#first conlang

[shara-miller]

this is my first conlang I've made some phonology and a basic writing system and would like critic (or praise :P)

My island based naturalistic language rules :

Vowels: /ɛ, i, a, ʌ, u/

Consonants: /l, f, v*, m, n, pʰ, tʰ, kʰ, s*/

*a lot of the name and gods have a /v/ i them making it not merge with /f/.

*/s/ is pronounced /ʃ/ after a vowel within its syllable .

Phonotactics: Words must alternate Constant and Vowel so: CVCV… or VCVC… but no: CVVC or VCCV.

Syllables:

Constant syllables: VC & CV.

End syllables: V & CVC*.

*this insures words can start and end in the same letter e.g. CV-CVC or VC-V.

Affixes:

Prefixes: are CV… The V is dropped if the word starts with a Vowel.

Suffixes: are VC… The V is dropped if the word ends with a Vowel.

Infixes: there are no infixes.

Shifts: /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ are in the middle of a split with it turning into /b, d, g/ wen after a vowel within the syllable, /p, t, k/ in some dielectrics* and generally older people. first /pʰ » b/ then /tʰ » d/ and last /kʰ » g/ transitioned. 

*each island has a slightly different dialect.

stage 1 ~70 years:

it became normal for almost all children (<15 years) to say /p, t, & k/ in VC&CVC syllables, within ~20 years and the old people who grew up without it die or adapt within ~50 years.

stage 2 ~50+ years*:

it becomes normal for almost all young people (10-20 years) to say /b, d, & g/ instead of /p, t, & k/ within ~10-30 years depending on island, and people start to teach their children within ~20-50 years.

*stage 2 is currently ongoing.

Speakers: The island is very isolated and they can't really communicate with others due to there being no bilinguals so there are no* loan words.

*they have all been there so long the are just normal words.

Island: They live on a small group of close together small* limestone islands.

*each island is about 50-130 x 70-150 Km islands.

Writing reason: they are highly religious and developed writing to archive the gods. Stories, names, powers, etc.

Alphabet: they independently develop their own phonetic alphabet written top to bottom in limestone with flint so each letter is made of 1-2 lines.

[thoughtfulfoxllama]

Hey fellow Conlangers

I was hoping to get some feedback on a Conlang I was working on

So, the basic premise involves a Symbolic Alphabet (an evolution from the Phonecian Alphabet), and 2-Letter Roots

The Words are created by the combination of the Letters (as an example, ʔ has the meaning of a Creator, and L has the meaning of Balance, so ʔL is to word for a God, which I admit is blatantly stolen from Semitic)

The Although I said above 2-Letter Roots are the Basis, many of the Words are 3-Letter Roots

This is because the 3-Letter Roots grow out of the 2-Letter Roots

Now, for the crazy part of my Conlang, I want the expansion to tell a story. So, if you expand ʃ-W, it would tell a story like this:

ʃ-W-ʔ: Death/Destruction

ʃ-W-B: Return/Restore

ʃ-W-D: Lord

ʃ-W-H: Judgement/Balace

ʃ-W-χ: To Sink Down

ʃ-W-T: Whip/Lash/Scourge/Punish

ʃ-W-L: Uncover/Expose

ʃ-W-L-L: Prisoner/Naked

ʃ-W-M: To Stink

ʃ-W-N: To Be Quiet

ʃ-W-ʕ: To become Rich/Freed from Distress

ʃ-W-ʕ-L: Fox or Jackel

ʃ-W-ʕ-R: Door Keeper

ʃ-W-P: Lie in Wait

ʃ-W-Q: To Run

ʃ-W-R: To Journey/To Be Strong

I made this myth as a prototypical Dying-and-Rising Story. The Lord dies, and seeks to restore Life. They suffer, until a moment of Quiet. They then pass the Door Keeper (I was using Egyptian Myth as an inspiration, so Anubis, the Jackal) back into Mortality. They then run to their Followers (you can't be a Lord without Followers), and teach them the Journey they made, so they can follow it when they die

But, these 3-Letter Roots have influence from both sides

Lets take K-L-B (Dog). It's a combination of the Primary Root (K-L, meaning All or Every), and the Secondary (L-B, meaning Heart, as the Core of Being, or as the Physical Organ). K-L-B therefore means the Heart of Everything (which, in the Faith of this hypothetical people, is Sirius, the Dog Star, so it grew to mean Dog, as they associated this Star with Dogs)

And finally, there are 5 Vowels, and they change the meaning of the Word

Lets take M-N

Man: Archetypal Human

Men: Humanity

Min: People/Nation/Culture

Mon: Clan/Tribe

Mun: Family

[mindpaintingless]

Im working on a conlang, and hear me out:

Polysynthetic toki pona, where words are built on long strings of fundamental concepts as individual morphemes.

Ik ik it's crazy but like, maybe I could make it work.

It might be a bit ambitious for my first conlang but I believeeeeee

[gamlieg]

I’ve been making languages of varying quality and complexity since I was a little kid but during lockdown i learnt about conlangs and when I had no internet access I used the notes feature on my e-reader to create dictionaries and grammar explainations and stuff, and looking back it wasn’t the best BUT i spent hundreds of hours on it so it’s still something I’m very proud of! So here’s a little piece of writing (this paragraph) translated into my very first “Proper” conlang Ilaveliaehn!

Y makyđ ilanguagyï voitha varyinj kuality•iliky aend kompleks•iliky sinsy y ysđ aehn ilitly kid suta voehnđ ilok•dowehn y’ilearehnđ aebouta konstructađ ilanguagyï aend vohen y havyđ ehnao ynterneta aekses y osyđ tay ehnotaë veatury aoehn y’aowehnđ ylectronik•iliky•sok tao kreaty diktioehn•sokö aend jramarr yksplaiehnŷ aend stuv aend ilokinj sak yta ysđ ehnota tay sesta suta y spend’đ many haourrä aon yta sao yta ys stil saomy•tainj y’aem many pridy vorr! Sao haery ys aen ilitly vority•iliky tainj (tais) taranslatyđ yehn tao y’aowehnđ aony•iliky “real” konstructađ ilanguagy ilaveliaehn!

Sorry for the lack of Gamlieg content! I’ve been away in germany meeting my boyfriend for the first time :) definitely more gamlieg stuff when i’m home to help me cope with all the sad loneliness haha

[mindpaintingless]

Right now, we're deciding on the phonology of our conlang, and we have the vowels down.

We're keeping it easy bc not everyone working on it has much experience in linguistics (everyone but me lol).

Above is the first attempt for the logography, and below...

...Is the second and probably final attempt.

I'm so excited to see where this one goes.

[theopenveil]

I've decided to work on my conlang again. I accidentally took an unplanned 6 month hiatus (oops). I may have to overhaul the sounds, but the overall goal of the language will remain the same.

If you're curious about what I have done so far click here

[theopenveil]

First Conlang: Phonotactics (And A Few Words!)

Ok, I've been busy these past 24 hours. If you saw one of my last two posts, I said that I misheard and misunderstood the IPA chart and used the wrong phones (sounds), and which resulted in phones that did not fit the idea of my language. So I did somewhat of an overhaul and removed and added some phones that I am really happy with.

After I chose the phones that I wanted, I went ahead and selected some phonemes (basically letters) that represent the phones. As you can see /z/ has two phones with it, because when they are used either sound is acceptable.

*Brackets indicate only the phone (sound), not the phoneme (letter)

*Phonemes are indicated by / surrounding them.

Consonants: /m/, /b/, /f/, /n/, /t/, /d/, /z/ [ð θ], /s/,  /ŝ/ [ʃ], /l/, /r/ [ɺ], /g/

Vowels:  /a/, /e/, /i/, /u/ [ɤ]

After, I came up with the phonemes, I developed a sound structure:

C=consonant and V=vowel

All CC or VV phones can only be doubled, not tripled or more. 

All CV combos allowed, except:

/l/ and /e i/

/r/ and /a/

All VC combos allowed except:

/l/ and /e i/

/r/ and /i u/

All CC combos allowed, except:

/b/ and /f/

/t/ and /d/

/z/ and /n d s ŝ r/

No same phone pairings example: no /mm/

All VV combos allowed, except:

Same phone pairings example: no /aa/

I chose this structure because compared to some languages (English for example) I do not have that many consonants and vowels and having a lot of sound combinations should make up for that. Also, I believe that this will hopefully give the most options for word and syllable construction. Speaking of syllables.....

After creating a sound structure next was creating syllable structure. This was the hardest and easiest, because I have such variety in sound combos, I also have variety in syllable combos. However, this was hard as well because I had to test out the many syllable combos:

1 syllable: None

2 syllable: CC, VV, VC, CV

3 syllable: CCV, CVV, VVC, VCC, CVC, VCV, etc.....

4 syllable: CCVV, VVCC, CVCV, VCVC, CCVC, VVCV, etc.....

5 syllable: CCVC, etc.....

6 syllable: CCVVCC, etc...

7 syllable and beyond: ??

I didn't test much once I got to 5 syllables and beyond. There are just way too many combinations and from the small test that I did it seemed that any combination of C and/or V would make a valid word (as long as it stuck to the  sound rules). Also, I am unsure if I may have words beyond 6 syllables. However, I won't know for sure until I start creating words and grammar.

And as promised here are some of the words that I made up to test the syllable structure, so they do not have any meanings yet. See if you can pronounce any of them!

Mfai

Bmfla

Uaez

Nigato

Lŝoa

Aoma

Ogima

Rdaiŝ

Zta

Ŝo

Ai

The next post will very likely deal with word construction and grammar. Also please let me know what you think of this, any input will be grateful! :D

[theopenveil]

irrhythmic replied to your post: First Conlang: Awkward

do you mean you used the wrong IPA characters? don’t sweat it too hard - professional linguists mess ‘em up all the time

Well I misheard and mispronounced the IPA characters, but it was for the better. I learned so much about phones, sonority, etc today that I was able to make it much better than originally planned. So it all worked out! :D