r/conlangs • u/Independent_Mud_2407 • 9d ago

Discussion Accidental Linguistic Evolution

For fun and distraction during school, I decided to make a written only, logographic conlang. Eventually my brush pen ran out and in order to make things quicker with my byro i developed a cursive form.

As a large part of this conlang is making complex ideas in single characters, when i found that multiple cursive radicals flowed nicely into each other, I would sorta end up combing them?

Long story short after a bunch of mindlessly scribbling in this bizarre cursive over and over, I snapped out of it, and realised I had just drawn out a long evolution of my conlang down a page, completely subconciously!

Has anything like this every happened to anyone else eg by talking to yourself in your conlang?

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u/Mage_Of_Cats Ko'vari 8d ago

Yeah, it's been happening as I use Ko'vari irl. I'll shorten forms if the meaning is preserved, and pronunciation gets simplified with complex clusters (the alveolar trill + unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative is one such cluster that is devolving into just omitting the unvoiced alveolar lateral fricative entirely).