#cwihlur

[sombra-conlangs]

I've been working on my merfolk conlang Cwihlur and I decided to share a bit about it since it's still MerMay! Following the prompts for quothalinguist's ConlangYear (I am way behind) I'm figuring out how possession works in the language, so here it is below the cut

(Note: This is actually how it works in Proto-Abyssal, the ancestor language to Cwihlur, I'll figure out how it evolves later)

The language has two different types of possession: alienable and inalienable, so things get treated differently depending on how inherent your connection to them is.

Inalienable possession is (roughly) for body parts, kinship, things originating from the possessor, attributes, and mental stuff.

*k͡ʘəwix lu luxɑ merfolk {poss} voice

(merfolk's voice)

*lu is a postposition originally denoting location, think of "the fin at the fish" eventually becoming "the fish's fin".

Alienable possession is for pretty much everything else, things that you can own but can be lost or removed without much difficulty.

*k͡ʘəwix seʀk͡ǁus seʀeq merfolk harpoon {poss}

(merfolk's harpoon)

*seʀeq is a postposition coming from the word for "thing" so it's marking the harpoon as the object, the property.

The word for thing came from the word for "matter, situation" like in Germanic languages, which in turn came from the nominalized form of the verb "to request" because a request or a question can be a "matter" or a "situation" to be discussed.

I had the option of not marking inalienable possession at all and only using one postposition for alienable possession, but I thought it could be fun to mark both. Once I decided on that I learned that apparently some languages use a difference in word order to make the alienable-inalienable distinction, so I thought of how to incorporate that into my language.

So that's why inalienable possession is marked on the possessor while alienable possession is marked on the possessee. And of course I tried to make sure the word order and etymologies matched with the meanings so it's not arbitrary (plus I consulted the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, love that book).

One more thing is I decided not to treat the following as possession (grammatically):

location, just because a thing is somewhere doesn't mean it's "of" that place, it's "in" it or "from" it

borrowing, the thing is not theirs, it's "with" them

stuff that hasn't been given, it's not theirs yet it's "for" them

A fun exception to the last one is prophecy, as this is seen as something predetermined, something we know is going to happen, so if someone is prophecized to acquire an item you can say the item is just theirs even if they haven't gotten it yet and no one would bat an eye.

As usual I'm not sure how naturalistic any of this is but it makes sense to me, doesn't seem too out there imo and I'm having fun so that's good enough for me lol

[sombra-conlangs]

I'm falling a bit behind on Conlang Year but I really wanted to have a name for my merfolk language already, so I spent a few hours thinking about it and experimenting with different forms until I came up with a name, it's Cwihlur [ˈk͡ǀʷi.ɬur] it just means merfolk voice/language so it doesn’t have a super interesting etymology but I like it, I feel like it fits.

So I suppose when I start posting more about conlang year I will tag my posts with the language name, might also tag posts as #Proto-Abyssal if I’m talking specifically about the proto-language.

[sombra-conlangs]

Conlang year update! I finished the initial word making prompts, I usually made more than 5 words per prompt so I ended up with 63 words, I definitely struggled with the weather themed ones considering the speakers of this proto-language live in the deep sea, making vocabulary for such a foreign world is certainly difficult, but other than that I haven't had that much difficulty. Excited to start on the sound changes next!

[sombra-conlangs]

Starting today I will be following @quothalinguist's Conlang Year prompts! if you're unfamiliar it's a list of 366 small prompts so by the end of the year you have a working language. I won't be making posts daily but I do want to share my progress every now and then, and since it's January 1st I thought it'd be a good idea to make a post about it.

Prompt: Set an intention for your language

A couple of notes:

Soft-naturalism is a term I came up with, TL;DR I want it to be vaguely naturalistic but will still let things like aesthetics and convenience drive some decisions, even if the result does not end up being 100% naturalistic.

If you saw an earlier post I made about my ideas for conlang year you will notice that I've ended up combining my ideas a little, originally I was trying to pick between working on a merfolk language that I could also use for personal things like small translations, or working on a language for my TTRPG wolrdbuilding project, but after a friend pointed out that the merfolk language could exist within the same TTRPG world I decided to combine both ideas.

So the main priority is going to be in my ability to use the language for personal reasons, like journaling and stuff, but I also want it to be a language of a fictional people in my fantasy setting, so I'll try my best to balance the two aspects, 1) what I think is cool, aesthetically pleasing and fun to use, and 2) what is naturalistic enough to be believable in my worldbuilding

I'm excited to see if anyone else is following along with conlang year!

[sombra-conlangs]

Conlang Year Day 32 Prompt: Test your sound changes as a package.

Since I'm already very used to writing phonological evolution rules for my languages I did it in a couple of days, even though there were many prompts for exploring different types of sound changes. I wrote the sound changes in order and tested them as I made more, so I finished this prompt a few days ago hehe I got excited and I had enough free time this month so why not.

I don't usually count my sound changes, but I wrote a total of 57 (I wrote it in Lexurgy and some of the sound changes are more complex and go thru a few steps, so depending on how you count it could be a bit more) and while a lot of the words are still fairly similar to their proto-forms I think there's enough of a change for me to be satisfied, plus the final words sound aesthetically pleasing to me, which was one of my goals so I'm happy with this.

SIDE NOTE: this fictional world is inspired by JRPGs so I figured I would include slimes as part of the fauna in this world, I picture the aquatic slimes as being somewhat similar to sea cucumbers, but of course not identical.

I also made a romanization system as you can see in the screenshots, completely ASCII friendly, except you can mark irregular stress with acute accents if you want, but it's not obligatory.

Some changes to the phonology are the introduction of palatal consonants, so we now have [ɲ] ny, [ç] hy and [k͡ǂ] j. We also have dental fricatives [θ] th and [ð] dh, labialized consonants (though they are quite rare) such as [kʷ] kw and [k͡ǀʷ] cw just to give a couple of examples, and a four vowel system with length distinction, [o] is an allophone of /u/ but not a phoneme.

[sombra-conlangs]

Conlang Year Day 19 Prompt: Create five proto-forms for body terms.

We're finally making the first few words! I'm very excited! This actually took a few hours to set up because I typically just write words in a spreadsheet but this time I'm using Obsidian to document my language, and I'm trying to make it look like Wiktionary so it's all fancy, the final result looks really good though so the time investment might be worth it.

EDIT: forgot I wanted to schedule this and posted it already, this is tomorrow's prompt, oh well haha what can I say, I got excited.

I actually ended up making 10 words, here they are:

səˈk͡ǃæn̪ - face

ˈʀɨ.pu - arm, hand

el - tentacle

wət̪ - back

ˈjɨ.qɑ - eye

k͡ǁup͡ɸ - head

xil - belly

læs - hair

t͡sem - fin

ˈje.ma - mouth

Of course keep in mind these are merfolk, hence the words like "tentacle" and "fin". Also I decided to name the proto-language "Proto-Abyssal" since these are deepwater merfolk, I think it works well.

In the Obsidian notes I left some bits empty like inflections because I don't know if there's going to be inflections yet, we'll figure it out as we get to that prompt.

Honestly this is very cool and I'm actually considering making an Obsidian vault for my Minecraft conlang, cause then I could upload it somewhere and people would have access to a Wiktionary style database of the language and see where all the loanwords come from and whatnot, but at the same time this takes a lot more work than making a simple spreadsheet like I typically do. For now I will continue documenting my language on Obsidian, I think it works and it's very cool, but I may eventually switch my notes over to a spreadsheet if I feel like it's not working for me, we'll see.

[sombra-conlangs]

Conlang Year Day 16 Prompt: Play around with syllable structures.

I have the proto-language's phonetic inventory defined and with today's prompt I also have the syllable structure for it! The only part of the phonology I haven't made yet is the stress system, I think the prompt for that is in a couple of days.

So here's what I have so far!

So there's a bit of context I should add: when I conlang I tend to make the inventory for the evolved language first, then I come up with an inventory for the proto-language, and then I figure out how to get from point A to point B. I give myself some wiggle room, so even if I can't get quite to my target inventory as long as I get close enough I tend to be satisfied.

So with that in mind, I actually did make a target inventory for this language, I won't show it until later, it can stay a surprise for now, but for the proto-language I wanted to make an inventory that is somewhat similar to my target but still different enough that the words will have to mutate quite a bit and won't look too similar to their original forms by the time I've applied all of the sound changes to them.

I've wanted to make a language with clicks for a while but I keep hesitating because I can't really pronounce or hear the different types of clicks very easily (like differences in aspiration, nasality, palatalization, etc.), but I decided that even if natural languages tend to have lots of distinctions in their clicks I probably don't need to add that for mine, I will add one distinction but I will end up with very few clicks in total and I think I'm fine with that.

At first I was unsure about the inventory I'm aiming to evolve but I think it's growing on me, and I think even this proto-language inventory looks nice. I also feel like the syllable structure gives me plenty of room to play with, I can evolve clusters into new sounds, simplify them, or make new clusters without too much difficulty.

I'm excited to start making words! I still have no idea about what kind of grammar I want for my language but I suppose I'll figure it out as I go haha I'm having so much fun with conlang year so far! I love it.

[sombra-conlangs]

Wιλȷëκwιμου!

This is a side blog, my main is Sombra Glaze

you can call me Sombra (she/her) I'm in my late 20s, a trans woman and I'm a conlang obsessed nerd (conlang is short for constructed language).

Here is where I'll post about my languages, feel free to ask me anything! I'll tag posts based on which language it's about, may add more languages in the future, we'll see.

#Cwihlur

The language I'm making following Jessie Peterson's #Conlang year 2026 prompts, it's the language of a species of deep-water merfolk who are powerful and feared by humans, and they exist in a world inspired by JRPGS and The Legend of Zelda. Also tagged as #Proto-Abyssal when talking about the proto-language specifically.

#Kxënt'exo

My attempt at making an enchantment table language from Minecraft, I haven't been working on it as much recently but I want to keep adding to it every now and then (more info available here).

#Osrican

An a posteriori east germanic conlang written with the Greek alphabet, it's set in an alternative history setting, currently it's basically abandoned, though I may try to rebuild it almost from scratch at some point, loved the phonoaesthetics, the grammar wasn't great (more info available here).

#Conlang year 2025

A currently abandoned idea for a surrealist personal language spoken by beings in the dream world, I plan to go back to that language eventually but it probably won't be any time soon.

There's also #Conlang year for all conlang year posts regardless of year.

I have a personal website tekseni.bearblog.dev where you can find information regarding my conlangs (and a few other unrelated things).

I also have a website meant to help beginner conlangers learn how to make a language conlang-guide.bearblog.dev if you want to get into language creation but don't know where to start I hope that site is useful! it's kind of abandoned and doesn't have a ton of stuff in it but I wrote a couple of good things in there and I want to add even more stuff in the future.

Dividers made by @ enchanthings