Conlang Random Thread

[Creyeditor]

An idea for a conlang numeral system (higher numbers) based on East Asian languages and traditional European year counting.

hundred=100
ten hundred=1,000
myriad= 10,000
ten myriads= 100,000
hundred myriads= 1,000,000
ten hundred myriads= 10,000,000
myriad myriad=byriad= 100,000,000
ten byriad=1,000,000.000
hundred byriad=10,000,000,000
ten hundred byriad = 100,000,000,000
tryriad=1,000,000,000,000

and so on, and so forth...

[malloc]

Weird coincidence but I have been working on numbers in my conlang and decided on pretty much this. I even coined "byriad" and "tryriad" to gloss words for powers of a myriad.

[Creyeditor]

Great minds think alike, I guess

[salem]

An idea for a conlang numeral system (higher numbers) based on East Asian languages and traditional European year counting.

hundred=100
ten hundred=1,000
myriad= 10,000
ten myriads= 100,000
hundred myriads= 1,000,000
ten hundred myriads= 10,000,000
myriad myriad=byriad= 100,000,000
ten byriad=1,000,000.000
hundred byriad=10,000,000,000
ten hundred byriad = 100,000,000,000
tryriad=1,000,000,000,000

and so on, and so forth...

I'm fond of nearly any number system that's more efficient with its terms than English (my default) is, and this achieves that goal well, using only combinations of five basic terms (ten, hundred, myriad, byriad, tryriad) to get to where English requires seven (ten, hundred, thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion or ten, hundred, thousand, million, milliard, billion, billaird), an advantage that widens as more orders of magnitude are reached. I like it!

[salem]

I've had an idea for a language's tense system to be torn to shreds by its speakers' unusual cultural perception of time, with the metaphor TIME IS AGE: older things and people are considered to be further into the future than their younger counterparts, as if everything shares a single timeline that begins at the moment of each creation or birth, all considered as the same zero point. This is expressed by verbs declining for tense based not on the actual sequence of events, but relative to the topic of the conversation's age at the time of that event relative to the speaker's current age; this doesn't affect the actual chronological flow of the narrative, but it does make flashbacks relatively harder to express.

If the speaker is talking to somebody older than them about an event in the elder's life that happened or will happen when the elder was or will be still older than them, the future tense is used, even if that event is in the chronological past; the reverse applies when talking about somebody younger than the speaker, and likewise when talking about institutions or objects being founded or created. Most nonliving inanimate objects not of human construction are assumed to have been created in the same moment as the universe itself, and so older than all living things and human constructions and each just as old as the other, so they're always in future tense. Objects, concepts, and people of unknown or ambiguous relative age to the speaker are by default thought to be "about the same age" and so they're always in a tense corresponding to actual chronology, as are members of a multiple birth to each other and any speaker to themself.

I imagine this sort of thing might, if not derived strictly from cultural cosmology, also arise through a custom of respectfully "centering" an elder when speaking to them being radically expanded to all possible addressees and topics. It might eventually simplify and evolve to a state where the former future tense becomes a inanimate marker on the verb (from its use for nonliving objects "created with the universe"), the former present a "human" gender marker (from its use for people of unknown age, and from putting people of different ages "on the same level" as the speaker as an egalitarian move), and the former past a nonhuman animate marker (from its use in either accurately or pejoratively treating animals as younger than the speaker, though large trees and so on might resist this and be moved to the inanimate gender for semantic reasons).

[Emily]

cursed idea: SVO language, adjectives precede the noun when the noun precedes the verb but follow the noun when the noun follows the verb

[foxcatdog]

Salem's idea scares me

[keenir]

Salem's idea scares me

I think its a nice idea whats described.
Granted, it sounds to me like when NativLang described how a tenseless Mayan language tells how a sequence of events occurred.

[salem]

Salem's idea scares me

I think its a nice idea whats described.
Granted, it sounds to me like when NativLang described how a tenseless Mayan language tells how a sequence of events occurred.

Oh? (I haven't seen this video.)

[keenir]

Salem's idea scares me

I think its a nice idea whats described.
Granted, it sounds to me like when NativLang described how a tenseless Mayan language tells how a sequence of events occurred.

Oh? (I haven't seen this video.)

my bad; meant to provide a link in my prior post; sorry.

https://youtu.be/ttq0S4cuIHA

[salem]

I think its a nice idea whats described.
Granted, it sounds to me like when NativLang described how a tenseless Mayan language tells how a sequence of events occurred.

Oh? (I haven't seen this video.)

my bad; meant to provide a link in my prior post; sorry.

https://youtu.be/ttq0S4cuIHA

That's a good one, thank you! But it's not at all what I'm describing, since my language's verbs still have an abundance of tense (and I haven't really touched on aspect or mood at all). Maybe a couple examples (as much as descriptions without any actual translated text or glosses count as examples) would help:

If I were talking to my younger sister (she's twenty-one, I'm twenty-three) and we were talking about her life, the reference point for tenses would be shifted effectively two years into the future: past for all past and present events and events up to about two years into the future (past because she was and will be younger than I currently am), present for events two years into the future (because then she'll be the age I am now), and future only for events more than two years into the future (because then she'll have gotten older than I currently am). If I were having the same conversation with my grandmother, that reference point would be shifted some fifty-three years into the past, and so all present and future events as well as all past events that occured when she was older than my current age would be put in the future tense, and so on.

But perhaps there's something of a retreat to "true tense" in more informal/less respectful contexts, like it doesn't matter that much that I'm two years older than my sister and so I can just treat her as the topic in the same way I would myself, with grammatical past, present, and future corresponding as you'd expect to strictly chronological past, present, and future.

[keenir]

Oh? (I haven't seen this video.)

my bad; meant to provide a link in my prior post; sorry.

https://youtu.be/ttq0S4cuIHA

That's a good one, thank you! But it's not at all what I'm describing, since my language's verbs still have an abundance of tense (and I haven't really touched on aspect or mood at all). Maybe a couple examples (as much as descriptions without any actual translated text or glosses count as examples) would help:

please and thank you.

If I were talking to my younger sister
and we were talking about her life, the reference point for tenses would be shifted effectively two years into the future: past for all past and present events and events up to about two years into the future (past because she was and will be younger than I currently am), present for events two years into the future (because then she'll be the age I am now), and future only for events more than two years into the future (because then she'll have gotten older than I currently am). If I were having the same conversation with my grandmother, that reference point would be shifted some fifty-three years into the past, and so all present and future events as well

Once, I heard a child declare "One day I'll be as old as you are & i'll dance on your grave!" What resulted was a very impressive slap. To me, at least, that would run the risk of informing the other person in this discussion, that they wouldn't get any older than that.

Granted, that could pair very nicely with fortune-telling, which was the sort of prophecy that was illegal in places like Elizabethan England.

as all past events that occured when she was older than my current age would be put in the future tense, and so on.

Hmm...*thinking thinky thoughts* Maybe this could be used to for (?in)formal settings with people that the speaker is very familiar with? Because I'm thinking "But when I go to the library, and try telling them about a book i used to read - i don't know their ages; ditto at a shop where I'm telling the seller about an outfit i used to wear, that I'm trying to get for a relative?"

Maybe have that time-based element only for familiars, or have the option for unknowns?

I suspect I'm overthinking it; sorry.

But perhaps there's something of a retreat to "true tense" in more informal/less respectful contexts, like it doesn't matter that much that I'm two years older than my sister and so I can just treat her as the topic in the same way I would myself, with grammatical past, present, and future corresponding as you'd expect to strictly chronological past, present, and future.

Well, whether you're talking to your sister or your grandmother, you'd be establishing a time (ie, the arrival of the hurricane, graduation, etc)...then something that happened there (ie, an inspiring speech)...then something that happened as a result of it (ie, you and grandmother and sister went to try a restaurant none of you had eaten at before)...

I assume so, because when I talk to my grandmother, she doesn't jump all over the temporal place (ie, talking remembering that speech, then discussing the start of that graduation, then her thoughts on that new restaurant we tried).
...my sister does do time jumps, but thats just how she talks when she's trying to make a point.

[jal]

cursed idea: SVO language, adjectives precede the noun when the noun precedes the verb but follow the noun when the noun follows the verb

Verb-averse adjectives. Cool.


JAL

[Man in Space]

I’ve a dilemma and I’d like to solicit opinions of the board at large.

I’ve been playing around with a new logographic system that has an aesthetic that I am really fond of. Problem is I have two possible use cases for it: Twin Aster and Akana. It can either be the writing system of Vyʌ or the Irghal in the former or of K!asic in the latter (yes, yes, I know I am incredibly late with this year’s delay, I’m getting to it). Opinions on which way I should go?

[keenir]

I’ve a dilemma and I’d like to solicit opinions of the board at large.

I’ve been playing around with a new logographic system that has an aesthetic that I am really fond of. Problem is I have two possible use cases for it: Twin Aster and Akana. It can either be the writing system of Vyʌ or the Irghal in the former or of K!asic in the latter (yes, yes, I know I am incredibly late with this year’s delay, I’m getting to it). Opinions on which way I should go?

I'm probably missing something here, but why can't the logography be used for both?

(obvious downside to my eyes is that that doubles the workload, which might be minimized if the same logographic signs are used for the same phones/sounds/rebus/etc...right?)

[Man in Space]

I’ve a dilemma and I’d like to solicit opinions of the board at large.

I’ve been playing around with a new logographic system that has an aesthetic that I am really fond of. Problem is I have two possible use cases for it: Twin Aster and Akana. It can either be the writing system of Vyʌ or the Irghal in the former or of K!asic in the latter (yes, yes, I know I am incredibly late with this year’s delay, I’m getting to it). Opinions on which way I should go?

I'm probably missing something here, but why can't the logography be used for both?

(obvious downside to my eyes is that that doubles the workload, which might be minimized if the same logographic signs are used for the same phones/sounds/rebus/etc...right?)

Different projects, different universes. I don't want to recycle it wholesale.

[keenir]

I’ve a dilemma and I’d like to solicit opinions of the board at large.

I’ve been playing around with a new logographic system that has an aesthetic that I am really fond of. Problem is I have two possible use cases for it: Twin Aster and Akana. It can either be the writing system of Vyʌ or the Irghal in the former or of K!asic in the latter (yes, yes, I know I am incredibly late with this year’s delay, I’m getting to it). Opinions on which way I should go?

I'm probably missing something here, but why can't the logography be used for both?

(obvious downside to my eyes is that that doubles the workload, which might be minimized if the same logographic signs are used for the same phones/sounds/rebus/etc...right?)

Different projects, different universes. I don't want to recycle it wholesale.

okay...partly?

imho, I'd say use it for Twin Aster...but I say that, in part, because I know at least a little of Twin Aster & next to nothing of Akana.

[foxcatdog]

What are some SOV generally features a formerly SOV language can preserve after the shift to SVO?

[bradrn]

What are some SOV generally features a formerly SOV language can preserve after the shift to SVO?

Any of them? That’s such a broad question it’s hard to give any specific answer.

[Travis B.]

What are some SOV generally features a formerly SOV language can preserve after the shift to SVO?

Well consider German and Dutch - while they are V2, verbs otherwise typically go to the end of a clause.