Conlang Random Thread

[WeepingElf]

Yep. The compromise I'm willing to go with is, so to speak, moderately humanlike aliens. As in bipedal / similar social structure / humanoid in the widest sense of the word. Which I think is not unrealistic. Actually, the more I think about it, the more Starfish Aliens (as they say on TV Tropes) feel unsatisfying.

Humans are an oddity, us being bipedal and having an erect posture. So at least you'd need some evolutionary explanation for "moderately humanlike aliens". I still haven't fully worked-out "my" conaliens, but they too are humanoid.


JAL

Yep (and there I need to figure something out) but bipedality makes sense for a technological species: you need to free the hands.
Birds are bipedal though (but it's an idea I already used!)

One possible solution is to start with a body plan with six or more legs, so you can convert the first pair of legs into hands without having to put the body on end. Or evolve manipulators from something else than legs entirely, such as mouth organs (like insect mandibles or a set of circumoral tentacles).

[jal]

Yep (and there I need to figure something out) but bipedality makes sense for a technological species: you need to free the hands. Birds are bipedal though (but it's an idea I already used!)

And birds lack good fingers. You could have some bipedal species with other appendages for manipulating of course, maybe intricate mouth parts like some spiders have. But it'll quickly go the way of the "alien" aliens rather than humanoids.


JAL

[AwfullyAmateur]

I have conaliens (my Sodemeresh) who are essentially humans that evolved from large, predatory clams.

[jal]

I have conaliens (my Sodemeresh) who are essentially humans that evolved from large, predatory clams.

I'd like to see the evolution of that :D


JAL

[Raphael]

I have conaliens (my Sodemeresh) who are essentially humans that evolved from large, predatory clams.

Now I wonder how the Sodemeresh version of "March of Progress" looks like.



Edit: jal beat me to it!

[AwfullyAmateur]

Some notes from awhile ago:

Haemocyanin instead of hemoglobin (so blue blood)
Poor eyesight in their main eyes (which can range in pupil size from ‘almost entirely pupil with a thin ring of color’ to ‘pupil barely exists’ depending on light levels)’, as these are largely vestigial.
Tiny clam-like ‘pinhole eyes’ all over the skin allowing for 360 degree ‘vision’. This also, however, acts like the sense of touch, giving them greater awareness of environment than many humans.
Excellent sense of smell which helped detect prey (ambush predators)
Sharp backwards facing fangs like some snakes, to grip prey.
As for their hearing, their actual earholes are covered over by skin so everything sounds a bit more muddled, but otherwise it’s pretty good.

[bradrn]

Your Bugs were pretty alien, as I recall.

(By the way, whatever did happen to the Bugs?)

I'm still mostly happy with what I wrote about the Bugs back in the day. One thing that's still to consider is whether to place them on the same planet as the rest of my conworlding (which would be convenient for other reasons)

Hmm, I always assumed they were on a different planet.

Yep. The compromise I'm willing to go with is, so to speak, moderately humanlike aliens. As in bipedal / similar social structure / humanoid in the widest sense of the word. Which I think is not unrealistic. Actually, the more I think about it, the more Starfish Aliens (as they say on TV Tropes) feel unsatisfying.

I agree more with jal here: humanoids are unusual, and need an explanation. Even on Earth, there are intelligent animals with manipulators which look nothing like humanoids. (Just consider the octopus…)

[Ares Land]

Hmm, I always assumed they were on a different planet.[/quote]
Yes, that was the original idea (and I may still go with that!)

I agree more with jal here: humanoids are unusual, and need an explanation. Even on Earth, there are intelligent animals with manipulators which look nothing like humanoids. (Just consider the octopus…)

Given similar conditions, as in land species in an atmosphere close to earth, it's harder to find ideas for really different manipulators though; tentacles are great underwater; trunks maybe?

I just came across an intriguing idea regarding bipedality: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28254476/
It may turn out to be kind of an accident that mammals are rarely bipedal.

[Richard W]

Given similar conditions, as in land species in an atmosphere close to earth, it's harder to find ideas for really different manipulators though; tentacles are great underwater; trunks maybe?

Non-avian maniraptorans could have developed hands, but they would not have been erect, but would have had horizontal backs like most terrestrial birds. Birds seem to do quite well with their beaks.

I do wonder if erect bipedalism is primitive for (African?) hominids, but was mostly ditched in favour of knuckle-walking.

Niven & Pournelle did come up with bifurcating trunks for their fithp in Footfall.

[jal]

I just came across an intriguing idea regarding bipedality: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28254476/
It may turn out to be kind of an accident that mammals are rarely bipedal.

Weird, it claims mammals don't have a caudofemoralis, while the Wikipedia article about the caudofemoralis claims they have.

Non-avian maniraptorans could have developed hands, but they would not have been erect, but would have had horizontal backs like most terrestrial birds.

Not sure they could've developed hands, it seems by that time their front apendages were pretty reduced. It would've taken a kind of reverse evolution to make them into functional hands again.


JAL

[Richard W]

Not sure they could've developed hands, it seems by that time their front apendages were pretty reduced. It would've taken a kind of reverse evolution to make them into functional hands again.

Even for the 'short armed' Troodontid Linhevenator it's been suggested that the forelimbs were used for digging or climbing! Possibly Therizinosaur forelimbs were too far gone in their specialisation.

[jal]

Even for the 'short armed' Troodontid Linhevenator it's been suggested that the forelimbs were used for digging or climbing!

Given the little remains we have for Linhevenator, I doubt whether that's more than popular science speculation. I can't find any speculation about that in the original paper. Regardless, digging and climbing can be done with claws that can't easily evolve into manipulation tools. Mononykus was also speculated to use it claws for digging, but I doubt it could manipulate with them very well :).


JAL

[TomHChappell]

…..
Even for the 'short armed' Troodontid Linhevenator it's been suggested that the forelimbs were used for digging or climbing! Possibly Therizinosaur forelimbs were too far gone in their specialisation.

Who was first to inspect their short arms?

[AwfullyAmateur]

I've heard it's possible some dinosaurs had short arms to ensure they wouldn't accidentally injure others during communal feedings, as they already had very powerful jaws.

[AwfullyAmateur]

By the way, my new 'lang appears to be progressing well enough. Yes, there is definitely a vaguely Persian flavor to it; in-universe this language takes a lot of words from human tongues. Some of its nouns:

1. Ĕlya - God
2. Myu- Cat
3. Kŏmya- Fire
4. Tuvyi- Water
5. Mĕla- Langu
6. Ădomo- Human
7. Devya- Cow
8. Rŏsyu- Person (meaning demon or angel, not humans. Humans are not people. Obviously.)
9. Chawo- Flower
10. Ŏvŭ- Love
11. Mŏko- Place (mŏ can be used as a postfix)
12. Fŏryu- Wing
13. Šatyá (from šatyătyewa)- King, Master, Lord, Ruler
14. Zhăta (from Old Iranian jatā, ‘smiter’. Originally was nisushama, or nisushamăle.)- Angel
15. Zhivá- Life
16. Dŏstá- Friend
17. Nibámu- Beauty

[AwfullyAmateur]

What do you think?

[Raphael]

By the way, my new 'lang appears to be progressing well enough. Yes, there is definitely a vaguely Persian flavor to it; in-universe this language takes a lot of words from human tongues. Some of its nouns:

1. Ĕlya - God
2. Myu- Cat
3. Kŏmya- Fire
4. Tuvyi- Water
5. Mĕla- Langu
6. Ădomo- Human
7. Devya- Cow
8. Rŏsyu- Person (meaning demon or angel, not humans. Humans are not people. Obviously.)
9. Chawo- Flower
10. Ŏvŭ- Love
11. Mŏko- Place (mŏ can be used as a postfix)
12. Fŏryu- Wing
13. Šatyá (from šatyătyewa)- King, Master, Lord, Ruler
14. Zhăta (from Old Iranian jatā, ‘smiter’. Originally was nisushama, or nisushamăle.)- Angel
15. Zhivá- Life
16. Dŏstá- Friend
17. Nibámu- Beauty

It looks nice, but unfortunately, I can't think of anything to say about it other than "it looks nice". Perhaps people who know more about phonology and morphology, or about the languages that influenced it, might have more to say?

[linguistcat]

I'm having weird issue with my "cat language" based on Japanese. Every time I come up with a sound change that would make it more "cat-like", I find it's already a sound change that did happen in a major Japanese dialect. I guess I could just push the sound changes further (more nasalization, more frictivization, etc), retain some older traits (8 vowel qualities instead of collapsing to 5) or focus more on grammar differences. But I feel like it's either too close to Standard Japanese when I'm done, or it doesn't sound very cat like to me, but maybe that's my own problem and other people would find it very cat-like.

[Raphael]

Maybe that's why the Japanese are so much into cute animals like cats?

[linguistcat]

Maybe that's why the Japanese are so much into cute animals like cats?

"The youkai living in the courts affected the speech of the upper classes" is my new whackjob linguistics theory.