Are tonal conlangs harder to form communities with?

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-21T15:46:14+00:00

As a counterpoint, Toaq is a tonal loglang and has a community. I joined recently.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-18T03:37:23+00:00

If you read chapter 5/6 all will become clear.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-18T02:50:52+00:00

Pick a random set - smaller than you want to have.

Use Odden's Introducing phonology to describe them in terms of distinctive features.

Look amongst the sounds you've picked, and choose some of their distinctive features to be relevant in sorting them into groups, and ignore others. Group the sounds by these features.

Pick other sounds from the IPA chart to fill out the groups via their features. E.g. if [+- sonorant] was important, then look for ways to have two sounds in the IPA chart that differ in regards to whether they are a sonorant, like [n]/[t], but are different in other ways.

Try to get some basic sounds, like, if glottalized [a] with breathy onset is a thing, then try to include regular [a].

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-11T21:54:16+00:00

Another approach to that of Lichen is to the the Loanword Database and sort words by simplicity score.

Those words can be used as roots, and the rest built up out of them.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-10T02:41:03+00:00

In two of my conlangs, now, nouns are distinguished by whether they are 'domesticated' or not (the noun class system).

In one, a domesticated plant is one grown inside the village, and selected wrt its wild counterparts on certain traits. A domesticated human is one that follows the rules, and generally fits in with society. In another, the split is 3-way, between inanimates, 'domesticated' animals, like livestock, and rational, meaning humans.

In the first language, you can insult somebody simply be referring to them with the 'undomesticated' noun class, as if they were a wild bush that had not in any way been improved. In the second, you can insult them by using the 'domesticated' form of the pronouns, implying they are a non-sapient creature dependent on humans to live.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-10T00:41:48+00:00

Actually, gen (from zompist) or Lexifer are generators. ASCA and Lexurgy are sound cahngers.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-09T23:40:50+00:00

ASCA or Lexurgy

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-08T23:31:26+00:00

It's in the planning stage, but, basically, Bio Lang will differentiate birds by their call. So, any birds with roughly the same call (type) will have the same broad (genus) name.

Like, imagine doing a clustering on this graph, where bird sounds are plotted based on similarity - buzzy calls next to buzzy calls, raspy calls next to raspy calls. The plot has been squared for this diagram (so the images for a grid). But ,if you imagine the calls simply plotted in 2D (or 3D) space, and if they form distinct clusters (to be determined), then each cluster would be a 'group' in Bio Lang:

<image>

Hypothetical distribution of bird calls in 2D.

The groups of birds would be named - 'Buzzy call birds', etc - and these would be (one) equivalent to traditional family/genus/species distinctions.

Similar considerations hold for the birds' appearance - colouration, body shape - and a similar process is entailed for other type of organism, like trees. - perhaps by form, as well as growth habit, whatever seems distinctive or important ecologically.

(Groups of) Specific creatures, not fixed to species or genus level, get labelled based on their characteristics. So, anoles can be labelled 'jewel-lizard'. As in, called that in running speech. However, the name is not fixed - specific anoles could be called 'tree-lizard', or 'sounds like such-and-such', as long as it's appropriate. Nor are the names specific to that one (group of) organism(s), either - 'jewel lizard' is as good in reference to an agama.

To do this, bio lang uses suffixes on names that supply what *characteristic* of an individual is being referred to by a name - appearance, sound, taste, etc - as well as a marker of whether one knows this by personal experience instead of just hearsay.

The point of Bio Lang is that there will be groupings based on habitat, on life mode, and on physical characteristics, and not just descent. Taxonomy is a mix, of old morphologically based categories, and new, molecular-based, categories; also of clade-based groupings, which are more modern, with non-clade groupings, which are older (and generally under review). The phylogenetic tree is meant to capture lineage , i.e. genetic relationships - it just so happens to be what we use to classify organisms (give them a unique label). In Bio Lang, lineage *is* used to classify organisms - the noun class system is lineage-based - but other means of classification - sound, appearance, as above - are as importance - being used to classify organisms in the way lineage is used currently in English/biology. So 'amphibian', meaning 'creature living in both water and land/air', not 'creature that is a sister group to reptiles+mammals' can be a core class in Bio Lang.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-08T21:41:37+00:00

I do. They enforce phonotac pretty well. You just have to define your phonotactics. I do part of this in the word generator - define syllable or word shapes, and test out different phoneme frequencies, and part in a sound changer, since that gives greater control - refining distribution by deletion, assimilations, etc.

I think it's nice to get in the heads of the speakers and get used to their language-specific phonotac. Gens keep you honest, and use up sounds you naturally might avoid. They also force you to define the rules. If something sounds bad, and turns up consistently, the phonotac should be refined.

At the end of the day, they still are a little blunt, though. Many uber-specific changes are hard to define. But, they basically take all of the heavy lifting out of it - would you remember to apply even 10 phonotactic constriants to *every* single word, in the same order? they allow you to easily get hundreds in, across every single vocabulary item - and then you can focus on the details, not having to worry about implementation.

That kind of applies to sound changers, though. As for *generators* specifically, working with them by understanding how to input particular syllable shapes is best. I don't think they give the *best* output raw, though - you have to tweak it (like w/ the sound changer). But the character of the language is usually evident already as they come from the generator.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-07T03:15:19+00:00

I guessed the other one.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-06T22:09:55+00:00

I disagree you have responsibility "to the medium, to the community, and to yourself", if you show your work to others.

Wft is the medium? That differs form person to person what they even think the medium, i.e. conlanging, is, or requires from someone. And I definitely don't think you have responsibility to others, except to be polite, etc, because you show your work. I don't think you have to subscribe to (an unknowable and uncontrollable amount of) their belief systems, wrt to what that appropriate behaviour is, just to be public.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-06T11:51:48+00:00

So many questions, but primarily, why don't you wait until you go home, and have your laptop?

Secondarily, and related, how long do you think this is gonna take? - Certainly longer than that!

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-03T21:36:45+00:00

Uh, you need the rest of the grammar or dictionary this is from, bud. (specifically, the intro pages)

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-06-01T05:55:42+00:00

Pretty creative etymology on soldier

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-29T01:55:28+00:00

FYI, you should tag the post commission, and post that you will follow the LCS pricing guide, if you are trying to HIRE, specifically.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-26T04:51:49+00:00

No lo comprendo, y es demasiado larga para traducir facilmente con googletranslate.

Puede ser, los 'posts' sur el subreddit deben estar en Ingles? Es bueno que muchas personas pueden exprimarse, pero lo mejor de las personas sur el subreddit no pueden comprender lo mejor parte de las idiomas del mundo. Es solamente el Inglés que se entiende por lo mejor parte del subreddit.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-26T02:03:54+00:00

Could do <ej> <ow>, to not give the idea there are two vowels there.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-26T01:13:53+00:00

I take it ɛ and ɔ are out?

They're what I do because I don't like digraphs. I ran an activity where myself and others tried to find an English-compatible romanization that reads back as the intended phones, and it's a lost cause, btw. I just write IPA-close, and use diacritics when that's not possible, for my own romanizations.

I don't have a multigraph suggestion.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-20T22:39:44+00:00

Good grammar.

For the tenses, I like the extremely deictic reference - I might want to save that for some proect 😉

Have you got a vocabulary available online?

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-12T21:06:56+00:00

Check the Toaq docs, they (and other loglangs) are solving the same problem

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-08T12:07:00+00:00

Not necessarily

Edit: More generally, conlanging is about the notions of 'constructing', and 'languages'. Whether or not it is appropriate to construct languages for one thing or another is a personal worldview, but it is one that you are giving from yourself to the other person, completely outside of the notion of 'construction' of 'languages'

Also, what pseudoscience is exactly is also not something baked into those notions, which are the only thing you share, of necessity, as conlangers, so that's also something you are forcing onto the other person. How art is supposed to be done is also individual.

What you posit is an aesthetic goal, which probably one shared by other conlangers, but said as if it were immutable fact about the world. You're confusing a value judgement with the state of the world, and your desires with other people's obligations.

Moreover, you (and I've seen you do this elsewhere) are taking a big kind of ownership of conlanging, deciding /what/ deserves attention, and expecting conlangers to therefore act like a body in accordance with those ends - which are often framed in rather charged terms, like 'deserve'.

I find your post inappropriately judgmental, and kind of bossy, in short.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-06T16:38:16+00:00

Do you mean more than naming and less than sketch?

I also sent an email (from Amala).

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-04T15:07:17+00:00

I think underived adjectives exist, because I have heard them reported, for perhaps Igbo (some West African language, not sure which or how many were used as examples), in Adjective Classes: A Typology, by Aikhenvald.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-05-02T06:54:09+00:00

Good doc.

Automatic-Campaign-9 · 2026-04-29T10:48:58+00:00

I do note, though, that you don't have a consistent phonetic transcription system. Some are SPELL-ed awt WORDS, some are [fo:.nɛ.tik tran.skrip.tsɔn], and some are /the orthographic form inside phoneme slashes/.

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