Conlang Random Thread

[Moose-tache]

(two US soldiers in 19th century gear are hunkered down behind a wooden palisade)

"Corporal, you told me the Mikihahaka have no word for war!"

"They don't general!" (an arrow narrowly misses the corporal's head) "I swear, they don't!"

A messenger on horseback rushes through a side gate, and staggers up to the general despite several arrow wounds.

"General! The Mikihahaka... They've learned... to paraphrase!" (he dies)

Coming to theaters this summer...

Make Big Shoot Shoot Fight

[äreo]

(two US soldiers in 19th century gear are hunkered down behind a wooden palisade)

"Corporal, you told me the Mikihahaka have no word for war!"

"They don't general!" (an arrow narrowly misses the corporal's head) "I swear, they don't!"

A messenger on horseback rushes through a side gate, and staggers up to the general despite several arrow wounds.

"General! The Mikihahaka... They've learned... to paraphrase!" (he dies)

Coming to theaters this summer...

Make Big Shoot Shoot Fight

lol

[äreo]

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?

Personally I'd go with your current formatting or Alternative 1.

[Qwynegold]

Personally I'd go with your current formatting or Alternative 1.

The current, really? I think it's bad because if you have a comment about the meaning of a gloss and some grammatical information, they both have to go in the same parentheses, eg. wear (headgear; pol. stem). And when there are several glosses, it's ambiguous whether the parenthetic information applies to all of the glosses or just the last one.

Hmm, I guess alternative 1 is good because the dash is a visually clear separator.

Thanks for the feedback!

[äreo]

Personally I'd go with your current formatting or Alternative 1.

The current, really? I think it's bad because if you have a comment about the meaning of a gloss and some grammatical information, they both have to go in the same parentheses, eg. wear (headgear; pol. stem). And when there are several glosses, it's ambiguous whether the parenthetic information applies to all of the glosses or just the last one.

Hmm, I guess alternative 1 is good because the dash is a visually clear separator.

Thanks for the feedback!

Happy to help. I resolved the unclear parentheses problem in my dictionary by putting them before all the glosses they applied to, with glosses they didn't apply to coming before them. This was really just an issue for lexicalized plurals, so I would list singular meanings first, then "(plural)" followed by the plural meaning. For example:

lís | sight, face, (pl.) eyes

[Qwynegold]

Ah, that's a clever way. I tested that too, but it didn't work so well for my purposes.

[Raphael]

I just posted this on Mastodon; it probably won't tell experienced conlangers anything new, but newbies might take something useful from it:

To illustrate how different, even closely related, languages can express similar things in different ways, here are three common German words *literally* translated into English:

Kühlschrank - "cool/cooling cupboard/wardrobe/cabinet" - fridge

Seehund - "sea dog" - common harbor seal

Baumwolle - "tree wool" - cotton

[jal]

Kühlschrank - "cool/cooling cupboard/wardrobe/cabinet" - fridge

Of course, the word originated when it was actually a cooling cupboard (with blocks of ice in it), before it was an electrical appliance.


JAL

[Raphael]

Kühlschrank - "cool/cooling cupboard/wardrobe/cabinet" - fridge

Of course, the word originated when it was actually a cooling cupboard (with blocks of ice in it), before it was an electrical appliance.


JAL

Thank you, good to know!

[linguistcat]

If you were reading a speculative fiction story, and came upon the noun <chonday> how would you pronounce it in your head and what would be your immediate associations or thoughts about it, just from spelling. What would be different if the word was <tonday> instead?

If you're curious, I'm thinking of using one of those for "a ten day period" as a rough equivalent of a week.

[äreo]

If you were reading a speculative fiction story, and came upon the noun <chonday> how would you pronounce it in your head and what would be your immediate associations or thoughts about it, just from spelling. What would be different if the word was <tonday> instead?

If you're curious, I'm thinking of using one of those for "a ten day period" as a rough equivalent of a week.

They'd both end in /ɒndeɪ/ and I think the latter would more quickly connect to "day" in my head.

"tennight" like "sennight" and "fortnight" might be worth considering too.

[bradrn]

If you were reading a speculative fiction story, and came upon the noun <chonday> how would you pronounce it in your head and what would be your immediate associations or thoughts about it, just from spelling. What would be different if the word was <tonday> instead?

If you're curious, I'm thinking of using one of those for "a ten day period" as a rough equivalent of a week.

Probably /ˈt͡ʃɒndæ͡i/ for the former, and either /ˈtɒndæ͡i/ or /ˈtʌndæ͡i/ for the latter. (Of course, this relies on me recognising them as intended to be English words.)

[linguistcat]

Probably /ˈt͡ʃɒndæ͡i/ for the former, and either /ˈtɒndæ͡i/ or /ˈtʌndæ͡i/ for the latter. (Of course, this relies on me recognising them as intended to be English words.)

I didn't think about it but I would probably also guess closer to /ˈtʌndæ͡i/ myself for the second. Would changing the spelling to <taunday> get it closer. If not I might go with tennight, as äreo suggested.

[jal]

If you were reading a speculative fiction story, and came upon the noun <chonday> how would you pronounce it in your head and what would be your immediate associations or thoughts about it, just from spelling. What would be different if the word was <tonday> instead?

"chonday" probably rhyming with "John day", while "tonday" more likely with STRUT (like "monday").

If you're curious, I'm thinking of using one of those for "a ten day period" as a rough equivalent of a week.

The main problem with that would be, for me, that the "day" part would make it sound like it's a specific day. If not a day of the week, then perhaps some holiday.


JAL

[Moose-tache]

You could call it "a ten of days."

(or my favorite: a "daycade")

[jal]

Another objection is that "chon" or "ton" doesn't seem to mean anything, while "day" does. That also makes it difficult to parse. I'd stick to more familiar language. E.g. "tenfold", or "halfscore", or "tennight".


JAL

[salem]

You could instead model the word off of German Jahrhundert 'century' and its cognates, including rare English yearhundred, and call your ten-day weeks daytens (probably pronounced more like Dayton(, Ohio) than like uncompounded day ten). Otherwise I'd also endorse tennight.

[bradrn]

After staring at paradigm tables for some time, I think I’ve finally found a reasonable structure to use for verb stem alternations in Eŋes. To illustrate by example:

Basic stem	fay ‘go up’	wal ‘go’	tuʔf ‘accompany’	winas ‘touch’
-es stem (iterative)		wles ‘walk’		wines ‘tap, knock’
-e stem (semelfactive / interrupted / diminutive)		wle ‘stroll’		wine ‘brush against’
-oŋ stem (resulting state / complete)	foyŋ ‘be high’	wloŋ ‘having walked’
-en stem (intensive)		wlen ‘run’	tuʔn ‘be friends with’	winen ‘indent’
-em stem (inchoative)	faym ‘rise’

So, the stem formation isn’t entirely regular, and the meaning is lexically determined, and not every verb can take every stem form… but the pattern is pretty clear, all the same.

[Zju]

Does it feature ablaut, what with fay ~ foyŋ?

[bradrn]

Does it feature ablaut, what with fay ~ foyŋ?

Sort of… but it’s probably easier to think of it as being like a biconsonantal system. (Compare it to the next column along, wal—wloŋ… that’s clearly not ablaut!)