Zompist Bboard Again

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Sun Jun 01, 2025 8:52 pm If you're concerned that starting from Old Japanese and applying cat sound changes yields Modern Japanese, why not just start from Modern Japanese?

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 7:44 am OK, well then if the cats just magically show up a thousand years ago, why must they start speaking Old Japanese, and not their own language? Or a para-Japanese conlang based on some hypothetical pre-Old-Japanese?

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 12:15 pm I don't think linguistcat needs a better justification for conlanging choices than "I want it that way".

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 5:18 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 12:15 pm I don't think linguistcat needs a better justification for conlanging choices than "I want it that way".

Agreed -- there is no need to apply supposed 'reason' to the linguistics of cat youkai.

linguistcat wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 12:00 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 5:18 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jun 03, 2025 12:15 pm I don't think linguistcat needs a better justification for conlanging choices than "I want it that way".

Agreed -- there is no need to apply supposed 'reason' to the linguistics of cat youkai.

This but also the cat youkai did derive from Chinese cat spirits, so maybe I should focus more on Middle Chinese, although I don't really want to do the amount of research I'd feel necessary to be satisfied, so Old Japanese is a good starting place for me. While there is work on Proto-Japonic and Pre-Old Japanese, we just don't know as much about them as the language that was actually written down in some form.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Jun 04, 2025 12:20 pm Of course, there is still the argument that the inventory defined by people such as Baxter is merely categories based off the Qieyun and like rather than an actual phonology...

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 2:51 am Preliminary attempts at a native Kgáweq’ script, based on the one Xander Vedejas created for me years ago.

linguistcat wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:11 pm As a tangent to my last statement and conlanging vent, am I right that you could take a diphthong and pretty much turn it into a vowel somewhere between the two as a pretty simple sound change?

Because if so this has simplified some things for me greatly. If not, what would you say the general rule is for diphthong -> single vowel?

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:37 pm

linguistcat wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 8:11 pm As a tangent to my last statement and conlanging vent, am I right that you could take a diphthong and pretty much turn it into a vowel somewhere between the two as a pretty simple sound change?

Because if so this has simplified some things for me greatly. If not, what would you say the general rule is for diphthong -> single vowel?

The general rule for a diphthong changing to a monophthong is that you don't have to justify changing it to any vowel between its start and end points, its start and end points included, with the rounding of either endpoint.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Thu Jun 05, 2025 2:51 am Preliminary attempts at a native Kgáweq’ script, based on the one Xander Vedejas created for me years ago.

1. I second quinterbeck’s question — how do the vowels work?
2. What writing implements do the Kgáweq’ use? What would this look like when handwritten?
3. The aesthetic reminds me quite strongly of the Aurebesh cipher developed for Star Wars. Was this intentional?

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 12:51 amI second quinterbeck’s question — how do the vowels work?

jal wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 2:57 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 12:51 amI second quinterbeck’s question — how do the vowels work?

Why would vowels be needed?

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Jun 07, 2025 7:03 pm Recently I have been experimenting with number systems for one of my projects, in particular a combination of sexagesimal and duodecimal. For instance, one would express the number 2025 as something like two-dozen-nine sixties and three-dozen nine. Admittedly this system is rather more complicated than pure duodecimal and it seems difficult to explain why it would evolve in the first place or persist long term. Then again, plenty of ancient Near Eastern cultures used a similarly messy sexagesimal system for thousands of years and we still have traces of it today in our timekeeping.