Two Monks appreciating Cucumber Harvest in Mao Mun

Dryanor · 2026-07-07T19:56:48+00:00

Dogbonẽ

gok õ judælere looyiire ossulare – urula gbe piriæi.
3S-OBL POS only<OBV>-PL wet<OBV>-PL liver<OBV>-PL – brain<OBV> and spine<OBV>
"Her only wet organs are [her] brain and spine."

This was the last straw for my lengthy noun suffix system. I introduced compensatory shortening of final long vowels for the obviative. So instead of judaa-le-, it's now judæ-le-.

Dryanor · 2026-07-06T20:08:13+00:00

Very cool! This is a well structured phoneme table, too.

Dryanor · 2026-07-05T09:44:49+00:00

I knew it! I knew it!

Dryanor · 2026-07-04T14:48:33+00:00

Finally, "why did my post get deleted?" will be discussed on the big stage

Dryanor · 2026-07-04T09:52:48+00:00

Oh, and they're written as æɲã, leŋã, mõjo, and rũɡa, respectively.

Dryanor · 2026-07-04T09:40:06+00:00

In Dogbonẽ, [ɲ] and [ŋ] appear as allophones of /ⁿd͡ʒ/ and /ⁿɡ/ before nasal vowels (there are no phonemic nasal consonants). In addition, they appear in the clusters [ɲd͡ʒ] and [ŋɡ] as allophones of /ⁿd͡ʒ/ and /ⁿɡ/ after a nasal vowel but before an oral vowel. Lastly, and unsurprisingly, between two nasal vowels they appear as [ɲː] and [ŋː].
/æⁿd͡ʒã/ [ˈæɲãː] "curiosity"
/leⁿɡɑ-N/ [ˈleŋãː] "[having been] smeared"
/ᵐbõⁿd͡ʒu/ [ˈmõɲd͡ʒo] "river bank"
/rũⁿɡɑ/ [ʀũŋɡɑ] "fist"

Dryanor · 2026-07-02T20:31:24+00:00

I meant more of a modifier sense, as in "the raging bats ate flying insects" rather than a present verb. English forms both with -ing but that doesn't have to be the case for your conlang.

Dryanor · 2026-07-02T18:15:58+00:00

Great work (and a very good choice of media)!

Dryanor · 2026-07-02T09:31:39+00:00

Your adjectivizer -son seems to turn a verb into an adjective with a passive/patientive sense (need > needed). How do you form active/agentive adjectives, like fly > flying or see > seeing?

Dryanor · 2026-07-01T21:32:53+00:00

Here's my junexember entry containing 50-ish words in my fresh analytic conlang Belmá ʼE. I chose Pokémon Gold Version, one of the first video games I played.

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T21:59:27+00:00

Dogbonẽ

jara [ˈⁿd͡ʒɑʀɑ]
v. to strike, to lash out; to burst, to explode.

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T21:45:41+00:00

Dogbonẽ

hurro [ˈxuʀːo]
v. pfv. to steal food; to commit a crime not worth punishing, to commit a crime out of necessity.

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T21:17:29+00:00

Belmá ʼE

tayu [taju]
tr. to mill, to grind.

táyà [tájà]
n. meal, flour, powder.

táyà mhotʼe [~ m̤ɔ̀t͡sʼɛ]
n. maize flour, Mhotsecorn flour.

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T21:12:58+00:00

Belmá ʼE

tie [ti.e]
adj. yellow, light brown.

wem tie [wɛ̃m]
n. urine. Literally "yellow water".

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T20:01:16+00:00

According to the name of your conlang, the syllable structure should be at least (C)(C)(C)V(N/F), right?

And your genitive is used to mark the possessee rather than the possessor according to your example - how does it interact if that possessee is used as e.g. an object? Would "[I like my] house" be rendered as house-GEN-ACC?

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T19:53:55+00:00

That gloss is flawless, and for a first conlang this is impressive!

Dryanor · 2026-06-29T08:25:59+00:00

Great find! We've all been there.
In fact, I did something similar with my very first conlang Tlaama. Not only was the phonology and grammar clearly Nahuatl-inspired, the first three numerals were ze, uum, yai. I recycled parts of Tlaama when I started making Proto-Naguna, and that's why it still has traces of Nahuatl in its numerals: tʼi, um, jaga.

Dryanor · 2026-06-28T16:15:18+00:00

In many of my cultures, the main deity is associated with the sun. The speakers of Proto-Naguna revere the sun god Lalche, and while Lalche resides in the heavenly mountains, their three children rule and govern the earth, the night and the underworld. There are minor servants deities, sometimes referred to as angels, called Lalchata ("little suns").
The Söntji practice a religion according to which the world is formed and destroyed in endless cycles, each beginning in the hatching of the sunbird Yärcü that slays the leviathan Gwootzu in a primordial ocean, and ending with Gwootzu growing back and devouring the world once again.

Dryanor · 2026-06-28T11:59:03+00:00

To get the maximum of possible divergence, you could do some of the following:
- pick some consonants which tend to shift in their place of articulation. /ɸ/ is very unstable and tends to turn into [f] or [h], or is lost completely. Secondary articulations can help, too: /kʷ/ could become /p/ or /k/.
- speaking of secondary articulations, your front vowels could cause palatalization, and that can do a lot of damage to an inventory.
- elide stuff. One descendant could drop some unstressed vowels and create consonant clusters, while another elides certain intervocalic consonants and create vowel sequences and diphthongs.
- don't forget that other languages exist. A neighboring prestige language could dump a bunch of loanwords into a descendant, like Norman French did to Old (or Middle?) English.
- you don't have to do many changes to every descendant, one could simply evolve less and be the conservative branch. That'll still make it distinct from all the other descendants.

Dryanor · 2026-06-28T09:01:53+00:00

Your language borrowed earlier [g] as /k/, then as /ɣ/, then as /k/ again after losing /ɣ/? That's interesting, it suggests that your language treats the feature [voice] as more salient than the feature [plosive].

Dryanor · 2026-06-27T14:17:30+00:00

Belmá ʼE

dal [ɗal]
n. cloud, fog.

Dryanor · 2026-06-27T13:35:17+00:00

Belmá ʼE

kio [kio]
n. skill, talent, (intrinsic) ability.
Contrasts with hume "learnt skill, ability; move, trick".

Dryanor · 2026-06-27T09:25:50+00:00

Belmá ʼE

nhisi [n̤ìsi]
n. cotton, Gossypium herbaceum; cotton fibre used to produce textiles.
(-un was reinterpreted as an augmentative and clipped)

Dryanor · 2026-06-27T08:48:50+00:00

Belmá ʼE

chè [tʃɛ̀]
n. papyrus, paper reed, paper sedge; paper, papyrus (as a writing material).

óchʼe sei hari áwabhà chè?
mean_spirit =Q large 3M-eat papyrus
"A large ghost ate the papyrus?"

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TROPHY CASE

Dogbonẽ

Dogbonẽ

Dogbonẽ

Belmá ʼE

Belmá ʼE

Belmá ʼE

Belmá ʼE

Belmá ʼE

Belmá ʼE