So...yeah. When I was younger and less knowledgeable about language construction as a whole (would you believe I didn’t read the LCK until I was about nineteen?), I created a language based on the snippets of Entish (Old and New) available through Tolkien’s lore. I was particularly interested by the idea of tones in Entish, a hypothesis put forth by Helge Fauskanger of Ardalambion. (Here’s the link, in case you’re wondering: https://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm) With a new post up, I reckoned I’d better try to find what I could, and see whether or not it was actually worth anything. Long story short? ...not really. Run-of-the-mill polysynthesis with little syntactical development and few parts of the tonal system actually behaving like tones, not to mention a rather nondescript phonology and a woefully small lexicon. But it might be worth a rehash. I might even see about fitting it into Ajjamah somehow, or creating a whole new world around it.
There were other languages as well, like the Goblin Tongue and the language of the Feh-Feh (a five-sex race of octopod from Venus). These, too, I’ll see about getting around to, should anyone be interested.
An example of pre-revision Treespeak (for now):
Hrúabrúumúàbràábrúumûhúàlalamúa
Beard-ASSIG.-large.deciduous-ACC-ASSIG.-1s-name-short-be.3s
My name is Treebeard.
(In theory it was supposed to mimic the sound of wood creaking in the wind. I definitely need some new symbols for this that reflects that properly.)
And of Goblin:
Cßı11 cqlr22 tr33 hr22 tkęhł4432 tkł11-qrñ12.
Watery-PAT goblin.like.moving-EXP drink-ACT PATIENT fall.accidentally-surface.downwards-EXP circular-fishlike-PAT
The goblin drank the water that accidentally fell down from the surface onto the circle of fish.
(I swear this is supposed to be pronounceable by humans with only the slightest of difficulty. Like that fly-language in Doctor Who mixed with Chewbacca with a throat-ache.)``
Nonhuman Conlangs for Redevelopment
Nonhuman Conlangs for Redevelopment
My name means either "person who trumpets minor points of learning" or "maker of words." That fact that it means the latter in Sindarin is a demonstration of the former. Beware.
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Spell Merchant | Patreon
Re: Nonhuman Conlangs for Redevelopment
Sure, I'd like to see more. The tones of Goblin remind me of a language I made once, but assigned to apes after realizing the phonology was out of bounds of human speech production. This was pre-Internet, so I didnt really know better. There were 15 tones on every syllable, 5 for the beginning of the syllable and 3 for the end (or maybe the other way around ... pre-Internet, so no notes on computer and theyre all gone now).
The consonants were something like /pʷ p pʲ t tl č k q/ for stops and the same PoA's for nasals, plus glides I dont remember. Every obstruent could be soft or hard, which I took from Gaelic but assumed it referred to literal force of production. There were seven vowels, i think .... /a e i o u y ɨ/.
I ended up scrapping the ape language idea and remaking this conlang as Dreamlandic, and essentially nothing of the original writeup remains, since Dreamlandic has a very small phonology reminiscent of Polynesian. Some animals on planet Teppala do have their own languages, but I'll likely never get around to even basic writeups for them.
The consonants were something like /pʷ p pʲ t tl č k q/ for stops and the same PoA's for nasals, plus glides I dont remember. Every obstruent could be soft or hard, which I took from Gaelic but assumed it referred to literal force of production. There were seven vowels, i think .... /a e i o u y ɨ/.
I ended up scrapping the ape language idea and remaking this conlang as Dreamlandic, and essentially nothing of the original writeup remains, since Dreamlandic has a very small phonology reminiscent of Polynesian. Some animals on planet Teppala do have their own languages, but I'll likely never get around to even basic writeups for them.