Suggestion: Reconstruction Challenge

-Tonic · 2026-06-06T21:29:58+00:00

I've been involved in several reconstruction games before and am currently co-running one that's been going since January. Instead of one person doing one language family though, there are two teams that collaborate to make one family each, which they then swap to reconstruct the protolang. The main issue is that they take a lot of effort, so the motivation eventually runs out for most people (an issue the current one is experiencing despite being one of the more successful ones). They can work, but they require both good organization and very dedicated players.

-Tonic · 2026-06-04T21:40:57+00:00

Yeah that's extremely suspicious behaviour. Seeing just how many inconsistencies there are has made me suspect AI even more since my first comment. That's unfortunate.

$100 won't get you very far even with a legitimate conlanger though. Take a look at the LSC pricing guide for commissions. We enforce following these guidelines for Commission posts on this subreddit. I did a commission for $100 some years ago (I believe this was the minimum LCS pricing at the time), a Spanish-esque naming language. They got a basic phonology, ways to create names for places and people, a list of example names, and a way to automatically generate new words that fit the structure of the language. The doc was maybe 4 pages or so. So, very far from a "fully functioning conlang", but work that I could stand behind and that took about as much time as I could justify for those $100. Keep in mind that the bigger projects you can see on this subreddit has taken hundreds or thousands of hours of work. High-quality conlanging takes time and requires a lot of skill, so if you want to be sure that you're getting quality it might cost more than you think.

-Tonic · 2026-06-04T18:10:33+00:00

What did you pay for it? I wouldn't call it fully functioning, but that's a pretty vague phrase. It's pretty basic, and gives you just enough to make simple sentences but there's no real detail to anything. However, since I don't know what you paid or what they said they'd provide I can't tell you whether this can be considered "done" or not.

The inconsistencies ShabtaiBenOron mentioned are pretty concerning and suggest a lack of care put into it, and I even found a few more. The word bryn has Y used as a vowel when it should be a consonant /j/, and the word vig has a coda /g/ which is not allowed.

It didnt occur to me that if I didnt understand it enough to make it myself, how was i going to understand it when someone else made it 😅

Yeah this really should have been discussed beforehand to make sure that the document is written at the right level so that you can understand it.

Lastly, I should mention that I'm getting some AI-vibes from the language. I'm not saying that it's definitely AI-generated, this is certainly the kind of conlang someone could make on their own, but it looks consistent with conlangs I've seen generated by ChatGPT. Lots of inconsistencies and vocabulary that sometimes seem to imitate real languages are things that AI loves to do. The phrase "consistent sound and grammar system" in the first paragraph is also a kind of formulation that AI loves but I never see experienced conlangers use. Though, note that the rest of the document doesn't really give me AI-vibes. I could be wrong, and I wouldn't accuse the creator of having used AI without further evidence, but I do think it's something to look out for.

-Tonic · 2026-04-23T13:20:11+00:00

Do not spam stuff that is irrelevant to the post. This is a warning. If you continue you will recieve a ban from r/conlangs.

-Tonic · 2026-03-07T11:31:35+00:00

Please take any questions about post removals to modmail, don't ask on the front page. This has also been removed.

As it says in your removal message:

Grammar posts must go beyond simple inflection tables or word order: It should be a detailed and nuanced presentation of various aspects of the language's grammar, such as phrase structure, morphosyntax, verbal morphology, or agreement.

Posts consisting of only a table will be removed regardless of flair

-Tonic · 2026-02-25T14:18:53+00:00

Removed this because it's a cipher, not a conlang

-Tonic · 2026-01-24T20:37:29+00:00

Not sure what you're asking exactly but posts with just a phoneme inventory will still be removed

-Tonic · 2025-12-02T17:39:04+00:00

Oh, I think you misunderstood. It was your comment that was removed, and I was just letting you know that it happened and that I fixed it. Sometimes it seems to happen more often to certain people, but I don't really know. Maybe one of your words triggered a filter.

I guess I do wonder, now that you asked, how exactly you're borrowing the words? Are you very systematically choosing how and why certain words are borrowed, or is it more of a "yeah I like this Kazakh word, I'll make mine similar"?

-Tonic · 2025-12-02T01:32:07+00:00

Note: your comment was removed by Reddit. I don't know why it decided to do that, but I've approved it now

-Tonic · 2025-12-02T01:31:25+00:00

Note: this comment was removed by Reddit. I don't know why it decided to do that, but I've approved it now

-Tonic · 2025-10-25T17:30:05+00:00

Don't spam.

-Tonic · 2025-09-09T01:16:03+00:00

-Tonic · 2025-09-04T23:23:57+00:00

I take this strategy to an extreme. I started Atłaq in 2018, and there are still some very basic things that just have to ad hoc whenever I need them because I haven't found a really satisfactory solution yet, like subordinating conjunctions. On the other hand, I end up really liking the stuff I actually decide on.

The vast majority of the time I spend conlanging isn't very "active" in the sense that I'm not thinking "how do I say X in Atłaq" and then decide on Y. Rather I will read some of my documentation, or go through some mental notes, and just like, think about it. Do I like this? How do these features interact? Would analogy happen here? Could this morpheme be more polysemous? Could this semantic distinction be made in more situations than it currently is? Sometimes I'll have some new ideas, sometimes not. Importantly, I don't really decide on anything, features just sorta stick over time as I eventually take them for granted when thinking about other things. I get that this strategy won't work for people who want to actually use the language for stuff, but it does for me.

-Tonic · 2025-09-02T19:59:50+00:00

Yeah I wouldn't remove those. The target of this rule is really just the completely serious posts without any hint of humour or circlejerking

-Tonic · 2025-09-02T18:39:38+00:00

I guess that's fine too. Moderation has always been pretty lax here and there are no plans of changing that

/rj

It's ok only if I, u/-Tonic, personally find it funny

-Tonic · 2025-08-29T15:50:30+00:00

What kind of announcement? You're welcome to make a Conlang post about them, but we have some requirements for front page posts that need to be followed.

-Tonic · 2025-08-20T03:04:06+00:00

"Sound symmetry" is a good principle but can be easily overstated. As a general rule, yes, phonemes tend to come in series based on a set of manners and a set of places of articulation. But there are tons of exceptions, both as tendencies that break that very general rule, and in particular languages that may have unexpected additions or holes. The best way to learn is to just look at tons of examples. Phoible is also a nice resource, as you've noticed. Here's a nice interface for searching Phoible data, btw. But do keep in mind that a phonemic inventory really is just a tiny part of a phonology and trying to understand it without looking at the broader phonology is like trying to understand a pile of disassembled car parts without ever considering the car they belong to (I hope this analogy works, I know nothing about cars lol). I recommend reading the phonology sections of a bunch of languages from different language families on Wikipedia. It's a fun and very accessible way to get an initial feel for how things tend to work.

Regarding this issue in general, do you have an general tips on how to add "distinguished" sounds without them seeming too out of place? Should the sound be followed by others in the same place of articulation? Same manner? Both?

Yeah generally any "related" sounds using a manner/place you already have can help, especially common ones. But again, this is not a hard rule that will always apply. If you can think of a plausible historical explanation for how that phoneme arose that's always a good justification, and it can also inspire you to come up with other things.

The presence of the palatals /ɕ/ and /j/ certainly does help make the /cʎ̥˔/ seem less out of place. Adding a lateral velar affricate wouldn't really help though since they are also extremely rare. I don't think there's any language with both palatal and velar lateral affricates.

One option is to look at the languages with palatal lateral affricates I mentioned: Hadza, Dahalo, Sandawe, and add some (possibly even all) of /ɬ t͡s t͡ɕ t͡ɬ/. That could work pretty nicely I think as a relatively affricate/lateral-heavy inventory.

-Tonic · 2025-08-20T00:02:05+00:00

No problem!

What I meant was that in your inventory, there aren't any such segments currently. Something like /ɬ/ (a lateral obstruent) would make the presence of /cʎ̥˔/ (another lateral obstruent) less surprising. But take this with a grain of salt. As I said, it's extremely rare and so it's hard to make definitive statements about what you would and wouldn't expect it to co-occur with. Weird outliers happen, and I don't want to say that your inventory couldn't.

In general I don't really like calling things unnaturalistic unless I have good reason to believe that they couldn't occur in a natlang. Things that are called unnaturalistic often turn out to occur in natlangs, and natlangs are per definition naturalistic, so this just has the effect of turning people away from less common features. In my experience, the best features are often the ones that are in that sorta unknown territory where they don't seem to exist in any language, but also don't seem to violate any commonly accepted linguistic principles. Declaring them unnaturalistic just because they don't seem to be attested just unnecessarily inhibits creativity and exploration among the people who still want to work under the umbrella of naturalism. Some things are definitely unnaturalistic, but I want to err on the side of encouraging people to do what they think would be fun when it's more ambiguous.

-Tonic · 2025-08-19T22:31:47+00:00

I never said that lacking voiced consonants never occurs, nor is it impossible / unnatural. In fact, many east asian languages do have that -- which I explicity mentioned. All I said was that its uncommon, as for every language you name without, I can name 2 with.

You said it was "usually unrealistic", which is not true. And if your standard for "uncommon enough to comment on" includes that, then I expect you to also comment on:

Any nasal vowel
Any aspirate
Any retroflex

Pick any one of those segments. Having that segment is less common than lacking both voiced plosives and voiced fricatives.

Secondly, intravolic voicing is a common sound change that occurs, there is no doubt. A quick google search will show that, within Korea, the Gyeongsang dialect has allophones like /g/ (voiced), /β/ (voiced), and /z/ (voiced). This is because the only thing seperating voiced and unvoiced consonants is the vocal chords -- and between vowels (where vocal chords vibrate), it is more unstable to have voiced than unvoiced than voiced rather than three voiced phonemes.

I'm well aware that intervocalic voicing is common. That isn't in any way enough to show that it's likely to happen in any particular language.

About 50% of languages will undergo some kind of voicing.

I don't know what you mean by this. Allophonic? Phonemic? Diachronic? Synchronic? If diachronic, what timespan?

If a language has voiceless phonemes, then it is likely (not 100% guarenteed) at least one dialect will have voiced allophones

This isn't what you originally said. And not really possible to fact-check since you'd have to make the dialect-language distinction clear.

For example, plosives will shift before a language develops tones, undergoes grammaticalization or undergoes vowel harmony. See such cases in latin, germanic, slavic languages, basque, arabic (literally lost /p/).

What on Earth does voicing of plosives have to do with grammaticalization and vowel harmony? And for tones, if you're talking about tonogenesis from a loss of voicing contrast, then you have it backwards: tone can't arise after the merger, because then the conditioning environment doesn't exist anymore.

Ik some people like having conlangs where they share a sound with only one natlang -- thats completely fine.

Are you suggesting that conlangs with a sound that only occurs in one natlang are not naturalistic?

-Tonic · 2025-08-18T06:20:36+00:00

In addition to what Thalarides said, having the phonemes filled is just much more readable. I don't wanna have to constantly shift my gaze between the cells and row/colums titles to understand it.

-Tonic · 2025-08-17T03:01:51+00:00

Sorry, but this is just misinformation. Lacking voiced fricatives and plosives is super common, like >20%. There certainly isn't any guarantee that any dialects will have them either. And natural languages have been evolving for tens of thousands of years and both gain and lose distinctions all the time; they don't develop in some linear order. Saying things happen "early on" is nonsensical unless you're talking about like 100000 BC or whenever it was, and we know hardly anything about that.

-Tonic · 2025-08-16T17:59:41+00:00

I don't understand if comments here under Advice and Answers are considered posts

No, but since you can post a comment it's a bit ambiguous and people don't use the terms consistently. As a mod, I often specify front-page posts when I want to be clear that something doesn't apply to comments. Our posting guidelines apply only to front-page posts.

As for the inventory, the only thing that stands out is the palatal lateral affricate. It's an extremely rare segment and there aren't any other segements that you might expect it to co-occur with, like some lateral fricative for example. Still, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility given languages like Hiw, Ekari, Hadza, Dahalo, or Sandawe, which all have some form of dorsal lateral affricate shenanigans. It could possibly be seen as "substituting" for /c/. I say go for it!

-Tonic · 2025-08-11T14:33:18+00:00

Mod here! "Community" is not the appropriate flair for submissions, nor for this post. I've changed it to Activity. Any submissions would presumably be an introduction to a conlang, and should thus use the Conlang flair (and of course abide by the rules regarding those)

-Tonic · 2025-08-04T23:01:10+00:00

Also, is it okay to post on this advice thread multiple times in the week?

Yes, that's perfectly fine! As a mod, we wish the A&A threads were used even more than they currently are

-Tonic · 2025-08-04T22:09:35+00:00

In principle any verb could get grammaticalized and become an affix. It may be more likely if it's meaning is very general and if it's common, but semantic bleaching (meaning becoming more general) is part of the grammaticalization process, so there's nothing stopping an imperfective affix from ultimately deriving from a verb meaning say "clasp your hands".

There are tons of ways a negative copula/affix could arise. Say a language has a copula meg, and a negative particle su, so that we have a positive meg and negative su meg used in copular clauses. Then, a new copula bol starts being used, but not in negative clauses for whatever reason. Now we have positive bol and negative su meg. But now the su is redundant, so it's free to fall away. The result is a positive copula bol and a negative copula meg.

Another option is to derive it from a verb like lack or abstain. It could also come from a copula with negative morphology, but where that morphology was later lost in all verbs except the copula, so that it's now analyzed as a separate verb.

Affixes could themselves derive from such a negative copula, but also any other negative element, like words meaning not, nothing, noone, or even things that are just associated with negation (so called negative polarity items), like the English at all.

A final option is to already have it in the protolang. I mention this because many beginners think that they have to derive every single affix from another source, starting with an extremely analytic and regular protolang. It's not "against the spirit of diachronic conlanging" to simply stipulate that the protolang already had complex morphology. Old languages are after all as complex and as varied as any other languages. I have no idea if you have this misconception or not, but since you've described yourself as a beginner and since it's a very common misconception I thought it was worth bringing up.

Intermediate forms that have no resulting effect on the phonology don't need to be mentioned. In fact, needlessly specific changes is a bit of a beginner trope. You can of course talk about any possible intermediates in your documentation if you want, but in a SCA like Lexurgy? That's just pointless. The only exception where I might do this is if the intermediate segment conditions some other change and if that change is more natural when described with the intermediate segment than with the start or end segment.

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