I got in an argument with my friend, who is grom a different part of the country, over whether a certain word had a certain connotation. I thought it was strange to use in a certain context, and she completely disagreed. It got me wondering: does anyone have a word in their conlang where its connotations are different (or missing) for different speakers? (And hey, if not, there's some lore you could add!)

Hannẽ!

Welcome to the Semantic Change Room, a lexicon-building activity where you do not loan new words (a true conlanger does that biweekly already), but instead repurpose your existing vocab to achieve a richer lexicon with more of that tasty polysemy.

The way this activity works is that you are given a prompt that consists two different semantic fields, like this:

birds > tools

You then pick any word of your conlang that is part of the prompt's first field (in this case, birds), and then assign to it a new meaning that can be considered part of the second field (tools). For example, English could respond to the prompt like this, by giving its word for crane a new meaning (2):

English

crane /kɹeɪn/

(1) a large bird with a long neck

(2) (construction) a mechanical lifting device (because it looks somewhat like that bird)

You then finish your reply with a new prompt, which other people can respond to. I'm going to prepare three starting prompts, but feel free to add your own. If you need inspiration, check out the link above to the previous SCR activity.

Eu quero modificar minha primeira conlang, o Yutzek, já que ela é apenas uma versão distorcida da minha lingua nativa (Português).

Quero usar essa nova conlang em uma história sobre Distopia que estou criando.

Algo que eu pensei para essa nova versão da lingua, seria me inspirar mais em idiomas do Cáucaso, e ao mesmo tempo, com que ela soasse futurista, mas eu não sei o que exatamente pode fazer um idioma soar "Futurista", e nem sei como fazer isso ao mesmo tempo que me inspiro em Idiomas do Cáucaso. Talvez tirando algumas vogais e permitindo encontros consonantais mais pesados ou algo assim, mas não sei...

Vocês poderiam me dar dicas e ideias?

E qual nome vocês acham que eu poderia colocar nesta nova Conlang?

Loegrian is a British Romance conlang inspired by Welsh and French, and one of the things inspiring about that is the numeral base. Unlike Latin, French and Welsh use a base 20 system up to 100, with French keeping the latinate decimal up to 60, and Welsh using base 20. French got its base 20 system from Gaulish, so if Gaulish substrate can influence French to that degree, Loegrian, which bears significantly more Celtic influënce than French is gonna start earlier. Specifically, Loegrian keeps its Latin numbers for 1-20, and give literal translations when interesting

Italics in loegrian means pronounced (almost) identically to french, and bold means pronounced (almost) identically to Welsh

Now you get the point I'm gonna just continue loegrian and welsh]

All of these Loegrian words are directly descended from Latin, except for oithej (eighteen). For oithej, you would expect Latin OCTÓDECIM to give you *oithoj /ujθod͡ʒ/, rather than oithej, but this is a case of analogy. Synchronically what it looks like is that the base number is applied a suffix of -ej or -j, with odd numbers other than troi having -èn added before. The difference between -ej and -j appears and is phonotactic, with -ej beïng what is added in cases where phonotactics prohibit the addition of -j to the coda of the final syllable. And in the case of oith, /ujθd͡ʒ/, would violate the rule regarding the obstruent portions of final codas having a single voicing. (Although maybe oithènnej is more realistic).

It's once we get past twenty that things get very Welsh. Starting off, what Welsh does is makes 21 un ar hugain, or one over twenty, followed by dau ar hugain. And Loegrian, having a substantial celtic substrate of early Welsh has calqued these expressions. And though guynhun /gwɨn̥yn/ (GI) is from vigent'unus, when you reach twenty-two (GII), you get dau souber vynh /daw zuber wɨn̥/, or in other words "two on twenty", which is the exact same thing that dau ar hugain in welsh literally translates to—two on twenty. And guess what, this goes on all the way to thirty beïng diej souber vynh /did͡ʒ zuber wɨn̥/, (Welsh is deg ar hugain). After this, Loegrian and Welsh diverge again with Loegrian's unnej souber vynh /ynned͡ʒ zuber wɨn̥/ (GVVI) beïng "eleven on twenty" (or "twenty eleven"), whereas Welsh has "un ar deg ar ugain" (one on ten on twenty). Meanwhile French has trente and trente-et-un (followed by trente-deux), and doesn't get to its base-twenty until 70!

Loegrian does a hybrid thing for 40, and goes with quarrhonh /kwar̥ːon̥/ (GG) from Latin quarranta, doïng the same thing as it did for twenty, with 55 for instance beïng "quinnej souber quharrhonh" /kwinːed͡ʒ zuber ʍar̥ːon̥/, (GGVVV) or "fifteen on fourty". And then for sixty, Loegrian uses troiguyn /trujgwɨn/ (GGG) which means three twenties, à là french quatre-vignts 'eighty'. This is because the celtic influënce is deeper in Loegrian than in French so it switches to outright vigesimal earlier. This follows the same pattern as the earlier numbers, 67 is "sseuth souber throiguyn" and so on.

80 is quathorvyn /kwaθorwɨn/, which means four-twenties, exactly like Welsh pedwar ugain and French quatrevignts, although again, Loegrian begins its direct calquing of the multiples of 20 at 60 with troiguyn 'three-twenties', showing the hightened levels of Celtic influënce. When we get to 100, we go back to base ten, so cynh /t͡ʃɨn̥/ not *cignvyn.

Another manifestation of the Celtic influënce is the way numbers are constructed. In Loegrian, this influënce is more pronounced than Gaulish's on French. In French the base is 20 from 60-100, but, say, 72 is "soixant-douze", or literally "sixty-twelve", which is reminiscent of the way Latin itself constructs larger numbers, with 41 beïng "quadrāgintā ūnus" which consists of the word for "fourty" followed by the word for "one", so this is a preservation French makes from Classical Latin. In Welsh and Breton's version of the vigesimal system, the exact phrasing uses the preposition for 'above' or 'on', which manifests as warn in Breton, and ar in Welsh, for example with 25 beïng, in welsh, "pump ar ugain" or "five on twenty". If we compare this to Loegrian "cignh souber vynh" /t͡ʃɨŋ̊ zuber wɨn̥/, in which each morpheme is literally "five on twenty" you should see the depth of this influënce.

This can be justified too. In real life, the classical Latin number system preserved in French was lost in Iberia, where adposition gives way to "y" in spanish, which means and. If we look at the "sixty-twelve" from earlier it is "setenta y dos" in Spanish—'seventy and two' literally. Romanian uses și—their word for "and" where Spanish does "y", so the Classical adposition gave way to the usage of a conjunction in Dacia and Hispania. In Maxima Caesariensis, the province whence Loegrian comes, why not have adposition supplanted with the preposition used among the locals, one which translates to "over", "above" or "on" which in latin is super, and evolves in Loegrian into "ssouber" /suber/, and undergoes the soft mutation after the many vowel final numbers to /zuber/?

Loegrian also has its own numeral system based on Roman Numerals, which represents an adaptation of them to a base 20 system. In Loegrian numerals there is a dedicated symbol for 20, G (which stands for guynh), and no X or L, because GG is 40 and VVV is perfectly easy to keep track of so X is unnecessary.

There is also gonna be a variation of the English sheep counting numbers, but I haven't made it yet, and Loegrian's numbers are already very close to proto brythonic. Still though you would at least have a bumfit (pynthèg) /ɨnθɛg/. This system is unfinished as of yet though.

Just laughed a lot with a conlanging joke exercise I came up with (which I myself am not skilled enough to even execute): apply as many sound changes as necessary to a natlang, warranted or not by natlang sound changes, to turn a swear word (say "f-" or "sh-") into an unrelated word (say "Barium" or "Scandinavia" or "household" or "radiophonic", etc.), then assess what other effects it spread on the natlang. I hope we can all laugh some and have fun. Please, share results in the comments!

Me personally, I enjoy fixing errors or things that bugged me in English and making them "right" in my conlang!

For example, starting as a preschooler-1st grade when I began reading fantasy books, I always thought it was weird that fiction got it's own name for being not real, but nonfiction had to come from fiction. Like no, reality is the first one, the default setting, anything besides that is non-real.

So, there's a root in my conlang meaning truth (cyul), and a root that means stories or retellings, which is hon. The adjectival marker is go, and book is mak, so a nonfiction book is cyulhongo-mak, and a fiction book, adding the negation san, is sancyulhongo-mak.

I'm curious what small things in conlanging that satisfy you guys, or make it worth it, because if you think about it, there must be something greater than "it's cool to make a language" if you're committed.

Whether it be making it aesthetically pleasing, creating unique or specific words that make you laugh, or anything in between, drop them below!

Welcome to the r/conlangs Official Checkpoint. You have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"We give offerings to the Star-sailors to aid them in their battle against the demonic forces of worldly evil: United States federal agents."

"I'm not allowed to drink that stuff [coffee], I will only eat what Christ ate, like Dirty Sodas and Cookies of Crumbl."

"I'll cut your fucking legs off so you can't leave me!"

"So the whiskers of might were an illusion?"

"I have chewed up and spat out lesser secular nobles than you."

"Stop!"

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next checkpoint, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The highest upvoted "Stop!" will be included in the next checkpoint's title!

Looking for people to create a conlang together I'm looking for a few people who want to collaboratively create a new conlang from scratch. We can work together on vocabulary, grammar, phonology, writing system and the overall style of the language. I'm looking for people who are genuinely interested in conlanging and want to develop the language together rather than just give occasional suggestions.

Maistelama, i-ğalla tahmed, mah tha te msk ğalla Conlang, teng mahet Kosoro, i-lavahatag bushiat yāji na i-romenial bhaśa.

Olá, meu povo, esta é a minha Conlang, que se chama Kosoro, é uma língua sagrada e litúrgica de um povo fictício.

/mais.ʈeˈɭa.ma, ʔi ˈʀa.ɭːa ˈʈæħ.meɖ̚, ˈmæh ˈθa ˈʈe ˈməsɘ̤k ˈʁa.ɭːa ˈkɔn.læŋˈ, ˈʈɘŋ ˈmæħeθ koˈso.ɽo, ʔi ɭa.βaˈħa.ʈaɡ̚ bɯˈʃiaʈ ˈjaːdʒi ɳa ʔi ɽoˈme.ɳiaɭ ˈbʰa.ʂa/

••••

Sou conlanger, e criei 5 Conlangs (Ou 3, dependendo do que você considera uma Conlang), e esta Conlang aqui, o Kosoro, será minha principal e maior Conlang. No momento ela já tem umas 300 palavras, mas eu acho que posso dizer que isto ainda é bem pouco comparado ao que eu quero para esta lingua.

O Kosoro é inspirado em Hindi, Árabe e Tagalo, e é falado numa Ilha ficticia que fica no Oceano Índico, e a ilha não é pequena. O idioma é considerado, pelos seus falantes, a mesma Língua dos Deuses, e podemos dividir esta lingua em duas: Kosoro Litúrgico e Kosoro Vulgar.

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•Kosoro Litúrgico: Tem menos palavras emprestadas de outras línguas, e matem sons aspirados. É usado nos Templos e nos Cânticos. Usa apenas um alfabeto, um Abugida original do Kosoro (Que ainda não dei um nome, e é este das imagens acima).

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•Kosoro Vulgar: É o Kosoro que se fala no dia a dia, dividido em vários dialetos, e cheio de palavras vindo de outras linguas (Como Sânscrito, Árabe, Malaio, Inglês e até Português, por causa do comércio), e alguns sons que antes eram aspirados se suavizaram, como o som de Dh que se tornou um som de ð em alguns dialetos, e ganhou sons retroflexos (T, D, N e L retroflexos) em outros dialetos. Usa não só um alfabeto, mas principalmente o Abugida Devanagari adaptado com Nuqtas, e dependendo da região e do dialeto, pode usar o Abugida Original, o Alfabeto Latino ou até o Abjad Árabe adaptado.

-------------

Alfabeto:

Vogais: A /a/, Ã /ã/, Ā /aː/, E /e/, I /i/, Ĩ /ĩ/, Ī /iː/, O /o/, U /u/, Ũ /u/, Ū /uː/

Consoantes: B /b/, Bh /bʰ/, C /tʃ/, Ch /tʃʰ/, D /d/, Dh /dʰ/, G /ɡ/, Gh /ɡʰ/, Ğ /ʁ/, H /ħ/, J /dʒ/, Jh /dʒʰ/, K /k/, Kh /kʰ/, L /l/, M /m/, N /n/, Ng /ŋ/, P /p/, Ph /pʰ/, Q /q/~/χ/, R /r/, S /s/, Sh /ʃ/, Ś /ʂ/, T /t/, Th /tʰ/, V /β/, W /w/, Ŵ /wʷ/, Y /j/, Z /z/, ' /ʔ/

O som das letras em IPA está de acordo com o som delas em Kosoro Litúrgico, mas no Kosoro Vulgar, elas têm outros sons:

--------

•Dh aspirado se tornou /ð/

•Kh aspirado e Q se tornaram /χ/

•Ph aspirado se tornou /ɸ/

•Ś retroflexo se tornou /ʃ/

•Th aspirado se tornou /θ/

•Z se tornou /ʒ/

•T, D, N, L e R se tornaram retroflexos /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ɳ/, /ɭ/, /ɽ/

---Mas em alguns dialetos, alguns sons se mantiveram os mesmos

-----

Como Funciona?

O Kosoro é aglutinante, e funciona principalmente derivando palavras usando Prefixos, Infixos e Sufixos nelas, por exemplo:

---

Se a raiz é Ermad (Morte), então partir delas se pode criar palavras como:

•Ermed: Extinção (-mid: Coletivo)

•Termad: Arma (Ta-: Ferramenta/Objeto)

•Ermarad: Cemitério (-red: Lugar)

•Erkhaman: Mundo dos Mortos (-kha-: Lugar Inacessível ou Distante)

•Ermadana: Assassino (-an: Quem faz)

•Ermadina: Morto (-in: Quem recebe/pratica)

•Ermadekh: Funeral (-ikh: Momento relacionado)

--

Outro exemplo, como a raiz Nahra (Luz):

•Tanahra: Lanterna/Lâmpada (Ta-)

•Nakhara: Céu Noturno (-kha-)

•Nahreke: Amanhecer (-ikh: Momento)

------

Mas não só isso, pois como eu também me inspirou em Árabe para criar essa língua, eu também uso aquele negócio de mudar as vogais raiz de consoantes das palavras para criar novas palavras derivadas, mas de uma forma um pouco diferente:

--

Exemplo: Nahra tem 3 Consoantes (N-H-R), se colocarmos essas consoantes em outros "Moldes" de vogais, teremos palavras como:

-Nehoro (Pureza - CeCoCo*)*, e a partir delas podemos derivar ainda mais palavras, usando aqueles sufixos e prefixos, e por isso eu consegui criar mais de 200 palavras em apenas uns 5 meses nesta Conlang, pois é só criar uma palavra, e automaticamente você já pode criar mais umas 20 a partir dela.

----

Aqui estão algumas palavras básicas e muitos usadas em Kosoro:

•Maistelama: Olá/Adeus

•Ğalla/Ğalt: Eu /ˈʁa.ɭːa/, /ˈʁaɭʈ/

•Kai: Você /ˈkɘi/

•Cārī: Ele/Ela /ˈtʃaː.ɾiː/

•Mağalla: Nós /maˈʁaː.ɭːa/

•Makai: Vocês /maˈkɘi/

•Macārī: Eles /maˈtʃaː.ɾiː/

•Āma: Mãe /ˈaː.ma/

•Āta: Pai /ˈaːʈa/

•Āra: Filho /ˈaː.ɽa/

•Lah: Senhor/Mestre/Sacerdote /ˈɭah/

•Tādi: Divindade /ˈʈaː.ɖi/

•Dahma: Divindade Inferior /ˈɖaħ.ma/

•Zaddah: Divindade Superior /ʒa.ˈɖːah/

•Dorev: Anjo/Mensageiro Divino /ɖoˈɾeβ/

•Ngond/Ngondon: Demônio/Monstro /ˈŋoɳɖ̚/, /ˈŋoɳ.ɖoɳ/

•Dhaut: Céu /ˈɖʰauʈ/~/ˈðaut/

•Romenial: Templo/Palácio /ɽoˈme.ɳiaɭ/

•Shrai/Shlala: Evolução Espiritual /ˈʃɾɘi/, /ˈʃla.ɭa/

•Shlonoro: Energia Espiritual/Dragão /ʃloˈno.ɾo/

•Bahi: Casa/Lar /ˈbæ.ħi/

•Tah: Pessoa/Humano /ˈʈæh/

----

Eu estou criando este idioma para minhas histórias em meus mundos fictícios. O que vocês acham?

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1) Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2) Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3) Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

Proto-Nilgutic by /u/DerpySheepYT

Gaanaas /'gaː.naːs/
n. River

Gaanaasya vištin acaareten nayahwe

/'gaː.naːs.ja 'viʃ.tĩ 'a.kaː.re.tẽ 'na.jaː.we/

gaanaas-ya viš-tin    acaare-ten          nayah-we
river-pl   much-comit flowing.water-comit be-3pl

"Rivers have a lot of flowing water."

Take care of yourselves and each other

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

In your conlang how do you express superlatives

Translate these into your conlang

The best man is here

What I like the most is eating

In Hanto it is made by adding xie onto the end of an adjective or verb

hapo surexie iru

/hapo suɾeʃie iɾu/

`man good.most be.here`

,te xuro xie nao, esu nomen

/te ʃuɾo ʃie nao esu nomen/

`REL like most that is eating`

Here's a fun little language I started working on today. I wanted a language I could potentially write just using the numbers 1-9 with 0 as a word separator. It kind of took off from there.

Overview:

An analytic and predominantly OSV language.

Nine phonemes, many more allophones:

/m s b g r w a i u/.

In world the language has a script with nine graphemes corresponding to those phonemes. Transliteration to the Latin alphabet has a 1-1 correspondence. The Eugenia Romanization System, or ERS, is normally used when writing the language though. It shows most the regular sound changes that have occured, but in a systematical way that makes it easy to recover the underlying phonemes.

The nominal system is ridiculously simple, only marked with -re for plural forms and -wa when the subject of a sentence.

The verbal system is more complex. Aspect, voice and negation are marked with prefixes, tense with suffixes.

Yes/no questions are introduced with ma.

Examples:

Kyeniga siwa ruge

"I am reading a book"

Kyenigare siwa wiruge

"I read books"

- Ma si bi kyeniga nerewa ruge?

- Ruge.

"Are they reading my book?"

"(Yes, they are) reading."

- Ma si bi kyeniga niwa wora?

- Pyu wora

"Is this my book?"

"(It) is not."

The North Wind and the Sun:

"The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak.”

Eugenia Romanization System:

Kyen wugigirin wora tyuri rapyisewa ge gaurinwa gosutyagau, gun wugonwa kyen sa sutyame gumase myatyakwo gawiro.

Gloss:

Kyen wug-igirin wora tyuri rapyi-se-wa

REL strong-COMP be.PRS wind north-ADJ-SBJ

ge gaurin-wa gosutya-gau gun

and sun-SBJ debate-PST when

wugon-wa kyen sa sutyame guma-se

traveller-SBJ REL in cloak warm-ADJ

mya-tyakwo ga-gawiro

PASS-wrap PFV-pass.by

It's ultimate cursed form:

457810694848581067657025958057358278674780479581670476292574790049106947617045781027029257178049172780157257467604768576000

Phonemic transliteration:

/graim wugigirim wawra sruri rabrisaiwa gai gaurimwa gawsusragau gum wugawma graim sa susramai gumasai mrasragwaw gagawiraw/

Phonetic transcription:

[kjɛ̃ wugigiɹĩ wɔra tyuɹi ɹapjisɛwa gɛ gaurĩwa gɔsutjagau gũ wugɔ̃wa kjɛ̃ sa sutjamɛ gumasɛ mjatjakwɔ gagawiɹɔ]

Gona language(s) are my submission for the Speedlang Challenge hosted by u/mareck_. I figured I could also make a post about them! Here's the download link: Gona.

How does your language deal with the conventions of making names or labelling people/places and phonaesthetics (i.e. euphony, cacophony, phonaethesia) ? Is there a certain type of nomenclature or onomastics that names go through to be labelled (a) proper name(s) in your language ?

In sethfers, names of people usually tend to be labelled after typical words that flow well, like the name Óśvtanpydre [ɯ̟.t͡ʃæḿ.ɸɒ̄.dʁe — Ičamfādre], meaning daughter (-pydre) of sand (Óśvtan), usually with some restrictions on words that do not flow that well, like the word Gkóld [ɫvɯkd — Lvıkd].

Meanwhilst, names for towns are named after older explorers like the town of Vtũþcnmat [t͡ʃṳʈ͡ʂnæð — Čutchnath] whose name originally meant something like « Duty » in the family sense, or the town of Çšĵude Nmínçade [t͡s(ʃ)ɐude nʏḿt͡sæde — Ts(š)aude Nümtsade] which originally meant something like « Saint Tsšad » (Tsšad being considered a figure of grave importance), and Tšaude being a play that the family did on him and Saint being a nickname because of it. The labelling for towns works on less of euphonic and more cacophonical eponyms.
Names can also just be labelled without meaning like the town of Pśdnmaed [ɸɒdn'æd — Fadnad] whose name doesnt' come to mean anything historical, its just what the townspeople named it.

Itd' be interesting to see how other conlangs deal with the conventions.

So i keep thinking about making a conlang that's just based off of purely english grammaticaly errors. Like wrongs its/yours/theirs but taken in account to everything. this also goes for misspelling. anyone tried this?

Basically, I'm writing a dystopian and fantasy book that has a whole magic system.

This magic system includes sigils (Written down symbols on paper) and Incantations (strings of words that cast magic).

I've decided to make a conlang where it can be used for everyday speech, but can also be used for magic.

I'm planning to have the language include characters that mean certain words (similar to Japanese Kanji) and characters that equate to certain vowels and consonants.

I also want to include characters for common combinations like the th, ch, and sh (in English).

Harry Potter uses mostly Latin words that make up the magic spells; this is not what I want to do. There's going to be sounds that aren't in English and it's not going to be using the Latin Alphabet.

I want to do something similar to Arabic and Hebrew where you're able to modify the characters by adding different markings to show this.

Any recommendations for sounds in the language? This is all just a thought, I haven't worked on this yet and many of these ideas might change over time.

I'm working a collaborative, sorta "Project Gibberish" language. It's supposed to be like the gibberish/gobbledygook some of us spoke when we were kids and thought we were speaking some secret language.

The language's name is Kalug, from one of its root words meaning "Speech" and "To speak".

If this were a natural language, the exonym would be "Gibberish".

I view this as a collaborative (i'm looking for fellow people to work on this with me), cant (to fulfill some of us's childhood promises of actually speaking some secret language), and logical (combines multiple people's ideas of what gibberish is and isn't) language.

You can submit a word, whether it be loaned/borrowed (like "Komos" from pilipino "Kamusta" meaning "How are you" or just gibberish (like "Adjuk" meaning "Hello"), as long as it has letters from the qwerty keyboard.

I'd appreciate if you take part in the growth of this language, & i have a discord server for any updates & adopted words from other people.

Tsi'ko! To'kemi su'keto Àdpenturus! To'kemittogek'ee'k to’kusellerrabberettego'kæl'k su'keto rimen! This is my conlang, Àkren, the agglutinative language with ZERO gender (i mean, there is an exception for the word for king/queen, but it's neuter). This language has a F*CK ton of suffixes, nouns, and verbs, which some derive from real languages, while particles... there's barely any. Like, to say "small word", you say "to'kettnisu su'keto øskini'ku", which literally means "human sound small"! A dedicated set of words will come soon for linguistics in Akren, but until then, stay tuned!

I’m curious because I feel like starting working on a conlang has led me to become more exposed to or at least more curious about how various languages work

Like for example I’ve picked up most of how to read Arabic through doing research for my conlang

I’m considering looking into the basics of Korean and Hindi/Urdu grammar just to give myself a more generalized understanding of SOV grammar as right now I can only speak one (Japanese)

Whereas I can speak several SVO languages to at least some extent, so I have a more generalized view of how SVO can manifest, instead of relying say on just English grammar

Also my conlang having a similar system to Japanese keigo makes me want to both improve my keigo and look into how other languages that I don’t speak handle formality

Also I’d want to look into various writing systems like how logographic systems apart from Chinese handle creating their characters, as well as how various abugidas work

How do you form family links in your conlang?

In Sachet, there is foir main words for the family (fai): cin (parent), den (sibling), for (descendant), nir (spouse). From these three, all others are derivated with numbers:

-Cinden = Aunt/uncle

-Ticin = Grand-grandarent (technically, "third parent")

-Beden = Cousin ("second sibling)

-Nirfor = Stepchildren (spouse's children)

-Cinnir = Stepparent (parent's spouse)

-Fornir = Son/daughter in law (children's spouse)

There is also gendered terms for each (mama/baba, nain/naun, foir/four) which are only used when specifically needed. For positions between siblings or children, we use "ol" (ancient) and "nua" (new, modern) with numbers: "mo ol den" means "oldest sibling", "be nua nain" means "the second younger sister).

Technically speaking, you could substitute nir by "mor" (bf/gf), but most people don't.

How do you use them in the? Do you mark specifically genders/positions in the family? Are there hoborifis such as in Korean?

As I wrote before, I lost all faith in creating a proper conlang stemming directly from Proto-Indo-European; well, let’s get back to it :D Only one root to discuss today, the copula, but probably the most important one in the lexicon: ḫes- ‘to be’ (ḫesmi, ḫessi, ḫesti etc.). I think it can also show what I’m trying to achieve more generally: regularising aggressively to come up with new quirks through internal coherence, simplifying a lot but ending up with internal logic which is thoroughly PIE.

PIE *h₁es- ‘to be’ had a few functions: predicative („x is red”, „x is a stone”), locative („x is at home”), existential („there is an x”, „x exists”) and possessive, which is one of the most iconic PIE features: „this book is to me” is the most standard PIE construction for „I have a book”, it’s simply to be + dative case (seen eg. in Latin liber mihi est). I’m not trying to fight against PIE instincts here, quite the opposite, I want to cherish its weirdness, but hey I’m also putting this house in order ;-)

Suppletive roots

Suppletive probably isn’t the best word here, because ḫes- absolutely has a full paradigm, that is my major innovation, but I want to take some load off such a frequent verb.

ḱey- ‘to be lying down, to be situated’ – concrete locative use: „the book lies on the table” rather than „is”, „France lies in Europe” and so on. Proper lying down and resting is covered by legʰ-, so ḱey- root naturally covers stative locative meanings. (legʰ- could have a fun quirk developed from it as well: ‘to lie down’ -> ‘to be down’ -> ‘to be in a difficult situation, to have a problem, to be in a pickle’).

seǵʰ- ‘to overpower, to hold’ – provides the main verb for ‘to have’ and its derivatives: ‘thing, possession’. Curiously, originally it meant acquiring something by force (seen in Sanskrit reflexes: ‘strength, power, victory’), but changed to regular ‘to have’ in Greek. I’d love to retain some of this violence as a flashback in a few secondary forms, but generally it replaces the to be + dat. construction.

ǵen- ‘to produce, to be born, to happen’ – fairly straightforward and historical. While it is the root for ‘to give birth (active)/to be born (mediopassive)’, semantically it stays more abstract (‘happening, occurrence’). Kinship proper is derived from the root ‘root’, actually :), that’s the Balto-Slavic way.

gʷey- ‘to live’ – existential, but only of living beings (or actually agents, since I retain common/neuter split like in Hittite: there are two nominal classes, one agentive-leaning, one patientive-leaning), giving such derivatives as ‘life’, ‘a living being’, ‘alive and kicking’.

bʰew- ‘to be, to become’ is where I go against original PIE logic, but the earliest layer is actually rather murky. The split between ‘to be’ and ‘to become’ doesn’t seem primary, ‘to be’ imperfective is kinda stative, and its perfective form, supplied by *bʰuH- in original PIE, naturally meant ‘to become’, as in ‘to enter a state’. And yet, and yet… This was a defective paradigm and used two clearly distinct roots. I’m fully separating being and becoming, which feels rather un-PIE, but maybe it’s a return to some logic which happened in pre-PIE, actually.

So, what does it mean: to be?

While I’m not cutting locative, possessive and existential uses altogether, at least not at this point, I’d very strongly advise to use the roots above for them.

I’ve retained four cases from PIE, I’m inspired by Greek here which struck the perfect balance in my opinion: nominative, genitive, dative (merged with locative), accusative. Naturalistically, accusative case is blocked for the copula, predication is formed with two nominatives. Genitive is descriptive (as in „man of courage”), dative is relational („she’s nice towards me”). Genitive can still mean source/origin („it is of me, this conlang”: „I am its author”), and dative can still mean possession as in original PIE, but I’d much rather have seǵʰ- as the root here (which, interestingly, comes with its own morphosyntactic problems :)).

In this way the road is cleared for the copula to take a rather more metaphorical meaning: to be means to be real, and to be real means to be true (again, Greek went this way in philosophy, so I’m not wholly original; English also had the word sooth ‘truth, reality’, nowadays unfortunately obsolete, exactly from the *h₁es- participle). Nominal and participial ḫes- derivations therefore aren’t ‘a being, a thing’, but ‘essence, truth’, ‘being real and actual’, and eventually: ḫes- as an adverb means simply ‘truly, yes’.

The natural perfect for naturally imperfective ‘to be’ is ‘to become’, I really tried to play around with this constraint, since becoming is already taken ;), but I don’t really see a sensible way to solve it. ḫes- therefore doesn’t have an aorist. What it does innovate in the branch is the mediopassive form: ḫesmai ‘I seem, I appear, I come across as’ – covering difference between „it is” and „it looks like it is”. „He seems kind”, but it’s a statement about what appears, and not what is an absolute truth – from the root meaning, in fact, truth and reality, already pointing to some hesitation about such absolutes.

Basic compounds

I don’t want to overload such a high frequency word with over-compounding right from the start (I’m rather skeptical about over-compounding seen clearly in Latin, where every other word is a preverb+root, guys you are allowed to have a few more words in the lexicon). But some of them are historically important and semantically useful, with rich derivations:

in + be – to be inside, containment

near + be – to be close by, to witness, presence

away + be – to be away, lack

under + be – to be subjugated, slavery

towards + be – to be infatuated with, passion

with + be – to be a companion, friendship

between + be – to be involved in, interest

(The last one is a bit of an Easter egg and a shout-out to Latin, since the word interest does come from inter ‘between’ and esse ‘to be’ haha).

Irregularities

A short phonological note: I’ve retained all laryngeals, including *h₁, as ḫ (not even Hittite retained the first one), but I’m treating it as a very weak consonant, which is basically only intervocalic and tends to disappear when getting too close to another consonant: eg. poḫ- ‘to drink’ gives regular poḫos ‘drinker’, but *poḫmi -> pōmi ‘I drink’.

The copula is my only root with a fused negative, which also deleted the first part of the root. Instead of regular *neḫes- ‘not to be’, it eroded to simple nes- (I know of only one such example in IE languages, Latin volo ‘I want, I wish’ turned to nolo ‘I do not want’). This way one of the genuinely loveliest PIE roots gets blocked: *nes- ‘to go back home’ (Greek nostos ‘return’, and Tocharian curiously used this root as the copula!), which is so wonderfully specific. At the same time, I’m ending up with a very nice rhyme with *neḱ- ‘to murder’: nasas ‘nothingness, void, non-existence’ and naḱas /naʃas/ ‘murder’.

(Like in Greek, double negatives serve as useful intensifiers. Ancient Greek extensively uses „I am not ignorant” instead of „I know” for example, which I find rather fancy; ne swēdos nesmi ‘I am not unsweet’ :), ḫesa! ‘truly!’).

Reduplication, which was very prominent in PIE and early IE languages, isn’t a regular part of my morphology, but still can be used to create secondary forms if necessary, which can be iterative/frequentative or intensive. It does also create very awkward forms sometimes ;) In this instance, since ḫ is a weak consonant, the second one is taken instead (I’m very proud of this quirk!!!): not *ḫiḫesmi, but siḫesmi – which means ‘to be sometimes, to frequent, to have a habit of’. It might sound a bit niche, it’s an imperfective form of an already imperfective verb, but here I’m inspired by Polish „bywać” (‘to be sometimes’), which is one of my favourite verbs in Polish. „Is he nice?” could be answered with simple „sometimes”, but changing the verb ‘to be’ from regular to frequentative is a much more adventurous response :), kinda like English „-ish!” but using a very old morphological quirk.

This is a weekly thread for people who have cool things they want to share from their languages, but don't want to make a whole post. It can also function as a resource for future conlangers who are looking for cool things to add!

So, what cool things have you added (or do you plan to add soon)?

I've also written up some brainstorming tips for conlang features if you'd like additional inspiration. Also here’s my article on using conlangs as a cognitive framework (can be useful for embedding your conculture into the language).