Conlang Random Thread

[bradrn]

How much could wanting to avoid certain sounds in words with certain meanings affect sound changes within a language or just a specific dialect of a given language? Or would that be more relegated to word choice or coining new terms?

I always used to hear that thats what helped give rise to the sheer number of languages in New Guinea - that when someone dies, their friends and family can't use the words (sounds?) in the deceased person's name...can't use them in anything, so they have to find workarounds.

Not sounds — that would be unworkable — but such word taboos exist around the world. The most famous case may be Bantu hlonipha, which probably sped up the incorporation of clicks from Khoisan languages.

[linguistcat]

How much could wanting to avoid certain sounds in words with certain meanings affect sound changes within a language or just a specific dialect of a given language? Or would that be more relegated to word choice or coining new terms?

I always used to hear that thats what helped give rise to the sheer number of languages in New Guinea - that when someone dies, their friends and family can't use the words (sounds?) in the deceased person's name...can't use them in anything, so they have to find workarounds.

Not sounds — that would be unworkable — but such word taboos exist around the world. The most famous case may be Bantu hlonipha, which probably sped up the incorporation of clicks from Khoisan languages.

This is interesting but I meant more like:
A language has the sound /p/, for example, and for some reason it isn't considered very nice sounding to the speakers, but the word /upara/ means a type of flower. So the speakers, or some subset of them at least, try not to use that name for the flower by either renaming it completely OR altering the /p/ sound to something else like /b/ or /h/ or /w/. And this was done with most positive or "pretty" words with /p/ in them. But words seen as having a bad or ugly meaning are more likely to be left alone, or even get "nicer" counterparts with the sound change.

I'm considering this for a dialect of a conlang except with a different type of sound and for different reasoning.

[AwfullyAmateur]

That seems very interesting. What're these 'other reasons', though?

And btw, yesterday Sodemeresh reached 1,200 words! Hoping to get it to 1,234 by Thursday. I've also decided to make the negation system a particle thing, because it's more convenient, less of a hassle, and fits nicely with the tenses. Not sure whether to put it before or after the verb though (tense particles go after their words, but negation seems like something that might go in the front). If I go with the first option of putting them after, I'd have words like menharau'b ("I don't understand"). I guess I could justify it in-universe that the language it's descended from used a bunch of particles and these are remnants of that.

[bradrn]

And btw, yesterday Sodemeresh reached 1,200 words! Hoping to get it to 1,234 by Thursday. I've also decided to make the negation system a particle thing, because it's more convenient, less of a hassle, and fits nicely with the tenses. Not sure whether to put it before or after the verb though (tense particles go after their words, but negation seems like something that might go in the front).

Both orders are equally plausible, though before the verb seems most common: see https://wals.info/chapter/143 (and for that matter also https://wals.info/chapter/144, which presents a more fine-grained view),

If I go with the first option of putting them after, I'd have words like menharau'b ("I don't understand"). I guess I could justify it in-universe that the language it's descended from used a bunch of particles and these are remnants of that.

That is indeed how affixes usually form: starting as independent verbs which become phonologically fused. (This is a big reason why I said earlier that I don’t really believe in a difference between affixes and particles.)

Also, what does the apostrophe represent?

[AwfullyAmateur]

Also, what does the apostrophe represent?

The apostrophe in menharau'b shows that it's short for menharau bur (bur's the negation particle). It's basically the equivalent of English's (for example) don't

[AwfullyAmateur]

Hoping to get it to 1,234 by Thursday.

Success! Sodemeresh just got its 1,234th word: Lovuzimi , which means "balcony".

[jal]

Sodemeresh just got its 1,234th word: Lovuzimi , which means "balcony".

How do you go about creating words?


JAL

[AwfullyAmateur]

How do you go about creating words?

Most of the time I honestly just throw together sounds I like that fit Sodemeresh's grammar, but as the lexicon's gotten bigger I've started to create words like dirikhamo (mask), which is something of an amalgation of dirikusha (face) and hamio/hamia (the feminine and masculine forms of false). Hence, 'mask' -> 'false face'. There's also hanpegant ('memory stone', aka gravestone), starmaia ('grain stick', aka pestle) and kandelbliska ('lightning song', aka thunder) and so on. There's also splitting various meanings that would be the same word in English, e.g. jeflonsole ('to bleed') and gazilonti ('to make something/someone bleed'). And yes, I do keep track of what words I've made so I don't end up with any (unintentional) homonyms.

[Travis B.]

And yes, I do keep track of what words I've made so I don't end up with any (unintentional) homonyms.

One thing, one must remember, is that natlangs do come with homonyms.

[äreo]

And yes, I do keep track of what words I've made so I don't end up with any (unintentional) homonyms.

One thing, one must remember, is that natlangs do come with homonyms.

One pair I've found recently in Msérsca is sý (v.) whistle(s) / sý own, self (reflexive pronoun).

Sý sýtýrimis sý.
[syː syːtyːɾimɪs syː]
own.GEN whistle-bone-INSTR whistle.PRES
He/she whistles with his/her own whistle.

[AwfullyAmateur]

Though I do have both korme ('to stand') and kore ('to hang', both things and people) so I imagine there'd be a few dark little puns about that in the conworld Sodemeresh is native to. Also, it's now 1300 words.

[Ahzoh]

I was inspired to develop a simple tone system for one of my conlangs but I've once again hit a wall as I don't know how to develop one and figuring it out has also lead me to realize that I don't know how to come up with a satisfying syllable structure that matches my aesthetic goals nor does it even have a developed grammar, so the whole thing is just a mess of dissatisfaction again.

I'm beginning to hate conlanging; always the same cycle of inspiration that devolves into fruitless frustration. New project, same project, same bullshit.

[bradrn]

I was inspired to develop a simple tone system for one of my conlangs but I've once again hit a wall as I don't know how to develop one

I quite like Yip’s book Tone as an overview of what’s possible. (It’s based on Optimality Theory, but nonetheless good even if you’re not interested in the formal phonology.)

I'm beginning to hate conlanging. New project, same project, same insurmountable obstacles.

Perhaps your expectations for yourself are just too high? You always seem to have a long list of aesthetic requirements and dislike compromising on any of them. Which is fine if you can get that to work, but it seems to be very difficult.

[bradrn]

It’s worth noting, let me add, that my conlangs rarely end up looking the way I originally wanted them to. But I find that the process of figuring them out pushes me in new and unexpected directions, and I’m generally just as happy with the way they eventually turn out.

[äreo]

I was inspired to develop a simple tone system for one of my conlangs but I've once again hit a wall as I don't know how to develop one and figuring it out has also lead me to realize that I don't know how to come up with a satisfying syllable structure that matches my aesthetic goals nor does it even have a developed grammar, so the whole thing is just a mess of dissatisfaction again.

I'm beginning to hate conlanging. New project, same project, same insurmountable obstacles.

These things can be hard to put together. Msérsca looked quite different ten years ago and has undergone a lot of refinement. Just today I've been toying with some ideas that would allow me to revive/rework my old Ōgami Miyako-inspired conlang Ksso, and it took me a few tries to get syllables I liked that weren't just direct copies of what Ōgami does.

But the obstacles aren't insurmountable, I promise you! Let's break them down into steps.

1. What are your aesthetic goals? They might even drift over time, but it might be good to define them as they are now, as explicitly as possible.

2. As for grammar, I like to just sort out a few broad tendencies at first:
a. How analytic/synthetic is the language?
b. Is it broadly left- or right-branching?
c. Related to branching, what's the default word order?

If you can define 1 and at least have a rough idea of 2, you can more easily figure out the next steps.

[Ahzoh]

1. What are your aesthetic goals? They might even drift over time, but it might be good to define them as they are now, as explicitly as possible.

The current project, Ossmal is supposed to have a Slavic/Eskimo-Aleut/Samoyedic vibe. It's supposed to be agglutinating like Inuit and its palatalized consonant series derived from a vowel system much like Proto-Samoyedic or Turkic languages. And I want a fair bit of words like /os.sʲu.taj/ and /xʲol.xaj/ but also words like /os.smal/. But recently I also felt like it would be neat to have a tonal system that resulted in an orthographic distinction like this: <mag-> /màk/ "black, dark" vs. <mak-> /mák/ "wide"

Beyond a few adjective prefixes (<os-> "white, light", <mag-> "black, dark", and <til-> "evil, immoral") and a suffix (<-ai> "denotes humans"), I have very little to work with grammatically.

And then many words that are /s x/ + /m n l p t k etc./) never sound as elegant as /smal/ "mountain". Idk, /os.smal/ is like a "cellar door" word to me; it perfectly encapsulates the aesthetic I am looking for, much like /ɲivxɡu/ would. Few other words, if any, are as harmonious to what it represents. Yet words like /os.smal/ I suspect would not lend well to developing a tonal system like Vietnamese, Chinese, Navajo, or Yoruba without some simplification of the syllable structure.

Whatever, thinking about this further just gives me a big pit in my stomach

[äreo]

Well it seems like you've got some cool ideas here. But as others have pointed out, sometimes everything you want isn't mutually compatible and you have to just roll with one thing over another.

You might look into the pitch accent systems of Ancient Greek, Serbo-Croatian, and some Scandinavian varieties. Even Danish stød might give you some ideas for how to make a simple tone or tone-like distinction work with relatively complex syllable structures. But yeah, a complex tone system à la Vietnamese will probably be hard to sell.

Also, not every word in a language will typify the "ideal" or "signature" sound of that language. This is something I've had to accept as well. I noticed yesterday that Msérsca rérhadme, símét [ˈʒɛɾxazmɛ ˈsiːmjɛt] "don't fear, darling" sounds pretty damned Slavic, as does the name of the language itself [ˈmʒɛɾska]. But these aren't really typical of the language overall, nor are they intended to be. But I appreciate them.

Look, Ossmal wants to be something. At a certain point you have to kind of let it show you where it wants to go. As a musician I sometimes really love a certain idea of how a song might be, but in order to complete it I have to let it be what it wants to be. Certain ideas I have just don't fit the final destiny of the song, but I sacrifice them so that the song gets to live somewhere and exist and be heard and tell the story it's supposed to tell.

[Qwynegold]

I've decided to restructure an old dictionary. Different glosses for the same entry are separated by semicolon, and I will not change that because it would be a lot of work. But I don't know how to separate explanations from glosses. I have three suggestions. Which do you think looks best?

Current formatting
haza-
VT. II-Z.

• unfasten; undo; untie; remove; take off (pol. stem)

See main entry: huẓu

kaba-
VT. II-L.

• wear (headgear; pol. stem)

See main entry: ḳulu

Alternative 1
haza-
VT. II-Z.

• unfasten; undo; untie; remove; take off – pol. stem

See main entry: huẓu

kaba-
VT. II-L.

• wear (headgear) – pol. stem

See main entry: ḳulu

Alternative 2
haza-
VT. II-Z.

• unfasten; undo; untie; remove; take off: pol. stem

See main entry: huẓu

kaba-
VT. II-L.

• wear (headgear): pol. stem

See main entry: ḳulu

Alternative 3
haza-
VT. II-Z.

• unfasten; undo; untie; remove; take off. Pol. stem.

See main entry: huẓu

kaba-
VT. II-L.

• wear (headgear). Pol. stem.

See main entry: ḳulu

[jal]

Most of the time I honestly just throw together sounds I like

Be aware that almost all (all?) natlangs have means to derive words from other words, or change the meaning of words, etc., and not just by word compounding. They may have prefixes or suffixes that have specific meaning, or just a vague notion of a meaning, and there may be extensive derivational morphology to change verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. into each other. Adpositions may be derived from nouns (a very common thing), if you have noun cases you could use those to derive words from others. So when building a lexicon, by all means "throw together sounds" for roots of concepts, but it would be very bad if without a diachronical explanation, "blood" would be "kwirka", "bloody" would be "oyko", "blood-red" would be "nuktuc" (while "red" is "birgion"). Or "to fight" is "dogir", but a "fighter" is a "qua'ta" and "a fight" is "cumba", and so on.

English is notorious for having a lot of words, and a lot of synonyms, because it is an amalgam of West-Germanic, North-Germanic, Romance (French) and Classical Latin. But most languages can get by with a lot less, so I'd aim for the latter, at least at first. Don't try to create a word for just any English word you know!


JAL

[Raphael]

Be aware that almost all (all?) natlangs have means to derive words from other words, or change the meaning of words, etc.

Yeah, that's why it bothers me when people assume that, if their conpeople don't have a word for something, they can't think of it, or that their conpeople will always reliably use words in accordance with official definitions.