If natlangs were conlangs

[Vijay]

Eh, I actually find it kind of charming. You get used to the tense morphology on adverbs, prepositions, etc. over time, too.

[Risla]

Malagasy. Oh, Malagasy.

• Seven deictic degrees of distance. Seven. Really, seven? Seven??? Who needs seven??????

WAT?

Seriously.

[Xwtek]

Malagasy. Oh, Malagasy.

• Seven deictic degrees of distance. Seven. Really, seven? Seven??? Who needs seven??????

WAT?

Seriously.

Are you sure that there is actually 7 degrees of distance and not 3 degrees, but there is variant demonstratives that have the same degrees of distance and visibility?

[Risla]

Are you sure that there is actually 7 degrees of distance and not 3 degrees, but there is variant demonstratives that have the same degrees of distance and visibility?

I'm quite certain. My Field Methods class in university did Malagasy, and one of my classmates focused on deixis (I mostly focused on the phonology and morphophonology). IIRC it seems like the system might be collapsing into six (what a surprise!), but it's certainly not a three-way distinction.

[Xwtek]

Are you sure that there is actually 7 degrees of distance and not 3 degrees, but there is variant demonstratives that have the same degrees of distance and visibility?

I'm quite certain. My Field Methods class in university did Malagasy, and one of my classmates focused on deixis (I mostly focused on the phonology and morphophonology). IIRC it seems like the system might be collapsing into six (what a surprise!), but it's certainly not a three-way distinction.

Please fix the Wikipedia page. It's unclear.

[mèþru]

Swedish - what's up with your phonology? You don't get to just invent a new IPA symbol just for your own language! Also what sound is it anyway - saying it is unpronounceable for foreigners is a cop-out that doesn't explain anything! Plus way too many vowels, especially front rounded!

[akam chinjir]

Pre-nominal relative clauses in a VO language? Not likely. (← All varieties of Chinese known to me.)

[Neon Fox]

I'm no huge fan of irregular verbs being all over the place--I'm looking at you, French--but it seems like there ought to be more than two. Scattering a few irregular forms through a handful of other verbs just...doesn't seem realistic. And as Yiuel says, don't even get me started on the writing system. If ever there was a phonology suited to a syllabary, Japanese is it, yet we're supposed to buy that they shotgun in these complex borrowed logograms for content words? I get prestige, but for God's sake.

(And oh yes, when we're speaking in a high register we'll just use a completely different word! And there are 8 different 1s pronouns, with which the speaker can indicate hir relative status and level of respect for the addressee!)

[Xwtek]

I'm no huge fan of irregular verbs being all over the place--I'm looking at you, French--but it seems like there ought to be more than two. Scattering a few irregular forms through a handful of other verbs just...doesn't seem realistic.

Uh, actually, Japanese's irregular forms is actually realistic, unless your idea of good irregular verbs is like English.

(And oh yes, when we're speaking in a high register we'll just use a completely different word! And there are 8 different 1s pronouns, with which the speaker can indicate hir relative status and level of respect for the addressee!)

Oh, you're complaining about it? Japanese is nothing compared to Javanese. There is 3 sets of vocabulary, Ngoko, Krama Madya, Krama Alus. And they used in different way to make 11 speech registers. Wow, as if 3 levels is not already fine enough. At least, Japanese is still rather predictable, with -masu suffix, o-V ni suru, etc.

[Neon Fox]

(And oh yes, when we're speaking in a high register we'll just use a completely different word! And there are 8 different 1s pronouns, with which the speaker can indicate hir relative status and level of respect for the addressee!)

Oh, you're complaining about it? Japanese is nothing compared to Javanese. There is 3 sets of vocabulary, Ngoko, Krama Madya, Krama Alus. And they used in different way to make 11 speech registers. Wow, as if 3 levels is not already fine enough. At least, Japanese is still rather predictable, with -masu suffix, o-V ni suru, etc.

"Some other language is worse" isn't actually a ringing endorsement.

[WeepingElf]

And don't even get me started on Esperanto! So unnatural the way nouns can only end in o.

...oh wait.

Well, all non-past positive verbs in Japanese end in -u, so there is precedent for a category to end with a common element. Pretty sure Zam was not aware of that though.

And all German infinitive verbs end in -n. So if you are doing a German crossword, and a verb is asked for, you can always fill in the last letter.

[Linguoboy]

Speaking of verb endings, whoever designed Korean got way too carried away. Several hundred possibilities despite not having any personal endings? You really should make some time to go through them all and throw out all the ones you don't need.

Also, I understand not wanting to have the same kind of vowel harmony system as everyone else, but it should make some kind of sense, 'mkay? You can't just lump all your back vowels into two opposing sets, make all the front vowels neutral, and call it a day.

[Zaarin]

Also, I understand not wanting to have the same kind of vowel harmony system as everyone else, but it should make some kind of sense, 'mkay? You can't just lump all your back vowels into two opposing sets, make all the front vowels neutral, and call it a day.

They were inspired by the guy that did Nez Perce.

[zompist]

I know Ser brought this one up already, but... Mandarin vowels, wut? Dude, have you even heard of "phonemes"? It's like, don't have any basic vowels, just combinations; throw an i or u in front of some of them, and not the same subset for each; and sometimes, for no reason, add /y/.

[Neon Fox]

I know Ser brought this one up already, but... Mandarin vowels, wut? Dude, have you even heard of "phonemes"? It's like, don't have any basic vowels, just combinations; throw an i or u in front of some of them, and not the same subset for each; and sometimes, for no reason, add /y/.

What I want on that one is a good description of the allophones. There's that palatal pair that only shows up before high front vowels, and none of the other three pairs they might be allophones of ever do so you just can't tell!

[Das Public Viewing]

Also Osage guy why you do this as well French kinda has an excuse because it's got a cramped vowel system anyway but you started off with a simple five-vowel system!

Don't forget Ancient Greek

I'm actually surprised so few people talk about the trainwreck of a lang that is Modern Greek.
First of all, you had to go from a regular agreement-based declension system to usually only denoting it in the article? It seriously seems like that's all that ever happens anymore with all the Europeän "Modern" langs. I mean, I get analogical leveling, but come on! I want some originality for once, something that hasn't been done yet, not German 2: kinda Russian.
Second, I get that phonologies are hard. I was able to forgive the original vowel system, especially since it was used in such interesting ways. That said, unconditionally fortifying the second part of a diphthong? Merging a million different vowels into /i/? (even /ɛː/, plus /oː/>>/u/: English much?) Who ever heard of most of these changes?
Third, I get that aspiration doesn't stay around for long (even if it was one of the best parts of Ancient Greek), but /f/θ/x/? Really? And the voiced ones too? What is this, Spanish? No, of course it isn't; even Spanish doesn't spell /b/ as <mp>. It's almost like it's trying to be Swahili, but it just can't do it.

[Knit Tie]

Alright, the guy who did Russian, good job taking that Polish thing from earlier and making it sound rather okay and not like a sputtering car engine. I like the palatalised series being preserved and not transitioning into entirely new palatal series. In general, I like the way you made the phonology that much less of a mess - one true palatal series plus the /ɕ:/ from previous /ɕtɕ/ sounds much more sane and reasonable than the mess Polish had. Not sure why the /ts/ is never palatalised, but I guess you wanted to keep it maximally distinct from /tɕ/.

The writing system is both lazy and crazy, I mean, come on, <ч> is just <h> upside-down, there's a whole bunch of latin letters used in weird as hell ways (<р> is /r/? Why?), random diacritics to convey /j/ and /jo/ or /ʲo/ that are never reused *but* a separate letter for a "hard" /e/ that is rarely written regardless and also no way to portray the vowel reduction. But props to you for figuring how to convey palatalisation without it looking like diacritic vomit or silent vowel hell, I like it!

Phonotactics are still kinda weird - massive clunky consonant clusters that look out of place in Europe (/vzblʲesk/? What is this, Salishan or Tibetian?) and I'm not sure how realistic it is to have palatalised and non-palatalised consonants freely cluster together with few restrictions, but at least you've put in more vowels between things than the creator of Polish, so there's that.

Grammar, however, is something that you still need to work on. If you wanted to make a saner Polish, why not bother simplifying the noun cases beyond removing Vocative? Why make two different ways of conjugating verbs and then reduce the vowels differentiating them into /i/ in most cases, anyway? Why so many goddamn fusional suffixes denoting things readily inferable from context? Why make the aspect distinction in verbs be represented by completely bloody arbitrary morphemes in each case? Just... fix your shit, man, and lay off the drugs.

[Xwtek]

Nahuatl is perhaps one of the best conlang in the Earth. Unfortunately, it's not spotless. Can you explain why 1PL and 2SG subject and pronoun prefixes are identical? Also, can you explain why you need to decline noun based on "case" (which is more about whether the noun is possessed or not), and number, like one in Europe, while you also have possessive prefixes? Also, your orthography is garbage. Try not to shoehorn Spanish orthography to your conlang.

[evmdbm]

Also they do a terrible job at making their characters actually distinct from each other, like in one of the phonemic systems has sa, chi and ki be distinguished from each other by being mirror-images or plus an extra stroke, and in the other their shi and tsu syllables are only distinguished by the precise angle of two small dashes in the top left corner of the character, like have you never heard of dyslexia mate?

Thai alphabet (or abugida) too. They all look the same but with the twiddles and crosses in marginally different locations, facing different directions, and is it 6 letters for a "k" sound??

[Xwtek]

Southern Tepehuan, unlike Nahuatl, (they're from the same family), has a horrible phonology. Really, you have /ɨ u o ʌ a/ as the non front vowel, but only /i/ as the front vowel? Also, what arbitrary consonant is /ɣ͡ʎ/?