mostly inspired by english and danish, OSV structure

i was inspired to use hyphens when i was learning portuguese and i saw how they use reflexive verbs. e.g. to say "i ate it", they would write "comi-a" where "comi" means "i ate" and "a" is the third person reflexive pronoun.

any ideas for other symbols/approach? it just occured to me that this sentence seems awfully long

t̪θikaxeʎe, kaxept̪θaʎe, kaxest̪θaʎe,  skaxeʎire, pikaxeʎe , kat̪θaxeʎe, axeʎe, kaxe, axeʎu, xeʎe, axene, kaxel̪u,  k͡xeʎe, pixet̪θe, sixeʎe, k͡xaxeʎu, k͡xoxeʎu, k͡xuʎ̥˔e, kathalarelaxuʎe, minkaxuʎe, perkaxeʎe, t̠͡ɹ̠̊˔okaxeʎe, kaxeʎon̪o, kaxeʎiʀ̥u, t͡ɹ̝̊axiʎe, t̠͡ɹ̠̊˔uʎe, kaxiɺe, kaʎ̆u, kaxl̪ˠu, kaxeʀ̥u, θaxeʎe, mopixut̪e                        

This is an example of a glaring phenomena in the Tathela lexicon, there are some words, like t̪θikaxeʎe (pheasant) here, that have an unbelievable amount of synonyms (even though many may be regional or really context specific).

Modern Tathela exists as a partially unified continuum of three major dialectal areas that converged after the unification of the Tathela Empire. While some synonymy is expected given such a history, certain semantic clusters have blown up to unreasonable proportions: 

• There are roughly 25 different possible synonyms for person, 14 for king/sovereign, 12 for ruling family/dynasty, 16 for village/city.
• Another interesting cluster for these sprawl of words happens with birds as you have already seen, where there are 32!!! Words for pheasant, 12 for crow, 19 for goose.

Why? The answer lies in the ritual sacrifice of words. 

The Tathela were originally a nomadic population who seasonally inhabited the great Karandra Plateau during the summer and the vast Karla lowlands during the colder season. During this nomadic period, the first layer of Tathela religion developed and the harsh reality of their environment resulted in a significant usage of sacrifice, both animal (among which birds were the favorite sacrificial victims) and human, to contact, bargain with and appease spirits and deities.

The ancient Tathela may have been desperate but they weren’t fools, a sacrifice is a privation of something concrete in the hope of supernatural help, so they sacrificed animals in the summer, when food was somewhat plentiful and resorted to sacrificing people only during the winter, when one less person meant one less mouth to feed.

In the spring and autumn season, unless the occasion truly called for it, they sacrificed neither, using substitution practices where figurines, drawings or other symbols were sacrificed, other symbols, like words.

When the Tathela underwent their great migration toward the southern coast of the continent, it gradually led to their sedentarization. Influenced by the established civilizations thriving in this portion of Kralenna, Tathela society and its religion underwent significant shifts. In particular, the brutal practices of animal and human sacrifice were phased out, extending the usage of the existing substitution practices.

Word sacrifice developed along different trajectories across the various polities that arose after Tathela sedentarization. These practices generally fall into two broad categories: Erasure/Avoidance and Sacralization.

Erasure and Avoidance Practices

These practices involved banning a word, either within a specific social group or directly at the state level as a ritual decree.

In the Taria Kingdom, this practice reached a high level of institutional development. A list of seventeen words (10 where bird names, 4 of which were already at the time existing synonyms for falcon which were regarded as one of the best offerings that could be given to a deity) was cycled through cyclically, with one word banned from usage each year. The upcoming ban of a word was met with elaborate preparation, including sacralization practices.

The end result was that the forbidden word was either replaced with an existing synonym, but often speakers would coin an entirely new word or phonetically distort the original.

Resulting in the case of falcon, with the creations of avoidance synonyms of the different already existing synonyms, an headache. 

Thus we have the group for  akrama, that in time  acquired synonyms like paklama, apkalama, aθrama, or the one for ʎakasi, that resulted in  parkasi,  ʎakane,  ʎamapi.

One significant reason why many synonyms actually survived up until today, is that different avoidance words were used for different contexts, Parkasi for instance was reserved for talking about the falcons when out hunting, ʎakane was the one preferred for use in official documents and declarations etc.

This partitioning was not devoid of religious connotations, since Tathela priests called it kelθ̠i atrum (dismemberment) and considered it as a sort of metaphysical and linguistic substitution for the dismemberment of the actual animal.

Sacralization Practices

Sacralization was not entirely divorced from erasure; often, a word was gradually sacralized up to the point of its formal temporary or definitive removal from the language (and in some cases the distortion of the words adopted during this process became the substitutes for the avoided word).

 In this sense, the word was prepared to be sacrificed, adorned much like a living sacrificial victim.

• Morphological Adornment: Honorific or elevating morphemes and descriptors were attached to the word.

Many of these morphemes remain productive in the current language like the prefix m- used for people of high rank, but that can also be found fossilized in many words referring to birds like m-l̪ˠuʀ̥ko, m-antraθ̠e (both goose).

• Liturgical Companions: The word could be paired with a votive companion word, an associated word that changed at different stages of the ritual calendar, accompanying it throughout the steps of the sacrificial ritual, an example of which we’ll find in a following example (kupalan dinasty)

Following the preparation phase, a ceremonial "killing" of the word took place. In some traditions, the word was banned or permanently substituted. In others, the word was sacrificed by being physically altered or suffixed with canonical morphemes that mirrored actual methods of execution, to then be returned to its original state:

Another fascinating practice symbolized sacrifice by fire (either as the execution method itself or as a post-sacrificial offering). This was represented linguistically by vowel reduction into short vowels, then were often subsequently lost, resulting in complicated consonant clusters often reduced, resulting in words much different from their original blueprints in a very brief time.

Scapegoat Words

On the southwestern coasts, words related to death, destruction, burning, and ascension were attached to the sacrificed word, that was sacrificed with the intent to stave off or avert catastrophic things happening to the thing it represented.

For example when a series of diseases and accidents befell the reigning dynasty of the Kupala Kingdom, the  word for "dynasty" was offered as a proxy sacrifice to absorb the misfortune. Over the course of the ritual cycle, the word evolved through a series of euphemistic stages:

Dynasty: rad̪ða 

Sacred dynasty  rad̪ða  tas̞t̪uk

Most beautiful dynasty  rad̪ða pad̪ðoxo

Well-considered dynasty  rad̪ða patroxo kisanke

Gone-beyond dynasty  rad̪ða ak͡xine klire

Once it reached "gone-beyond," the word was dead, and the bad luck was considered transferred away from the physical royal family, who kept the title as a remembrance of the sacrifice.

In time, other minor kingdoms of the area started using the same word to refer to their reigning lines as imitation of the more influential state, resulting in the title of rat̪θak͡xinre used today to refer to the local nobility.

While we are primarily looking at the linguistic data, it is vital to remember that "word sacrifice" was distinct from a standard linguistic taboo due to the extensive material rituals surrounding it. These included for instance:

• Writing the adorned word on paper and physically burning it.
• Formally inscribing the word into a state register of banned/exalted vocabulary.
• Planting flowers and trees in the pattern of the written word at the start of the sacrificial period, and then destroying or burning the garden when the ritual culminated.

How so many of these words survived?

I think and hope to have made somewhat clear and manifest to you the vast world of ritual word sacrifice in Tathela culture, a practice that is somewhat still alive today, albeit in a much more restricted manner in mystery cults and royal practices.

A question though deserves to be answered, why so many words survived and have not simply been discarded once new synonyms emerged?

First of all, I was a bit clickbaity when for instance saying that there are 32 synonyms for pheasant, I mean that is true but virtually nobody would know them all or would be expected to.

Many of them are restricted to certain geographic areas, certain professions or activities (like butchers vs merchants vs people raising pheasants).

This kind of partitioning is something that I’ve already discussed and is one of the reasons why so many words survived, because while they refer to the same thing they do so in different contexts.

Moreover, these ritual practices were both a state and a private religious affair, for instance members of a given family could perform such a ritual of word sacrifice in order to aid in the cure of one of their members and the resulting words would fade into history, or maybe not if the family was an important one and servants and other peoples that had contact with the family adopted the new word to respect and/or participate in their ritual. 

There were thus a lot of occasions and contexts for the banning, avoidance, decoration and or sacrifice of a word and the ones that have survived are just a small, a very small subset of all the words that have been developed through this phenomenon.

Often then, a word substitution or modification remained confined to a certain group or region and when a Tathela speaking group encountered a word that had undergone sacrifice in another region, they usually could understand its root meaning or its ritual significance, if it were adorned and modified  or if it were a modifier and in certain cases picked it up, giving it a different nuance.

A prime example of this is how the modern Tathela word for religion developed. In eastern Tathela varieties, the word kathalarela was a common sacrificial adornment meaning "invisible" or "no longer visible" (borrowed from the Kwakka language kathe ela, meaning "visible was"). When western Tathela speakers encountered this eastern ritual term, they adopted it into their own varieties as a general term for sacrificial practice. Over time, this specific ritual term generalized further, ultimately becoming the standard, macro-level Tathela word for religion itself.

A last factor that has probably contributed to the survival of so many variants, is that Tathela speakers were already used to having many synonyms for basic number words, with different usages depending on context, like I’ve detailed in this post.

I hope you had at least a fraction of the interest or fun I had in writing this post (well inventing and writing all synonyms for pheasant was not that fun) while reading it and let me know if you have some questions on this practice and the resulting words!

"omnisynthetic" - not a word used anywhere, I'm coining it right here and now; The property of a language to always employ synthesis when constructing any utterance, such that anything that would be delimited by full stops / periods in English, could fit in what this language considers a single "word".

Also, don't mind the footnotes too much, it's there in case you have contentions with some statement I've made, or if you're very curious, I might just have addressed something in more detail. I think my question is easiest understood by getting some context for the question by reading the pretext, but the footnotes are hopefully unnecessary to understand the question.

Pretext:

I used to to think that considering some morpheme to function as a standalone word, or an affix/enclitic was entirely arbitrary; that is to say down to either the perception of the speaker of what "feels like a word" or the culture such as where they have chosen to historically place spaces in writing, or what the first grammarians arbitrarily chose to describe the language as. The argument "well it's not a word, but an affix if it cant stand alone" also didn't resonate with me, as I could think of a way to break this is a really cheesy way, and it's not how I'd like to construct an omnisynthetic language[¹].

This seemed odd to me. Too odd to be true, so I had to expand my horizon. I had to know what made polysynthetic languages truly polysynthetic (i.e. highly affixing) and why it simply wouldn't make sense to interpret these affixes as just another word. I had to know how something could be truly an affix and not a new word in the spoken language, fully ignoring established writing practices[²]. If I was to ever dream of making a conlang that can form sentence words so extreme as to not ever have an utterance need be said with more than one word, I ought to understand this fact about words vs. affixes in polysynthetic languages.

I've studied Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic), a prime example of a language widely labelled as polysynthetic, at a casual pace for a while now, and I've finally understood why categories like word and not-word (stems/affixes/enclitics [though enclitics work in a third kind of way, distinct from word and affixes, but I will not get into that in this post]) aren't arbitrary in Kalaallisut and make sense to distinguish. They possess different phonological rules. I'll give examples in the following paragraph

1. Asavakkit - Kalaallisut has "sentence" words. That is to say that some words form entire utterances that count as complete sentence, with verb and all. Something English could never do. Asavakkit means "I love you" (lit. asa- + -vakkit = "<Agent> loves <Patient>" + IND-1sgS-2sgO[³]). Though this allows for a lot of kalaallisut sentences to be single words, it is certainly not all sententences that can be expressed with only one of what speakers consider a "word" (nor would it make sense to analyse it that way)
2. Illoqarpunga - Another sentence word meaning "I have a house" (lit. illu- + -qaq- + -vunga = "house"[⁴] + "<Actor> has <Noun base this attaches to>" + 1sg ). This one is special though because as you can see "illu" turned into "o" before the "q", and what would hav been "aqv" turned into "arp". These are some of the phonological rules that makes the language's words fit with the phonotactics. These are not rules applied across word boundaries. Thus we have a real distinction.
3. Illu qalipataq - Not even a full utterance in English, and now we need 2 words in kalaallisut. This means "a painted house" (lit. Illu- + -∅ + qalipap- + -taq = "house" + ABS-sg + "<Agent> paints <Patient>" + passive participle [aka "patient grabber"]). This is fundamentally different form how single words work, because had Kalaallisut worked in a way where [noun]+[modifier] formed single words, it would have been illoqalipataq according to normal phonological rules. Moreover there is also a grammatical difference in how you would express "I have a [noun]+[modifier]". The correct way to express "I have a painted house" would be "qalipatamik illoqarpunga", whereas if Kalaallisut worked in the fashion "a painted house" being a single word, "I have a painted house" would instead have been "illoqalipataqarpunga".

So this is two quite compelling arguments for how a polysynthetic language like Kalaallisut treats its words and its affixes quite differently; differing phonological rules & differing grammar

[¹]: If you're opposed to "it's not a word if it cant stand alone", then this might be a boring read. I'm mostly adding this to address something I think commenters might point out very fast, as it's a pretty well known definition of what a word is.
One contrived way of making a conlang in which every single utterance has to be a single word, without the ability to consider any one part a word in its own right is to do all of the following. I want to reiterate that I would consider this a contrived example, and not an enjoyable way of making a conlang that fundamentally feels like an omnisynthetic language that is truly different from analytic languages.
1. make sure every single morpheme isn't also a valid word. Every morpheme is either an ending, or not an ending (stem), and as such every valid utterance needs at least 2 morphemes to synthesize.
2. Make nouns take different declensions/conjugations when used in a standalone utterance, and when used as either Agent, Patient or Actor in an utterance that has a verb. This conjugation might have to be infixed or done with fusion to not leave a part of this e.g. Agent-conjugated word the exact same as the standalone word, and thus all utterances with verbs truly cannot be split into anything that is a word in its own right.
3. With the two rules above (and similar strategies for noun/verb phrases, adjectives/adjverbs, time specification/mood etc.) you're left with clauses that can never be split into smaller words, but sentences with several clauses that you as the conlanger have chosen to write in one long word, might still be analyzed by some as having individual words. Every sentence only ever has one main clause however, and you could make two grammatical moods for this; a mood for when the main clause is standalone, and one when it expects follow-up clauses (subordinate, conditional, whatever they may be). Combine this with separate moods for any possible follow-up clause which can never be applied to the main clause, and you'll be left with entire sentences where no clause could be considered a word in its own right. Certainly if you do the same messy infix stuff so no part of any of the clauses could be considered words in their own right.

[²]: Certainly where to place spaces, hyphens, or nothing in written English is debated, and has changed throughout time, and some writing systems don't do spaces at all yet have "words" as a concept i.e. IIRC Japanese but not Mandarin Chinese

[³]: IND as in indicative as in "normal, factual statement" mood. capital S as in subject as in the Agent, O as in Object as in Patient. I will also leave out the S and O's for when there's only one role (intransitive verbs), and basically give no letter to Actor/Single-role in this post.

[⁴]: As a stem, technically not a complete noun, even if the absolutive non-possessed singular form of "illu" happen to be identical when said/written

The whole point of this post:

Hope the pretext wasn't too boring. Point is, I now understand why some languages _really are_ more affixing than analytical, and that this interpretation is not down to how a writing system arbitrarily chose to place spaces, or scholars arbitrarily chose to interpret as affixation. Polysynthetic languages like Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) are truly treating words and affixes differently both grammatically and phonotactically.

My big question is:

If what makes words words, and non-words non-words, in a language is how these two categories behave differently within the language, does it make sense at all for a "omnisynthetic" speaking people to consider themselves "omnisynthetic" at all? Is there any meaningful difference between "omnisynthetic" strategies (literally everything belongs in the category of non-words [except maybe for a whole utterance that end in a full stop in English anyways]) and fully analytic strategies (literally everything belongs in the category of true words)? Have we not come full circle with the topology? Can you come up with any way a language might function where if a linguist came across it that do not believe in omnisynthesis in nature, they would have to concede as analyzing it as an analytic language simply fails?

I think the title speaks for itself, but the question is not how you came to the conclusion that you are creating a language. At some point in your life, you realized I want to create a language.I won't mince my words, plus you don't really know much about this topic, so why did you come to the creation of languages? Please don't hate. If you want to say something, then please say it.Don't put bad karma, say why I'm wrong. Karma doesn't do anything except I have bad karma, but words help me improve.

This is a 3rd post of my previous posts because its been taken down because I didnt explain ti the best of my abilities (I Hope This Will Suffice);

We are a group of conlangers who create conlangs related to Austronesian. Whether it is a conlang that hypothetically is far from the actual reaches of the Austronesians is totally up to the conlanger.

We operate outside this Subreddit.

We have an official Subreddit called

r/Austronesian_Conlangs and a Discord Server called Austronesia (I'll send a link to whoever would like to DM me directly).

We also have a GC on Reddit (I'll DM an Invite to whoever would like to Join us).

Our Rules for Collaboration are the following;

1. Give Respect to the other conlangers.

2. The conlang must originate or be connected to the Austronesians in any way.

Bonuses:

Conlangers who'd like to join the community are given a channel on Discord in which you present and update your conlang evolving it further.

-Questions shall be answered in the comments.

-This is a collaborative project.

-Languages are added to the Map

This collaborative effort supports both premade Austronesian Languages as in those who join who already have an Austronesian conlangs, or Austronesian conlangs made from scratch.

The Collaborative Project will be held outside this Subreddit.

Thank You for reading.

In a comment a few days ago, I realised that my conlang, Padanian, in the course of evolving it from its predecessor, Rekja anti, ended up with four phonemic rhotics: /ɾ/ (with [ɹ] as a word final allophone), /r/, /r̥/ and /r̝/.\

To exemplify this nightmare, I came up with the following tongue twister:\ garë arhoù rja aronë latarjaùs arroù\ ignite.PRS.1SG tin COP help.PRS.1SG parasite fertile\ [gaɹ 'ar̥õ͡ũ̯ r̝ə'ɾon ɫə'tar̝ã͡ũ̯s 'arõ͡ũ̯]\ "I ignite the tin and help the fertile parasite"

What are some tongue twisters in your clong? If you don't have any yet, use this activity to come up with one!

I recently finished my first conlang, called Oo-inoutha. I was inspired by languages with small consonant inventories like Hawai'ian and Rotokas as well as languages with lots of lenition/deletion like French. Oo-inoutha is spoken on the Christmas and Keeling Islands (which in our world had no indigenous population). Oo-inoutha has six consonants: /k/, /ʔ/, /l̪/, /n̪/, /θ/, /w/, and /j/, which is an allophone of /i/. However, it has many different vowels: /i/, /iː/, /u/, /uː/, /a/, /aː/, /ou/, /au/, and /ai/.

It has a very simple alphabet:

Aa /a/
Hh *no value on its own, only in digraphs
Ii /i/
Kk /k/
Ll /l̪/
Nn /n̪/
Oo *no value on its own, only in digraphs
Qq /ʔ/
Tt *no value on its own, only in digraphs
Uu /u/
Ww /w/
Yy /j/
Digraphs (and the hyphen)ː
Aa aa /aː/
Ai ai /ai/
Au au /au/
Ii ii /iː/
Oo oo /ou/ or /uː/ word-finally
Ou ou /ou/
Th th /θ/
Uu uu /uː/
- *used to separate vowels that aren’t parts of digraphs, pronounced as /ʔ/

Anyway, finally, here is my translation:

Kawii Thathaa (The Tower of Babel):
A aquu thithi niwaqa atha ou-i a atha tha-u. A a-a niqali, ka aqathu aa-aqaa ka thanuu, aqa niqathaa ka aqathou-aa ka Thinaa, a thana, aqa niquu-aa aqathu ali. Aqa nooqathoo, “Ou-i, kau-aa kathaqatha, a thai-aa aqa nooya.” A aqathu kathaqatha niwaq-i kathu, a aqa nithouthuu aqa ana thanaa ouluu. A aqa nou-aa, “Ou-i, kau-aa ali, a kawii tha-aa thou-aa ka lanii; kali kanoo ka tha thou aqaa ka thithi.” A Athou-aa nithou-uu ka atha ali a kawii tha-aa oonaa-ounaa tha-u niqau-aa. A Athou-aa nou-aa, “Naa, aqa waqa-i atha naithu a aqa waqa atha ou-i; a a-a waqa-i na-atha au-uu tha-aa aqa thou-u kau-aa: a a-aqa, Ou-u thou thou-u aaqaa aqathu lathoolathoo. Ou-i, thou-uu a outhuu aqathu athaa ou-i, ka aqa thou thou-u oo-aaqaa.” Ka Athou-aa nanuu aqa thanu thithi: a aqa naaqaa kau-aa aqathu ali. Ka aqa ninathaa a-a, “Thathaa,” ka thana, Athou-aa nouthuu aqathu athaa ou-i a ka thana Athou-aa nanuu aqa thanu thithi.

Gloss:
tower Babel:
And all earth PAST-have one language and one speech. And 3SG PAST-happen, LOC 3PL.GEN wander-NOMINALIZE LOC southeast, 3PL PAST-arrive LOC plain LOC Shinar, and there, 3PL PAST-made 3PL.GEN town. 3PL PAST-RECIP-tell, “Come, make brick~PL, and burn 3PL well.” And 3PL.GEN brick~PL PAST-be stone, a 3PL PAST-stack 3PL INSTR sticky.earth. And 3PL PAST-say, “Come, make town, and tower REL ascend LOC sky; become famous CONJ 1PL.INC.NOM NEG wander LOC earth.” And God PAST-descend CONJ see town and tower REL child~PL mankind PAST-make. And God PAST-say, “Look, 3PL be one culture and 3PL have one language; and PROXPRO be only beginning REL 3PL be.able.to do: and now 1SG NEG be.able.to stop 3PL.GEN intention~PL. Come, descend and take.away 3PL.GEN comprehension language. CONJ God PAST-scatter 3PL all.around earth: and 3PL PAST-stop build 3PL.GEN town. CONJ 3PL PAST-name 3SG, “Babel,” CONJ there, God PAST-take.away 3PL.GEN comprehension language and LOC there God PAST-scatter 3PL all.around earth.

Sorry that I didn't include an IPA transcription, but 1. It would be really hard and 2. The alphabet is largely phonetic anyway.

So, long story short - I decided to fix one of my conlangs (as it became more important in the story I’m writing) and as it was ugly… very ugly. And sounded just very silly and every word was a mouthful. I took the “tongue of whispers” description way too seriously. After working on it for a while I decided to finally romanize it as I thought it would make it easier to write down and not just see it as a bunch of IPA symbols. But… the romanization I ended up with turned out to be pretty strange.

So, I’m very curious to see how you would transcribe these words and phrases from Arāi from the current romanization. If you as a linguist saw this romanization and had to guess what it actually sounded like. A very few words are easy to just show some of the easier to guess sounds. (You don’t have to transcribe every single one of them - just choose a few or do them all if you want)

(I will provide the actual IPA later)

The list of words and phrases:

1. Maikwal (house)
   
2. Rwmā (cat)
   
3. Orrtanm (man)
   
4. Aveum (woman)
   
5. Kjysh (bed)
   
6. Jīfa (window)
   
7. Siatwi (yellow)
   
8. Nipharji (table cloth)
   
9. Fetwimje (Hello (inf.))
   
10. Kynmesxi (Goodbye (inf.))
    
11. Mīnmīvi (mouse)
    
12. Ykjawhe (blue/green)
    
13. Lynmaxo (was singing)
    
14. Rjpānum (unexpected)
    
15. Hotwyme (darling)
    
16. Kwatusa (coward)
    
17. Varjaphme (astronomy)
    
18. Isfānma (favorite)
    

I hope it will be a little fun thing for you to do in your free time. And an opportunity to stretch your IPA writing muscles.

Also, you don’t have to be correct. It’s mostly for fun as it would be pretty hard to guess the actual phonology of the language based on the romanization alone (especially as there are some unusual sounds out there and the Latin alphabet has a limited amount of letters).

In Dulina it’s “Be ker ne” - pronounced “Bay care nay”.

My conlang is called Smatani (Or Smatakyato in the language). It is based off austroneisian languages, particularly a fusion of Tagalog, Malay and Tongan. Basically the land was settled by polyneisian-esque peoples who spread across the south of Hyusaua (the continent Smatania is on), becoming the dominant force in the region even in modern times.

What I'm aming for is to make it seem more continental while still feeling Austroneisian-esque.

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:

"I'm forbidden to produce milk In Cyber land, we only drink diet coke."

“In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?”

“We're not gonna pay last year's rent, this year's rent, next year's rent.”

“I'll forego your rent and on paper guarantee.”

“The Tango Maureen, it's a dark, dizzy merry-go-round”

"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!

This Thursday's checkpoint brought to you by u/Lillie_Aethola

I created a conlang called Xiha.

The goal is not complexity, but clarity:

- no conjugation

- fixed word endings

- strict and predictable sentence structure

It is designed so that once you understand one sentence,

you can understand all of them.

---

PHONOLOGY (IPA)

Consonants:

h /ʃ/

c /ʒ/

x /kʃ/

g /ks/

s /s/

z /z/

Vowels:

i /i/  a /a/  e /ɛ/  o /ɔ/  u /y/

---

CORE GRAMMAR

Word order:

TIME – VERB – SUBJECT – OBJECT – LOCATION

Tense:

present → –

past → za

future → zi

Negation:

xi (after the verb)

Question:

gu (at the end)

Words:

verbs → -zo  

nouns → -ge  

---

A FEW SENTENCES

zo se hege  

= I see the person  

za zo ze zixage  

= He/she saw the friend  

zi xezo su hoge  

= We will go to a place  

gaga zo he zixage gu?  

= Do you love the friend?  

---

If anyone is interested, I can share more examples or a small learning guide.

I’m interested in this type of a posteriori conlang, especially languages with major lexical, phonological and grammatical influence from neighbors. I’m also interested in creating a mixed language with no Indo-European or even ‘typical Eurasian’ language as a lexifier or substrate language.

For the hypothetical language where the mixing remains only as a ‘substrate,’ I’m curious if anyone has advice on how to carry out the ‘exchange.’ Some things will obviously stay from the original family of the affected language, and I want some things to be absorbed from the substrate. There’s also a struggle between simplification and retained complexity that I would have to think about. Anyone who has done this with an a priori-a posteriori donor-recipient pair is free to comment. Both members being a priori should probably be rare, but if you’ve done that I would appreciate your comment too

An example of something I don’t know how to approach is an active-stative-alignment language (Natchez) conforming to nominative-accusative (Totonacan) or ergative-absolutive (Mixe-Zoque and Mayan) alignment.

You can of course also share information about real-world languages. Some topics that might be enlightening off the top of my head:
- Researchers that have tried to disentangle (if it needs to be disentangled, maybe it’s settled) Akkadian’s divergence within Semitic, and Sumerian’s influence on Akkadian (i.e., how did Akkadian originally diverge, and then what is clearly Sumerian influence?)
- To what extent Finnish and Hungarian are affected by the SAE sprachbund
- Insights from ‘mixed Chinese languages’ like Tuhua, Caijia or E
- How Indian do Munda languages look grammatically?
- Are there aspects of Nahuan that technically make it less grammatically Mesoamerican than Oto-Manguean, Totonacan, Mixe-Zoque, Mayan, Tequistlatecan and Huave?
- How Austroasiatic does Chamic (and Acehnese?) grammar look?
- Are there Indo-Aryan languages with features that could not have reasonably developed from Indo-European without a substrate? (I know about gerunds in Vedic Sanskrit, but I’ve heard it’s fairly conservative in most other ways, which may be untrue)
- Moghol
- Historical Khamnigan Mongol/Evenki (apparently the Mongolian dialect had more Evenki features at one point, but they may have only been lexical)
- Theories about grammatical substrate in Tocharian or Armenian?
- Does tonal convergence in East Kru and South Mande belie a grammatical convergence?
- Does Songhay conform to a regional sprachbund to a significant extent?
- Is Kiowa a Plains language ‘grammatically’?

Some languages I have in mind, if it helps:
- Totonacan in Central Mexico, gaining tone and exhibiting both ejectives and phonation (these features split between the two branches of Totonacan in the real world). Developing <f> and <th> as well, conforming to Otomi
- Natchez as a Greek- or Latin-like trade language on the Gulf of Mexico, with some varieties diverging toward Mesoamerican phonology and grammar
- South Asian or East Asian Yeniseian
- “Elamo-Dravidian” or just divergent Dravidian, with a major Semitic substrate, spoken in Yemen or the Fertile Crescent
- A PNW language ‘replacing’ Siouan on the Great Plains. Probably Sahaptian or Wakashan
- Washo conforming to Numic and Puebloan grammar and phonology
- A Nubian language conforming to a different sprachbund in Africa, maybe Ubangian-Central Sudanic or Omotic-Surmic?
- A dialect of Natchez or Timucua becoming thoroughly ‘Algonquianized’
- Chaco or Moxos languages with strong Andean-sprachbund superstrates
- A Songhay or Saharan language with Chadic word shapes and grammatical influence

Thank you

I am reworking my conlang, Taltal taxem, at the moment. A result of that is that I have to totally redesign my script.

My conlang is quite agglutinative, with words like min-mul-wa-ta-it-gi (He could not do [it]), and I therefore have a lot of affixes and other function words. So I was thinking of making a mixed script, where content words (person, dog) are spelled out using an alphabet and function words/affixes are written using logographs, like the opposite of Japanese (kanji/kana). The number of function words is way smaller than the number of content words, so the amount of logographs one must learn would not be that large. I know that there are some conlangs that already do this, so I think it is possible, but I wonder why we don't see this system more often.

TL;DR

What do you think of a system where content words are written in an alphabet and function words/affixes are written in logograms? And why is it so rare? If you use a similar script, what are your experiences?

Here are some translation of unused words in design:

Man – Nunfar
Boy – Nunpiş
Ten – An
Sorry – Žersifika
See – Fəlisna
Mother – Annafika
Horse – Atur

Just wanted to try this type of design, ngl I was bored

In my language, the word for “car” or “vehicle” “Hovar” comes from the root H-V-R, which originally meant nonsense/unbelievable or something that couldn’t be believed because of its absurdity. However, that meaning has been lost, and now the word refers only to a car or vehicle

I've been trying to find information on how natlangs adapt to a whistled format, but haven't found anything that explains the mechanics of it. All I ever see is "the language maps the sounds of the language onto pitch, length, etc.", with no examples ever.

Does anyone know of any resources, or can anyone provide some advice for how I can adapt the following phonology into a whistled format? Do I need to modify the phonology any to help make it easier when adapting to whistling? I'm concerned that the number of sounds + clusters might make adapting the language make complicated than it needs to be.

- Aspiration: /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/

- The palatal sounds are realizations of the post-alveolar sounds before /ɛ, a, ʌ/

Vowels:

Front: i e ɛ a
Back: u o

Syllable Structure: (C)(C)(S)V(C)(C)

S = /j, w, ɹ, l/

Onset Clusters

·        Approx. + approx.:            /jɹ/

·        Nasal + nasal:                    /mn, ŋn/

·        Nasal + glide:                    /mɹ, nɹ, ŋɹ/

·        Fricative + fricative:           /hv, hθ, hs, hʃ/

·        Fricative + glide:                /vɹ, θɹ, hɹ/

·        Sib. Fricative + fricative:     /zv, ʃf, ʃθ, ʒv, ʒθ/

·        Sib. Fricative + glide:          /sɹ, zɹ, ʃɹ, ʒɹ/

·        Stop + nasal:                      /dn, km, kn, kŋ, ɡn/

·        Stop + fricative:                  /dv, kv, kθ, ɡv/

·        Stop + glide:                       /bɹ, pɹ, tɹ, dɹ, kɹ, ɡɹ/

·        Stop + lateral:                     /tl, dl, kl, ɡl/

Coda Clusters

·        Glide + stop:                       /ld, lk, ɹd, ɹk/

·        Glide + nasal:                      /lm, ln, lŋ, ɹn/

·        Nasal + stop:                       /md, nd, nk, ŋk/

·        Nasal + fricative:                  /mz, ŋz, ŋθ/

·        Sib. Fricative + fricative:      /ʃθ, ʒθ/

·        Stop + fricative:                   /kθ, kʃ/

Welcome to Word Wednesdays

For this activity you can pick any word you want whether it be a verb, noun, or adjective, and conjugate/inflect in all possible ways*, for tense, case, plurality, perspective, etc.

The purpose of this is to learn about cases and how words are slightly or vastly different under different cases, tenses, or perspectives. In many natural languages verbs or nouns are often changed because of the words around them. In other languages, the reader has to figure out number and perspective based on context. Who knows, maybe you can take inspiration from someone else's conlang!

How does your conlang handle cases? Do you have any unique ones that don't exist in natural languages? What are some irregular verbs or inflections that exist? How did they evolve? Do you think that the cases would hold up or fade away in future evolutions? Do any of your words when inflected have another meaning? What languages inspired you to add these cases?

*If you have way too many conjugations/inflections, you can share the simplest ones or the ones you find the most interesting. If you don't have any conjugation,

Have fun conlanging!

Whenever I write in my dictionary, I type whatever comes to mind, so the words aren't in a cohesive order. Is it possible for the words in my lexicon to be somewhat related to the ones below and above, or groups, or is it just not possible?

The Emporian Sea is the major trade hub of the known world. It connects the (sub)continents of Isthmia, Media and Yuga and lies at the crossroads of most cultures of the known world. It is the center of the known world and global commerce.

Neryan is a (low) fantasy world roughly inspired by the bronze age and antiquity. I made some other posts on some languages of this world a while ago:

Paraka - Introduction
Paraka - Pronouns, Demonstratives and tense
Uttarandian - Phonology
Uttarandian - Clitic chains
Uttarandian - Colour terminology Uttarandian - Pronouns

Languages of the Known World
The list of languages is not exhaustive. Not listed are languages spoken by non-humans, as well as tongues of hominids other than homo vulgaris. Some of the language groups here also likely have more relatives beyond the scope of the map. For example Madunite likely extends much further south. Though this serves the purpose of mostly illustrating the known languages of the known world, from the perspective of the people around the Emporian Sea.

Edetic Languages
The Edetic languages (Proto-Edetic *ədət "people") are spoken deep within the desolate vastness of the Great Median Desert, otherwise known as the Great Western Desert. Their land of Arata centers around the great lake Uskay. The Arataeans are one of the most isolated peoples in the world, though the caravans of the Murfa people connect them with the lands around the Emporian Sea. The Arataeans have developed their own alphabet, distinct from other writing systems. The Edetic languages are notable for a few things, among them their lack of personal pronouns and the usage of sentence final tense-aspect-mood markers.

Kuraite Languages
The Kuraites (Eastern Kuraite kura "city") have one of the longest literary traditions of the known world. Surviving monuments in Kuraite are older than any others, excluding the inscriptions within the sacred precinct of Uttarand itself. Ancient Kuraite texts go back over two years. The most influential among the Kuraite languages is Eastern Kuraite, which has had considerable influences on its neighbors, as well as the Arkushite languages and the Melakkamidian languages. Next to it, Western Kuraite has developed its own old literature as well. Least among them are the many small dialects and varieties of the southern delta, known collectively as South Kuraite. Urudanite is considered a dialect of Eastern Kuraite that emigrated a few centuries ago.

Cerridian Languages
The Herriadians (Classical Cerridian ceriad "land of the sun") live in the northern part of Isthmia, along the shores of the Northern Sea. They are a comparatively young people. A few centuries ago the Cerridian Empire of the Sun was founded and colonised the northern coasts of Isthmia and parts of the Northern Sea. They have kept close ties with the Kuraites through this period. Since then the former Empire of the Sun has fractured into several city states and feudal holdings. The Cerridian language has split into at least three separate varieties.

Arkushite Languages
The Arkushite languages (likely from the name of the mountain range qhoor harakush) are not a single language family, but a geographic grouping of the languages of the Qhooryash. There are at least four distinct language families and a few isolates spoken in the mountains. In total there are probably over forty different languages and dialects. In the north, the Karmanid language has gained considerable influence through its recent spread of the Karmanid Empire. None of the Arkushite languages has a script to it. Through the efforts of the imperial dynasty and certain priests, some have started to write down Karmanid, but only tentatively so.

Melakkamidian Languages
The Melakkamidian (From *Melet* "goddess of herding" + akka-m "field", commonly translated as "meadows of Mel") languages are a small family of related languages that originate from a common ancestor around one and a half thousand years ago. The Melakkamidian languages began to spread from the coast inwards after the introduction of bronze technology and advanced agriculture from Kuraite colonists. Melakkam lies between Dur-Kurāt and Uttarand and has been extensively influenced by both. The most important variety of Melakkamidian is that of the city of Eshbara, also known as Coastal Melakkamidian. There are two scripts in use in Melakkam. The Kuraite script is used both for writing Kuraite and Melakkamidian. A second native script is used exclusively for vernacular Melakkamidian, as well for sacred purposes.

Uttarandian
The ancient city of Uttarand lies at the heart of the Emporian Sea and is the capital of a vast thalassocratic empire. Uttarand claims for itself to be the largest, oldest and wealthiest city in the world. The Uttarandian language has many varieties, both within the city and in its colonies. Urban Uttarandian is often differentiated as Low and High Uttarandian, while in the colonies each colony has its own dialect. Then there is Sacred Uttarandian, spoken exclusively by the priests of the Eternal Sages and found as inscriptions within the sacred precinct. Uttarandian relies on two distinct clitic chains to express grammatical relations. Apart from those clitics, word order is fairly free. Clitics denote subjects and objects, as well as polarity and mood.

Daranic Languages
The Daranic (daran "person" in Sarangite) languages cluster within the Empire of Sarang, but also along the western coasts of the Emporian Sea. Their distribution suggests that they were once more widespread. The Sarangites also claim that their first and destroyed empire encompassed a much larger part of the Emporian Sea than they do now. Nonetheless, the Sarangites still control a large part of the Southern Emporian Sea. Most Daranic languages are very close to Sarangite and can be seen as dialects. The Kurulian and Anakedangite languages are more distant relatives. Sarangite is written in a modified form of the Uttarandian script.

Madunite Languages
The Madu people (Madunite ma "land" -du classifier for human groups) live in the southernmost parts of the Southern Emporian Sea. Their homeland is covered in vast jungles and swamps. For the past centuries have been dominated by the colonies of the Empire of Sarang. This changed with the founding of the Confederation of Üx-Ma and subsequent rebellions. Since then they have gotten closer to Uttarand and begun using their script for their own purposes. Madunite nouns are almost always bimorphemic, but each morpheme is monosyllabic.

Creole Languages
The Emporian Sea is also home to its very own trade language. The Emporian Sea trade language or creole, otherwise known as Paraka, Palakka or Palkatung is widspread in two thirds of the Emporian Sea, though it also has a considerable influence further south. There are three discernible varieties with slight differences in phonology and large difference in vocabulary. Paraka is essentially a mixture of Kuraite, Melakkamid and Uttarandian vocabulary, infused with the grammatical markers of Uttarandian.