General Conlang Discussion

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Irkan
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Irkan » 2012-07-13, 8:59

Dormouse559 wrote:
Irkan wrote:I want to ask something and, as it's just a small doubt, I think I'll post it here.
The thing is... how do you call a sentence ending with an interrobang? (for example: What‽) Because it's neither a quastion nor an exclamation...
I'd call it both. So an exclamatory question or an interrogative exclamation, something like that. (And it's so cool to find someone else who knows of the interrobang!! :) )

Thank you! I use the interrobang a lot in my conlang, as I distinguish between exclamations, questions and this new thingie I guess I'll call exclamatory question.

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-06, 22:57

The Ancient Language from the Inheritance Cycle by Chris Paolini annoys me to no end, so I find it strange that I'm so irritated by what this article says about it:

USA Today wrote:She realizes that Eragon echoes Tolkien in its pseudo-Celtic language and imagined universe of dwarfs and elves.
"Pseudo-Celtic"? The Ancient Language is a pseudo-Germanic cypher of English that doesn't even start to compare with Sindarin, Quenya, or any Elven language. Get it right! :n:

:roll: You know you're a conlang nerd when ...
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-16, 10:27

So I thought it might be interesting to try making Cyrillic and Greek transliterations for Lifanô (Cy: Лифано Gr: Λιфανω). This is my first serious attempt at anything like this, so I'd love it you'd if point out any improvements that can be made. Here's some information on my choices:

Cyrillic: Characters were chosen first of all based on the Russian alphabet. When a phoneme was missing, such as /ɔ/, /ɛ/, or /dz/, I looked at other languages that used Cyrillic. /o ɔ/ <Ө О> is from Mongolian. /ɛ/ <Е> is from Bulgarian. /dz/ <Ӡ> is from Abkhaz. /dʒ/ <Џ> is from Cyrillized Romanian. /ɲ ʎ/ <Њ Љ> is from Serbian. There may be a way of explaining all of those with fewer languages, but I haven't gone out of my way to find it.

Greek: The qualities assigned to the vowel letters are a mixture of ancient and modern Greek pronunciations; length wasn't considered as it isn't phonemic in Lifanô. Α, Ε, Ι, Ο have their modern qualities, and Η and Ω have their ancient qualities. Υ is repurposed to represent /u/. I've had the most trouble and probably need the most help with representing the palatal and palato-alveolar phonemes. I took most of my cues in that area from "Hellenized" Albanian.

In both scripts, consonant gemination is shown by writing the consonant in question, or the first consonant of a digraph, twice.

Code: Select all

IPA         Latin       Cyrillic    Greek
/a/         Aa          Аа          Αα
/ts/        Cc          Цц          Τσ τσ
/tʃ/        Ćć          Чч          Τσ’ τσ’
/e/         Ee          Ээ          Εε
/ɛ/         Êê          Ее          Ηη
/ɸ/         Ff          Фф          Φφ
/h/         Hh          Хх          Χχ
/i/         Ii          Ии          Ιι
/k/         Kk          Кк          Κκ
/l/         Ll          Лл          Λλ
/m/         Mm          Мм          Μμ
/n/         Nn          Нн          Νν
/ɲ/         Ńń          Њњ          Ν’ ν’
/o/         Oo          Өө          Οο
/ɔ/         Ôô          Оо          Ωω
/p/         Pp          Пп          Ππ
/r/         Rr          Рр          Ρρ
/s/         Ss          Сс          Σ σς

/ʃ/         Śś          Шш          Σ’ σ’ς’
/t/         Tt          Тт          Ττ
/u/         Uu          Уу          Υυ
/v/         Vv          Вв          Ββ
/ʎ/         Yy          Љљ          Λ’ λ’
/dz/        Zz          Ӡӡ          Δσ δσ
/dʒ/        Źź          Џџ          Δσ’ δσ’


Here's a sentence in all three scripts:


Nuospa sa ći feańê pine affa nêl ainta aćkat nê puosnaku.

Нуөспа са чи фэање пинэ аффа нел аинта ачкат не пуөснаку.

Νυοσπα σα τσ’ι φεαν’η πινε αφφα νηλ αιντα ατσ’κατ νη πυοσνακυ.


What do you guys think? :)
Last edited by Dormouse559 on 2012-08-25, 10:09, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby razlem » 2012-08-16, 15:01

I really like the Cyrillic one; the letters you use make it look less like one particular slavic orthography. I.E. people won't immediately think "Russian" when they see it, as opposed to the Hellenic.
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby razlem » 2012-08-16, 15:55

I'm finally making a full English-Angos dictionary (in alphabetical order, too!)
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-16, 19:42

razlem wrote:I really like the Cyrillic one; the letters you use make it look less like one particular slavic orthography. I.E. people won't immediately think "Russian" when they see it, as opposed to the Hellenic.
I'm glad you like the Cyrillic. It's one of my favorites, too. It's also more phonemic than either the Latin or the Hellenic script; one symbol per phoneme, no digraphs or diacritics (unless you count Љ or Њ, which are ligatures :P ).

razlem wrote:I'm finally making a full English-Angos dictionary (in alphabetical order, too!)
Oh, that's great! When might we be seeing it?
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby razlem » 2012-08-16, 21:13

Hopefully by the end of the day today :mrgreen:
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby razlem » 2012-08-16, 22:35

I had to change some stuff on the wiki dictionary though. I had "posion" twice, and I split up some meanings to avoid ambiguity (namely blood:juice and room:cell).
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-16, 22:45

So I noticed. I check the dictionary's edit log occasionally to keep the French version up to date. :)
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Kaylee » 2012-08-17, 2:11

Dormouse559 wrote:The Ancient Language from the Inheritance Cycle by Chris Paolini annoys me to no end, so I find it strange that I'm so irritated by what this article says about it:

USA Today wrote:She realizes that Eragon echoes Tolkien in its pseudo-Celtic language and imagined universe of dwarfs and elves.
"Pseudo-Celtic"? The Ancient Language is a pseudo-Germanic cypher of English that doesn't even start to compare with Sindarin, Quenya, or any Elven language. Get it right! :n:

:roll: You know you're a conlang nerd when ...


I remember getting hounded by Inheritance fans with I asked about the Ancient Language. They did not like what I had to ask at all. :blush:

I didn't like the "could he be the next Tolkien" part the most though.

I'm finally making a full English-Angos dictionary (in alphabetical order, too!)


That's great news, Razlem! :good4u:

*I haven't been on in a while, so any updates I missed I will direct now. xD*
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-17, 6:18

Kaylee wrote:I didn't like the "could he be the next Tolkien" part the most though.
Yeah, I mean kudos to Paolini for writing a best-selling book series, but he isn't the next Tolkien. He'd need to do what Tolkien did to achieve a comparison like that, which is to say he'd need to define a genre, not rehash every last one of its tried and true tropes.
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Irkan » 2012-08-17, 9:50

Now changing the subject of discussion (is this sentence even right?), what kind of writing systems do you usually use? I mean, do you use the already existing alphabets or invent new ones? And if you invent them, what do you use: syllabaries, abujidas...?

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby razlem » 2012-08-17, 14:51

Irkan wrote:Now changing the subject of discussion (is this sentence even right?)

Yep, you can say that :yep:

For my other conlangs, I don't have the patience to build my own letters, so I usually use a Cyrillic/Greek mix. I've been wanting to try a language using Katakana too.
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-17, 21:36

Irkan wrote:Now changing the subject of discussion (is this sentence even right?), what kind of writing systems do you usually use? I mean, do you use the already existing alphabets or invent new ones? And if you invent them, what do you use: syllabaries, abujidas...?
I almost always use the Latin alphabet. Sometimes my conlangs are spoken in a conworld, so I imagine that there's some native script, but I have yet to make a conscript that I like. I would use existing scripts other than the Latin alphabet more often if I knew enough about the languages that use those scripts to make a conlang set among them (not even necessarily related to them, but I'd want to insert believable loanwords, which I couldn't do without some knowledge of the source language[s] and culture[s]).
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Kaylee » 2012-08-18, 1:42

I haven't made it to that part of my conlang yet. I've only searched up the various types a few times before, so I'll have to sit down and think hard about it. However, I was thinking of creating one for my second conlang with a friend.

Not much has been decided since that idea though. :?

@Dormouse559:

Definitely agree with you.

He reused so many ideas and themes from Tolkien's stories, Star Wars, Pern and Tales from Earthsea it was hard to see how it was original. Eragon was the only good book in the collection, with Eldest as second, and mostly for the writing. The last book...was terrible.
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Learning:lkt (lkt) Next: ru (ru) af (af) bo (bo) ar (ar) cy (cy)/gd (gd)

Thanks to hashi, ronin319, razlem, johntm, Lenguas, jake12,Milya0 and YngNghymru for literally teaching me from nothing, to something big! Thank you guys so much!

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Ciarán12 » 2012-08-21, 9:29

I've got a question for you guys that have a posteriori conlangs: how do you make them? I really want to create one, but there's a lot involved in doing so (that is, if you want it to be linguistically credible, which I do). I'm talking about believable sound and grammatical changes, borrowings etc... Do you guys tend to develop a conlang out of a living natlang, as if it was a future daughter language, or do you try to construct a sibling language, and if so how much of a mastery of the original parent language would you need?

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-23, 0:16

Hmm, I don't know exactly how much help I can be here, but here are my observations about a posteriori conlanging.

One of the first things you need to do is find a list of the sound changes that are common to the daughter languages, if it's applicable. For instance, the sound changes from Classical Latin to Vulgar Latin, if you mean to make a romlang, since all Romance languages come from Vulgar Latin, not Classical.

Know at least one of the daughter languages at an intermediate or advanced level. And if you don't learn the other languages, learn about them. This gives you at least passive familiarity with most languages in the group, so you can see similarities and differences in vocabulary and grammar. If you have an idea of what precedents exist in the languages, you can make educated choices either to follow those trends or break them. This can also give you an idea of what an ancient word form might have looked like if the mother language isn't well documented (like Vulgar Latin).

As for future conlangs, I can't help you from experience, but it obviously helps to learn more about the spoken/informal variety of a language than the written/formal variety since that is the source of most change in languages.
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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Irkan » 2012-08-29, 13:43

And here I am asking again... Does anybody know if a language without a passive voice is possible? I mean, after all:
The letter is wirtten by me = I write the letter
The letter is written = write.IMPRS the letter (like in Spanish Se escribe la carta)

Is it possible?

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Ciarán12 » 2012-08-29, 13:59

I think Finnish is like that. It has a passive, but the agent cannot be indicted (apparently).
See here.

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Re: General Conlang Discussion

Postby Dormouse559 » 2012-08-29, 15:20

Irkan wrote:And here I am asking again... Does anybody know if a language without a passive voice is possible? I mean, after all:
The letter is wirtten by me = I write the letter
The letter is written = write.IMPRS the letter (like in Spanish Se escribe la carta)

Is it possible?
Topic prominent languages typically either lack the passive voice entirely or use it rarely and attach negative connotations to it. This is mainly because they don't need a passive voice. If you want to emphasize the object of a verb, you simply topicalize it.
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