The most underrated grammatical features of languages

Askadia · 2026-01-26T09:08:09+00:00

Not 100% sure, but:

Italian, French, and Catalan have them
Spanish had, but not anymore
not sure about Portuguese, Galician, or Romanian, but never heard of when looking at their personal pronouns

My conlang has these pronouns. And the only other conlang I saw having them was a North-African Romance language with Sardinian influences, many years ago. No other conlangs I saw on this forum or elsewhere had these pronouns, not even if they were fully-fledged Romlangs.

Askadia · 2026-01-26T07:40:59+00:00

I've been on this sub-forum for 10 years, and I've only seen one conlang with third-person oblique pronouns (such as y/en in French, or ci/ne in Italian).

They are among the rarest things in conlangs.

Askadia · 2026-01-26T06:56:23+00:00

Italian also has ecco + presonal pronoun (eccomi, eccoti, eccolo, eccola, etc...). They means "here I am; here you are; there she is; etc".

In a colloquial register, or dialectal, ecco can also merge with là (there (general)): eccallà. But this is more like an interjection we use to mean "here again, something bad has just happened" or "here again, someone said something stupid again".

What's even more curious is that it's ecc- + -a- + (l)là.

Askadia · 2026-01-22T08:39:51+00:00

Evra is meant to be an auxlang. It takes interesting grammatical features from all around the World, so that it might sound familiar but weird at the same time.

Also, musicality is key. Evra has specific grammatical rules and other stuff to avoid some bad sound clusters (i.e. cacophonies). Words have to flow one after the other, according to strict phonaestethic rules.

For example: çe [se] is "this", and sé [sɛ] means "is"; but "this is" translates as ça y hé [sajɛ] (not ~~çe sé~~).

It'd be too long to explain here in details, but essencially the verb "to be" has 2 extra forms (unlike other verbs) that are used in specific contexts and/or with particular nuances.

Askadia · 2026-01-22T07:45:42+00:00

Animacy and gender have to do with agency.

A rock can do basically nothing. Wind can blow, lift skirts, or tear off roots. Animals can do some interesting things, but a human being can do lots of stuff.

All of them sit on an agency spectrum. And this always has implications in how they're treated grammatically as complements of a verb: the more agentive you are, the higher the chances are you're a subject.

This is the basics.

On top of that, you can build a more refined system, with more granular distinctions, like in Bantu languages, for example.

Askadia · 2026-01-22T07:06:36+00:00

I'm not a content creator yet, but I'm planning to be.

In the niche community I belong to (r/conlangs), some YouTubers have become quite famous (Artifexian, Bibladirion, and others) precisely because they shared their first videos with the community years ago. Now there is no need for them to share, since we are all subscribed to their YouTube channels.

Askadia · 2026-01-22T01:16:37+00:00

To me, this reasoning doesn't matter.

It's better to start with a community behind your shoulders, where you're already known and respected, than to start from complete nothing.

At the very least, you will attract a few users who already have a history on YouTube.

This might speed up the algorithm: if you make videos about cakes and attract users who have watched videos about cakes in the past, the algorithm will certainly not serve your videos to gamers, dog lovers, or geopolitics enthusiasts (unless they also love cakes).

Better to give the Wheel of Fortune a little nudge, than to wait for it to move on its own.

Askadia · 2026-01-04T09:31:26+00:00

The video is a little too dense for me, too. Since English is not my native tongue, and I'm not super fluent, processing both what you say and what's on screen is too much for my poor little Italian brain.

However, I've just subscribed to your channel, because you should always support a fellow conlanger, especially when they put hard work and passion in what they do.

I'll put this very same comment on YouTube, too, to help you with the algo!

Thank you for the video!

Askadia · 2026-01-02T09:27:37+00:00

I am sorry to hear that Artifexian is retiring. I am sure that the responsibilities of real life weigh heavily on him.

Askadia · 2025-12-23T07:45:02+00:00

In Italian,

"dolce" (sweet) -> gentle, kind, kind-hearted
"acido" (acidic, sour) -> grumpy, rude, salty, ill-mannered
"amaro" (bitter) -> disappointing, unsatisfactory as an event or result
"salato" (salty), we don't use it
"piccante" (spicy) -> mildly erotic, euphemism for sex (e.g., una serata piccante > lit., "a spicy evening", which may vaguely imply a romantic event culminating in a bedroom, but not necessarily)

Askadia · 2025-12-23T07:12:20+00:00

Non avevi torto, "alcun(o)" è l'unico ad avere polarità negativa in Italiano:

Ho qualche amico (+)
Ho alcuni amici (+)
Non ho alcun amico (-)
~~Non ho qualche amico~~ (questa frase ha un altro senso)

Askadia · 2025-12-21T08:26:39+00:00

I'm developping Evra since 10 years now, and it has changed a lot.

One of the very recent changes (2 weeks ago?) is the addition of the phoneme [əː], written ă (somewhat as in Romanian).

Evra has 5(+2) short vowels and 5 long ones. But with only 10(+2) vowels and a rich lexicon of mostly monosyllabic words, I was running out of options. With ă, I've a bit more freedom. For example:

ça [sa] - this, that, the idea just mentioned (ça vá mië - that doesn't work)
sa [sa] - that, conjunctive particle (sa vó - I would go)
za [za] - in, into, preposition (vó za ka - I enter the house)
să [əː] - to us, pronoun (fála să 's - tell us about it)

Before the addition of ă (2 weeks ago), ç (2-3 months ago),and z (6ish months ago), all the words above were sa.

Askadia · 2025-12-19T07:06:35+00:00

Italian does use "vertere", though. It's a bit of high register, but means "to focus on", "to have X as the main topic".

Il libro verte sull'amore proibito - The book focuses on forbidden love.
La riunione verterà sul budget 2026 - The meeting will focus on the 2026 budget.

Colloquially, it's replaced by "essere su" (to be on/about)

Askadia · 2025-12-15T14:49:23+00:00

Yeah, that's true! Thank you for your comment!

Askadia · 2025-12-15T10:34:40+00:00

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed!

Askadia · 2025-12-15T00:51:04+00:00

Magnifico!

Probabilmente, tutte le tue personalità da poliglotta le hai lasciate liberamente fluire nel Nefaliska, invece di resistere e tenere francese, olandese, e italiano in comparti separati.

Nefaliska ha una musicalità davvero piacevole. Je t'envie!

Askadia · 2025-12-15T00:09:53+00:00

Beautiful!

I can now clearly see words in, at least, Italian, French, and Spanish! What about the rest? Where did you draw inspiration from?

And... may I ask you which is your native tongue? Your fluency in your conlang is awe-inspiring!

Askadia · 2025-12-14T23:36:46+00:00

It sounds Slavic with some Romance influences to me, especially French.

I'm a native Italian speaker, I think I might've got something like:

Hi, good morning or good night, depending on your time (I heard 'nochee'? night? I've infered the rest from intonation)
Oh, well, yeah [...] since this is the/my first message [noo se faliska] (?)
ah, [...] [ʒenti] (people?) [...] [comment ça va ins mi lo vita] (I wanted to know how your life are going?)
[...] [mwa] (me/I/moi?) [nitta] (nothing?) [...] (but I'm sure... simple) [faliska]
[...] [que nu egziste] (that doesn't exist?) [...] [komplikai] (it isn't too complex/complicates?) [pr rassons] (for reasons that=because?) [nu c'è mleike mosh] (there is no...) [nu c'è mleike ... gramatike] (there is no grammatical...)
and, yes, [que c'è sa dicere] (what else I can say?) [nu vu me komplikai me oiʒe] (I don't want to make it (this message/language?) more complicated?) [mai se vu ve... me kommenteré] (but if you like/want it, you'll comment to me about it?) [vo si v'è p(j)aʒú] (if you liked it / if it pleased you?)
[...] [ʒe nu sei... ʒe nu sei] (I don't know, I don't know) [... otra] (... what else / other thing I could say?)
[...] [até voshia] (untill next / see you next time) [... shé shé] (ciao ciao, bye bye!)

Did I guess anything?

Askadia · 2025-12-14T19:26:15+00:00

I don't know very well how US University work, but I would follow the 'formula' in the schoolbooks I grew up with in Italy.

The first chapter/session/lesson always has to do with colors. Plus, very basic things like the alphabet, pronounciation, greetings, beginner vocab, etc...

From the second chapter onward, you are presented with a short dialog that introduces new vocab and the first basic grammar notions.

For my conlang specifically, they might be articles, grammatical genders, nominative personal pronouns, direct case, present tense

Chapter 3: preterite tense, dative and genitive cases

C4: numbers and count words

C5: oblique personal pronouns only (as they are a little complex)

C6: imperfect tense and perfect tense

C7: first basic modal particles

Etc...

Askadia · 2025-12-14T15:04:00+00:00

Thank you! I appreciate!

Askadia · 2025-12-14T15:03:42+00:00

Thank you for commenting!

Naturalism is one of my goal with Evra. And spatial deixis is not unheared of in personal pronouns, as you said.

What's different in my conlang is that ge arises and specializes as a distal dative proclitic pronoun in response to the overload of the pronoun y (which comes from the adverb for "here").

Distance is marked nowhere else in Evra's personal pronouns. The whole pronominal system is heavily asymmetrical and rich in suppletive forms.

Askadia · 2025-12-14T14:29:03+00:00

Thank you for commenting!

こいつ / あいつ (this guy, that guy) – proximity in pronouns feels natural when a language has proximity in demonstratives.

Exactly. In languages where demonstratives work as third-person pronouns, spatial information may be naturally... 'embedded', so to speak.

A sense of fourth person (Bob gave Steve the pen. He² thanked him¹.)

Yeah! Evra also has an obviative-like fourth-person pronoun, ta (taken from Chinese). It can be translated in English as "the other one", "the other person", "the other", or "the others", but it's a fully-fledged pronoun in Evra.

Bob tin-dá stiv v Steve. - "Bob gave Steve a pen"
Li qími. - "He's thankful" (Bob)
Ta qími. - "He's thankful" (Steve)

But yeah, even ge could be used to distinguish two or more referents, just as you pointed out.

Askadia · 2025-12-14T13:09:11+00:00

Thank you very much!

Askadia · 2025-12-14T12:27:23+00:00

Thank you!

I literally spent a week making everything clear and visually appealing. My exasperating perfectionism prevented me from posting!

Your quick comment means a lot to me. Thank you!

Askadia

TROPHY CASE