@Jonlang_

Conlanger. My current project is a Celtic inspired Elf conlang family. Twitter: @Jonlang_

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Building words

In my PQL conlang family I build words from simple roots, but seeing as “root” is already a linguistic term for something else, I’ll refer to them here as “bases”. A base has only a broad meaning and are not words in their own right (although, due to sound changes, some P words may be the same as its base), the base LAK (bases are always capitalised) means “coldness” (not the word, just the sense of being cold). From LAK I can form nouns, adjectives, verbs and anything else - but there are rules.

The base has no precise meaning itself, but has a vague or generalised meaning or “feel” about it. The most common basic bases have the structure C(onsonant) V(owel), VC or CVC, there are also bases with the structure V. Bases are written in capitals and avoid use of IPA where possible, but some IPA characters are used, like ŋ; long vowels are written with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ō, ū).

As well as bases there are also sub-bases. These are bases with a more refined definition than that of the original base. These only occur with [C]V[C] bases. This is done by adding a C to the base. If the root is [C]V then the C is added straight to it, making a new [C]V-C base, e.g. √TA-G*. If the original base was [C]VC then the new C is added with a preceding V which is the same as the base vowel, thus creating [C]VC-VC, e.g. √TAM-AG*. The duplicated V can be a long or short version of the base vowel, e.g. √TAM-ĀG. Sub-bases are treated like bases in every way and cannot be used as words directly (although, through phonological changes, a word may become the same, or similar to its base).

Nouns

Nouns can be formed in a number of ways. The simplest nouns are formed by adding a vowel, long or short, to the base. More complex nouns are formed in the following ways:

Nasalised nouns

Some nouns are formed by infixing a nasal consonant between the root vowel and the final consonant, if that consonant is a plosive (-t, -d, -p, -b, -k, -g) including aspirated and palatalised variants), an approximant (-j, -w) or a liquid (-l, -r). These nouns also take a suffixed vowel like the simple nouns above. Nasalised nouns are not used for any specific meaning. An example could be a base TAK, using nasalisation we get a word *tanka (with final vowel), or the base MAL could yield *manlō.

Nouns with strengthened nasals

Bases ending with -m, -n and -ŋ had a voiced plosive inserted after them, making them -mb, -nd and -ŋg. These words also take a vowel ending in the same fashion as nasalised nouns and vocalic suffix nouns. Examples could be: LAM yielding *lamba or DAN yielding *dande.

Nouns with plosive affixation

Bases ending with nasals (-m, -n -ŋ) or liquids (-l, -r) have an unvoiced plosive inserted after the consonant, becoming -mp, -nt, -ŋk, -lt, -lp, -lk, -rt, -rp and -rk. These nouns also take the vocalic suffix as above. Examples could be: TOL yielding *tolta or SAM yielding *sampa.

Nouns with doubled final consonants

Bases ending with an unvoiced consonant duplicate that consonant, therefore -t becomes -tt, -k becomes -kk, etc. These nouns also take a vocalic suffix as per all of the above methods. Examples could be: GAP yielding *gappe or PAT yielding *pattā.

Nouns with suffixes

Many bases, both [C]VC and [C]VCVC, take suffixes of the type CV. By the ‘P’ period many of these suffixes became merged due to the loss of final vowels, the suffixes -de, -do, -du often become -dh. These suffixes become an intrinsic part of the word and, by the time of P, are not recognisable as elements in themselves.

These are not suffixes which form new words from existing words, i.e. in Welsh we derive the word gwybodaeth (knowledge, information) from the word gwybod (to know a fact), thus deriving an abstract noun (gwybodaeth) from a verb (gwybod) by means of a suffix (-aeth), which is a suffix common in Welsh for deriving abstract nouns from other words. The suffixes described below are suffixed to a base to form a word, not suffixed to a word to form a new word.

Immediate suffixes

Immediate suffixes have no vowel suffixes separating them from the base. Some of the suffixes are CCV, but most are CV.

-b-: suffixes beginning with -b- (-be, -bo, -bu). -bo used for the location of an action, e.g. sleep - ‘bed’; work - ‘workplace’; rest - ‘grave’. -d-: suffixes beginning with -d- (-de, -do, -du). -j-: suffixes beginning with -j- (-je, -jo, -ju). -k-: suffixes beginning with -k- (-ka, -ke, -ko, -ku). -kw-: suffixes beginning with -kw- (-kwa, -kwe). -kwa is used for verbal actions, e.g. a seeing - ‘a sight/view’; a hunting - ‘hunt’; a knowing - ‘knowledge/information’. -l-: suffixes beginning with -l- (-la, -le, -lo, -lu). -m-: suffixes beginning with -m- (-ma, -me, -mo). -n-: suffixes beginning with -n- (-na, -ne, -no, -nu). -r-: suffixes beginning with -r- (-ra, -re, -ro). -re tends to be used to form instruments, e.g. instrument for writing - ‘pen’; instrument for striking - ‘sword’; instrument for biting - ‘tooth’. -s-: suffixes beginning with -s- (-sa, -se, -so). -sk-: suffixes beginning with -sk- (-ska, -ske, -sko). -sl-: suffixes beginning with -sl- (-sla, -sle, -slo). -sla is used for non-physical actions, e.g. ‘a thought’, ‘a wish’, ‘a desire’, ‘a longing’, ‘a hope’. -st-: suffixes beginning with -st- (-sta, -ste, -sto). -t-: suffixes beginning with -t- (-ta, -te, -to, -tu). -tʰ-: suffixes beginning with -tʰ- (-tʰa, -tʰe, -tʰo, -tʰu). -tʲ-: suffixes beginning with -tʲ- (-tʲa, -tʲe, -tʲo). -tʲa tends to be used for instruments, e.g. that with which one bites - ‘jaw’; that with which one ties - ‘rope’. -w-: suffixes beginning with -w- (-wa, -we, -wo).

Mediate suffixes

These suffixes follow a vowel suffixed to the base, the suffixed vowel is called a vocalic extension. The vocalic extension is a repetition of the base vowel, but can be short or long. These suffixes are far fewer than the immediate suffixes.

-da: -de: -la: -le: -ma: -me: -na: -ne: -no: -kwa: -kwe: -ra: -re: -ro: -sa: -se: -so: -ta: -te: -tʰa -tʰe -tʰo -wa -we

Adjectives

Adjectives are constructed in an almost identical way to nouns, however, there is a much more limited range of affixes available. The only vocalic endings used are -ā, -ē and -ō. Note that adjectives always take long vowel endings, never short vowels.

Adjectives use the same methods: nasalisation, strengthened nasals, plosive affixation, doubled final consonants, immediate and mediate suffixes. Again, the available immediate and mediate suffixes are far fewer for adjectives than nouns:

Immediate suffixes The suffixes work in the same way as they do with nouns, but are fewer in number.

-dā, -dē: -dē tends to be used for adjectives of materials, e.g. ‘wood’ > ‘wooden’; ‘oak’ > ‘oaken’; ‘metal’ > ‘metalic’; ‘silver’ > ‘silvern’; ‘gold’ > ‘golden’. -jā -jē -kā, -kē: -kā tends to be used for negative adjectives, e.g. ‘evil’, ‘tyrannous’, ‘ugly’ etc. -kwā, -kwē -lā, -lē -mē -nē -rē -sē -tā, -tē -wā, -wē

Mediate suffixes The suffixes work in the same way as they do with nouns - following a vocalic extension.

-dē -gwē -jē -kwē -lē -mē -nē -tē -wē

Verbs

Ah, verbs - the bane of my conlanging efforts. PQL verbs are far more complex (to build) than nouns and adjectives.

Verbs all fall into one of three categories; i-stem, a-stem and u-stem. These categories denote the final vowel of the verb; i is the last vowel of the verb stem of i-stem verbs, a is the last vowel of the verb stem of a-stem verbs and u is the final vowel of the verb stem of u-stem verbs.

How to form verbs

Build a verb stem by means outlined above (vocalic suffix, nasalisation, strengthened nasal etc). This will create a verb stem ending with -i, -a or -u. This verb stem also serves as the infinitive form.

To form the present tense:

Choose one of the appropriate suffixes to attach to the verb stem (not the base).

i-stem: -ja, -je, -jo a-stem: -je, -we, -wa u-stem: -le, -la, -ne, -na

This will now produce a word with the structure BASE-VOCALIC ENDING-PRESENT SUFFIX. If we take the root TAK we get tak-a-we, *takawe. The verb stem here is *taka and the present tense is *takawe. This Proto-PQL word will yield something like *tagaw in P (though this is untested).

To form the future tense:

To form the future tense a suffix is added to the present tense. The suffix is -(n)ath and is derived from an older auxiliary verb *nantha which originally followed the present tense to show intention. By the time of P the word had become a suffix. The word *nantha became nanth and was quickly corrupted to nath and suffixed. To form future tense verbs simply add the -(n)ath suffix to the present tense. *tagaw (present) > *tagaunath (future). Whether the suffix is -nath or -ath is somewhat irregular.

To form the past tense:

The past tense is more complex than the present and future tenses. It can be formed in three ways:

1. Suffixing to the verbal stem, in a similar manner to the present. The suffix depends on the stem, see below. 2. Reduplication of the base vowel (prefixed to the base) + a vocalic suffix. This causes lengthening of the base vowel. This is also derived from the base, not the verbal stem, as if it were a separate word. This tends to be used with older verbs. 3. Plosive affixation to base + vocalic suffix. This tends to be used with older verbs.

Methods 2 and 3 work in the same manner as their noun and adjective counterparts and use the same vocalic suffix as the verbal stem.

Past tense suffixes for method 1 are:

i-stem: -lonō, -lanā, -linē a-stem: -lono, -lana, -line u-stem: -nota, -noka, -nonto

There are other forms of verbs like the gerund, impersonal, imperative, passive participle and active participle - but these are all formed with suffixes to the verb stem, much like the present and method 1 of the past.

And that’s it. Thanks for reading. Contact me via Twitter at @Jonlang_ and also feel free to discuss this post on Reddit at r/jonlang

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Initial consonant mutations of P-Elvish

The characters in brackets show how the phoneme is actually written if different to the International Phonetic Alphabet symbol; i.e. [b] is written as <b>, so nothing in brackets; the phoneme [ð] is written as <dh> so 'dh' is written in brackets. The same applies to the other phonemes.

The Soft Mutation is the same as Welsh - pretty much due to the fact that P-Elvish has a very similar phonetic inventory to Welsh. The Liquid Mutation is completely my own idea - I just like how these changes sound when they follow a liquid consonant ([l] and [r]) and the Nasal Mutation is somewhat from Welsh ([b] > [m]; [d] > [n] and [g] > [ŋ]) but I didn't want to include the Welsh unvoiced nasals, so instead I have unvoiced plosives become voiced.

Also <ph> is only ever used to write the phoneme [f] when it's a result of mutation. All radical instances of [f] are written as <f>; i.e. farth (green) /farθ/, but pêlh (white) /peːɬ/ would theoretically become phêlh /feːɬ/ if it were to undergo liquid mutation.

Discuss this on the Jonlang subreddit.

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The pronouns of P-Elvish

This post is now outdated.

I’ve spent some time this weekend working on the P-Elvish pronouns. They have undergone the same phonological changes that all PE words go through - beginning at the Proto-Elvish stage and finish at P-Elvish. The only difference is that some of them have undergone irregular phonological changes which would be unexpected; but I simply justify them by saying all natural languages have peculiarities and irregularities.

Personal pronouns

The personal pronouns (I, you, she etc) come in two varieties. Firstly in word form; and secondly in suffix form, for suffixing to verbs. P-Elvish personal pronouns do not have different forms for the subject and object. Also, P-Elvish does not differentiate between he, her and it.

1st Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root NĪ)

Sing. nen (I, me) Pl. nem (we, us - inclusive); ner (we, us - exclusive)

2nd Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root NĒ)

Sing. nev (you) Pl. nel (you)

3rd Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root Ē)

Sing. ech (he, him; she, her; it) Pl. et (they)

The suffix forms are:

1st sing.: -n 1st pl.: -m (inclusive) 1st pl.: -r (exclusive)

2nd sing.: -v 2nd pl.: -l

3rd sing.: -ch 3rd pl.: -t

Demonstrative pronouns

English demonstrative pronouns are words like this and that. These demonstratives work differently in P-Elvish to how they would in English. In English the demonstrative is placed directly before the noun we are talking about:

This book That book

In P-Elvish this is done using a phrase corresponding to English “the book here” (this book) or “the book there” (that book). This is also true of Welsh; y llyfr ‘ma (this book, literally “the book here”) and y llyfr ‘na (that book, literally “the book there”).

English also has plural forms of these demonstratives; these and those, to be used with plural nouns:

These books Those books

P-Elvish does not need to use plural forms, but instead relies on the plural article and plural noun to do the same job.

The P-Elvish words for ‘here’ and ‘there’ then are:

hen (here) hel (there) - used for things/places which can be seen. sal (yonder, there) - used for things/places out of sight.

il euer hen - these birds (literally “the birds here”) ir hain ganad hel - that red blood (literally “the red blood there”)

Head over to the r/jonlang subreddit to talk about this.

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My Celtic inspired conlang family.

What is it?

If you follow me on Twitter then you’ll have seen, over the past month or so, that I’ve been tweeting about things to do with P-Celtic conlangs and Latin-Celtic conlangs. Allow me to take this opportunity to make clear what I mean by these:

My current project is inspired by Celtic languages. Celtic languages are a branch of the Proto-Indo-European languages. The modern Celtic languages are split into two main groups: Brythonic and Goidelic, or P and Q, respectively. Why P and Q? Well, in the P branch (Brythonic) there was a particular sound change involving the phoneme /kʷ/ where /kʷ/ changed to /p/. This did not happen in the Q branch where (I think) /kʷ/ became /kw/ in some places and /k/ in others. My P-Celtic conlang simply follows some of the key changes that Brythonic languages went through (and mostly Welsh rather than Cornish or Breton). I haven’t yet began work on the Q-conlang because it will have the least use in future stories for which these conlangs are to be spoken.

The “Latin” Celtic conlang is a third conlang which will be derived from the same Proto-conlang (simply called “Proto-Elvish”). It’s phonology resembles more that of Latin than Welsh (my P-conlang) or Irish (my Q-conlang). It has only the fricatives /f/, /v/, /s/ and /h/ (Latin doesn’t have /v/) whereas the P-conlang as /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/ ,/h/, /x/ and, of course, /ɬ/. Proto-Elvish has pre-nasalised versions of b, d and g, which are written with superscript m, n and ŋ before them. These become de-nasalised in P and Q but become nasal+plosive clusters in the Latin style conlang, and if they are initial the receive an epinthetic vowel, so mb- becomes amb-, nd- becomes und- and ŋg- becomes uŋg- in initial positions. Some of these changes result in drastically different words from the same roots:

Proto: kwesle (white) /kwɛslɛ/ P: pêlh /peːɬ/ “Latin”: quesye /kwɛsjɛ/

Proto: ndini (black) /ⁿdini/ P: din /dɪn/ “Latin”: undino /ʊndɪnɔ/

The term “Latin” is simply because the phonology and grammar will be more like Latin than Celtic, but belongs to the same family as P and Q. It will have noun declensions instead of pre-positions like P and Q. The P and Q conlangs also feature Celtic-style consonant mutations, absent from the “Latin” conlang. 

Mutations

Thus far, I have only worked on P and “Latin”, and the P mutations are as follows:

Soft Mutation

/p/ > /b/ /t/ > /d/ /k/ > /g/

/b/ > /v/ /d/ > /ð/ /g/ > deleted

/ɬ/ > /l/ /r̥/ > /r/ /m/ > /v/

Liquid Mutation

/p/ > /f/ /t/ > /θ/ /k/ > /x/

/b/ > /v/ /d/ > /ð/ /g/ > deleted

Nasal Mutation

/p/ > /b/ /t/ > /d/ /k/ > /g/

/b/ > /m/ /d/ > /n/ /g/ > /ŋ/

These mutations were originally phonological changes, which over time became morphological. They are mostly triggered by words with specific endings, like il (the plural definite article) causes Liquid Mutation (as it ends with a liquid) while i (the singular definite article) causes Soft Mutation as it ends in (or is a ) vowel (it’s i before consonants and ir before vowels, /j/ and /h/).

Articles

On the subject of articles, the P-conlang has two: i and il: singular and plural versions of the definite article. It has no indefinite article (like Welsh), but the “Latin” conlang has no articles, like Latin.

The names “P”, “Q” and “Latin”

The names P, Q and “Latin” (often just referred to as “L”) are clearly placeholders until I have come up with suitable names for them. The placeholder name of “Latin” is also used because the language will perform a role similar to that of Latin nowadays; it will be all but dead, used only for records, poetry and names by the Elvish speakers who will be speaking P and Q (depending on their location).

The lexicons and grammars of P and “Latin” are quite scarce at the moment, as I have been concentrating on the phonological changes. P took quite some time to get right, as the mutations system needs to be justified in the sound changes (which they now are). The “Latin” changes were much simpler in comparison.

The written conlangs, their orthographies and identifying them

The two languages are easily identifiable, P has a lot of gw- initial words, whereas “Latin” doesn’t use the grapheme <w> at all (it uses <u> instead). “Latin” words often end in vowels which is rare in P because it goes through apocope. P uses diacritical marks like ê and á and “Latin” only uses a macron with vowels ō ā and a tilde with n, ñ when /ŋ/ is not followed by /g/:

ñ = /ŋ/ medially ng = /ŋg/ medially ng = /ŋ/ finally /ŋ/ cannot appear initially.

The P conlang also has lots of clusters involving <h>, th, dh, lh, ph etc and they are all fricatives (I think...), where as the “Latin” lang only has a few and are all written with one grapheme, f, v, s, h... “Latin” also only has two diphthongs, <ei> and <ai> which only appear word finally, all other Proto-conlang diphthongs were reduced to long vowels, which didn’t happen in P. Neither language tolerates the clusters /sl/ - in P /sl/ becomes /ɬ/ and in “Latin” it becomes /sj/ (notice the above example, Proto kwesle > “Latin” quesye) - which brings me to another difference, the phoneme /j/ is written in P as <i> and in “Latin” as <y>, the <y> grapheme doesn’t appear in P.

I will eventually come up with a writing system for these conlangs, and the differences in spelling using the Roman alphabet will be moot, but also unreadable to anyone who hasn’t seen it before!

I’m pretty tired as I write this so I’m going to stop now. Any questions, feel free to ask.

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A New Project

If you follow me on Twitter or fora then you may know that I have recently started a new conlang project. The new project is a P-Celtic inspired language family to be spoken by a kind of “Elf-like” race in some stories.

Stories?

Yep. I recently discovered some short stories and sketches of stories involving Elf-like people that I wrote circa 2002-2005. I thought these had been thrown away in house moves, but no - they survive! So I plan to work them into something more mythological and see if I can get them to connect somehow. The point of this new language family is to give these people their own language, which will breed its own history and heritage and, hopefully, give the stories more depth and believability. This is going to be a fairly lengthy process as I need to learn a fair amount in order to build the languages in the family and see what’s what with the surviving stories as there will undoubtedly need to be some re-writing, changing of things and addition of stuff (more stuff and things is always good!)

P-Celtic? What’s that?

If you don’t know P-Celtic is a term for a branch of Celtic languages. There are now only six of the Celtic languages in existence and they are all from the Insular Celtic branch, to which P-Celtic belongs. As well as the P-Celtic branch there is also a Q-Celtic branch. These names refer to a sound change in the Celtic languages where Proto-Celtic [kʷ] became [p] (P-Celtic) and [kw] (Q-Celtic). The P-Celtic branch is also known as Brythonic (or Brittonic) and the Q branch is known as Goidelic (or Gaelic). The surviving P-Celtic languages are Welsh, Cornish and Breton; the surviving Q-Celtic languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx. I actually plan to do a Q-Celtic branch at some point, too.

The plan

The P-Celtic conlang will be mostly influenced by Welsh, having a very similar phonology, a lot of gw- initial words (I love the sound of these!), lots of fricatives like [θ], [ð], [f], [v], [s], [h], [x] and, of course, [ɬ]; but leaving out ones like [z], [ʃ] and [ʒ] which only appear in Welsh in loanwords ([ʃ] is sometimes an allophone of [s] in Welsh). One of the other stand-out features of Welsh phonology is the vowel [ə] (Schwa), being represented by the letter Y. This makes written Welsh words like ystafell (room), ysgol (school) and ysbyty (hospital) very distinctive and therefore I will probably not replicate this in my conlang; I want it to have a very Welsh flavour, but not make it a reinvention of Welsh.

Mutations

You can’t have a Celtic inspired conlang without including mutations. What are they? Well... in Celtic languages some initial consonants of words change depending on certain circumstances. These changes are usually triggered by the preceding word (often an article or preposition) but a mutation can also be triggered by a grammatical rule: nouns in the vocative case could mutate, verbs following an auxiliary verb could mutate, verbs being negated could mutate. Welsh features all of these:

A feminine noun following ‘y’ (the definite article; the) takes Soft Mutation: cath - a cat y gath - the cat

A negated verb takes Mixed Mutation (Aspirate Mutation if possible, Soft Mutation if not): Gwelais i - I saw Welais i ddim - I did not see

A verb following an auxiliary (other than ‘bod’ (to be)) takes Soft Mutation: Dw i’n trio - I try/I am trying Wnes i drio - I tried/I did try

Nouns in the vocative take Soft Mutation: Plant - children Blant - children!

Some possessive adjectives cause mutations. ‘Fy’ (my) causes Nasal Mutation: plentyn - child fy mhlentyn - my child

‘Dy’ (your) causes Soft Mutation: plentyn - child dy blentyn - your child

‘Ei’ causes Soft Mutation when ‘ei’ means ‘his’ and Aspirate Mutation when ‘ei’ means ‘her’: plant - children ei blant - his children ei phlant - her children

These sorts of mutations will be incorporated into my conlang. Although Welsh has the Soft, Aspirate and Nasal mutations, I only plan on having two: Soft and Liquid. The liquid mutation, not present in any Celtic language as far as I know, will be triggered by words ending with liquid consonants (Ls and Rs), as I plan for the conlang to feature a lot more liquids than Welsh does (I love liquids!) The mutations will not necessarily be the same shifts in sound as Welsh either. Soft Mutation is lenition, so as long as the radical sound shifts to a more sonorous sound with the same place of articulation, it should be valid. Welsh [s], for instance, does not mutate, but becomes [h] in Irish ([h] is regarded as more sonorous than [s]); Welsh [f] does not mutate but could, in theory, become [v] as [v] is more sonorous than [f]. These are all possibilities for my conlang, and these will be explored. I may include some sort of Nasal Mutation, but it’s unlikely to be a mirror of the Welsh NM.

So to summarise: I have lots of Elf-faerie-magic stories which I plan to sort through, keep the best and work into some sort of connected narrative, if I can. I plan to build both P-Celtic and Q-Celtic conlangs for these stores (P taking priority). As you have probably guessed my Quebric conlang is now abandoned and will not be picked up again. Quebric was only a personal conlang with no application in mind, but served only for me to learn more about conlanging and linguistics. Wish me luck!

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Some changes...

There have been some recent minor changes to the Quebric language. Although minor they do concern some of the features documented in this blog.

Phonology

I have added the diphthong /ʊi/ [ui] to the phonology. This also has ramifications for the chart showing the internal vowel changes for i-affection plurals. The updated chart has been added to the Plurals blog post, but it’s also here:

Mutations

There have been changes to the nasal mutation. I originally wanted to avoid borrowing from Welsh too closely, but since then the Welsh unvoiced nasal consonants have really grown on me and I couldn’t resist rejigging the nasal mutation. The changes only affect the unvoiced stops /k/, /t/ and /p/, as shown below:

/k/ [c] becomes /ŋ̊/ [ngh] /t/ [t] becomes /n̥/ [nh] /p/ [p] becomes /m̥/ [mh]

/g/ [g] becomes /ŋ/ [ng] /d/ [d] becomes /n/ [n] /b/ [b] becomes /m/ [m]

Again, these changes have been reflected in the Mutations blog post.

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Singular/plural & collective/unit systems

Here I will lay out how Quebric deals with noun number. Quebric has two systems: singular/plural and collective/unit (unit is often called singulative).

Comparison of grammatical number systems in English and Quebric.

The number system for nouns in English is a simple singular/plural system where the singular is the base form. Any noun in English can be placed into one of three sub-classes within this system:

a)    Nouns that can be used in either the singular or the plural (the vast majority of non-abstract things – cat(s), star(s), magazine(s)).

b)    Nouns that can only normally be used in the singular (abstract ideas and uncountable things – honesty, milk, information, bread).

c)     Nouns that can only be used in the plural (things that are or have two parts – trousers, scissors).

 Quebric has mutually exclusive twin systems, like the Celtic languages:

 System 1:         singular/plural  System 2:         collective/unit

System 1 works on much the same lines as the English system, with the same three sub-classes. The difference from English is that these do not account for all nouns in Quebric, because a large number lie outside the singular/plural system and instead belong to the collective/unit (c/u) system, which has its own rules of operation.

Distinction between the singular/plural and collective/unit systems.

As has already been said, the sing./pl. system of Quebric mirrors that of English and other European languages – the basic form of the noun is sing., with the pl. (where possible) is formed from it. It does not matter if a noun cannot form a plural – the base noun is still in the sing. and that is enough to classify it as part of the sing./pl. system. On the other hand, the collective/unit (c/u) system is primarily made up of living things which are usually associated with being in a group. This includes many trees, plants and animals (especially those living in or kept in groups as well as swarming or colony insects). The base form of these nouns all have a collective meaning, with the unit form built from it by way of a suffix (which is gender specific).

Singular/plural nouns

Where English has a large majority of its plural nouns ending in -s (like Spanish), Quebric has two main ways of forming plurals ((a) and (b) below).

 a)    i-affection plurals are plural forms which are formed by changing the internal vowels of the singular noun. Newer, modern words do not tend to use this system as it is a left-over feature from the older language where plurals were formed by an i-suffix, which later shifted the internal vowels before being dropped from the word altogether. This is a feature borrowed from the Germanic languages and is a feature of English (goose > geese; man > men), a left over feature from Old English/Anglo-Saxon.

The below table shows the vowel changes in final syllables and non-final syllables.

b)    Nouns which end in -air (or the feminine -airit) (agent nouns) change to -áwir (regardless of gender, but -áwir nouns are masculine).

Plurals of compound nouns

Compound nouns – i.e. words made up of noun + noun, verb + noun, or adjective + noun – form their pl. in the same way as the second element of the compound.

Duals

A very limited number of nouns have a special dual form denoting ‘two’ rather than ‘many’. All are made up of the element

tes- or tais- two + noun (the noun takes SM).

Note that duals are not plurals. Nouns with dual forms can (and often will) have a plural form as well and there are usually special rules to using duals.

Collective/unit nouns

Overview of c/u nouns

The Quebric c/u system uses three suffixes; two feminine and one masculine. The feminine suffix -ys is only used to form unit nouns of trees, plants, flowers etc. All other feminine unit nouns are formed with -in and all masculine unit nouns are formed with -edh.

Collective nouns of one or two syllables which contain a long vowel (á, é, í, ó, ú) become short (a, e, i, o, u) when the suffixes are added.

Examples

Some examples of these can be seen below:

Gorod mountain becomes geryd mountains. This is an i-affection plural.

Cít sheep (pl.) becomes citin sheep (sing.). This is a feminine collective/unit noun. Notice the shortening of the vowel í when the -in suffix is added.

Caran friend becomes cerain friends. This is an i-affection plural.

Euer birds becomes euerin bird. This is a feminine collective/unit noun.

Quena trees becomes quenys tree. This is a feminine collective/unit noun. Notice that this one uses the -ys suffix (because it’s flora) which also causes the final vowel of quena to drop and the now final n- takes the suffix.

Arquen shoes becomes arquenedh shoe. This is a masculine collective/unit noun. 

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Consonant mutations

In this post I have presented the Quebric consonant mutation system. This is inspired by (and largely ripped off from) the Celtic (particularly Welsh) mutations. Initial consonant mutations are the change in the initial consonant of a word due to it following a “trigger” - a word which causes mutations. One of the most common “triggers” in Quebric is the definite article: i. This causes soft mutation to singular feminine nouns and nasal mutation to plural masculine nouns:

cobr spider i gobr the spider i cybr the spiders

Notice how cobr spider mutated to gobr for the singular following i, but remained cybr spiders for the plural following i.

gorod mountain i gorod the mountain i ngeryd the mountains

Notice this time that the singular gorod did not mutate after i, but the plural nasally mutated to ngeryd (from geryd mountains) after i.

Soft mutation

The soft mutation (SM) is a form of lenition (from Latin lenis “soft”) which causes a consonant to become more sonorous (which means becoming phonetically more vowel-like). The Quebric SM is almost identical to that found in Welsh because Quebric and Welsh have very similar phonologies. The mutations are (IPA between slashes, Quebric spelling in square brackets):

/k/ [c] becomes /g/ [g] /t/ [t] becomes /d/ [d] /p/ [p] becomes /b/ [b]

/g/ [g] disappears /d/ [d] becomes /ð/ [dh] /b/ [b] becomes /v/ [v]

/ɬ/ [lh] becomes /l/ [l] /r̥/ [rh] becomes /r/ [r]

/m/ [m] becomes /v/ [v]

Nasal mutation

The nasal mutation (NM) causes consonants to become nasalised. This mutation is exactly the same as the Welsh NM.

/k/ [c] becomes /ŋ̊/ [ngh] /t/ [t] becomes /n̥/ [nh] /p/ [p] becomes /m̥/ [mh]

/g/ [g] becomes /ŋ/ [ng] /d/ [d] becomes /n/ [n] /b/ [b] becomes /m/ [m]

Aspirate mutation

The aspirate mutation (AM) causes consonants to become fricatives:

/k/ [c] becomes /x/ [ch] /t/ [t] becomes /θ/ [th] /p/ [p] becomes /f/ [ph] /l/ [l] becomes /ɬ/ [lh]

AM also causes vowel-initial words to become h initial, a process called h-prothesis. So the word iaur language would become hiaur language under AM.

Hard mutation

The hard mutation (HM) is not inspired by Welsh, but rather Cornish. The HM is a form of fortition (from Latin fortis “hard”). HM can be thought of as the opposite of SM.

/g/ [g] becomes /k/ [c] /d/ [d] becomes /t/ [t] /b/ [b] becomes /p/ [p]

/gw/ [gw] beomes /kw/ [qu]*

/l/ [l] becomes /ɬ/ [lh]

/v/ [v] becomes /f/ [f] /ð/ [dh] becomes /d/ [d] /θ/ [th] becomes /t/ [t]

* The cluster gw will HM to qu, but qu itself is immune to all mutations. This is why the cluster /kw/ is not written as the expected [cw] but as [qu].

The HM is the least encountered. It has only two triggers: ryn our and tei if.

The SM is the only mutation which has grammatical triggers as opposed to proximity triggers. Proximity triggers are words which cause mutations in following words. The SM can be triggered by some grammatical role the word is playing within a sentence (like when the subject and object of a sentence are not separated by anything, as Quebric is a VSO language, then the object receives SM).

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Numbers

Here follows the Quebric numerals, from one to ten. My original intention was for Quebric to have a vigesimal (based on twenties) system, but this may change to a much simpler decimal system, so for now, I’ll only post 1-10. Another point is that the numbers 2-9 have feminine forms which are used with feminine nouns - these are all marked masculine (m) and feminine (f). The word for 0 (zero) is gan, the same as the Quebric negator (c.f. Welsh dim).

Cardinals

0 - gan 1 - sel 2 - tes (m) / tais (f) 3 - nin (m) / nain (f) 4 - ques (m) / quais (f) 5 - túlë (m) / talen (f) 6 - engë (m) / ungi (f) 7 - eledh (m) / ílid (f) 8 - lin (m) / lain (f) 9 - telen (m) / teilun (f) 10 - yltë

The following mutation rules must be observed with Quebric numbers:

Sel one causes soft mutation of feminine nouns. Both tes and tais two cause aspirate mutation of all nouns. Both engë and ungi six cause aspirate mutation of all nouns. Eledh seven but not ílid causes soft mutation of all nouns. Yltë ten causes aspirate mutation of all nouns.

Ordinals

1st - ceset 2nd - antë 3rd - manta From 4th onwards the masculine form of the cardinal is used with the suffix -(m)bë: 4th - quesembë 5th - túlembë 6th - engembë 7th - eledhbë 8th - limbë 9th - telembë 10th - yltebë

All ordinals cause soft mutation to feminine nouns.

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Articles

The indefinite article

Quebric has no indefinite article and so the English a and an are not translated. The indefiniteness of a noun is indicated by the absence of any preceding article.

English has ‘substitute’ indefinite articles for use with plural words and words which cannot be counted, such as bread. These words are some and any. They too have no equivalents in Quebric. Where they occur in this use in English they must be left untranslated in Quebric. The sentence I bought some apples is rendered in Quebric as I bought apples which means the same thing. Quebric has no concept of the indefinite article and so is consistent in ignoring it.

The definite article

There are two forms of the definite article in Quebric.

i - When the following word begins with a consonant, except h- or consonantal i-. ir - When the following word begins with a vowel, h- or consonantal i-.

(A consonantal i is an i followed by another vowel giving the initial i the phonetic value /j/.)

Whether the following noun is singular or plural makes no difference to the form of the definite article in Quebric.

Despite being a language with grammatical gender, Quebric does not have gender-based forms of the definite article, instead there is a mutation system.

The definite article and mutations

Masculine plural and collective nouns undergo Nasal Mutation following the definite article. Masculine singular and unit nouns are unchanged by the definite article.

            gorod mountain and geryd mountains

            i gorod the mountain, but

            i ngeryd the mountains.

Feminine singular and unit nouns undergo Soft Mutation following the definite article. Feminine plurals are unchanged by the definite article.

            megir troll and megír trolls

            i fegir the troll, but

            i megír the trolls

Because g disappears under Soft Mutation this has ramifications for the definite article. If the letter following g is a vowel then under SM the definite article must then become ir instead of i:

            gethim garden

            i gethim then becomes ir ethim the garden.

Other things to consider

Quebric expressions of price/quantity and time/distance use i/ir where English requires either a or per.

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The two meanings of ‘y’

An overview of ‘y’.

In Quebric the word y  (pronounced /ə/) has two meanings:

and

with / by means of

Y also has mutation consequences, which will be dealt with later on. But it’s the mutations and context which will allow a lister to infer the correct meaning of y.

‘Y’ as and.

The Quebric word for and is, in its radical state, y. Y works in the same way as English and. Y also has four other forms: ych, yth, yph and ylh, which are explained below. Y causes Aspirate Mutation.

When y causes Aspirate Mutation its form also changes. The ending taken by y matches that of the mutated form of the next word. The Quebric letters [p], [t], [c] and [l] are all susceptible to Aspirate Mutation and become [ph], [th], [ch] and [lh], respectively. Words beginning with a vowel (masculine and feminine) “grow” an initial [h], called h-prothesis.

Here are the phonemes for the above Quebric letters:

/p/ [p] /t/ [t] /k/ [c] (Quebric ‘c’ always sounds like a ‘k’) /l/ [l] /f/ [ph] (‘ph’ only occurs when /p/ undergoes aspirate mutation) /θ/ [th] /ɬ/ [lh] (this is the same as the Welsh ‘ll’)

y followed by radical [th] becomes yth.

y followed by radical [ch] becomes ych.

y followed by radical [lh] becomes ylh.

y followed by radical [p] causes AM [p] → [ph] and changes to yph.

y followed by radical [t] causes AM [t] → [th] and changes to yth.

y followed by radical [c] causes AM [c] → [ch] and changes to ych.

y followed by radical [l] causes AM [l] → [lh] and changes to ylh.

y followed by a vowel causes h-prothesis in the vowel [V]→ [hV] and changes to ych. (V stands for any vowel.)

So the phrase ‘a mare and a cow’ becomes:

Stage 1 (translate word-for-word):  láréch y cyr

Stage 2 (apply changes caused by y):  láréch ych chyr

So ‘a mare and a cow’ translates as ‘láréch ych chyr’.

The idea being that there is no break between ych and chyr. The idea for this came from Welsh, where the word yn changes to either ym or yng depending on whether it’s followed by an m, mh or ng, ngh.

‘Y’ as with / by means of.

The Quebric word for with as in by means of is also y. The difference between y and and y with/by means of is that y with/by means of causes Soft Mutation, not Aspirate Mutation. This feature coupled with context is enough to distinguish between the two meanings of y. When y means with it is sometimes written as ŷ but this is optional and is only to show the difference between the two. When y precedes a vowel, a h- or a consonantal i- (/j/) it becomes yr (the same rule as applied to the definite article ir).

This form of y (or yr) is used to say things like:

He was stabbed with a knife

I went to work by train

She went to school by bus

But cannot be used to say:

He went to school with his friend (different type of with)

She met up with her sister after work (different type of with)

Y / yr can only mean with when it can be replaced by by means of in English.

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Quebric phonology

For my first proper Tumblr blog post I thought I’d post the phoneme inventory for Quebric. The phonemes are written between slashes and the orthography is written in square brackets.

Consonants

Plosives: /p/ [p], /t/ [t], /k/ [c], /b/ [b], /d/ [d], /g/ [g].

Fricatives: /f/ [f] [ph], /θ/ [th], /s/ [s], /x/ [ch], /h/ [h], /ɬ/ [lh], /v/ [v], /ð/ [dh].

Approximants: /r̥/ [rh], /r/ [r], /w/ [w], /j/ [i], /l/ [l].

Nasals: /m/ [m], /n/ [n], /ŋ/ [ng], /m̥/ [mh], /n̥/ [nh], /ŋ̊/ [ngh].

The cluster /kw/ is written as [qu] and not the expected [cw]. The cluster [ph] only appears when /p/ undergoes aspirate mutation,radical /f/ is always [f], never [ph]. The phonemes /m̥/ [mh], /n̥/ [nh], /ŋ̊/ [ngh] only appear as a result of the nasal mutation.

Vowels and diphthongs

/a/ [a], /ɑ/ [á], /aɪ/ [ai] initially and medially, [ae] finally, /aʊ/ [au].

/ε/ [e], /e/ [é], /εɪ/ [ei], /εʊ/ [eu].

/ɪ/ [i], /i/ [í] except finally [i] finally. (Note that before vowels [i] has the value /j/)

/ɒ/ [o], /ɔ/ [ó], /ɒi/ [oi] initially and medially, [oe] finally, /ɒʊ/ [ou].

/ʊ/ [u], /u/ [ú], /ʊi/ [ui]

/ə/ [y]

Notes

Something to note about the letter [h]: the letter [h] often has the value of /h/ but is sometimes used in conjunction with other letters to make a new letter, for example [t] + [h] = [th]; [d] + [h] = [dh], so [h] isn’t always pronounced.

The following are considered to be single letters in Quebric:  ch, dh, ng, lh, ph, rh, th, qu.

[jon-lang-blog]

Hello and welcome.

Hello and welcome to my Tumblr. If you don’t know me then my name is Jonlang (not really) and I go by the Twitter name of @Jonlang_. I am an aspiring fantasy writer and inventor of invented worlds and mythologies. But mostly.... I’m a conlanger.

My current (and only) project is Quebric. Quebric is a conlang with a very Celtic flavour, featuring initial-consonant mutations, echoing pronouns, verbal-nouns, a VSO word order and the like. It isn’t simply a cypher for Welsh though (or Cornish or Breton or Irish or Manx or Scottish Gaelic), it is its own thing. Quebric isn’t supposed to be the “seventh Celtic language” or anything like that, but it is influenced by them, but it’s also (a little bit) influenced by Finnish, Old English and Old Norse.

I am by no means a linguist. I do this as a hobby and have absolutely no formal education in the field of languages or linguistics. I am, however, very interested in European languages, mostly Celtic (and even more so the Brythonic branch). I am also learning Welsh ~ dw i’n trio dysgu siarad Cymraeg. I am using the experience of building Quebric to learn more about languages and how they work in the hope of building an entire language family in the future.

I have some rough sketches of a second conlang lying around - a conlang for dragons, but this is mostly stuff to do with phonology as I try to come up with a realistic phoneme inventory for dragon anatomy. But this won’t be documented on this blog, nor my Twitter. It may one day come to something but at the moment my focus is Quebric.

If you’re joining me here from Twitter, then welcome and thanks for following. I have no idea how often this will be updated but feel free to message me.