#let's make a conlang

[annikathewitch]

Let's Make A Conlang Poll #1!

The first step to making a language is deciding what sounds to include! Generally speaking, you need two types of sounds, or phonemes, to make a language: vowels and consonants. Here, we are somewhat arbitrarily starting with the vowels!

To create our vowel inventory, we will first vote on how many of the basic vowel qualities (from the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) chart found here) will be used! From there, polls can be used to select the top vowels, as well as whether or not to make further distinctions, such as length or nasalization, which would add more vowels to the inventory.

For reference, English has 7-8 basic vowel qualities, Standard Chinese has 2-6, Hindi has ~10, Spanish has 5, French has 11, and Arabic has 3. The most common number is 5. The highest number is 13, though higher numbers are theoretically possible.

If 6 or more wins, further poll(s) will be created.

This poll is to select the number of base vowel sounds for a constructed language made (as much as possible) entirely with tumblr polls! More information on this project can be found here!

Please reblog for larger sample size! Poll #2 should go up in 48 hours!

[nonprojectspecific]

Relative Clauses

Linguists of Tumblr, please give me a sanity check, I'm looking at relative clauses in Qamonté and what feels right is to make the relative clause an adverbial phrase on the modified noun.

For a simple phrase like Shezhángchi pe shishfyúíḥchi qepíshchi taṭwúdlu zhonús transform in the relative clause persons that holds the net in net holding person feels really intuitive, for a language that uses the NOUN pe MODIFIER construction all the time, and clean but I'm not convinced it extends to more complex phrases like:

[annikathewitch]

This was... approximately my motivation for starting the tumblr poll conlang thing lol

What inspired you to start the poll?

Well you see I hadn't taken my ADHD meds and I really wanted polls.

[gaydryad]

stupid orthography ideas: use <ë> and <ä> for /ə/ and /ɐ/ respectively, where the double dot is essentially saying, "this vowel but the neutral tone one"

( and yes I know [ə] & [e] and [a] and [ɐ] are different heights. realistically it's probably more like /ə ~ ��/ for <ë> at the very least while /ɐ/ is just any open central-ish vowel. shh. its fine. I built this three-way a-ɐ-ɑ distinction and I'm NOT changing it even if it'll make the orthography easier. fuck you, me )

[the-personiftranslator]

overburden

A child once lived here.

She was not of Jing’an. She held no part of him. Jing’an had no reason to treat her as anything but a cell of a foreign organism. She has been put away. Where to, the city cares not; she is a matter for his upper avatar to suffer.

That is what he tries to tell his son, his demiavatar, standing in the center of her room, but Jing’an’s control over this area is newly established. He cannot blind the demi’s eyes with smoke and dust to the details of the girl’s life as he could if he was in the downtown, or the mines. He cannot stop the demi from examining the embroidered eyes of a man on the hood of a thing like a cheset she left unfinished on a stool and knowing they’re the same as his, even if the women of Jing’an use metal needles instead of bone. There is smoke here like a faint trace of the smell in the mines, from a fire still smoldering.

But it is far too warm here for the thick coat the demi wears, to protect himself from the descending winter outside. His nose wrinkles at the greater stench of the meat left hanging on the ceiling. He self-consciously traces the curves of the black tattoos running from the delicate skin under his eyes to the beginning of his ears, so unlike the sharp Vs he remembers the girl’s brothers sporting from mouth to chin. The bend of the wall, her space separate from her family’s by a woven curtain, is alien.

And the silence.

Jing’an is never quiet. In the mines, he deafens with the sound of saws on ancient bone; in the downtown, he cries in the competing cadences of eight different languages and music mimicking the sound of the La’gut River running through his center. The creatures in the taiga on his outskirts gladly supplant him as his influence wanes. But here, in the chaos of the eviction, they have all fled, and the demi hears nothing.

Her embroidery loses its color to him when he glances back at it. What does it matter that they have the same folds?

The demi wipes sweat from the nape of his neck and strides out of the house, out of the village, if it can even be called that. Jing’an may be able to repurpose the men who once lived here, but the structures they left behind are only overburden.

[velaraffricate]

my new conlang has a name, malakawi! mala means tongue or language, and kawi means... well. it'd be translated into english as "our", but it's a bit more complicated than that.

some nouns such as body parts and kinship terms are inherently possessed and have the possessive clitic affixed onto them. but there's no outright genitive, instead the locative gets used for alienable and the instrumental/comitative for inalienable possession. if you were to say "our fish", which is alienable, you'd say lyga kallos instead of *lyga kawis (the -s is a nominalizer which must be affixed onto the clitic so it can stand alone).

also, kawi is the first person plural - but besides the singular there's also a dual (2), a paucal (3-10) and a global plural (all). so kawi is the default, but there are also situations where the singular malakaxi, dual malakixi or paucal malakyxy would be more appropriate.

[ghostlynimbus]

I generally prefer using Greek names for fantasy stories that I'm not going to come up with a conlang for, but I'm not sure if that'll work for a gods and goddesses au inspired by Greek mythology....

Would that be weird? Should I just try and avoid any names associated with Greek mythology? Idk

[strixcattus]

I'm at the point of the Conlang Year translation where I can no longer avoid coming to terms with the fact that my chosen text has a few difficult words in it. I've got seven blanks left to fill and they're all things like "disoriented" and "rejuvenated" and "breakfast."

That last one isn't as complicated as most of the others. But it's still something I don't have a plan for and have been putting off figuring out.

[dedalvs]

My brother and I absolutely cackled after that Aemond and Aegon Valyrian exchange!

I wanted to ask (and I'm terrible at conlangs, so forgive me) what grammar/syntax Aegon is stumbling over here and how to properly say what he intended to? Any why is he making thise mistakes (simply lacking the vocabulary, or rules of the language he hasn’t grasped)?

Let's take a look at it. This is what he said:

Nyke koston... Bēvilus... Sētegon bīlīvāzmi?

The subtitles say this:

"I can... Have to... Make a war?"

Prior to this Aemond is, essentially, showing off. He knows that Aegon has simply not put any time into studying Valyrian (or studying anything). At this stage, Valyrian is no longer spoken by the family on a day-to-day basis—especially as Alicent probably never learned it at all (or if she did, only in a few scattered lessons here and there; not to actually use). In order for either of the boys to gain any kind of fluency in the language, they have to study constantly and find ways to use it. There's simply no daily need for the language—and plenty of reasons not to use it, as very, very few people they'll encounter on a daily basis speak the language.

Now, if we were talking about two random people in Westeros, this wouldn't mean anything. But these are the children of Viserys Targaryen, himself a descendant of Aegon the Conqueror. They brought their family line and their culture with them to Westeros—and, of course, their language. If someone like Alicent Hightower doesn't speak High Valyrian it means nothing. If a Targaryen doesn't speak High Valyrian, though… See, they're supposed to be able to speak Valyrian. Failing to do so carries with it a sense of shame that isn't present for a random person who doesn't speak Valyrian. Aemond knows this. Aegon is annoying him, so he goes poking at that wound.

Aemond could have fed him a short line with an obvious answer to help Aegon out, but instead he threw a whole mess of Valyrian at him. The longer it goes on, the more lost Aegon gets, desperately trying to catch up and figure out what was just said and thereby missing what is being said at that instant. From the whole speech, Aegon probably only figured out that he was being asked a question, and it was something having to do with planning.

So, back to what he says. The beginning student of a language is quite adept at doing a single verb in a present tense sentence. In a discussion like this, though, you're typically saying things like "I think that" or "We should" or "I suggest" or "Perhaps we might", etc. All that stuff that we need to offer opinions, make suggestions, hedge, etc. Much more than simple narration.

Aegon is attempting to do this without a sufficient command of the language. He knows some vocabulary, he knows some grammar, but he simply did not put in the work to actually speak this language. Thus, he has to overcome a lot of Common Tongue (i.e. English) interference.

There are many differences between Valyrian and English, but the biggest one by far is the major word order. In English, the verbs come before the rest of the junk; in Valyrian, they come at the end. And this is how things get all messed up.

In English, you start the sentence saying things like "I think" or "We should" or "It seems". In Valyrian, those things come at the end. If you start with the Valyrian equivalent of "I think", you will quickly realize (presuming you know enough of the grammar) that you're sunk, because once you've said it, the sentence should be done. Thus you get Aegon's false starts.

Starting at the beginning, Aegon says Nyke koston, which is kind of like saying, "I could". But there's nowhere to go. This is how a sentence ends. For example, if he wanted to say, "I could fly to Harrenhal", he would say Harenhalot sōvegon koston—literally "To Harrenhal fly I could". If you're thinking English-ly, you're essentially thinking backwards, and if you simply translate what you're thinking, you'll immediately have nowhere to go. You'll have to take a pause and think about how to get started again. And that's exactly what happens here.

Now, leaving aside that Valyrian is a pro-drop language and starting it off with nyke "I" is unnecessary and makes you look like a beginner, koston isn't bad (I mean, if used sentence-finally). Once he realizes he can't start there, though, he loses confidence. It's those old High Valyrian lessons all over again, and some maester suggesting he hasn't studied. That self-doubt makes his facility with Valyrian worse. This means his chances of recovery are severely hampered.

But onward he presses, and he decides to say "We have to" or "I have to". Now, the problem here is in Valyrian that requires the verb bēvilagon. This verb isn't used in the usual way. Literally it means "to lie on". If you wanted to say "We must mobilize our dragons", you'd say Īlvī zaldrīzī mazannagon īlo bēvilza. That's literally "Our dragons to mobilize us it lies upon". The one who must do something is placed in the genitive and put directly before the verb. If you start with the verb, well, you missed your chance to say who it is that must be doing something—let alone what they must do. Another false start.

It's also worth noting that he says bēvilus as opposed to bēvilza. Let's ignore that it's the aorist and focus on the fact that it's the subjunctive (just like koston). You use the subjunctive with your main verb when you're hedging—when you're suggesting. Not when you're commanding. Kind of an odd thing to say "We must do this" with the subjunctive. Kind of like saying "Maybe we might considering having to do this".

At this point, his confidence has completely evaporated. Everybody's staring at him like he has no idea what he's talking about; Aemond's eating it up. He knows he's cooked. He's got to say something, though, so he says sētegon which isn't even conjugated. It means "to make" or "to create", which might make sense in English (e.g. "to make war"), but doesn't make sense in Valyrian (a bit like saying "to construct a war" or even "to bake a war") and then tries to pronounce vīlībāzmi "war" (wrong case/number, wrong order) and fails, saying bīlīvāzmi, which means nothing (also he wanted vīlībāzme. Vīlībāzmi is "wars").

Long story short, he doesn't present himself very well—and we didn't even talk about his general pronunciation or intonation. It's kind of a great big mess in only five words. A true disaster.

But if there were no expectation that he should be able to speak Valyrian, none of this would matter! If there were no shame associated with him specifically not being able to speak Valyrian no one would expect it of him, and this challenge would mean as little as someone challenging him to speak the Old Tongue or Asshai'i. It'd be meaningless.

In short, this small portion of this scene is about being a heritage speaker of a language. It's the exact nightmare scenario all heritage speakers fear: To be put on stage and made to perform despite being unequal to the task while simultaneously feeling that they should be equal to it.

It'd be so cool if it was okay to be kind of good with a language—if that level of mastery was acceptable. In the real world, anyway.

[what-even-is-thiss]

If you’re having trouble picking a language to learn you might want to evaluate why you want to learn a language in the first place

Do you want to do it to connect with your relatives? Because you’re moving to a country where you don’t speak the language? Then you already know what you have to do. Get out there and start watching YouTube videos and bothering your grandma to teach you, silly. Just do it.

If you just want to speak a second language for its own sake and don’t really care what, just pick a language that’s common in your region and/or will help you in your career. These types of languages will likely have local news stations in the language, local people to talk to, local language exchanges, a presence on streaming services in your country, etc. In the US this is almost always gonna be Spanish. Sometimes it might be something like German or Chinese but it’s usually Spanish. I give this suggestion because then your motivation is always staring you right in the face at the library when there’s a whole section you can’t read and motivation can sometimes be the hardest part of language learning. And if there’s a lot of stuff to watch and a lot of people to talk to that can also keep you from getting bored.

If you wanna be quirky or different but still want something easy just pick a language with a lot of speakers that isn’t spoken much near you that preferably also has a large presence online so you can watch and read content in that language. So if you live in the US likely something like Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Korean. These languages also have a lot of monolingual speakers so they have a lot of tv, books, and movies made for them and they’re writing in their own language on social media websites.

If you want to learn a dead language decide which ancient culture you’re personally most abnormal about and pick that one. If you’re doing it for spiritual reasons to read a holy book then again you already know what you’re supposed to be doing, silly. Get reading. Find a quirky teacher on YouTube.

If you want to learn an endangered language and/or are interested in language preservation see what endangered languages live near you and if they’re open to outsiders learning them. Local universities often work with minority language groups to make dictionaries and they may have a program locally to help preserve the language you might be able to participate in. If that’s not possible where you live for whatever reason, I’d suggest finding one that you just really like and whose speakers are happy to teach to outsiders. If you’re looking for ones with a lot of resources available to you then something like Hawaiian or one of the Celtic languages would likely be your best bet, but look around. There’s a lot of people out there doing the work to make endangered languages more accessible.

If you wanna play on hard mode then pick a language that’s spoken in a country where almost everyone speaks English because you’ll have to defeat the locals in 1v1 combat before they’ll let you speak to them in their own language. So basically learn a Scandinavian language.

If you want to learn a conlang (why?) then decide which kind of nerds you want to make friends with. If you want to make friends with regular nerds, learn something like elvish or Klingon. If you want to make friends with people that just like conlangs, learn Esperanto. These are generally the most active conlang communities. If you want to just learn a language in a week and only sort of approximately say what you mean then learn toki pona.

If you’ve fallen hard in love with a language then pick that one. It doesn’t matter if it’s impractical or you don’t have a concrete reason. If you know that your love for that language and its culture is enough to keep you going then it’ll keep you going. You’ll find resources if you’re determined enough. Go. Be free.

[annikathewitch]

Let's Make A Conlang!

Okay, so. The idea behind this is to create a constructed language where every decision possible is basically left up to the whims of tumblr polls. Anything with too many options to make a feasible tumblr poll will be randomized. The aim is to make a fully-usable language, complete with dictionary and set of grammer rules. Polls will be posted either daily or every other day and be up for a week each, mostly to get as large a sample size as possible. I will try to insert audio where necessary, as well as explanations of what any terminology means.

The tag I will be using is #Let's Make A Conlang (Eventually this will be changed to the language's name, once it has one). Any ideas and constructive criticism are welcome!

Outline featuring rough plan and list of polls below the cut. Polls will be linked here as they come out, and the outline will be updated as results come in and I can plan things out in further detail.

The first poll is scheduled for 24 hours from now.

Phase One: Phonology

This is the phase in which the sounds the language will use will be decided.

Part 1: Vowels

Poll #1 - How many vowel qualities (aka the base vowel sounds)? (Part 1- Selecting a range)

Poll #2 - Will vowel length be meaningful?

Poll #3 - Will any vowels be nasalized (under circumstances to be determined later)?

Poll #4 - Will any vowels be rhotic (under circumstances to be determined later)?

Poll #5 - How many vowel qualities (aka the base vowel sounds)? (Selecting a range, round 2)

Vowel quality tournament - Vowel quality selection. How this is done will vary based on how many we need to select.

Poll #??? - Which vowels will be long?

Poll #???+1 - Any dipthongs? Tripthongs?

Poll #???+2 - Dipthong/Tripthong selection

Part 2: Pulmonic Consonants

Part 3: Non-Pulmonic Consonants

Part 4: How the fuck are we gonna write this.

Part 5: Phonotactics

Phase 2: Morphology/Grammar

Part 1: Broad Typology

Honestly most of the rest of this relies pretty heavily on the other stuff so I'm not gonna start planning yet.

Phase 3: Vocabulary

[silverfoxboy]

hey therianblr, ive decided im gonna make a conlang just for therians. and im only going to let therians or alterhumans learn it. if youre interested, dm me (or if you have ideas on how it should sound) :3

the concept is similar to things like pig latin, its a language for a certain group of people, and that group does not want outsiders to learn their language so were gonna basically have our own language to ourselves! but that also means well have to regulate the resources used to learn it since its not meant for non alterhumans

if ur a therian PLEASE reblog this so more therians can know and help me out! pls an thx

[deep-down-in-drowsy-town]

One Song in Every Language

Okay, tumblr. Let's try something.

I want to make a playlist with one song in every single language. Of course, this is impossible- the spotify playlist limit is something like 5,000- but I want to try. Of course, I can't do this alone, and so I'm sharing the project with the entire online language nerd/ music nerd community. Together we can celebrate linguistic diversity- and find some really cool music :)

Here's how it works. This spreadsheet will document every song and language represented. When you want to add a song, first look in the spreadsheet to see if that language is already represented. If it isn't, add the song to the playlist, and then add it to the spreadsheet.

What counts as a language? This is, as we all know, a fundamentally political question (Russian/ Ukrainian? Hindi/ Urdu? "Chinese" and its "dialects"...) We don't have to solve those debates here. My thinking is: the point is to celebrate linguistic diversity in as many forms as possible. If you can make a reasonable argument for why a song and its linguistic variety should be represented, go ahead and add it.

Yes, this means conlangs count (cause conlangs are SICK!) This also means dead languages count- throw in all the Latin and Classical Nahuatl you like. Glossolalia (à la Sigur Ros) and semi-linguistic scat-esque nonsense (à la Kobaian)? Sure, why not!

I'm calling this one song in every language, but we also want to highlight small and minority languages. So maybe we don't want ten different French songs, but if there are two or three different artists singing in Sami (especially different varieties of Sami), throw it in!

Let's make this awesome. Let's make this huge. Spread it around to every language nerd and music geek you know.

Thanks, dankon, merci, etc :)

[conlangery]

Do I have to read some Chomsky to be good at conlanging/linguistics? If so, which readings do you recommend? I’ve found the phonology part of conlangs the hardest to understand, I need all the help I can get. Thanks in advance

For conlanging specifically, I will recommend you do not read Chomsky.

Much of Chomsky’s work doesn’t lend itself to conlanging. He focuses on English examples almost exclusively and so much of his work is abstract mathematical models of UG. You’d be better off with many other authors: Haspelmath, Aikhenvald, Dixon, Hyman…

On phonology specifically, sure, Chomsky and Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English is influential, but it’s old and most of the valuable parts are baked into general linguistics courses, while feature theory has continued to march on. I can recommend authors based on specifics (if you touch tone or pitch accent you must read “How (not) to do Phonological Typology: The Case of Pitch-Accent” by Larry Hyman).

Some general things I recommend for any conlanger once you’re got some basics down:

Texts about describing language (Paynes Describing Morphosyntax, Dixon’s Basic Linguistic Theory)

Anything typology. Typology helps you define your options and typology papers are usually full of examples from a variety of languages.

Any descriptive grammar you can find. Just trawl the Language Science Press website and download any Grammar of … that catches your eye.

Let me know if there’s something specific you have issues with in phonology. I have some background there, but it’s one of those areas where I’m too far in to know what general recommendation to make.

[banal-lotus-eater]

[Image ID: A digital painting split into three parts. The middle portion is an abstracted scene of Arthur and Oscar at a church-like bar and the side portions are of mirrors with painted scenes showing previous and future events inside. The mirror frames are etched with various small details which make reference to the themes found in the fic and in the podcast. The left mirror’s scene makes reference to scene where Noel and Arthur hug in the chapter “The collapse” and the right mirror’s scene is an exaggerated version of end of the chapter “The ritual”. endID]

I participated in the Malevolent Big Bang (check out more works @malevolentbigbang) this year with a bunch of other artists! Here is my piece for @crowfeatherquill's fic Final Miles, a post season 5 fic that sees the return of my boys Oscar and Noel. Its so good and I've been chomping at the bit to post this. Also!! Check out the other artist's pieces for this fic on their tumblrs, @gazebodj and @stokiss

(also also @aetheremin beta'd the fic and i think they should get some extra recognition)

Zoom ins/ Timelapse / ranting under the cut!

Here's the piece cut up into it's thirds with more in-depth image IDs. It has the Mirror sections first then the middle section. Warning, the second mirror has R'lyehian (Cthulhu conlang) text in it.

[Image ID: The left most portion is of an intricately etched and cast oval bronze mirror. The mirror has a section of music etched on it which are the first few measures of Faroe's theme. The inside of the mirror shows a scene of Noel and Arthur in armor hugging each other on a dark forest's floor. Arthur has a pure yellow cape that wraps around him and behind Noel. endID ]

I really liked this one and it was my first pass at drawing the mirrors. I learned a lot on drawing flur de lis and wasn't as focused on making specific design choices for specific references instead of busying up the design for lack of a better term. The left side was my more experimental/first pass side where I did that one first, learned, and then did the right side using the lessons I learned. Now onto the right mirror (again, this has R'yhlien in it)

[Image ID: The rightmost portion is of the other mirror, an equally intricate etched and cast rectangular mirror. The bottom of the mirror has banners with R'lyehian text on them. The sentences are "Y'ahuaah mg n'ghft'drn (Translated: I wear(lit: use) no mask) and "Mg n'ghft'drn?  Mg n'ghft'drn!" (Translated: No mask? No mask!) The scene inside is of Oscar, Arthur, and Noel crouched in a magic circle. They are all wearing fantasy medieval garb with Oscar in a priestly/cleric outfit, Noel in his armor still, and Arthur in a tunic, pants, and yellow cape. The yellow cape wraps around the scene separating the trio from both Hattie behind them and the viewer. Hattie is in a traditionally witchy outfit and is holding a glowing book while pages fly around her. She has an oversized witch hat that has an eye on the underside and the tail of the hat splitting into a monstrous mouth with a bell hooked on to the mouth’s bottom lip. endID]

woo! Thats a huge ID and I'm sorry. I tried to cut it as much as I did but I am not brief. I may do a seperate post breaking down some smaller details on this haha. Lets move onto the middle.

[Image ID: The middle portion has Oscar sat on a stool at the left of the bar with Arthur across from him. Oscar is glaring at Arthur while Arthur is facing away from him. Behind the bar is replaced with a church window that has a painting of angels amongst the clouds. The angels are mostly all looking towards Oscar and there is a group surrounding him that are fretting over him.  The only exceptions are, an angel hovering over Arthur pointing for him to leave, and an angel on the far right side holding a sword and looking towards the angle in the middle. The angel in the middle is the largest one that stares unreadably down at Oscar while pointing one hand up towards god and the other on their chest with a modified gesture of Benediction. endID]

I did this section last and honestly it was like dessert compared to the other two sections. No hate on those, but I loved painting the angles and clouds :).

And here is the timelapse. Its roughly 2 mins because I had to move canvases in the middle since my computer crashed twice in the middle of painting the right mirror's scene.

ID: A timelapse of the previously described pieces, starting from random sketches of angels to sketches of the scene to finalizing details and rendering. endID]

anyway, more malev stuff probably sometime, i have college to work on tho and midterms are coming up.

[velaraffricate]

yeah i think im committing to this probably....... it's a cool consonant inventory in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with it per se, i just want more flexiblity. i think i just generally tend to prefer bigger consonant inventories. actually, this original inventory was a bit of a challenge to myself because i like voiceless sounds more than voiced ones and fricatives are my faves, and this has almost none of those! so i might end up recycling it for a different project, but for this lang, this is how i'm gonna change it:

Also collapsed all the mid vowels and added schwa to balance it out. i think i'd like to revisit an /e, o/ and /ɛ, ɔ/ contrast if i do another clong that features vowel harmony.

din ɛgwa is honestly my favourite conlang, but it lowkey pains me just how restricted its phonology is with only 11 consonants, almost all of them voiced, and essentially (C)V(V)(C) syllable structure. im on the verge of completely redoing the vocab with a new consonant inventory tbh........