Translation:

[image of a svobenian google search result saying earth's age is 4.543 billion years]

A: how is it

A: (that) the earth is 4543 [sic] billion years old but the year is (only) 2025

B: idiot 🤦

Also a bit of a context, Svobenian is my Germanic conlang with strong Slavic influence (basically a descendant of Proto-Germanic with Slavic sound changes and many proto-slavic borrowings). I made this joke to demonstrate the difference between “vėtar” (year, cognate to English winter, used only as a time unit, e.g. 4.543 mlrd vėtř, meaning 4.543 billion years) and “jero” (cognate to English year, used in other contexts, e.g. jero 2025 “year 2025”)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47864397

I'm doing some conlanging for a book and I'm having trouble finding the word for how we can take a verb, add -er at the end, and get a word for a person who does that thing. For example, a driver is someone who drives, a commander is someone who commands, a lawyer is someone who laws, and a finger is someone who fings. I am having trouble finding out how other languages noun their verbs in this way since I don't know what this thing is called. Pls halp.

Abstract:

“Can a language exist without verbs? What would such a language look like?” These are perennial questions in many conlanging communities. They do not, however, have a single unique answer. Whether a language can exist without verbs, or what that question even means, fundamentally depends on how one chooses to define “a verb”—something which is not universal between language or between linguistic theories. Under any given definition of “a verb”, however, a number of different strategies have been investigated by different conlangers over the years for eliminating the category from their languages. In this article, Logan Kearsley surveys some of the strategies that have been tried, with an analysis of which definitions of verblessness they do or do not meet, and provides reference materials and recommendations for other conlangers who may wish to tackle this kind of project themselves.

The main idea behind this language is to become evolutionary food for other languages of my conworld. As such I'll probably never flesh it out completely, only the necessary to make its descendants feel a bit more natural.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Context and basic info

The conworld I'm building has three classical languages, spoken 2~3 millenniums before the conworld present: Old Sirtki, Classical Tarune, and Mäkşna. And scholars in the conworld present are reconstructing their common ancestor, that they call "Proto-Sitama".

What I'm sharing here, however is none of their fancy reconstructions. It's the phonology of the language as it was spoken 7 millenniums before the conworld present. Its native name was /kʲær.mi.'zɑst/, or roughly "what we speak"; the language itself had no written version but it'll be romanised here as ⟨Cjermizást⟩.

Its native speakers were a semi-nomadic people, who lived mostly of livestock herding. They'd stay in a region with their herds, collect local fruits and vegetables, and then migrate for more suitable pasture as their animals required.

It was quite a departure from the lifestyle of their star travelling ancestors, who were born in a highly industrialised society in another planet.

Grammar tidbits

Grammar-wise, Cjermizást was heavily agglutinative, with an absolutive-ergative alignment and Suffixaufnahme. So typically you'd see few long polymorphemic words per sentence. Those morphemes don't always "stack" nicely together, so you often see phonemes being elided, mutated, or added to the word.

Consonants

Manner \ Set	Hard	Soft
Nasals	/m n/	/mʲ ɲ/
Voiceless stop	/p t k/	/pʲ tʲ kʲ/
Voiced stop	/b d g/	/bʲ dʲ gʲ/
Voiceless fric.	/ɸ s x/	/fʲ ʃ ç/
Voiced fric.	/w z ɣ/	/vʲ ʒ j/
Liquids	/l r/	/ʎ rʲ/

Cjermizást features a contrast between "soft" and "hard" consonants. "Soft" consonants are palatalised, palatal, or post-alveolar; "hard" consonants cannot have any of those features. Both sets are phonemic, and all those consonants can surface outside clusters.

Palatalised consonants spawn a really short [j], that can be distinguished from true /j/ by length.

Although /j/ and /w/ are phonetically approximants, the language's phonology handles them as fricatives, being paired with /ɣ/ and /vʲ/ respectively.

/r rʲ/ surface as trills or taps, in free variation. The trills are more typical in simple onsets, while the taps in complex onsets and coda.

The contrast between /m n/ is neutralised when preceding another consonant in the same word, since both can surface as [m n ŋ]; ditto for /mʲ nʲ/ surfacing as [mʲ ɱʲ ɲ].

Coda /g/ can also surface as [ŋ], but only in word final position; as such, it doesn't merge with the above.

Liquids clustered with voiceless fricatives and/or stops have voiceless allophones.

Vowels

Proto-Sitama's vowel system is a simple square: /æ i ɒ u/. They have a wide range of allophones, with three situations being noteworthy:

• /ɒ u/ are typically fronted to [Œ ʉ] after a soft consonant
• /æ i/ are backed to [ɐ ɪ] after a hard velar
• unstressed vowels are slightly centralised

Accent

Accent surfaces as stress, and it's dictated by the following rules:

1. Some suffixes have an intrinsic stress. If the word has 1+ of those, then assign the primary stress to the last one. Else, assign it to the last syllable of the root.
2. If the primary stress fell on the 5th/7th/9th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 3rd-to-last
3. If the primary stress fell on the 4th/6th/8th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 2nd-to-last.
4. Every two syllables, counting from the one with the primary stress, add a secondary stress.

Phonotactics

Max syllable is CCVCC, with the following restrictions:

• complex onset: [stop] + [liquid]; e.g. /pl/ is a valid onset, */pw/ isn't
• complex coda: [liquid or nasal] + [stop or fricative]; e.g. /nz/ is a valid coda, */dz/ isn't

If morphology would create a syllable violating such structure, an epenthetic /i/ dissolves the cluster.

Consonant clusters cannot mix hard and soft consonants. When such a mix would be required by the morphology, the last consonant dictates if the whole cluster should be soft or hard, and other consonants are mutated into their counterparts from the other set. For example, */lpʲ/ and */ʃp/ would be mutated to /ʎpʲ/ and /sp/.

Stops and fricatives clustered together cannot mix voice. Similar to the above, the last consonant of the cluster dictates the voicing of the rest; e.g. */dk/ and */pz/ would be converted into /tk/ and /bz/ respectively.

Gemination is not allowed, and two identical consonants next to each other are simplified into a singleton. Nasal consonants are also forbidden from appearing next to each other, although a cluster like /nt.m/ would be still valid.

Word-internal hiatuses are dissolved with an epenthetic /z/. Between words most speakers use a non-phonemic [ʔ], but some use [z] even in word boundaries.

Romanisation

As mentioned at the start, the people who spoke Cjermizást didn't write their own language. As such the romanisation here is solely a convenience.

• /m n p t b d g s x w z l r/ are romanised as in IPA
• /k ɸ ɣ/ are romanised ⟨c f y⟩
• "soft" consonants are romanised as their "hard" counterparts, plus ⟨j⟩
• ⟨j⟩ is omitted inside clusters; e.g. /pʲʎ/ is romanised as ⟨plj⟩, not as *⟨pjlj⟩
• /æ i ɒ u/ are ⟨e i a u⟩

One big advantage of phonemic scripts (alphabet, abjad, syllabary, abugida) over semantic ones (logography, idiography) is that they're simpler, smaller, and easier to learn. Languages have fewer sounds than concepts they can express with those sounds. But at what point would a language have so many different sounds that having a semantic script would be simpler than a phonemic one? Is this at all realistic?

This is more hypothetical than a lot of stuff to do with conlangs. It seems to me that this would only be the case in a language with thousands of distinct phonemes. Wikipedia's list of languages by number of phonemes doesn't mention anything close to 200. Even with lots of digraphs any phonemic system for a remotely naturalistic language should be simpler than a logography.

I'm not fluent in linguistics jargon, so I'm copying and pasting my explanation from an article on Conworkshop. Also, the formatting isn't always exactly right because I'm not tech-minded enough to use all the features properly, but I gave it my best effort. Here's the explanation from the article:

The word Koiwak ['kɔɪ.ʃʌk] is derived from "koi" meaning "good", and "wak" meaning "language". So Koiwak is the "good language". It is the main language of Wakpondo.

This language is not meant to be used as a complete language. Certain things are almost impossible to talk about in Koiwak, such as (but not limited to) politics, religion, engineering, law matters, music theory etc. It is a supplementary language for speaking about natural, real things in a way that a lot of languages cannot allow for.

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Root words are 3 (or sometimes 4, rarely 5) letter blocks to be built on. These are almost always (CVC).

-o can be added to a root word to show it's a noun, but it's not necessary if context already makes that clear.

vok - bird (root word, general) voko - bird (definitely a noun)

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Plural is -r. So,

voko - bird vokor - birds

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On the end of a verb: (lon = go/move/travel)

-ja - present (lonja = going/in motion/travelling)

-u - past (lonu = went/moved/travelled)

-i - future (lonja = will go/will move/will travel)

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Certain things/phenomena are made more specific with affixes.

ban - something pertaining to mountains or similar things.

zhabano - big mountain lhubano - mountain/large hill phзbano - small hill/mound/pile zoibano - any tiny thing that resembles a tiny mountain

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An interesting thing about zoiban...

-ew- is the collective noun affix, so:

zoibanwo - goosebumps

banwo - mountain range, so zoibanwo (dropping the /e/ for ease) is "tiny itty bitty mountain range".

mi zoibanew - I have goosebumps.

Incidentally, -em- means a piece/drop of something.

flεko - fire (generally) flεkemo - flame flεkewo - blaze, inferno

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yam- is used to turn a word with a literal meaning, into a metaphorical version.

qoko - hiccup qokyamo - problem (proverbial hiccup)

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Universal form of address is -pun. It can mean sir, madam, miss, dude etc, regardless of rank, gender, age, level of familiarity etc. -el- can serve as a diminutive to show affection.

Johnelo - Johnny vokelo - birdie

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Nouns are altered by various suffixes

Beautiful(ly) - klase Beauty - klasau Beautiful person/creature - klaseno More beautiful - puklase Most beautiful - zuklase Less beautiful - klasεime Without beauty - nhiklase

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Nhε is used to mean isn't it?/don't I?/aren't you?/wasn't she? and so on.

Kyi mhчdja, nhε? - you're tired, aren't you? Mi mhчdu, nhε? - I was tired, wasn't I? Koiwakja zhakoi, nhε? - Koishak is awesome, isn't it?

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Moi can mean myself/yourself/ourselves/themselves/himself/herself/itself.

Mi kεvja moi - I flatter myself Kyi kεvja moi - you flatter yourself Жi kεvja moi - we flatter ourselves

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For me, yes, an example I could use is transforming a generic language using an alphabet, formed using Turkish as the base, and evolving it based on Chinese influences and attempting to adopt logographic styles

This made me theorise on how Chinese works and the absolute role of context, where I could apply it and what not

But what about you?

Yesterday, I submitted a post asking for your help in creating a global auxiliary conlang. With not much interest being shown in the first day of posting, I decided to go ahead and embark on this project alone.

Phonology & Orthography

My "north star" when designing the phonemic inventory for the language was striking a balance between usability and accessibility. In my humble opinion, minimalist languages such as Toki Pona excel in the latter but utterly fail in the former. More complicated languages such as Esperanto and Ido tend to do the opposite (they can be quite eurocentric). I believe I have found a happy medium between the two.

Consonants

The language's consonants (and their graphs) are as follows:

• Stops: /p^h^/ (p), /b/, /t^h^/ (t), /d/, /k^h^/ (k), /g/
• Fricatives: /f/, /s/, h /x~h/ (h)
• Nasals: /m/, /n/
• Approximants: /w/, /l/, /j/
• Rhotic: /r~ʀ~ɾ~ɺ~ɹ~ɻ~ʁ~.../ (r)

I have chosen to aspirate the unvoiced stops to allow speakers from more languages to distinguish them. Those who's native tongue distinguises stops on aspiration can use [p^h^] and [p] for /p^h^/ and /b/, respectively, and those who's native tongue does so on voice can use [p] and [b].

Rhotics vary wildly cross-linguistically, making including one in a lingua franca very difficult. However, with how I plan to derive the language's vocabulary, doing so seemed necessary. As such, I have coined the "whatever the heck rhotic." So long as the sound produced is a rhotic, it is the "correct" phoneme for . However, speakers who are able to produce multiple rhotics should use some discretion when deciding which one they use as some can be harder to distinguish than others.

My decision to include the remaining consonants simply came down to their presence cross-linguistically. I initially planned to create a heat map of the IPA with each phoneme's "temperature" being a weighted sum of its occurrences in the languages on Ethnologue's list of the most spoken languages, but the work required for that seemed to outweigh the benefit. As such, I did what every self-respecting linguist would do and eyeballed it!

Vowels

The language's vowels are as follows:

• High: /i/, /u/
• Mid: /e/, /o/
• Low: /a/

Ah, the ol' five-vowel system, tried and true. I mean, there's not much to say here. Moving on!

Phonotactics

The language's phonotactic rules are largely inspired by those of Toki Pona. They are as follows:

1. All syllables follow a (C)V(S) structure, where "S" denotes a sonorant that is not /w/ or /j/.
2. Null onsets are word-initial only.
3. No adjacent sonorants; codas always assimilate to following onsets.
4. Words may be no longer than three syllables.
5. To reduce sliding, /j/ is only permitted before /a, o, u/, and /w/ is only so before /a, e, i/.
6. The penultimate vowel is always stressed.

Final Thoughts

This may not be much, but I am trying to refrain from hyperfixating and making everything too quickly as I want your thoughts on every step I take. What do you like so far? What could be improved?

Collaborators are always welcome!

Edit: Typos (of course)

Never made an international auxlang, nor have I ever collaborated on a conlang project as none of my friends are into linguistics. Thought I’d kill three birds with one stone. Who’s in? I’ll probably use Google Docs, LibreOffice, or one of the many collaborative Markdown editors out there.

MIT research finds the brain’s language-processing network also responds to artificial languages such as Esperanto and languages made for TV, such as Klingon on “Star Trek” and High Valyrian and Dothraki on “Game of Thrones.”

Just wandering around Lemmy looking for conlanging communities. Saw this one linked in the sidebar of !worldbuilding@lemmy.world .

I happen to be partial to xenolangs, and the above is a sample of Commonthroat, a language inspired by the sounds my dog makes when he's dreaming. The "Romanization", if you can call it that, is rCFqKqmqn, pronounced /chuff, long rising strong whine, huff, long high strong growl, huff, short low strong grunt, huff, short high weak grunt/, and means egg eater.

The script is read from right to left, and as the phrase reverse abjad implies, the letters are vowels (whines, growls, or grunts) and the diacritics are consonants (huffs, chuffs, or yips). Both tone and volume are significant in vowels.

name of language: uá

name meaning: speech, language, talk

writing system: latin, cyrillic (recently added)

there are 9 sounds in total

“a” - like father

“e” like bed

“i” like in “see”

“o” like in “store”

“u” like in “moon”

n “New”

s “Save”

kh, like in “Hat”

“m” - “Money”

Accent means the syllable is drawn out slightly/more emphasis

á - not, no

ae - everything

oé - animal

aí - reptile

uá - speech, talk

óa - good

íe - bad

khéen - using

khái - disgusting

ian - person

iasía - mirror, reflection

iéo - yellow, green

o - to hold, have

kháa - fish

khána - noise

khóm - come

khási - plant

khén - can, possible

akhú - raccoon

khíi - fruit, vegetable

khín - also

khísi - piece, cut

khíen - rock

khó - goop, paste, powder

khon - air, spirit

khúe - color

khúu - group

khué - ear, to hear

áan - to steal

ákhe - to sleep or rest

áso - blue, green

auá - head, leader

ékho - block/square

én - clothing, cloth

ée - cold, ice

séi - fire, hot

úi - big

íi - small

ókhu - mouth, to eat

ina - line

íu - paper

óie - red

ón - is, at, exist

úkha - hand

úkhin - see, eye

úna - hole

na - land

nana - parent

néi - woman

níe - man

nókhi - dead

ónsi - back

nún - moon

nusi - silly, play

núe - many

nákha - number

nasa - strange

nasin - way

nena - bump, mountain

ni - me

khí - this

nimi - name

nókha - foot

óin - love

ona - it

óen - open

ákha - break

nái - do

aía - stick

án - food

ána - give

si - of

síin - feel

síeia - black

síi - end

sisi - bug

okha - near

ókhi - container

sána - same

séo - skin

séne - what

séui - high

siéo - body

síkhe - circle

sin - new

khía - you

khísi - face

síkheén - picture

sona - know

súno - sun

súa - table

súi - sweet

san - from

sáso - but

saua - to

séo - water

sénkho - time

óno - house

sú - two

únkha - sex

úsa - mouth

úsaa - fight

uáo - white

uán - one

uasó - bird

uaua - strong

uékha - away

uíne - want

I lovee the way "dragon" turned out it's so cutee

This can be both in-universe (like word origins that say something interesting about the society in which the conlang is canonically spoken), out-of-universe (like little hidden references you wouldn't expect people to notice), or even both.

I could mention a million things in my own conlang, but the example that inspired this post was the slang term "3-zo" or "poeezo" /pøːzo/ which basically means "a recurring expense; a person, form, or notice sent for the purpose of extracting this money; or the money so extracted". And this word "3-zo" comes from a clipping of yaPoeezolloeyya /japøːzoʎ.ʎøj.ja/ literally meaning basically "the three animals" — and referring to a set of three institutions that work together to help the rich and hurt the masses.

And this idea of "three animals" taking money from the poor was inspired by the Occitan folk song "Ai vist lo lop", where the description of a wolf, fox, and hare dancing around a tree is commonly taken as a metaphor for the monarchy, nobility, and clergy engaging in various merriment, while the peasants get screwed over. That folk song also describes how the peasants toil year-round to earn "a few coins", only to find that all their money is squandered within a month.

So yeah, my conlang's word for like "rent" and "taxman" and "utility bill" and "Netflix subscription" is ultimately in reference to an Occitan folk song about dancing woodland creatures.

Astorí!

Welcome to the fourth no longer-weekly c/conlangs post!

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As you might be able to tell, as the initial hype for the community has slowed down, we've also started getting behind on the weekly posts. Sorry for that. We'll hope to be able to maintain a somewhat less ambitious bi-weekly schedule. But please keep posting your conlang things here - every post matters (to us)!

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Conlangs of the Week

The conlangs of the week are the Ancient Language and Dwarvish from Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle (aka Eragon and the following books). Both these languages feature frequently in Paolini's setting and are essential to the worldbuilding and story of the setting. On the other hand, they have often been criticised for their lack of originality and lack of real rules or vocabulary. Instead, there are just lists of translated words or phrases, not even with an explanation on how to pronounce them. (Though it seems that Paolini has actually done some more leg-work to establish the languages more broadly since the books were released.)

What do you think about this method of conlanging? Would you consider relexes of English (or other irl languages) "proper" conlangs? Are relexes okay as naming languages? Or do you think that the concept of relexes are just gatekeeping?

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Linguistic feature of the week

Less of a linguistic feature and more of a conlang sub-category, our subject of discussion this week are naming languages. Naming languages are conlangs made with only limited grammar and a limited vocabulary, usually just about enough to fill in a map or generate some names - often for a literary setting.

Do you use naming languages? At what point do you consider a conlang having passed the stage of "naming language"?

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Post of the week

No posts this week, so no post of the week ;p

Happy conlanging everyone and thank you for joining us on c/conlangs!

Esterní!

toki!

Welcome to the third weekly c/conlangs post!

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First of all sorry for the delay between the last post and this one, I have been pretty busy last week so I kind of just… forgot. Sorry!

Also, if you have suggestions for a conlang and linguistic feature of the week, please send them to me! I only know so many, so I’m always happy to learn about more, so I can include them in these posts!

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Conlang of the week

This week's conlang of the week is: toki pona! This language was made by linguist Sonja Lang, at first to see how having an extremely small vocabulary would influence the way speakers view things. But the language has quickly grown to have a large community, and even lots of speakers (for a conlang) due to it’s cute nature and ease of learning.

What do you think of toki pona? Do you speak it? Do you think it changes the way speakers will look at things? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!

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Linguistic feature of the week

This week’s linguistic feature is more of a linguistic curiosity. Keeping with the theme of toki pona, we are looking at how your conlangs might influence the way its speakers think and act!

When German and French speakers were asked to imagine a key and describe its characteristics, they had vastly different answers. People speculate this is because of the grammatical gender that both languages have, one having a key be masculine, the other feminine.

And in toki pona, because you only have very little words to describe things it often forces speakers to break things down to the core of what they want to say, which might actually help them get their point across better too!

In what way might the features of your conlang influence its speakers? Or what things within a language do you think would influence the way people think the most? Please share it with us in the comments!

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Post of the week

This week the post of the week is this great post by @Erika3sis@hexbear.com about how people seperate words in speech! Go check it out! https://hexbear.net/post/3003566

Happy conlanging everyone and thanks for being apart of the c/conlangs community!

o musi a!

In most languages it's easy to tell where one word ends and another begins in writing, assuming that one has spacing or interpuncts or perhaps one uses some sort of logography à la Chinese or mixed script à la Japanese. But what about in speech? People will generally not make any sort of clear stop from one word to the next, in fact people will often use reduced pronunciations when they speak.

And this is why it's important to think about the methods that speakers of a language can use to separate words from each other. The process of identifying word boundaries in speech is called speech segmentation, and this process utilizes things like phonotactics and allophony, prefixes and suffixes, syntax, set or stock phrases, common contractions and reduced forms, intonation and pauses, stress and pitch accent, and simply trying to figure out the most logical interpretation of what one has just heard from the knowledge that one already has. Surely among other methods, with multiple methods working simultaneously as redundancies.

So the way I like to test this is just by writing out a sentence, and then marking down what the telltale signs are of where one word ends and another begins. I have attached a diagram of this, and I'd find it interesting to see similar charts of your own languages, or otherwise hear about the methods that your languages use.

When I say "by sound" I am assuming that you're all developing spoken languages as opposed to signed languages, but if there is anyone here who is developing a signed language, I would love to hear more about how segmentation works in such a language.

Sellamat! Kam leitte yu?

Welcome to the second weekly c/conlangs post!

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Conlang of the Week

The conlang of the week is Sambahsa. Created as an international auxilliary language (IAL) by the linguist Olivier Simon, it was first revealed to the public in 2007. As an IAL, it recognises that a universally "easy" learning experience is near impossible to achieve and therefore tries to concentrate on basing its systems on Indo-European languages, which are of course widely spread. On the other hand, a large amount of vocabulary comes from other language families.

What do you think about Sambahsa? Does it meet its goals? Have you heard of Sambahsa before? Do you think it can succeed as an IAL? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the thread!

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Linguistic feature of the week

Keeping with Sambahsa's Indo-European theme, we want to look at Indo-European features in conlangs. While some parts of the conlanging community shun unique Indo-European features because they feel it lets on too much of the conlanger's (expected) natlang background, some people have wholeheartedly embraced some Indo-European features in their conlangs or are even trying to build their own, such as the ever-popular romlangs.

Do you use Indo-European features in your conlang(s)? Did you add them on purpose or were they indeed your own background sneaking in through the backdoor? What IE features do you find easiest to omit from conlangs, or hardest to avoid? What's your favourite IE feature to use in a conlang? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

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Post of the week

The first post of the week here on c/conlangs goes to Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net! Congratulations! She made a great post on what she likes best about conlanging. You can check it out here: Post of the week (I'd like to also use this opportunity to shout out Kalvo@lemm.ee's post on their conlang, Koiwak).

Happy conlanging everyone and thank you for joining us on c/conlangs!

Chao!

The types of words that might get one's speech stereotyped as "lazy" or "disfluent" or "uneducated" or whatever else if used excessively or in too formal a setting, but which in truth are vital for fluency and listening comprehension.

I dunno, this is just an impression because I don't interact much with the broader conlang community, but I feel like these words often end up being sort of overlooked by many conlangers. I certainly overlooked them for a long time myself. But to me these words make a language feel that much more alive, you know, that different people talk in different ways with different registers.

Do any of you have any interesting thoughts or experiences with these types of words? How are they handled in your own conlangs?

I'll start myself: I've been quite interested in Esperanto recently, and I am thinking of starting to actually learn the language. Esperanto is just really interesting to me, because of its history and size, compared to other conlangs. I don't believe it will become the universal world language, like once was dreamed. And I do think esperanto has quite a few shortcomings when it comes to being an international auxilliary language. The reason I want to learn it is more just for that history and culture.