If natlangs were conlangs

[Raphael]

Without an example I can't say I've ever experienced this.

Narrator's Voice: "Here we see the crocodile prepare its attack on the gnus..."

[Jonlang]

Without an example I can't say I've ever experienced this.

Narrator's Voice: "Here we see the crocodile prepare its attack on the gnus..."

I read that in David Attenborough's voice. But is this not just the narrator including the viewer in what's going on?

[Travis B.]

Without an example I can't say I've ever experienced this.

Narrator's Voice: "Here we see the crocodile prepare its attack on the gnus..."

I read that in David Attenborough's voice.

As did I.

But is this not just the narrator including the viewer in what's going on?

The usage I am familiar with that might be being referred to here is using we in an exclusive sense to mean "we, the group I (the speaker) belongs to, not you".

[WarpedWartWars]

Did the creator or creators of the major European languages have to come up with a word in English meaning "precious metals used as a financial investment" that, at least in its written form, looks a lot like a French word, also adopted as a loanword in German, meaning "broth"? It has the weird effect that I can't read English texts about certain aspects of financial history or current financial shenanigans without getting hungry.

"bullion"? I might not be able to either, due to the term "bouillon cube", (which I seem to have always misread as "bullion") a small cube of what is essentially condensed broth.

[Jonlang]

Did the creator or creators of the major European languages have to come up with a word in English meaning "precious metals used as a financial investment" that, at least in its written form, looks a lot like a French word, also adopted as a loanword in German, meaning "broth"? It has the weird effect that I can't read English texts about certain aspects of financial history or current financial shenanigans without getting hungry.

"bullion"? I might not be able to either, due to the term "bouillon cube", (which I seem to have always misread as "bullion") a small cube of what is essentially condensed broth.

We call them stock cubes.

[Raphael]

Did the creator or creators of the major European languages have to come up with a word in English meaning "precious metals used as a financial investment" that, at least in its written form, looks a lot like a French word, also adopted as a loanword in German, meaning "broth"? It has the weird effect that I can't read English texts about certain aspects of financial history or current financial shenanigans without getting hungry.

"bullion"? I might not be able to either, due to the term "bouillon cube", (which I seem to have always misread as "bullion") a small cube of what is essentially condensed broth.

We call them stock cubes.

Interesting, in that it might potentially lead to a similar problem.

[Ryusenshi]

english… has this bizzare undocumented phenomenon where one uses we when one means I but it's not royal we, but rather regular we but one feels need to use group as a means of defending oneself from criticism.

Well, I often write we did XYZ in reports, as if I'm speaking for the entire team, even when it's something I did on my own.

[Travis B.]

english… has this bizzare undocumented phenomenon where one uses we when one means I but it's not royal we, but rather regular we but one feels need to use group as a means of defending oneself from criticism.

Well, I often write we did XYZ in reports, as if I'm speaking for the entire team, even when it's something I did on my own.

I don't get how one can suppose that this is a "bizarre undocumented phenomenon" myself.

[Ryusenshi]

I don't think it's a way of "defending oneself from criticism", but rather to... avoid drawing attention to oneself. Saying I did XYZ would feel too personal, possibly even pretentious. "Look at me, I did all of this by myself!" The word we is more neutral: is it our small group? Our team? Our department? Our company as a whole?

Narrator's Voice: "Here we see the crocodile prepare its attack on the gnus..."

I read that in David Attenborough's voice. But is this not just the narrator including the viewer in what's going on?

Yes, I tend to understand it as me, the narrator, and you, the viewer/reader/etc, are seeing this.

[Raphael]

And non-fiction books will sometimes contain passages along the lines of "Now that we have explained this topic, and, by doing so, laid the necessary foundations for understanding this second topic, we can move on to explaining the second topic..."

[Travis B.]

I don't think it's a way of "defending oneself from criticism", but rather to... avoid drawing attention to oneself. Saying I did XYZ would feel too personal, possibly even pretentious. "Look at me, I did all of this by myself!" The word we is more neutral: is it our small group? Our team? Our department? Our company as a whole?

Narrator's Voice: "Here we see the crocodile prepare its attack on the gnus..."

I read that in David Attenborough's voice. But is this not just the narrator including the viewer in what's going on?

Yes, I tend to understand it as me, the narrator, and you, the viewer/reader/etc, are seeing this.

Agreed completely. We very often means "a group of which I am a member, which I am assigning credit to" as opposed to "me myself as an individual rather than the group as a whole".

[FlamyobatRudki]

I don't think it's a way of "defending oneself from criticism", but rather to... avoid drawing attention to oneself. Saying I did XYZ would feel too personal, possibly even pretentious. "Look at me, I did all of this by myself!" The word we is more neutral: is it our small group? Our team? Our department? Our company as a whole?

I read that in David Attenborough's voice. But is this not just the narrator including the viewer in what's going on?

Yes, I tend to understand it as me, the narrator, and you, the viewer/reader/etc, are seeing this.

Agreed completely. We very often means "a group of which I am a member, which I am assigning credit to" as opposed to "me myself as an individual rather than the group as a whole".

~ The use I was reffering to in my original statement really does seam to involve avoiding criticism or to use group as a short of shield, which i'd coin Pluralis Templaris,
while the other use mentioned here which is documented in style guides Pluralis Technicratis.

at-least now using different labels for the different uses of plurality marking, now what is the they I would use to reffer to the fact that I do not know the number of people I am reffering to called?

[Kuchigakatai]

Leaving this here without comment.

For Dinka, enough evidence has been available from tape recordings, transcriptions at least partially reliable, and the notes and impressions of a most observant missionary, the Rev. Talmadge Wilson, to arrive at a tentative analysis of the vowel system. If this analysis is correct, it is also remarkable, because the system is quite unlike any other known to me, especially when the morphophonemic alternations operating within it are considered. There appear to be contrasts between (1) very long vowels with extremely clear, “brassy” quality and extreme articulatory positions, (2) breathy vowels of intermediate length and somewhat more neutral (i.e., toward central) tongue positions, and (3) very short, centralized vowels; of the last type, any two vowels with adjacent tongue positions are very hard to distinguish. There are seven contrasting positions for each type. Thus the vowel diagram is like an eight-spoke wheel with the top spoke missing (or, if preferred, like a horseshoe, rather than like the usual vowel “triangle” or trapezoid). The vowel diagram may be depicted as follows; a macron indicates length, a dieresis indicates breathiness, and a breve indicates shortness and centralization:



This analysis is reinforced by a morphophonemic pattern: alternations between noun singulars and plurals appear to involve most commonly a movement clockwise to the next spoke, but in the same position on the spoke; that is, if the singular has /ü/, the plural has /ö/; if the singular has /ö/, the plural has /ɔ̈/; and so on around until if the singular has /ë/, the plural has /ï/; but if the singular has /ï/ there is no change in the plural (since there is no spoke in the next position clockwise). A less common pattern is precisely the reverse, with the alternation in the plural one spoke counterclockwise from the vowel of the singular; if the singular is on the /u/ spoke, there is no change in the plural. Still other alternations are one step in or out on the same spoke: /ō/ to /ö/, /ă/ to /ä/, and the like. If the above diagram is filled in with lines—three concentric horseshoes and seven spokes—then the morphophonemic alternations permit single moves on any line, never more than one space and never across a gap in a line.

Source: Welmers, W.E. 1973. African Language Structures. pages 28-29.

The Wikipedia article on Dinka offers a different analysis of course, one that might be more up to date, but it's not exactly any saner.

[Ares Land]

My own ideas for marking plural by vowel change were obviously not nearly ambitious enough.

[fusijui]

A starfish vowel system, why not?

[Creyeditor]

Maybe the right vowel system for a starfish alien conlang.

[Kuchigakatai]

[Travis B.]

That's too strange to be a conlang. Conlangers typically don't abuse overlong vowels, or for that matter overlong diphthongs, that much.

[FlamyobatRudki]

That's too strange to be a conlang. Conlangers typically don't abuse overlong vowels, or for that matter overlong diphthongs, that much.

now now your just willfully Discarding conlangs made by your local Turkish baker;

nuxalk has features that some people would accuse of being kitchen sink but i just love it and its' aesthetics.

[Zju]

Does that paper happen to have description of the phonology? I'm curious to see what the phonetic realisations of /kîɛɛɛr/ and /dɛ̂aaal/ are.