Any Japonic or Koreanic conlangs out there?

[Otto Kretschmer]

Do they exist?

[Ares Land]

They do. Check out Rounin Ryuuji's rather impressive work here: http://verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=779

[Vardelm]

If you mean specifically a posteriori langs, see above.

If a priori that have elements inspired by Japanic/Koreanic languages, that exists as well: viewtopic.php?p=51492#p51492.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

A brief caveat that the thread for mine is severely out of date, and also a Japonic language dumped into a fantasy world, and entirely missing Sinitic loanwords (I also wouldn't call it impressive).

[Kuchigakatai]

I believe our user LinguistCat also has made some Japonic ones, although not sure if there's anything more than snippets.

I've never seen a Koreanic conlang here or elsewhere.

[linguistcat]

I believe our user LinguistCat also has made some Japonic ones, although not sure if there's anything more than snippets.

Yeah, only snippets. I keep changing what I want to do with it. (Currently at "Make it less Japonic looking and then more like Japanese again.")

I've never seen a Koreanic conlang here or elsewhere.

Unfortunately neither have I. I want to learn some Korean soon though so that might change :3

[keenir]

I believe our user LinguistCat also has made some Japonic ones, although not sure if there's anything more than snippets.

I've never seen a Koreanic conlang here or elsewhere.

Would a featural writing system be one part of what distinguishes a Koreanic conlang from a Japonic one?

[Moose-tache]

Korean and Japanese are quite distinct. The verbal morphology has different forms and usage, the phonology is very different, and of course they have largely exclusive stocks of basic vocabulary. So I don't think you would need to find a thing that distinguishes them, any more than you'd need to find a thing to distinguish Finnish-inspired conlangs from Spanish-inspired ones.

As for featural writing systems, for most of the time that Korean has been written, it has used a combination of Chinese ideograms and syllabic glyphs loosely based on those ideograms. In other words, a writing system very similar to that used to write modern Japanese. I once made a Tungusic conlang that was heavily influenced by pre-modern Korean, and its writing system evolved into something very much like hanzi + "hiragana."

[masako]

Would a featural writing system be one part of what distinguishes a Koreanic conlang from a Japonic one?

Not to derail the thread too much, but what is meant by "featural"?

[WeepingElf]

Would a featural writing system be one part of what distinguishes a Koreanic conlang from a Japonic one?

Not to derail the thread too much, but what is meant by "featural"?

A featural script is one where the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode the phonological features of the phinemes. Like Hangul or Tengwar.

And @keenir: No, that is not what distinguishes them. A Koreanic language is one that has a common ancestor with Korean; a Japonic language is one that has a common ancestor with Japanese. The writing system used does not matter at all.

[fusijui]

I once made a Tungusic conlang...

There's TWO of us!!!!?!!

Step One has been accomplished. Next, Step Three: World Domination.

[masako]

A featural script is one where the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode the phonological features of the phinemes. Like Hangul or Tengwar.

"Encode"?

Hangul may have characters that help a reader determine sound approximation, but it no more "encodes" phonological information than any other system (see geminates, diacritics, etc). Also, while linguists (pro or amateur) analyze writing systems in such a way, native users of any writing system do *not*, therefore it's a convolution and contrivance to use such a term.

[keenir]

Korean and Japanese are quite distinct. The verbal morphology has different forms and usage, the phonology is very different, and of course they have largely exclusive stocks of basic vocabulary. So I don't think you would need to find a thing that distinguishes them, any more than you'd need to find a thing to distinguish Finnish-inspired conlangs from Spanish-inspired ones.

Okay; most times when I check wiki or books, they say things like the two languages {Korean and Japanese} are fairly similar (not very), and that if a person knows one, they'd have an easier time learning the other (compared to, say, learning English or Hindi)

Thank you.

Would a featural writing system be one part of what distinguishes a Koreanic conlang from a Japonic one?

And @keenir: No, that is not what distinguishes them. A Koreanic language is one that has a common ancestor with Korean; a Japonic language is one that has a common ancestor with Japanese. The writing system used does not matter at all.

Before today, I'd thought that each of them were almost monotypic {to use a biology term} - that each family has only one genus which has only one species. (i hadn't been sure of Ryukyuan (a Japonic language), wavering between seeing it as another isolate, a member of the Sinitic family, or something else}

Also hadn't realized that Silla {the kingdom} hadn't spoken Korean, but spoke a Japonic language. {sayth the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_l ... ar_Japonic }

Thank you.

[WeepingElf]

A featural script is one where the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode the phonological features of the phinemes. Like Hangul or Tengwar.

"Encode"?

Hangul may have characters that help a reader determine sound approximation, but it no more "encodes" phonological information than any other system (see geminates, diacritics, etc). Also, while linguists (pro or amateur) analyze writing systems in such a way, native users of any writing system do *not*, therefore it's a convolution and contrivance to use such a term.

Well, perhaps I have chosen the wrong word.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Korean and Japanese are quite distinct. The verbal morphology has different forms and usage, the phonology is very different, and of course they have largely exclusive stocks of basic vocabulary. So I don't think you would need to find a thing that distinguishes them, any more than you'd need to find a thing to distinguish Finnish-inspired conlangs from Spanish-inspired ones.

Okay; most times when I check wiki or books, they say things like the two languages {Korean and Japanese} are fairly similar (not very), and that if a person knows one, they'd have an easier time learning the other (compared to, say, learning English or Hindi)

As far as this goes, I tend to believe the features they share to be areal rather than genetic, or, if there is a genetic link, I have some idea of its being outside the time depth of a reasonably accurate reconstruction. There seem to be fairly strongly opposing views among actual linguists, but the one that (presently) makes most sense to me is that purported cognates (outside shared Sinitic borrowings, which are numerous, and not genetic markers) are probably borrowings resulting from language contact.

Would a featural writing system be one part of what distinguishes a Koreanic conlang from a
Also hadn't realized that Silla {the kingdom} hadn't spoken Korean, but spoke a Japonic language. {sayth the wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonic_l ... ar_Japonic }

I wasn't familiar with "peninsular Japonic" till now (I was aware that, in all probability, the people speaking what we might call "Proto-Japonic" probably did migrate to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean peninsula, however), but this only makes me think it more likely that the shared features are areal, and shared vocabulary is through borrowing.

Returning to the original topic of the thread, I've found working with Japonic pretty fun. I've had a little inspiration to revisit the sound changes and how they now ought to function within the internal timeline I have for them, but it's a big project, and the bigger a project gets, the more easily it ends up stalled, I find.

[Moose-tache]

In an attempt to be more helpful to our friend Keenir:

Korean and Japanese are typologically very similar. For example, they both use postpositions and very little other nominal morphology, while having fairly complex agglutinative (and a tiny bit fusional) verbal morphology. Both encode tense and grammatical politeness on the verb. But how this morphology works is different.

Japanese has a very regular agglutinative system on verbs, and much of this system is mirrored on verb-like adjectives. Negation is encoded on the verb. Korean's morphology has always felt a little more... chaotic to me, as a learner, but this could just be my perception. There are more "one-offs," endings that cannot be grouped in a class with other endings, like -ji, the one-stop do everything ending for Korean verbs. Korean, like English, does not encode negation directly on the main verb, and has turned a couple of modal suffixes into pseudo-future tenses. And I'm focusing on morphology here. There are syntactic differences, and huge obvious phonological differences. My go-to example is Japanese /keːsatsɯ/ and Korean /kjʌŋtɕal/, both derived from identical Chinese roots (if you consider that Japanese /k/ is fortis and Korean /k/ is lenis, not one segment of these words is identical!).

The details that are similar are mostly areal features of northeast Asia. For example, the -te/-go ending behaves similarly, but not identically. Japanese uses -te in -te kudasai constructions, but you would not say -go juseyo in Korean (or maybe you would, but I haven't noticed anyone say it that way). In any case this usage is very similar to what they call "converbs" in Tungusic linguistics. Both languages have suffixes that straddle the line between inflection and derivation. For example, Japanese -tai means "I want to," but also functions as a V>Adj derivational suffix (no clear Korean equivalent of this exists). Korean adjectives function somewhat like Japanese na adjectives, but this is pretty standard across Asia. And Korean also allows you to juxtapose two nouns without ceremony (again, like English), so the line between noun, adjective, and verb can be blurred in different ways than in Japanese.

So you could make a "generally K/J conlang" that combines features of both. I think that would be really interesting. But if you wanted to make a specifically Japonic conlang or a specifically Koreanic conlang, you'd need to dive pretty deep into each language and really get a feel for how they are different.

[keenir]

As I mentioned, normally the similarities were mentioned in passing. The few books that said anything more (and, disclaimer, the libraries i had access to, generally either had small linguistics sections, or focused on things like How Language Works; I think - emphasis on my unsureness - Comrie's Atlas of World Languages mentioned that Japanese or Korean was unsure of where it fit and in which language family)

In an attempt to be more helpful to our friend Keenir:

Many thanks for clarifying and adding to how to differentiate between the families; hopefully, Otto and others seeking to make Japonic and-or Koreanic conlangs will be able to harvest a great deal of information from this thread and thereby make a great project.

[keenir]

A featural script is one where the shapes of the letters are not arbitrary but encode the phonological features of the phinemes. Like Hangul or Tengwar.

"Encode"?

Hangul may have characters that help a reader determine sound approximation, but it no more "encodes" phonological information than any other system (see geminates, diacritics, etc). Also, while linguists (pro or amateur) analyze writing systems in such a way, native users of any writing system do *not*, therefore it's a convolution and contrivance to use such a term.

Why is it a convolution to say a featural script is one category of writing system? Native users of scripts - be they featural or abjad - use the systems to know what they're reading (where to say the geminates, the sounds typographically marked by diacritics, etc), and linguists use the systems to classify what information is given...or at least thats how i understand it.

[masako]

@keenir

Calling Hangul a "featural writing system" is as redundant as it is convoluted. All systems impart phonological information, save for purely ideographic systems, of which, there are none. Even Hanzi has phono-semantic elements in the majority of characters.

ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ impart no more, or less, phonological information than k kh kk does. It's not ""featural"".

[keenir]

@keenir

Calling Hangul a "featural writing system" is as redundant as it is convoluted. All systems impart phonological information, save for purely ideographic systems, of which, there are none.

okay, thats redundancy covered...but how is it convoluted?