyme tables date from circa 1000 AD, which I'd say would be close enough. You can find Guangyun-era reconstructions in Pulleyblank (1991), in which he calls the stage "Late Middle Chinese". Grammar-wise, you may find the summary of key changes from (pre-)Classical to early Tang Chinese (i.e. of the 600s) in Peyraube (1996) useful.

You may also find the Baxter-Sagart reconstruction more palatable once you know that all those glottalization marks stand for Type A syllables, i.e. the same thing that Zhengzhang Shangfang reconstructs as long vowel length, e.g. 道 Baxter-Sagart *[kə.l]ˁuʔ vs. Zhengzhang *lʰuːʔ. Parentheses also mean dubious presence (渠 *[g](r)a 'canal' may have been *ga), while brackets mean confident presence but dubious nature (so that example could be *Cga, *Cɢa). By the way Schuessler is libgenable.

　Handel, Zev. 2014. Historical Phonology of Chinese. The Handbook of Chinese Linguistics, by C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li, Andrew Simpson (eds), 576-98. Wiley Blackwell.
　Peyraube, Alain. 1996. Recent Issues in Historical Chinese Syntax. New Horizons in Chinese Linguistics, by C.-T. James Huang, Y.-H. Audrey Li (eds), pp. 161-213. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
　Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 1991. Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation: Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Old Mandarin. UBC Press.

[Pabappa]

first sketch at an emoji script for Icecap Moonshine .... i dont know how well this will render on everybody's devices, so I might use screenshots when I get closer to a final version. This would also help greatly with getting things to line up, since as it is I think Im going to have to just stakc everything on one line, for now.

JoyPixels is my favorite emoji set now, though I may mix in some of my own creations too. I may use different colors of emojis to represent glyphs that are only slightly different in form in the classical Moonshine script. e.g. I have two heart glyphs.

Noticeably lacking are the face emojis ... though I am strongly considering having them in the script after all in a traditional use as expressions of emotion rather than phonological content.

This script is for a society at roughly medieval levels of development, with literacy somewhere around 10 to 50% depending on definition. e.g. most people can read better than they can spell, since this one of those languages that has many more letters than it needs, but once basic rules are learned, any word can be pronounced correctly on sight.

t nd ʷh /tandoh/ "man, adult male"
pˀ ṭ ā y /pàṭē/ "woman, adult female"
ġ ú m pˀ /ġúmbà/ "peach"
t ā pˀ /tāpà/ "grape"
pr /par/ "boat"
pr y /per/ "body"

The glyph that marks out fruit names is homophonous with the "dress" glyph higher up, showing that context matters. In the original Moonshine script, the fruit glyph is generic and not colored in, so it doesnt look like an orange specifically.

The boat glyph is a biliteral, standing for the consonant cluster /pr/, which can also be used to spell /par/. The native Moonshine script allows glyphs to be vertically stacked, which allows a distinction between /per/ and /pre/, but I cannot do that with emojis.

I did my best to keep semantically close to the original glyphs, but some concepts obviously dont belong to a medieval society. Here, I used the airplane emoji for Moonshine's "paired wings" glyph, a red rose for the thorn glyph, and scissors for a "smooth blade" glyph. I might use (a tractor) for the plow that spells /é/.

[Man in Space]

I wanted to translate something from Stellaris into CT…so here it is.

Áʕe sar étkða giré, áʕe aĝłíl tr gor
áʕe sar étkða ikłe áʕe aĝłíl tr gor
/áʕè sàɹ étkθà ìkɬè | áʕè àŋɬíl tɹ̩ xòɹ/
[áʕè sàɹ étkθà ìkɬè | áʕè àŋɮíl tɹ̩ xòɹ]
COP see day/PL all.DIST | COP crave CAUS fall
'TIME IS SIGHT GRAVITY IS DESIRE'

Hmm…not much of the allophonic voicing going on in this one. Just happened that way, I guess. A few notes:
- Étkða giré 'all (those) days' is an idiomatic construction used as a way to express the concept of time.
- Similarly, tr gor 'cause of falling' is used to mean 'gravity'.
- CT absolutely loves zero-deriving various nouns from verbs (and verbs from nouns; sar the verb is actually a zero-derivation from sar 'eye', the nominal sense being older.
- For those derivational operations that aren't zero-derivations, you can stack various nominalizers/verbalizers/derivational stuff into utterly abysmal trainwrecks, as in laʕhá haðál kanðá tr ïg sák hé hé 'it made him become an investment advisor' (outcome.CAUS A capable CAUS become.VBLZ wealthy 3SG 3SG).

[bradrn]

Here’s an interesting conlang idea I came up with today. (At least, I think it’s interesting; you may differ.) It isn’t anything near enough for a full grammar sketch, but I wanted to share it, so… here it is.

The basic idea is that it’s a language without a distinction between vowels and consonants. Instead, each phoneme has both a consonantal and syllabic (or ‘vocalic’, if you prefer) realisation. The phoneme inventory is:

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Rounded Palatal	Velar	Roudned velar	Laryngeal	Rounded laryngeal
Occlusive	b~m̩	d~n̩	ɟ~ɲ̍	ɟʷ~ɲ̍ʷ	ɡ~ŋ̍	ɡʷ~ŋ̍ʷ
Unvoiced continuant	f~ʋ̤̍	ʃ~ɚ̤	ç~i̤	çʷ~ÿ	x~ɯ̤	xʷ~ṳ	ħ~ɑ̤	ħʷ~ɔ̤
Voiced continuant	v~ʋ̩	ʒ~ɚ	ʝ~i	ʝʷ~y	ɣ~ɯ	ɣʷ~u	ʕ~ɑ	ʕʷ~ɔ
Glottalised	ɓ~ʋ̰̍	ɗ~ɚ̰	ʄ~ḭ	ʄʷ~y̰	ɠ~ɯ̰	ɠʷ~ṵ	ʔ~ɑ̰	ʔʷ~ɔ̰

Of course, there are rules specifying which phonemes are consonantal and which are syllabic. The first phoneme in a word is always consonantal (except for words with only one phoneme, naturally); subsequent phonemes alternate between syllabic and consonantal realisations. So for instance /ɓʔdɣʷʄɡħʷ/ becomes [ɓɑ̰duʄŋ̍ħʷ].

Now, this introduces a bunch of alternations into the morphophonology which quickly get very weird indeed. For instance, let’s have a look at the personal pronouns:

	s	p
1	bʒ	dbʒ
2	ɓʔ	dɓʔ
3	ɠʄ	dɠʄ

Clearly, the plurals are formed regularly from the singulars. But wait… let’s have a look at the phonetic realisation of this:

	s	p
1	bɚ	dm̩ʒ
2	ɓɑ̰	dʋ̰̍ʔ
3	ɠḭ	dɯ̰ʄ

That lovely regular system has gotten utterly mangled!

Oh, and I’m already tired of typing all those IPA diacritics, so let’s introduce a romanisation — a phonetic one of course, to capture all those interesting details:

	Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Rounded Palatal	Velar	Roudned velar	Laryngeal	Rounded laryngeal
Occlusive	b~m	d~n	j~ñ	j̈~ñʷ	g~ŋ	gʷ~ŋʷ
Unvoiced continuant	f~ẅ	s~r̈	ç~ï	ç̈~ÿ	x~ɯ̈	xʷ~ü	ħ~ä	ħ̈~ö
Voiced continuant	v~w	z~r	ɏ~i	ɏ̈~y	ɣ~ɯ	ɣ̈~u	h~a	ḧ~o
Glottalised	ɓ~w̃	ɗ~r̃	ɉ~ĩ	ɉ̈~ỹ	ɠ~ɯ̃	ɋ~ũ	ʔ~ã	ⱳ~õ

So the pronouns become:

	s	p
1	br	dmz
2	ɓã	dw̃ʔ
3	ɠĩ	dɯ̃ɉ

Much better now.

Alright, now let’s do some morphology! As we already saw with the plural marker, the… let us say… unique phonology makes morphology quite interesting. Let’s pluralise some more nouns and see what happens:

house /bʕʷd/ bod → /d-bʕʷd/ dmḧn
tree /ɣʷʄħ/ ɣ̈ĩħ → /d-ɣʷʄħ/ duɉä
sun /vbɟʷɣg/ vmj̈ɯg → /d-vbɟʷɣg/ dwbñʷɣŋ

Now let’s add a definite affix /ʕ-/:

/ʕ-bʕʷd/ hmḧn, /ʕ-d-bʕʷd/ hnbod
/ʕ-ɣʷʄħ/ huɉä, /ʕ-d-ɣʷʄħ/ hnɣ̈ĩħ
/ʕ-vbɟʷɣg/ hwbñʷɣŋ, /ʕ-vbɟʷɣg/ hnvmj̈ɯg

But enough with nouns, let’s talk about verbs. Specifically: what happens to verbs when they undergo polypersonal agreement while subjected to everpresent horrific morphophonological processes? Let’s first choose our victims verbs to mangle conjugate:

see /dʕx/ dax
hear /ʝʝʔ/ ɏiʔ
touch /vħʷ/ vö

Now, to get our polypersonal agreement, I’ll just add pronouns to the beginning of the verb: /bʒ-ɓʔ-dʕx/, /dɠʄ-bʒ-ʝʝʔ/ etc. But now let’s have a look at the conjugations for, say, dax:

	-1s-	-2s-	-3s-	-1p-	-2p-	-3p-
∅	brdax	ɓãdax	ɠĩdax	dmznhɯ̈	dw̃ʔnhɯ̈	dɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈
1s-	brbrdax	brɓãdax	brɠĩdax	brdmznhɯ̈	brdw̃ʔnhɯ̈	brdɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈
2s-	ɓãbrdax	ɓãɓãdax	ɓãɠĩdax	ɓãdmznhɯ̈	ɓãdw̃ʔnhɯ̈	ɓãdɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈
3s-	ɠĩbrdax	ɠĩɓãdax	ɠĩɠĩdax	ɠĩdmznhɯ̈	ɠĩdw̃ʔnhɯ̈	ɠĩdɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈
1p-	dmzmznhɯ̈	dmzw̃ʔnhɯ̈	dmzɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈	dmznbrdax	dmznɓãdax	dmznɠĩdax
2p-	dw̃ʔmznhɯ̈	dw̃ʔw̃ʔnhɯ̈	dw̃ʔɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈	dw̃ʔnbrdax	dw̃ʔnɓãdax	dw̃ʔnɠĩdax
3p-	dɯ̃ɉmznhɯ̈	dɯ̃ɉw̃ʔnhɯ̈	dɯ̃ɉɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈	dɯ̃ɉnbrdax	dɯ̃ɉnɓãdax	dɯ̃ɉnɠĩdax

Awful! The object affixes — not to mention the verb itself — are barely recognisable between cells!

Finally, let’s finish off with some sentences. I won’t bother formalising much more of the grammar, let’s just invent a couple more things as needed and put them together to get some sentences quickly:

/ʕ-vbɟʷɣg=ɣʷʝ bʕʷd-ɓʔ=ɣʷʝ bʒ-dɠʄ-dʕx/
Hwbñʷɣŋɣ̈i bodw̃ʔuɏ brdɯ̃ɉnhɯ̈.
DEF-sun=CONJ house-2p=CONJ 1s-3p-see
I see the sun and your house.

/ɓʔ=ɣʷʝ bʒ=ɣʷʝ ʕ-ɣʷʄħ dbʒ-ɠʄ-ʝʝʔ/
Ɓãɣ̈i brɣ̈i huɉä dmzɯ̃ɉiɏã.
2s=CONJ 1s=CONJ DEF-tree 1p-3s-hear
You and me hear the tree.

/bʕʷd-bʒ=ɣʷʝ d-ɣʷʄħ-bʒ=ɣʷʝ dɠʄ-dɠʄ-vħʷ/
Bodmzuɏ duɉäbrɣ̈i dɯ̃ɉnɠĩvö.
house-1s=CONJ PL-tree-1s=CONJ 3p-3p-touch
They touch my house and my trees.

And, yep, as expected all the affixes and words got completely mangled. (Quick quiz: how many people immediately noticed that -ɣ̈i and -uɏ are the same morpheme? What about -mz- and -br-?)

(Not that any of this matters or anything; I just thought it was an fun experiment to share. Torturing words Pervasive morphophonological alternations are fun!)

[jal]

I've done some "interesting" morphological changes in the past (e.g. with Alũbetah), but this is a whole 'nother level :). I bow to the king! Congrats :).


JAL