first name ijo last name Sijen @ijosijen - Tumblr Blog

So... I have decided to make my own language families and am wondering how you make your own.

For me, I find that it helps to set out all of the modern languages that I want related in a particular tree and make connections from there based on how divergent I want them to be.

But enough about how I do it, how do you plan out your conlang families?

Synchronically. I've found that as projects get larger and larger, doing things retroactively gets more and more difficult. I have to start contorting languages and histories in ever-weirder ways in order to get it looking how I Wanted it to look.

Another thing that's happened as I've gotten into making full families is that I've started having to do a lot more worldbuilding. I need to keep a timeline of the languages so that I know when sound & grammar shifts happen in relation to each other. I need a working understanding of where the speaker groups are in relation to one another.

As dialects diverge I need isoglosses, which means I need a physical map. In offense against me, I like mapmaking, and I have detailed maps for my settings, but when it comes to mapping dialects and isogloss lines I've mostly ended up using quick blocky sketch diagrams in a notebook.

My projects take years IRL, and so my plans have often changed substantially as I've gotten into them, but for the Gavellian family I started with "I want these broad groups to exist" and cascaded groups down from a proto. I don't do that anymore. Again, lessons learned.

For my current project, I started with a single proto and have been developing strands of it in sync with one another. I have general goals for the divergent branches, but I'm working on them in generational chunks. Apply changes, create isoglosses, etc. I don't know when or how they'll lose intelligibility with one another.

I don't have a specific goal in mind for the entire project outside of "fun times with head marking" and my general aesthetic sensibilities.

tldr:

manage your timeline first, plan starting from proto down to youngest.

timeline logistics will be your largest headache.

either advance through the timeline simultaneously for every language in the family or keep meticulous notes on when everything relates to everything else

know where your speaker groups are physically in relation to one another

#ask! yay!

levunalangs

Lexember 3: Radaru

Back to Valya! Today’s Lexember word is radaru, meaning “pond” or “pool.” It’s a slightly irregular diminutive of radu “lake,” which is related to ru “sky.” If the relationship there looks confusing, it’s because of Valya’s newest sound change. It’s both recent within the history of the Valya language, and also recent in the real-world development of Valya (as in I only came up with it last night).

Back in proto-Valya, the word for sky was *rau, and a poetic way of referring to a lake was with the reduplicated diminutive form *rarau. That’s essentially “little sky,” based on the reflection of part of the sky in the lake. That would become raru in Valya, but that’s a tricky sequence to say, especially in rapid speech—just try it, with two rolled [r]s! So the second [r] changes to a [d], and instead the Valya word for lake is radu.

But even the un-dissimilated form isn’t obviously recognizable in modern Valya as the diminutive of ru, especially given the meaning, so Valya speakers re-diminutivized it to make “pond” from “lake.” That would be rararu, but the dissimilation rule kicks in again and changes the second [r] to a [d], producing radaru. So now even that doesn’t really look like a diminutive of radu, though this change was recent enough that currrent-day Valya speakers do recognize the connection (and, in fact, spell both words as if they were raru and rararu).

The two other words that are affected by this sound change (so far) are also diminutives, since the double [r] only tends to pop up when reduplication is involved. They are ridyifki, “string,” diminutive of ryifki “rope,” and ridintsi “village,” diminutive of rintsi “town.” No other pre-existing words are affected, since I only even had seven words with two [r]s and the rest either have them farther apart, like farufaru (“hill,” diminutive of faru “mountain”) or in clusters, like rirba (“little onion”) and drupra (“excellent”).

misterradio

Im really curious how people know about Esperanto. Since its a relatively recent language (from the 1880s), its obviously not going to be as widely spoken in the world as other languages (altho apparently it is the most widely spoken constructed language). I assume most people are introduced to it later in some way?

If u know what Esperanto is, feel free 2 reblog this and say how you learned about it in the tags.

#knowledge of esperanto just sort of Happens when you get into linguistics #i don't remember at all

4x Translation

#gavellian family #hg translations #high gavellian #llevic #demotic gavellian

rainyydoves

i beat myself up for not knowing enough about my special interests a lot but then i remember the average person off the street has no idea what the carboniferous is and i feel better

rainyydoves

are you really bad at it or are you in "good at it" spaces

gutterselkie

Me: ah shit, I misidentified that yellow rumped warbler as a female goldfinch, I should literally be hung at the gallows for this. I'm such an IDIOT

My friend, pointing at a vulture: check out that fucked up crow lol

redfagdiver

#a post about you

Ship of Theseus Language Evolution

You're gonna have to do a bunch of squinting in this specific example if you want to call Demotic Gavellian a serious evolution past Koine/High. But there are some caveats:

The provided pronunciation for HG is the Cadan Standard, which was made by and for... late Demotic speakers.

The actual plumbing of the syntax is wildly different. Demotic has a bunch of very HG like structures, sure, but the clausal system is halfway in the grave & the default word order has changed, as have a whole bunch of basic particles.

There have been some sound shifts. Nothing insane, but the sound system has absolutely shuffled around a bit, even since late Koine.

Also: in-setting, the High Gavellian orthography is is all that's happening from here on. Sellan scribes are about to pull a tibetan. Hence, the Demotic example has a diagetic HG transliteration up top in bold and an actual practical romanization in the first gloss line. <h> isn't assigned to any single phoneme rn, it's the digraph marker.

The transliteration to the romanization is still remarkably transparent to my addled brain, so we'll see how bad it gets once we hit Middle Gavellian's tonogenesis.

#gavellian family #high gavellian #demotic gavellian

Late Proto-Vyinḍali Sound Inventory

I haven't cooked this hard in a good, long while. Phonotactics & sound distribution are complicated.

#vindalic

nick-nonya

the right question to ask when worldbuilding is not "does this make sense", it's "does this fuck tremendously".

notaplaceofhonour

follow up: “how can i make this make sense internally in a way that allows for more things that fuck tremendously”

themeadowscene

I would love to see a fantasy novel where the lore that the reader / protagonist learns at first is not true

themeadowscene

e.g. they're told that this kind of creature has some kind of psychic or pheromone-based "mate bond" that cannot be broken; but it turns out that's a popular myth that has never been scientifically substantiated, and is basically used to keep people in bad relationships (basically the equivalent of "human women are biologically submissive")

themeadowscene

"lore" is imo too often treated like information that the author is giving the reader, and it just happens to be using the medium of diagetic (that is, 'in-story') exposition.

it's so much more interesting and dynamic to treat "lore" as information that is generated and disseminated in-story. who is telling the protagonist this information? under what historical and social circumstances was this idea formed? what political motives are there for trying to get people to believe this information? which characters would disagree with it? would the protagonist believe it, or be sceptical? does the plot bear it out, or cast doubt on it?

the-writings-of-infinite-stars

don’t think I ever posted it here but I’m working on a language family

this is the general framework, some of the names are inspired by DnD. Don’t kill me I’ll think of original names eventually those are just placeholders based on vibes alone.

niniralin

This snippet, which reads qhɔ́k šʌ ya tɯ́n šʌ ya swǐ gqjhɔ́w pa ("Sadness and happiness come in cycles"), is the oldest known piece of Tuudé* language wisdom literature, which would later become a major genre. It has been dated to 104 BDR.

*Autonym "Nqsū́ Cæg" (which durned into "Tuudé" in English after an intercontinental game of telphone)

commasama

Collections of tools to use for linguistic data analysis

Because people keep making and sharing misleading/invalid/unreliable “data analysis” posts about fanfic and related fan-studies topics and then get fussy when people point out the issues with their methods.

You don’t need to be a professional computer scientist, linguist, data analyst, etc. If you’re sharing data, you should do the best you can to make sure you’re as methodologically correct as you possibly can be, and with the internet at your fingertips that is now easier than ever.

Links below the cut so this post doesn’t get annoyingly long to scroll past.

capnsoapy

this is a poem to me

capnsoapy

I suggest loving every trans woman you meet before its too late

problemnyatic

embarassing to admit but i had a phase where i was on the fence about the tma/tme thing until I had to force my tme friends of multiple stripes of identity and gender to stop- for the love of god to fucking shut the fuck up about harry potter in the group chat like An year ago. and i realized then that TME people really just do not believe, and find it deeply tiresome to be made to consider, that it really is that serious for trans women.

TME people think that they understand oppression and so it lets them assume what TMA folks' oppression is like, and they think it's tedious as fuck that we have all these demands and stupid little things that we make them have to think about "or else [they're] a bigot I guess." Sorry it takes energy for you to give a shit about us, put the fucking effort in anyways! Maybe you don't "get it" like you think if doing what trans women ask of you to be considerate turns into a growing resentment for us inside your heart.

Happy for you that decisionmaking gets to be sooooo easy for you. I wish I knew what that's like, but I'm a trans woman, so I unfortunately have to preemtively solve for being a pedophile to anyone who thinks I have a little too much sense of self for their taste. Maybe think for once in your life before assuming yet another trans woman is a pedophile and reporting her to authorities that have been exhaustively proven to have it the fuck out for us. Learn to have a personal life that allows for blocking us if you really can't stand us instead of needing to turn the whole fucking world into your personal comfort chamber. Thanks.

problemnyatic

"nooo you don't understand I don't hate trans women, you're putting words in my mouth!! I just hate that trans woman. Well okay and that other one. And that one. And a few more. Actually I maintain a list, of trans women who I've decided you SHOULD hate if you're a good person, but don't worry, it's not every trans woman! It's just a list almost entirely composed of trans women. Which means nothing! If you say it means anything YOU'RE oppressing ME."

problemnyatic

Sorry, that's too much. I know transandrobros don't like, all keep personal shitlists like this (right..?). That's making up a guy to get mad at. You just let kiwifarms do it for you and "resort" to "unfortunately having to use problematic sources" just because they're the ones that "had all the proof."

translation of an excerpt from the analects.

#hg translations #high gavellian #wynncraft

The High Gavellian Orthoaesthetic

(the following is lorem ipsum text thrown together from recent translations)

...

Tintate causiot craôae om fiaen vaer civaecayl. Do dejan do rella fon ozi sil tiovu egil. Hinjen, haci tau cin nu vu si sento ne sieon, inca ti la a haci cin dejan vamfe neylos etene, inca ahin. Ne zech dejani qira nalle theilyo hita soc séno atta. A-ti vil zrygre ne tau fryno susénul. Vil ne nu vu a sillé's e'q eison nalltione oumve osúmovo-alló ti péseimosiffas neswé. Do cin mosu ny pau, ai si neylos uwésae inca t'as-a fe son isha mosu na siae. Inca t'as om aciuse ochne a Hinein as a ti laennechusellre.

Laqu ai set do lludire ól uvau faesuen vil ne péte pondaur vadae flavae si aegaeo do neylos pisac siae. Rio jes do fraes soson neylos tiesau lon-eanqon tosich crahae. Ti van enes Sianein ne ozi tio tiegor tauch. Fe qir'om inlya résaech ti qalqo lludiré llu kugiu. Tauch sum lona laqu e-ti távas n'om ause aur, e aquto fi sellae va távas om wrar jes ll'equo neti laen sofur. Om fraes tiégovae qarqo auxae vuebxen, ta om fraes péco qarqo vuebxen auxae. Oŕa qalqo zech, nilye haci uvau lan ta sial ta tral, si as qa nesrich sie om vamfe hiva zech.

#high gavellian

redstonedust

welcome to my epic fantasy world. we have many developed fantasy kingdoms with 2000 years of rich lore and history. and to the south you can see the evil sand people and to the east theres japanchina.

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first name ijo last name Sijen