If natlangs were conlangs

[Kuchigakatai]

Or, the comeback of the thread where we call natlangs bad conlangs.

Old Church Slavonic has many cases marked and distinguished by a single vowel: gradŭ grade grada gradě gradu gradi grady.

And there's a bit of syncretism of different case and number combinations, to make matters worse: gradŭ 'the city, of the cities', grade 'oh city!', grada 'of the city, the two cities', gradě 'in the city', gradu 'to the city, of/in the two cities', gradi 'the cities (nom.)', grady 'the cities (acc.), with the cities'.

Terrible conlang.

The vowel phonology of Marshallese is also very bad. A 4-vowel vertical system with 3 allophones each depending on the surrounding consonants? It's like Mandarin's vowels but less realistic due to its pure verticality.

(EDIT: In case it isn't obvious, the idea is to make fun of common conlang tropes by showing unfavoured characteristics do happen in natlangs.)

[Frislander]

Somebody tell that guy who did Navajo that determining the ordering of nouns in a clause by an animacy hierarchy is a stupid idea.

[Pabappa]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kildin_S%C3%A1mi_language

Really? You cant just throw a bunch of extra letters and apostrophes into Finnish and call it a separate language. And, have you actually tried reading this out loud? I mean, jiev liijja, what even is that?

[Kuchigakatai]

I think the creator of Kayardild shouldn't pretend that that language is spoken by humans. It would be fine for an alien language, but marking tense-aspect-mood on content words that aren't verbs is going too far. Especially if it redundantly marks TAM there, multiple times!

Ngada kurri-nang-ku malawu balmbiwu.
1SG.NOM see-not-POT sea-POT tomorrow-POT
'I won't be able to see the sea tomorrow.'
(POT = potential tense-aspect-mood)

Niya waajarra wangarrina ngumbanmarutharra thabujumarutharr?
3SG sing-PAST song-PAST 2SG-DAT.PAST elder.brother-DAT.PAST
'Did she sing the song for your elder brother?'

Also, regarding the second sentence, do you really need to have a six-syllable word to express "your"? (Okay, more than half of the word is just the case+tense marker, but still, that's long.)

[Zaarin]

Does whoever made Tlingit really expect us to believe that out of five lateral consonants not one of them is /l/?

[HourouMusuko]

PIE-creator: you've given me hours of enjoyment studying your fascinatingly intricate and some would say unnecessarily complex language, but I just don't know if I'd call it naturalistic. A language where the mid-vowels are predominant seems a bit far-fetched. What language has syllabic laryngeals, but little or no occurrence of /a/? I'm just not buying it. (Don't even get me started on /bʰ/ but no /b/). And while I appreciate the extensive use of ablaut, it seems so arbitrary in so many cases that I'm wondering why it's even there except to confuse me.

I'm liking the look of it, but I'm wondering what human can pronounce all those laryngeal sounds. If this were a natlang, I'd imagine it would quickly die out and leave no legacy. Keep up the good work, though.

[Xwtek]

Somebody tell that guy who did Navajo that determining the ordering of nouns in a clause by an animacy hierarchy is a stupid idea.

That's realistic compared to the fact that Navajo have fusion of Aspect and Mode by ablaut. If it doesn't bad enough, each verb stem has its own ways, there is no regular way to do ablaut on verbs. Even worse is each verb have a rather arbitrary restriction what mode or aspect is allowed. Even worse still is most of them are homophone already, so it doesn't contribute much to the meaning. That's now how fusional language works Navajo.

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

Also, asking a question by word order is the worst idea I have ever seen about marking polar question.

[Richard W]

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

It's just an imitation of the French subtractive morphemes, as in _oeuf_ 'egg' > _oeufs_ 'egg' and _petit_ 'little' (m.) < _petite_ (f.). English //s// is the present tense marker, with subtraction for the person and plural markers. You also see (or rather, hear) these subtractive person and numbeɾ markers being applied to the present subjunctive marker //ː//.

Thai seems to get a few things the wrong way round - or is it deliberate violation of universals?

1. For word derivation, it has umpteen prefixes and no suffixes. (It does have one infix, -am(n)-.)
2. It then goes and has suffixes for its two inflections - genitive and comparative.
3. For reduplicative ablaut, it has the general pattern (back-vowel, front-vowel) whereas the universal says that such ablaut goes (front vowel, back vowel).

[Raholeun]

Piraha is little more than an sketch. Just two numbers and nothing more? No colour terms, hardly any kinship terminology? Come back when you've got more to show than that.

[Frislander]

Whoever did Icelandic - you have over a millenium to play with, you can't just merge some of the vowels, make minor alterations to the consonants and leave everything else untouched that's not how language evolution works!

[Xwtek]

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

It's just an imitation of the French subtractive morphemes, as in _oeuf_ 'egg' > _oeufs_ 'egg' and _petit_ 'little' (m.) < _petite_ (f.). English //s// is the present tense marker, with subtraction for the person and plural markers. You also see (or rather, hear) these subtractive person and numbeɾ markers being applied to the present subjunctive marker //ː//.

Then why isn't the non-3SG PAST form of <pick> is <picke>? Why isn't the <d> removed?

Basque is a pretty good conlang. However, something bothers me. Why you put your conlang in Western Europe?

[Frislander]

Basque is a pretty good conlang. However, something bothers me. Why you put your conlang in Eastern Europe?

? Basque is about as west as you can get, nowhere near Eastern Europe, you must be thinking Hungarian, which has its own problems, like who thinks double acutes are a good aesthetic, and what's with all those cases, including a blinking comparative in -bb?

Somebody tell that guy who did Navajo that determining the ordering of nouns in a clause by an animacy hierarchy is a stupid idea.

That's realistic compared to the fact that Navajo have fusion of Aspect and Mode by ablaut. If it doesn't bad enough, each verb stem has its own ways, there is no regular way to do ablaut on verbs. Even worse is each verb have a rather arbitrary restriction what mode or aspect is allowed. Even worse still is most of them are homophone already, so it doesn't contribute much to the meaning. That's now how fusional language works Navajo.

Heck, the super redundancy of the system beggars belief, why would you have regular prefixes marking these categories and then this stupid root-alternation on top? And why all those imperfective aspects what do they all mean there's too many!

Also having a separate prefix for a location as an object that's just weird man, idk if I buy that.

[Richard W]

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

It's just an imitation of the French subtractive morphemes, as in _oeuf_ 'egg' > _oeufs_ 'egg' and _petit_ 'little' (m.) < _petite_ (f.). English //s// is the present tense marker, with subtraction for the person and plural markers. You also see (or rather, hear) these subtractive person and numbeɾ markers being applied to the present subjunctive marker //ː//.

Then why isn't the non-3SG PAST form of <pick> is <picke>? Why isn't the <d> removed?

Different personal endings in present and past - not uncommon. And there are (were?) forms of English in the UK where '-s' is a TAM marker used for all persons and numbers - 'You pays your money and you takes your choice'. I think that is a purely native development, but from the location there might just be some Welsh influence, though I can't see what.

I can remember being taught (by a work book, though) that both subject and verb can't both end in '-s', which can be generalised to a plural marker that deletes final ///s///. Deletion of inflectional -s becomes vacuous in the past tense. (For me, the 'possessive' of was is was's.)

[Xwtek]

Basque is a pretty good conlang. However, something bothers me. Why you put your conlang in Eastern Europe?

? Basque is about as west as you can get, nowhere near Eastern Europe, you must be thinking Hungarian, which has its own problems, like who thinks double acutes are a good aesthetic, and what's with all those cases, including a blinking comparative in -bb?

Whoops, mistype. edited. Thanks.

[gestaltist]

Polish is such a tryhard conlang. I mean - you need over 100 conjugations to fully account for all patterns in the language? Like what? And even when you ignore exceptions is something like 17 conjugations. The author just loves making tables or something. Also: ever heard about analogy?

The romanization is god-awful, as well. Why would you use <ą> for /ɔ̃/? (Or rather [ɔw̃~ɔN] because that guy just likes being special.) And don't even get me started on <ł> for /w/. That just doesn't make any sense.

[Xwtek]

Anyone making Indonesian must be reminded: passive don't work that way. Also, WTH with your personal suffixes. Why only singular, and for verb why only on OBJECT? However, the relationals it a neat idea

[Kuchigakatai]

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

Indeed. Would you believe a language that has gender, case and number inflections in adjectives, but gender and case matter for the feminine accusative only, all other forms being the same for gender/case? Ridiculous, right? And yet that's what English has in its verbs.

[Nortaneous]

Also, English, WTF you just mark subject only for 3SG? At least if you don't want too many agreement suffixes, you can mark verb by person only or number only. Also, why can't you combine that -s with a -ed? Also, you have too many irregular verbs.

It's just an imitation of the French subtractive morphemes, as in _oeuf_ 'egg' > _oeufs_ 'egg' and _petit_ 'little' (m.) < _petite_ (f.). English //s// is the present tense marker, with subtraction for the person and plural markers. You also see (or rather, hear) these subtractive person and numbeɾ markers being applied to the present subjunctive marker //ː//.

no

For reduplicative ablaut, it has the general pattern (back-vowel, front-vowel) whereas the universal says that such ablaut goes (front vowel, back vowel).

doesn't Manchu also have this?

[masako]

Whoever told these people who made Semitic roots that reading and inflection would be easy obviously didn't consider 27 verb forms. Also, marking vowels is helpful, not superfluous.

[circeus]

French creator, we are still awaiting a justification for wholesale fronting of /u/ to /y/. You figured out something sensible yet?