Tąitąi! :)

he/him | (he, en) [de]

[paizau]

Tąitąi! [tɑ̃i̯t.tɑ̃i̯] "Hello!"

Welcome to my conlang blog :)))

i plan for this blog to just be a dump for everything conlang related, all the way from random shitposts to proper posts about my conlang, plus reblogs of linguistics and conlang related stuff. i have two main conlangs - Ngįout [ŋĩ.ˈɔ̄u̯t], which is basically done, and Kshafa [kʂā.fā], which i'm currently working on, an i hope that you'll find my posts interesting :))

main blog: @haomnamu

[paizau]

God. making sense of a deep orthography, especially in a conscript, can be such a headache. But I think I Got There. >:)

[paizau]

The Five Forms of a Dummy 2nd Conj. Verb

So I think I've settled on a final version of the rehauled phonology of Ngįout(?, this name is not possible anymore so I need to come up with a new one lol).

To showcase it, and the new spelling rules of the orthography to match this new phonological history and morphophonemics, here are the five forms of a dummy 2nd conjugation verb:

lǫpnhį [lɔ̃pˈɲĩ] (long 1st.sg)

lǫpnhot [lɔ̃pˈɲɔt] (long 2nd)

lǫuhm [lɔ̃̂ũm] (3rd, short 1st)

lǫuhm [lɔ̃̂ũm] (short 2)

lǫuhm [lɔ̃̂ũm] (combining form)

Forms 3-5 are homophonous, but are distinguished in writing. In the photo below you can see forms 1-5 from top to bottom respectively in the script.

[alder-prince]

I've been meaning to showcase my conlang for SO LONG. lol. it's really mostly just a script with a few dozen nouns but I think it sounds cool and cozy and I write it everywhere when I get bored.

the blue scroll on the side says "Sho'eyic" (/ʃoejix/ in IPA phonemes). then is shown the 19 glyphs. tried to make it look pretty-- medieval manuscript style 🔥🪻

here's the IPA for further reference, cause my handwriting is a bit messy:

[paizau]

Kshafa in its hiatory has gone through 2 big restructurings of its vowel system, which I will make specific posts about some day. This led to some funny situations where a proto-form like *datemi, with 3 distinct vowels, evolves into dèthéme [dè.tʰé.mē]. The /e/-fication of Kshafa.

[kelasian]

now that i finally have something to show, here are two simple example sentences from sentian. fun fact this is probably like the third conlang i have ever made that has a definite article (and possibly the first one that has both definite and indefinite article)

anyway im very excited to be working on this conlang that has given me nothing but pain in the past!! ive got ideas for differences between the literary and spoken language and am really looking forward to expanding upon them

[kelasian]

one of the differences that i had already worked out before the pause which is possession. except i deepened it further with reflexive forms which are used in the spoken variety usually only in the third person but are completely preserved in the literary form

[kelasian]

also have a pronunciation while im at it. nothing crazy though

[yuk-tepat]

Yuk Tepat - Basic Color Terms

[paizau]

in the sound change applier. straight up "tweeking it". and by "it", haha, well. let's jutsr say. Tonogenesis.

[ouroboros-clong]

Subject Agreement in [conlang]

[Conlang year clong still has no name yet, sadly]

So, as I think we've mentioned previously, this conlang has consonant mutation. And originally, in the proto-language, verbs were uninflected for person.

Now, originally the language was also SVO, so at some point subject pronouns and noun phrases caused initial consonant mutation on a verb. So a verb like girhe [ˈɡir̥e] "to speak", would become (if we ignore later developments like the invention of the dual and word order changes):

Éḋi ngirhe "I speak" Isol ngirhe "We speak"

Ú cirhe "You (sg.) speak" Ulha ngirhe "Y'all speak"

Turher ġirhe "He/she speaks; they (sg.) speak." Turhen ġirhe "They (anim.) speak."

Turhe girhe "It speaks" Turheṅ girhe "They (inan.) speak"

Now, we can see that, except the 2nd person, the mutation is identical in the singular and plural for each person (and also gender for 3rd person). So analogy kicks in, making the 2nd plural identical to the 2nd singular, essentially meaning that verbs now inflect for person and gender, but not number. This makes it so the mutation is triggered by grammatical context now instead of the specific words used.

Later, the word order changed to VSO, and the dual number evolved, but that inherited the marking depending on person. So now, we have this in the modern language:

Ngirhe éḋi/isoṫiṅ/isol "I/We both/We speak" Cirhe ú/uthen/ulha "You/You both/You speak" Ġirhe turher/turhetiṅ/turhen "They (sg.;an.)/They both (an.)/They (pl.;an.) speak" Girhe turhe/turheṅ "It speaks/They (pl. inan.) speak"

[mewling-central]

I've been learning to harvest clay and I used my very first batch to write something in Proto-Seraphic! It was a writing system originally meant to be written in clay so I'm very glad it came out so clear. On the left is the unfired tablet and the write is the fired tablet. It ended up cracking and breaking (first time firing greenware whoops) but I don't mind because it gives it an archaeological feel to it!

Ndeytğĺ pr-afwék ju-Tawawí, qe pr-vim ju-Kirawí, qe pr-jahwúvim ju-Tlad.

[ˌn̩.dɛjtˈɣl̩ pr̩ ɑˈfwɛk ʒu ˌtɑ.wɑˈwɪ qɛ pr̩ vim ʒu ˌki.rɑˈwi qɛ pr̩ ʒɑˈhwuv.im ʒu ˈtlɑd]

PFV.FUT.RES=that.[DIST] by (o).HEAT.[SG] of tëwėlwī and by (t).light.[SG] of cīralwī and by (m).crop-PL of tlāod

"By the warmth of Tëwėlwī (the Nurturer; Sun deity), by the light of Cīralwī (the Protector; moon god), by the gifts of Tlāod (the Firmament; earth goddess), it shall be."

[tepat-side]

Graphic Analysis

Trying to work out all the stylistic elements of Tepatic glyphs.

These are distinct from glyph radicals, which are the smallest distinctive meaningful elements of the writing system, which are combined to spell words.

What you see here mostly don’t have any meaning, or any sound, they’re just shapes.

[sombra-conlangs]

Recently a handful of people have told me that they really like the way I organize my conlang notes, I use Obsidian (a note-taking app) and I picked a theme to make it look like Wiktionary, so if there's any interest I'd like to make a blank template to share for other conlangers to use. (details below the cut!).

As you can see from the screenshots I have pages for words that include IPA, definitions, and even things like tags. These tags are useful for making automatically updating lists, so if I tag a word as "Verb" it will show up in the list of verbs without me having to manually add it.

And there's a "properties" section at the top, it is a bit tedious to fill out the same info that's already in the text into the properties but it allows you to see those properties on the automatically updating lists, as you can see on the third screenshot.

You can even have a list for transitive verbs specifically by either adding a "transitive" tag, or in my case adding a link to the transitive page (trans.) which also doubles as a glossary so I can click on it and it shows me what transitive means (This lends itself well to noun classes imo).

I use templates so if I want to add a new word I can just click on the template for "Proto-Abyssal Noun" or "Proto-Abyssal Verb" and it will give me a page ready for me to add all the info I need to. This feels like a pretty convenient way for me to keep track of things.

One of the main advantages imo is that if you have several languages in the same world you can easily link between them, for example you can add "this is a borrowing from X language's word: Y" and have actual links between the pages, works with Proto-languages as well.

And if you do have several languages it's useful to have a page for each definition, so you can see what a word is in several of your languages at once, like in the first screenshot if you click "sing" you'd see the word for sing in all of my languages (only 1 has a word for sing atm tho).

Now, of course, anyone can learn to set up their own Obsidian vault, it's not that difficult, but I've found a handful of plugins and things that are useful for beginners, so if you need to change the name of a tag or a language you don't have to manually edit hundreds of notes.

And honestly in my opinion the most tedious part is setting the whole thing up, organizing things into folders and making all of the automatically updating lists work properly, so I think it could be a good idea for me to make a blank template with all the folders and everything in place and share that, as well as writing a little guide on useful plugins for updating tags, properties, etc. as well as tips to avoid future headaches down the road, does this sound like something anyone wld be interested in? let me know!

[paizau]

Messed with the Ngįout sound changes some more, and now I want you to welcome two new vowels to the inventory: ų̈ /ɯ̃/ and ų̋ /ɯ̃ː/!

Another things is that as a result of this change, nasal vowels also undergo ablaut, so now words that in the old system were reanalysed as 2nd conjugation verbs because they had unvariable vowels, are now back to the 1st conjugation as a special nasal vowel subclass! the special thing about it is that the qualities are not the same, because nasal high mid vowels merged with the high vowels instead of staying distinct: an example using *siᵐb- "sit"

Old system: 2B verb

1sg - sįį [sĩ.ḭ́]*

2sg - sįot [sĩ.ɔ́t]

3sg - sį [sḭ́]

nom. - sį [sḭ́]

New system: 1Vn verb

1sg - sįh [sḭ̂]

2sg - sų̈ht [sɯ̰̂t]

3sg - sį [sḭ́]

nom. - sų̈ [sɯ̰́]

*the tilde is moved to the bottom when there is also a tone diacritic to avoid a clash. these are all still nasal vowels, and not creaky voiced ones)

[yuk-tepat]

Why climb the neighbor’s tree?

Ngût kwit i-x̬angqlup tu-chôl-pem sat i-kyat. suppose fruit of neighbor FUT fall enter yard of you.

Suk kyat tu-mok-um u-tyang-noy muk-un? Then, you FUT why PRED-climb steal tree-OTHER?

‘Why climb the neighbor’s tree, when the fruit falls in your yard?’

In one of their early conversations regarding statecraft, Tsyam argued that self-interests could be exploited by the kingdom to fortify itself. Lord Qom countered that acting purely in self-interest, it would be to the advantage of a prince to kill his father to gain power. Tsyam is said to have used the example of a man whose neighbor has a tree next to the wall. The fruit falls in his yard, and the neighbor has promised him that he can take any fallen fruit. In that case, he has merely to do nothing but wait in order to receive benefit. In such circumstances, what fool would jump the fence and climb the neighbor’s tree to pick fruit?

Unfortunately, some men, including princes, are fools.

Idiomatically, “climb the neighbor’s tree” has come to represent someone so stupid and greedy that even if they would get what they want anyway, they try to grab it anyway in a way that kills their chance.

[paizau]

Current palatalization situation of Kshafa stops:

C+j clusters evolved into palatalized consonants twice.

In the first palatalization the velar stops *k and *g palatalized and became true palatals /c/ and /ɟ/, while *j was simply dropped after other stops.

The second palatalization occured after high vowels were lost, creating new C+j clusters. This time the alveolar stops *t and *d palatalized into alveolo-palatal affricates that later simplify to fricatives /ɕ/ and /ʑ/.

The problem:

I want more alveolo-palatals.

Proposed solution:

have the velars palatalize in both cases.

The question:

How should I go about it?

Should I go with option 1:

1st palatalization: *kj *gj > c ɟ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > ɕ, ʑ

Or 2:

1st palatalization: *kj, *gj > *tɕ *dʑ > ɕ ʑ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > c, ɕ, ɟ, ʑ

currently I'm leaning towards option 1, because it feels more right, but option 2 has more merging and complication potential which I do enjoy.

[paizau]

went with 1 because 2 just felt wrong :/

[paizau]

Current palatalization situation of Kshafa stops:

C+j clusters evolved into palatalized consonants twice.

In the first palatalization the velar stops *k and *g palatalized and became true palatals /c/ and /ɟ/, while *j was simply dropped after other stops.

The second palatalization occured after high vowels were lost, creating new C+j clusters. This time the alveolar stops *t and *d palatalized into alveolo-palatal affricates that later simplify to fricatives /ɕ/ and /ʑ/.

The problem:

I want more alveolo-palatals.

Proposed solution:

have the velars palatalize in both cases.

The question:

How should I go about it?

Should I go with option 1:

1st palatalization: *kj *gj > c ɟ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > ɕ, ʑ

Or 2:

1st palatalization: *kj, *gj > *tɕ *dʑ > ɕ ʑ

2nd palatalization: *kj, *tj, *gj, *dj > c, ɕ, ɟ, ʑ

currently I'm leaning towards option 1, because it feels more right, but option 2 has more merging and complication potential which I do enjoy.

[paizau]

That moment when a root is completely eroded through sound change and all that's left is the inflectional ending:

*rilo-ntad > *rilwonted > *riwonde > *rwōnde > *wōnde > /vo.ⁿde/ - /∅/ + /vo.ⁿde/

compare

*kato-ntad > *ketwonted > *kʰetʰwonde > /kʰe.tʰvo.ⁿde/ - /kʰetʰ-/ + /vo.ⁿde/