Conlang Random Thread

[AwfullyAmateur]

Thanks for pointing out the English thing. I'm brand-new to this, so I've been trying to weed out any English conflations. Should fix that soon.

[äreo]

Thanks for pointing out the English thing. I'm brand-new to this, so I've been trying to weed out any English conflations. Should fix that soon.

Welcome to the board! Have some pickles and tea.

Copia de ny-sour-pickles-1-gallon.ffc0f44a0be85000ee4399f282cd751c.jpg (11.92 KiB) Viewed 251601 times

Copia de Tea.jpeg (26.39 KiB) Viewed 251601 times

Do note that there's nothing necessarily wrong with your conlang having a lexical or grammatical feature that resembles English. It's just that for your own enjoyment (and that of others who may enjoy seeing your conlangs), it's best to be aware of it. That way it's a conscious choice rather than an automatic bias. I personally have taken inspiration at times from some of the quirkier features of English.

You want your conlang to be its own thing. So it's good to think outside the English box, but don't think you have to do everything as un-Englishly as possible either. Learning about how other languages do things will give you more perspective. Sometimes they happen to overlap with how English works, and other times they're as different as can be.

To build on what bradrn said about French pousser, it's even used to refer to hair growth! Je me laisse pousser la barbe = "I'm letting my beard grow out."

[AwfullyAmateur]

On the topic of that French sentence, I recently learned something interesting about French; that, if you have two verbs directly one after the other, you often don't conjugate the second. Nous détestons travailler - We hate to work (please tell me I got that right [or don't]).

[bradrn]

On the topic of that French sentence, I recently learned something interesting about French; that, if you have two verbs directly one after the other, you often don't conjugate the second. Nous détestons travailler - We hate to work (please tell me I got that right [or don't]).

This is pretty common in subordinate clauses, cross-linguistically speaking. English has something similar: *He hates to works.

[jal]

Hi AwfullyAmateur, welcome to the board!

Let me give you some advice:

1. When creating a conlang, think about what you aim for. Do you want a conlang just for your personal enjoyment? Fine, everything goes. Even if it's a cypher of English - as long as you enjoy it! However, on this board, there's many people that think that one should put a bit of effort in conlanging, so you may experience some criticism in that case. If, on the other hand, you want something that looks naturalistic, you'll need to learn a lot about languages in general, stuff like what is morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; morphosyntactic alignment (active/stative, ergative, accusative); the difference between tense, aspect and mood, what's an isolating language, inflecting, agglutanating; what is the difference between SVO/SOV etc. word order; what are cases and what are they used for, cross-linguistically; agreement; languistic universals; and so on and so forth. On top of that, you may want to learn about language evolution, and a priori vs. a posteriori conlangs.
2. Think about how to present your language. Learn about glossing (the Leipzig glossing rules are a good resource, though perhaps a bit daunting at first), and learn the right terminolgy when presenting some feature of your language.
3. When creating vocabulary, always consider the semantic reach of a word. You've already experienced it with "grow", but each and every word will have experiences or things that include it, and those that don't. Can "bird" both denote an ostrich and a sparrow? Or does your conlang make a difference between flightless and flying birds? Is the word for a "chair" the same word as a "stool", or a different one? Why would your language distinguish seats like English does, by the absence or presence of a backrest? Is "sleeping" both when dreaming and when not? Is doozing still sleeping? Is resting different from sleeping? Maybe your language distinguishes "consient sleeping" from "inconsient sleeping", but both are still sleeping. The very worst thing you can do is copy 1:1 all the idiosyncrasies of English vocab.
4. Study grammars of natural languages, especially those that are nothing like English (or other well-known European languages) at all. You can get a lot of ideas about how other languages solve things, in ways you'd never have thought of yourself. Resist the temptation of copying tids and bits from all over the place, as you'll get what's called a kitchensink conlang - one without internal logic, or very unnaturalistic.
5. Do not be afraid to ask! We're here to help you, so if you want to know about stuff, just ask. Most people here are language nerds and are happy to share their knowledge with others.

EDIT: And of course, buy and read the books of this board's overlord, Zompist a.k.a. Mark Rosenfelder:

• The Language Construction Kit - introduction to conlanging
• Advanced Language Construction - more advanced conlanging
• The Conlanger's Lexipedia - about how to create vocab

JAL

[bradrn]

Now that is a collection of really great advice. We should honestly find a place to put it for all beginners to read.

[jal]

Now that is a collection of really great advice. We should honestly find a place to put it for all beginners to read.

Thanks. No doubt there's much more advise one could give, this is all just from the top of my head :).


JAL

[WeepingElf]

@AwfullyAmateur, welcome to the ZBB!

[xxx]

Let me give you some advice:

1. When creating a conlang, think about what you aim for. Do you want a conlang just for your personal enjoyment? Fine, everything goes. Even if it's a cypher of English - as long as you enjoy it! However, on this board, there's many people that think that one should put a bit of effort in conlanging, so you may experience some criticism in that case. If, on the other hand, you want something that looks naturalistic, you'll need to learn a lot about languages in general, stuff like what is morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; morphosyntactic alignment (active/stative, ergative, accusative); the difference between tense, aspect and mood, what's an isolating language, inflecting, agglutanating; what is the difference between SVO/SOV etc. word order; what are cases and what are they used for, cross-linguistically; agreement; languistic universals; and so on and so forth. On top of that, you may want to learn about language evolution, and a priori vs. a posteriori conlangs.
2. Think about how to present your language. Learn about glossing (the Leipzig glossing rules are a good resource, though perhaps a bit daunting at first), and learn the right terminolgy when presenting some feature of your language.
3. When creating vocabulary, always consider the semantic reach of a word. You've already experienced it with "grow", but each and every word will have experiences or things that include it, and those that don't. Can "bird" both denote an ostrich and a sparrow? Or does your conlang make a difference between flightless and flying birds? Is the word for a "chair" the same word as a "stool", or a different one? Why would your language distinguish seats like English does, by the absence or presence of a backrest? Is "sleeping" both when dreaming and when not? Is doozing still sleeping? Is resting different from sleeping? Maybe your language distinguishes "consient sleeping" from "inconsient sleeping", but both are still sleeping. The very worst thing you can do is copy 1:1 all the idiosyncrasies of English vocab.
4. Study grammars of natural languages, especially those that are nothing like English (or other well-known European languages) at all. You can get a lot of ideas about how other languages solve things, in ways you'd never have thought of yourself. Resist the temptation of copying tids and bits from all over the place, as you'll get what's called a kitchensink conlang - one without internal logic, or very unnaturalistic.
5. Do not be afraid to ask! We're here to help you, so if you want to know about stuff, just ask. Most people here are language nerds and are happy to share their knowledge with others.

EDIT: And of course, buy and read the books of this board's overlord, Zompist a.k.a. Mark Rosenfelder:

• The Language Construction Kit - introduction to conlanging
• Advanced Language Construction - more advanced conlanging
• The Conlanger's Lexipedia - about how to create vocab

and a final word of advice: don't follow any advice...

[AwfullyAmateur]

Ju lut hajolat azio tremintem pe kau lut sansulat stargriyem.
To (a place) the (FPL) fields (PL) he [will] go (3SG) pe (Future marker) and (no marker) the (FPL) crops (PL) harvest (3SG).
He will go to the fields and harvest the crops.

FPL- Feminine Plural
PL- Plural

Sodemeresh uses particles (is that what they're called?) after verbs to signify tense. The marker is unnecessary if context already makes it obvious, and after using a tense marker the first time, they (tense markers) don't need to be added unless the tense outright changes.

[bradrn]

Sodemeresh uses particles (is that what they're called?) after verbs to signify tense. The marker is unnecessary if context already makes it obvious, and after using a tense marker the first time, they (tense markers) don't need to be added unless the tense outright changes.

‘Particle’ is the general term for such things, yes. But making the tense marker optional is intriguing! (It reminds me almost of clause-chaining systems, which are very interesting but I don’t have the time to explain properly just right now.)

[AwfullyAmateur]

The reason it has 'tense particles' is because I was too lazy to come up with actual, proper inflections for tense. Hence, I will eat -> Harizu pe. So I just added particles (didn't know that was the term for them at the time) and told myself 'relax, it'll be fiiiine, that'll do until we think of something else". But then I sort of realized that I could make this work, actually, if I was careful about it. It's even found its way into a related language, Estreri, that I recently started as well.

[äreo]

The reason it has 'tense particles' is because I was too lazy to come up with actual, proper inflections for tense. Hence, I will eat -> Harizu pe. So I just added particles (didn't know that was the term for them at the time) and told myself 'relax, it'll be fiiiine, that'll do until we think of something else". But then I sort of realized that I could make this work, actually, if I was careful about it. It's even found its way into a related language, Estreri, that I recently started as well.

It absolutely can work, and if you end up creating a descendant language, those particles could end up suffixed to the verb, becoming inflections. You could end up deriving a fusional system of inflections (à la, say, Spanish) from straightforward Sodemeresh particles, pronouns, etc.

[jal]

Be aware though that if a language has tense particles, it likely will have aspect and/or mood particles as well, or merge these concepts into fused particles. It is highly unlikely that a language will just have particles for tense, but is highly inflexional otherwise. Not impossible of course, but not very naturalistic.


JAL

[AwfullyAmateur]

Seems to me that if necessity is the mother of invention, sloth could well be its father

[AwfullyAmateur]

And for past continuous and such, Sodemeresh functions like this: I am eating = Harizu li, -> I was eating = Harizu ali . Al= Past tense, Li= Future Tense, Pe= Future Tense. For harizu ali the reason the 'al' part comes first is because it's based relative to the speaker and the present time (So, e.g., in the current time you're speaking, it all happened in the past). This can be done in other combos too, such as harizu peali, which means I will have been eating. I don't think it's too bad for someone who's never really done this before.

[keenir]

This can be done in other combos too, such as harizu peali, which means I will have been eating. I don't think it's too bad for someone who's never really done this before.

Its very good, both for someone who has never done it before, and for beginners in general.

[Richard W]

Be aware though that if a language has tense particles, it likely will have aspect and/or mood particles as well, or merge these concepts into fused particles. It is highly unlikely that a language will just have particles for tense, but is highly inflexional otherwise. Not impossible of course, but not very naturalistic.

The only inflexional aspect we've seen on the verb is essentially for person. Apart from that feature, I was comparing Sodemeresh with Siamese, where most tense markers are optional. The marker of the future (จะ) is not very optional (grammars describe it as mandatory, but I've come across it being omitted), but it's also described as an irrealis marker, so perhaps it shouldn't be called a tense marker. However, different markers have different positions (before or after), and one is tempted to call markers derived from verbs auxiliary verbs.

[Travis B.]

One thing one should keep in find is the difference between tense and aspect. Take English, for instance - it has three basic tenses, past, present, and future, but it also has perfective, progressive, and habitual aspect (progressive and habitual aspects are both kinds of imperfective aspect), and it combines all of those with retrospective (aka "perfect") and prospective (aka "going to" future) aspects. Note that what makes retrospective and progressive aspects different from tenses is that they can be combined with tenses to form things like "future in the past" (e.g. "I was going to order 'native Thai' but then I remembered that was absurdly spicy") or "past in the future" (e.g. "He will have arrived at the airport by the time we land to pick us up.). Also note that not all combinations are necessarily valid; e.g. in English you can have present habitual (e.g. "He eats sushi") and past habitual (e.g. "He used to eat sushi before he turned vegan") but there isn't really a future habitual.

[AwfullyAmateur]

Oh, and by the way, I've going through the pronouns on my second conlang and, it occurred to me: Can you make possessive pronouns double as possessive adjectives or not?