Zompist Bboard Again

I like to give myself constraints when conlanging--partly out of the challenge, partly out of a sense of it being like real life and having to work with what you have, and partly out of a way to deal with option paralysis. The steps:

1. First, start with gleb and generate a random phonology. The allophonic rules can be ignored, or you can include some or all of them if they're reasonable. Syllable structure can likewise be ignored or amended.
2. Find a list randomizer (I like to use Random.org) and randomize the permissible segments in the syllable--i.e., if your syllable is something like CRVH, randomize the order that the phonemes in the C, R, V, and H slots appear.
3. With these randomized orders, use gen to generate words. What I like to do is have a single, maximal syllable structure and then use zeros to indicate null segments and then a rewrite rule to delete the zeros from the final output, so, say, if my onset is in CR, then I will call a variable R that has a bunch of zeroes at the beginning. gen works on probabilistic selection so a few leading (or trailing) zeros can dramatically affect the output.
4. To generate some grammar (and other features) as a starting point, use Wesley Kuhron Jones' Elided!.

It's perfectly all right to have ideas going in and to edit your results to conform to the same.

Why do all this work, when New Guinea already exists?

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 9:12 am Why do all this work, when New Guinea already exists?

By that logic, you might as well ask why anyone should do any conlanging, when New Guinea already exists.

Glass Half Baked wrote: ↑Wed Jul 02, 2025 9:12 am Why do all this work, when New Guinea already exists?

Are you paying for our plane fare to and from New Guinea?

no one can afford a ticket to Conlangistan...

Here's an idea I had about this very topic:
Use the phonemes in your name!

• this includes all consonants and vowels,
• any diphthongs (not necessarily required but optional),
• if you want added challlenge: stick to your name's syllable structure and phonemic stress,

Maybe a max of two "freebie" phonemes, if your name lacks something you feel a cloņ just can't live without.

Use your nickname, full legal name, shorter name (if applicable), whichever you feel gives you the most breathing room.

Karavantage wrote: ↑Sun Aug 10, 2025 6:11 pm Here's an idea I had about this very topic:
Use the phonemes in your name!

• this includes all consonants and vowels,
• any diphthongs (not necessarily required but optional),
• if you want added challlenge: stick to your name's syllable structure and phonemic stress,

Maybe a max of two "freebie" phonemes, if your name lacks something you feel a cloņ just can't live without.

Using those one freebie phoneme (because there are too few plosives in my name), my phoneme inventory would be:
/m n/
/b d k/
/f s/
/r/
/i u/
/e:/
/æ A/

I hope scammers can't figure out my full name from this.

There's a little too much randomness in this approach
to be sufficiently serious for my taste...
It's not far off from randomly generating conlangs,
or even paving the way for AI-generated conlangs...

for constraints I prefer to start with limited assumptions
and build the entire language following a certain logic,
so that I feel like I'm discovering it, an observer of its self-organization,
without really making any choices...

The challenge is to be able to say everything,
without adding new elements to these assumptions,
even if it means putting yourself in a particular state of mind
to only reuse the resources of the language,
a bit like what the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis describes...

For my name, with a little creative interpretation:

/n/
/b t d c ɟ k g ʔ/
/v s/
/ɾ/
/w l l̴ j/

/ɛ e i ə ɨ a o (u)/
/n̩/

• My freebies are the voiced coronal plosives.
• /e/ and /j/ are separate here because it’s a little more parsimonious.
• /o/ and /w/ are separate for partially similar reasons, though /w/ does also come from my first surname.
• /u/ is marginal as some pronounce my second surname with that vowel instead of reducing it (I do the latter).
• The vowels have been finessed a bit so that there’s a bit more balance to the system (this is also why /u/ is marginal).
• /ʔ ɾ ɨ n̩/ are thanks to phonological processes in my idiolect, though I’ve elected not to explicitly call the /t/ here aspirated, again for symmetry.