Ninety-Eights and Ninety-Nines @isoraqathedh - Tumblr Blog

Adjectives

Time to discuss how nouns inflect.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

Orthography

Time to discuss more about the orthography.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

Inflection examples

Let's start by looking at some basic examples.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

Inflections take 2

It's time to do something that I don't think I've done in a long time. Try again.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

Much better progress with things this time. And more interestingly, a few topics that needed more than one page!

Table of Contents, Book 43

#meta

Other tuning glyphs

We can support many types of scales using these clef-like items.

#Flėšaotj #Music from the ground up #conworlds

levunalangs

Good evening. I am greatly inspired by your presentation of Sdefa and at some point I must make something similar to that. But before any of that: how do you count "steps" in a contour? They look like scale steps, but I can't work out the reason why some of them have sharps and flats and others don't.

Perhaps you are counting semitones, which could explain it, though I'd like to confirm anyways.

Thank you!

They are indeed scale steps. In situations where it’s the contour that matters and not the exact pitches, no distinction is made between half and whole steps, minor and major thirds, etc. The first-person suffix is {+third -step}, but with the starting note A that could be {A C B}, {A C B♭}, {A C♯ B}, or {A C♯ B♯}.

The reason for this is to allow for compositional flexibility. If the music so far has trended towards being in A major, it would be better to use {A C♯ B}; if it’s been in F major, then it would be better to use {A C B♭}.

For similar reasons, octave choice doesn’t matter, so {A C} could also be a sixth downward instead of a third up. Compositional flexibility is also the motivation behind the relatively free word order and the option to choose different third-person suffixes. All of those factors put together mean that there are a lot of ways to say the same thing, some more musically pleasing or coherent than others.

I hope you do start your own musical conlang! I would love to see it.

isoraqathedh

Ah, this is good.

I am mooting an orthography for Sdefa using keyscript, and the fact that diatonic scale steps are what matters makes it one less thing to worry about when considering how to do it.

There is nothing written about it yet, and given my posting schedule, even if I finish immediately it won't show up for approximately two years because of the posting backlog, but it gives me something to think about.

levunalangs

Sorry, what does that mean? Are you making a separate orthography?

isoraqathedh

Yes. Once I learnt how the basic syntax works in Sdefa I immediately made the connection to how keyscript notates music; in the music theory that it is native to, collections of notes combine to form words, which are distinguished from each other by their contours. It's not a perfect fit, because a keyscript musical word also includes rhythm and sometimes the starting note is constrained, but the idea is close enough that I'm motivated to make it work.

This is half a page of me copying a sentence and then rewriting it in keyscript, and some notes to myself with how to progress. It's not a complete page and as mentioned this attempt is no good, so I have to try a bit later.

I should also mention that keyscript is not really meant to be written on five-lined staff paper like this and is much more comfortable with ordinary ruled paper or grid paper.

#Flėšaotj

Some irregular verbs

This is not the correct way to inflect these words. It's just a try.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

Person inflections

Even more nice tables that now make more sense to me.

#Mdseiag #conlangs

levunalangs

Good evening. I am greatly inspired by your presentation of Sdefa and at some point I must make something similar to that. But before any of that: how do you count "steps" in a contour? They look like scale steps, but I can't work out the reason why some of them have sharps and flats and others don't.

Perhaps you are counting semitones, which could explain it, though I'd like to confirm anyways.

Thank you!

They are indeed scale steps. In situations where it’s the contour that matters and not the exact pitches, no distinction is made between half and whole steps, minor and major thirds, etc. The first-person suffix is {+third -step}, but with the starting note A that could be {A C B}, {A C B♭}, {A C♯ B}, or {A C♯ B♯}.

The reason for this is to allow for compositional flexibility. If the music so far has trended towards being in A major, it would be better to use {A C♯ B}; if it’s been in F major, then it would be better to use {A C B♭}.

For similar reasons, octave choice doesn’t matter, so {A C} could also be a sixth downward instead of a third up. Compositional flexibility is also the motivation behind the relatively free word order and the option to choose different third-person suffixes. All of those factors put together mean that there are a lot of ways to say the same thing, some more musically pleasing or coherent than others.

I hope you do start your own musical conlang! I would love to see it.

isoraqathedh

Ah, this is good.

I am mooting an orthography for Sdefa using keyscript, and the fact that diatonic scale steps are what matters makes it one less thing to worry about when considering how to do it.

There is nothing written about it yet, and given my posting schedule, even if I finish immediately it won't show up for approximately two years because of the posting backlog, but it gives me something to think about.

#conlangs #Flėšaotj #sdefa

Tuning information paragraph

A little bit like a key signature but not the same.

#Flėšaotj #Music from the ground up #conworlds

Negations

Saying no is difficult with flags.

#Octovexillology #conworlds

What is your favorite part of making a new language?

When things fall together.

I think I am different amongst the average conlanger in that most things look the same to me; whether it's grammar, phonology or pragmatics, it is all constructed via the same mechanism of "gimmicks". Normally you can understand gimmicks as simply bullet points for why the language is interesting (or in the case of conlanging, why it exists and why I made it in the first place), but you can also think of it as constraints in the design space of any future features of the conlang.

As such, when a new feature comes along and slots in well with all the other existing features, that's a good feeling. Things have fallen together nicely.

I have once received a sort of criticism of the fact that the things I make have no cohesiveness. This is true, yet I don't think of it as much of a big deal, mostly because I wouldn't know how to make it happen deliberately. It is nice when this happens, but this is a sometimes thing. And yet it is good, and I like it when it happens, "as a treat", as the young may say.

#ask box #conlangs