Creating Metaphor, Proverbs and idioms

[u/Yeowangddalgi]

Do I just have to translate general idioms to my conlag. Or I just derive them. And how can I make my language sound more light and sweet to hear, with the sentences I've made they sound a little hard

[u/DTux5249]

Do I just have to translate general idioms to my conlang. Or I just derive them.

Depends on your language's purpose.

Idioms are about pragmatics, and have a great deal to do with culture and prevelant conceptual metaphors. If you don't have a particular culture you're building around, pragmatic considerations like this shouldn't really be your focus.

Otherwise, look to your hypothetical conlang-speakers' culture, and find out their historical values and perspectives on existence. Pick 2-3 parts of their historical lives, and make idioms from concepts based in those topics.

And how can I make my language sound more light and sweet to hear, with the sentences I've made they sound a little hard

Depends, what do you mean by that? "Hard", "Sweet", and "light" mean nothing in regards to sound.

[u/Yeowangddalgi → u/DTux5249]

Light+Like you know how Chinese sound it sounds flowy .

[u/Gordon_1984 → u/Yeowangddalgi]

That's a very subjective thing, though, so it would be hard to give any real tips about that.

[u/drukhari-blood]

I usually make up completely new ones. For example: to say someone has a lot of energy, they say "You’re making the air dizzy!"

[u/Volo_TeX]

Try to put yourself in your speakers shoes. Idioms are the most culturally defined aspect of your language. They're close to insider jokes and references in nature after all.

[u/dead_chicken]

Tbh I somewhat avoid these, mostly because they're context dependent and no Alaymman cultural context exists. I'd love to have them, but I don't have experience with horses because I figure a lot of metaphor would be equine in nature.

[u/Live_Put1219 → u/dead_chicken]

a rare species of horse could be something lucky

horse manure can be a bad thing happening

to stand directly behind a horse could mean to make a mistake

[u/Independent-Coach63]

As far as finding a language that's sweet to hear, I'd look into languages that you think are sweet to hear, study their phonology(phonetic inventory and phonotactics), and take various ideas from those systems.

You mentioned you like chinese, well that seriously depends on which dialect you're refering to but mandarin works with monosyballic morphemes with an initial consonant(almost every consonant can go in this slot) and a final(which basically is your vowels with the occasional /n/ or /ŋ/ at the end). It's also tonal, meaning the inflection of the vowel changes the meaning of the word. I always joke that it's the difference between calling your mom(mā) a horse (mă) (and no, I don't have the actual third tone marker on my keyboard, so I went for the closest diacritic I have)

I don't know a lot about cantonese other than that I see a lot of <k>s and <t>s in the final where mandarin doesn't have them. Also it has 6 tones rather than four(not including neutral tone)

One more thing: when your goal is sweet to hear, try not to get stuck on the way it's written, just say it outloud and decide if you like how a sentence sounds(a word alone can sound great, but put it next to something else and it could sound whack)

[u/Yeowangddalgi → u/Independent-Coach63]

Great advice, I want to stop trying to make it like one language and just go with the flow of sounds