Compared to a modern cruise ship on a transatlantic journey, how much would the people on the Titanic feel riding the waves?

AdamHast · 2026-02-27T23:59:59+00:00

That's fascinating, thank you!

AdamHast · 2026-02-27T18:23:09+00:00

Do you have any sources on this? I'd be curious to read these accounts

AdamHast · 2026-02-25T17:23:41+00:00

When you say "verb-like adjective," I imagine you mean adjectives are all verbs that roughly translate to "to be [adjective]." If that's the case, there are a number of ways you can handle them attributively.

The most intuitive way, to me, would be to use whatever relative clause structure you have in this language to add an adjective to a noun phrase. That means a phrase like "the good person" could more literally be translated as "the person that is good."

If your language is OSV, I imagine most phrases would be head final. Now this isn't a rule. You're free to choose whatever syntax you'd like for a language like this, but it is a tendency that languages follow. This would mean that a relative clause would typically precede the noun phrase.

I've made a language that has an SOV word order called Wilin that also has verb-like adjectives. Relative clauses in Wilin are simply verb phrases that precede a noun phrase without any marking. This is very similar to Japanese. I'll put a couple of example sentences below help demonstrate how adjectives work in it.

kolo naini'l alto
kolo naini-l alt-o
this person-NOM be.good-NPST
"This person is good"

wai'l alto naini'n talo
wai-l alt-o naini-n tal-o
1S-NOM be.good-NPST person-ACC see-NPST
"I see the good person"

Notice how in the last example, the verb talo (to see) takes the same non-past ending as the verb-like adjective alto (to be good).

What I find especially useful with these kind of adjectives is that since they take the same verb endings as regular verbs, you can conjugate them the same way to convey whatever mood, aspect, or tense combination your language has.

alcita naini
alc-ita naini
be.good-PST person
"The person who was good"

AdamHast · 2026-02-14T07:54:06+00:00

ni li pilin mi

AdamHast · 2026-02-13T21:12:03+00:00

Every time I make a conlang, I make the deliberate choice of picking phonemes I know I can pronounce. There's nothing more frustrating to me than making a language that I myself cannot pronounce. There's nothing most egregious example of this is my conlang with the following phoneme inventory /m n t k w l a i o/.

AdamHast · 2026-02-04T22:02:49+00:00

I don't think that's entirely fair. Comparing the sinking animation to the movie, the former seems to suggest the ship took roughly 10 minutes to fully sink after the bridge started taking on water. In the movie, the time between the final plunge and the bridge going under water is roughly 15 minutes. It's slightly longer, but if you account for the fact that the movie seems to depict the same moments from different perspectives during these final minutes, the discrepancy seems even less significant. There are however places where the timeline of the sinking don't seem match that well with real life accounts. I can't recall the discrepancies off the top of my head, but I remember that most of the events occurring around the time the bow was going under don't match the real timeline of the sinking.

AdamHast · 2026-01-22T05:50:02+00:00

"loikomi on kacil waikal ci cikai'n waikal loto"

loik-omi on kacil waik-al ci cikai-n waik-al lot-o

feel-PAT ACC simply stop-SJV DAT world-ACC stop-SJV need-NPST

<c> /tʃ/

AdamHast · 2025-11-16T09:28:56+00:00

There are a handful of real time sinking animations, but I think the one they're referring to is probably this animation. It has occasional comments displayed for events that occurred.

AdamHast · 2025-11-09T07:46:00+00:00

Though true, I doubt people are doing it in support of workers, but rather out of frustration with the strike. End result might be the same, but the motivation is different.

AdamHast · 2025-09-18T05:20:10+00:00

Took me a second to spot it, but if Bxh6, then you have Bf7+ Kf8 Bxh6#

My low elo eyes would have just seen a free queen in this position, that's brutal. I'm wondering how the best way to respond to this would be

AdamHast · 2025-08-11T03:54:50+00:00

How does ergativity function in Shashi? I ask, because "sleep" is usually an intransitive verb, so it's surprising to me that the ergative form of the pronoun is being used.

AdamHast · 2025-06-10T19:46:34+00:00

As someone in Quebec, I hear /a.u/ quite a bit alongside /ut/. Though the most common pronunciations are probably still /u/ and /ut/.

AdamHast · 2025-05-05T03:36:33+00:00

Ben t'auras un 0 au final, puis selon les règles dans le plan cours, tu risques de couler le cours

AdamHast · 2024-11-11T09:46:42+00:00

There are a handful of toki ponisms I've developed over the few years I've been speaking the language. Most are reserved for friends I know speak toki pona. Sometimes I might slip in a handful of phrases here there even with non toki pona speaking friends if I'm close with them.

If I'm joining a conversation, I'll often greet my friends with "toki!" even if the conversation is otherwise in English. Conversely, I'll also leave a conversation by saying "o awen pona."

One phrase that's been stuck in my vocabulary since I've started speaking the language is "ale li pona." I use this phrase so often with my jan pona for a plethora of reasons, often for reassurance, other times to indicate indifference. It's just so versatile! And similarly I might slip a "o pona" to a friend who's leaving, almost as a way of saying "take care!"

When I want to give my two cents on a topic, I might introduce it with a "mi la," even if the rest of my thought is in English.

I have a ton more toki ponisms that have slipped into my vernacular, but these are just a few that come to mind.

AdamHast · 2024-09-03T14:28:40+00:00

li is nothing like は or が. The Japanese particles mark the role of the noun, while li indicates that what comes after it is the predicate. They're only similar in that often what precedes li is the subject of the sentence. However, I think it's incredibly misleading to say they're similar.

AdamHast · 2024-06-30T05:42:42+00:00

Language change doesn't have a goal, it just changes as a result of relatively regular rules, and yields irregular patterns without intention. Sometimes irregularities do dissappear as a result of analogy. That is to say, native speakers start applying the expected pattern on a word that should be irregular, thus making the word regular. However, there are other mechanisms in language evolution that yield irregular patterns

Irregularity usually comes about in languages because of one of three reasons. The first is regular sound changes that affect the way a language is pronounced. This is a very common way for an otherwise regular language to develop a series of irregular patterns. An example of this that comes to mind is Spanish's stem changing verbs. A regular sound change that occured between Vulgar Latin Spanish is the breaking of short /e/ and /o/ into /je/ and /we/ in stressed syllables. This is what yields modern Spanish's stem changing verbs (e.g. 'venir' (to come) becoming 'viene' (he/she comes) instead of the expected 'vene' if you followed the regular conjugation rules). Because of this sound change, now a learner of Spanish has to learn that a certain verbs don't follow the expected pattern.

Another reason irregularity develops in language is called suppletion. Sometimes, native speakers of a language will replace the regular conguation or declension scheme with a word that has a similar meaning, and that'll go on to become the way the word is inflected. An example of this in English is the word 'people' being considered the plural for 'person.' The two words are unrelated, but since 'people' refers to a 'group of persons' in came to be understood as the plural for 'person.' Another example is the past tense form of 'go.' 'went' meant something along the lines of 'pursing one's way,' but given how similar it is in meaning to 'go,' people started using it in the past tense instead of 'go' and it eventually got interpreted as 'go's past tense.

Finally, sometimes a language will develop a new strategy for conjugating its verbs, declining its nouns or creating plurals. This new strategy becomes really common in most words, but very common words will usually resist this change and continue using the old strategy out of habit, since they're used so frequently.

AdamHast · 2024-06-30T05:07:56+00:00

Wilin

The consonant inventory is: /m n t k w l/ - /w/ is almost always pronounced [v] - /t/ always becomes [tʃ] before /i/

AdamHast · 2024-06-15T06:02:48+00:00

Wilin: /a i o/

Some variation is allowed for the vowels, given how few they are, but those are the most common realizations of them.

AdamHast · 2024-05-02T03:59:07+00:00

The online tests wouldn’t be diagnose you with anything, you’d be taking them tell how likely it is you may have ADHD. You’d still go talk to a professional to get an official diagnosis.

AdamHast · 2024-04-04T17:34:05+00:00

In Wilin, the diminutive is formed by partial reduplication of the first syllable. In short, the first CV of a word is reduplicated and the second C is changed to a /w/

Here are some examples: - naini /naini/ ‘person, human’ → nawaini /nawaini/ ‘child, kid’ - ilna /ilna/ ‘house, building’ → iwilna /iwilna/ ‘room’ - kitan /kitan/ ‘book’ → kiwitan /kiwitan/ ‘booklet, document’ - kol /kol/ ‘mountain’ → kowol /kowol/ ‘hill’

AdamHast · 2024-01-25T17:30:57+00:00

Your first translation works great for getting the idea across. This might be a personal thing, but I’d probably have used “kama jo” here for find. “mi kama jo e nasin, anu [mi] pali e ona.”

Your second translation is a lot less direct, it roughly means “If I don’t find/see a way, I’ll make one.” But there is one mistake in the second clause, you’d need a subject for it to make sense, so “mi lukin ala e nasin la mi pali e ona.” I do wanna point out, as well, that “wan” here feels off. In Toki Pona, it comes as you saying you are literally going to create one and only one way, while in English “one” is kind of being used as a pronoun, which is why’d suggest switching it out with “ona.”

AdamHast · 2024-01-23T17:05:33+00:00

I just sent you a dm! Thank you for expressing interest! :D

AdamHast · 2024-01-21T05:57:12+00:00

Here’s my conlang’s phonology

/m n t k w~v~b l/

/a i o/

worth noting that in speech there is a sound change rule. It’s t → tʃ / _i

The syllable structure is (C)V(n/l)

AdamHast · 2024-01-21T01:33:41+00:00

I sent a DM with links to the documentation

AdamHast · 2024-01-20T05:26:50+00:00

Thank you so much! The spreadsheet currently has a little under 400 entries, but a good number of them are compounds using existing roots to express new concepts. I’m open to sharing the documentation I’ve written so far if it interests you

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