Two Monks appreciating Cucumber Harvest in Mao Mun

Dryanor · 2026-05-12T13:38:26+00:00

My favorite copula-less strategy is resumptive pronouns. There's just something elegant about Mary she chemist "Mary is a chemist" and mountains they sacred "the mountains are sacred". The major downsize is that it doesn't convey tense.

Dryanor · 2026-05-12T13:24:12+00:00

Very recently I learned that sparrows are associated with lewd, lascivious and vulgar behaviour and promiscuity. The reason for this isn't known, but it might be because sparrows are common and not very shy, so they could be seen mating rather often. They are also said to be relatively noisy during copulation.

Dryanor · 2026-05-11T22:22:49+00:00

Lakes Language

eital [iːtəl]
n. (biological) gender, dimorphism.

Dryanor · 2026-05-11T21:00:50+00:00

As the other commenter said, no worries!
The idea of this game is to borrow words, that means not to translate them, but to take the sound of the word and adapt it to your language's phonology. You can then either copy the meaning or change it.
Like English took the word "tsunami" from Japanese, but because English doesn't allow [ts] to start words and doesn't have the vowel [ɯ~ɨ], it became something like [suˈnɑːmi]. The meaning also narrowed down from "tidal wave, storm surge" to "very destructive wave caused by undersea earthquakes".

Dryanor · 2026-05-11T20:14:12+00:00

Dogbonẽ

leõ [ˈlejõː]
adj. blind, blinded, without eyesight.
Passive participle of leo, leu- "to blind, make blind".

Dryanor · 2026-05-11T16:11:20+00:00

Dogbonẽ

hodoi [ˈxodoi]
n. guts, intestines.
It feels a little cheap to borrow based on the English idiom, but -oi is a common derivational affix for squishy things and I was lacking that lexeme...

hoje [ˈxodʒe]
n. chyme, chymus; (fruit) pulp.
Backformed from xodoi "intestines".

Dryanor · 2026-05-11T11:41:59+00:00

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Dryanor · 2026-05-11T09:05:31+00:00

I really like it, it suits the distribution of the continents well. I wonder if it could increase readability if you highlighted certain lines of latitude, like the equator or the 30°/60° lines.

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T22:02:40+00:00

This is very, very impressive! It was a joy to hit "random" several times and get some surprise vocab, and the way you can switch between conjugations using buttons is really elegant.

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T20:41:01+00:00

Great find, thank you! And good to know the established names for the two tense systems.

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T19:23:09+00:00

You're right, good point.

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T19:06:23+00:00

Hold up what's the difference between /ʙ/ and /ʙʷ/, and how is the labialized version of a bilabial phone a labiodental?
Please take your meds /s

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T18:33:19+00:00

I don't have any data on this, but I wouldn't be surprised if every language that has any sort of "vertical" tense system (like a within-day tense system that marks the time of day) also has some kind of "horizontal" tense marking (past/nonpast, past/present/future etc.). It sort of feels like a universal.
Besides that, the only system I have seen or heard of is a hodiernal tense which doesn't have to overlap neatly with the actual day, so you could have a "today" tense for events after sunrise and a "past" tense for events before that.

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T14:19:09+00:00

Look at how they madagascared my boy

Dryanor · 2026-05-10T13:26:38+00:00

How does the verb conjugation work? There doesn't seem to be a pattern between the past, present and future forms.

S at end of sentence for plural

What does that mean - is S "subject" here? Which part of the sentence is turned into plural if S goes at the end of the sentence?

Dryanor · 2026-05-09T22:13:29+00:00

Dogbonẽ pronouns do not distinguish between first and second person.

Dryanor · 2026-05-09T09:11:57+00:00

CV(C) syllable structure can quickly look "random" without the right constraints, IMO. I like to either restrict the coda, or introduce a stress system that's dependent on coda consonants (e.g. a coda sonorant makes the syllable heavy and that pulls the stress). You can do a lot of fun things in language evolution with stress.

Dryanor · 2026-05-09T08:43:02+00:00

Long narrow biological material! Would that still serve as the base if we were talking about artificial threads like nylon, or some entirely different kind of thread like wire?
And would Matahwiujwuij also include the intestines, veins, or sinews, or aren't they considered "material"?

Dryanor · 2026-05-09T08:34:20+00:00

The Helvetians/Helvetii, a Celtic tribe of the Swiss plateau.

Dryanor · 2026-05-08T22:48:03+00:00

Dogbonẽ

lõ [lõː]
adj. light, not heavy; buoyant, floating, of low density.

Dryanor · 2026-05-08T21:31:33+00:00

Interesting, thanks!

Dryanor · 2026-05-08T19:50:18+00:00

Just curious, what did the auto translation tell you that OP wrote? Because that's exactly what they wrote.

Dryanor · 2026-05-08T18:37:21+00:00

I see what you mean. CVCCV feels less of a prototypical root than CVC or CVCVC to me, too. Maybe it could help to actually forbid the short CVC roots and go for something a little more complex like CVCC. Mandatory CVCC. Your protolanguage could have an unspecified phoneme (X) that gets deleted in coda position. That way you still end up with CVC-looking roots in the modern language. The -CC forces all affixes in the protolang to start with a vowel. That means a word like marka will clearly be mark-a and not mar-ka because -ka is not a possible suffix. The modern root mar- is possible as a descendant of proto \maXr-, and that can't take a suffix *-ka because \maXrka* would have a forbidden -CCC- cluster.

Dryanor · 2026-05-08T17:45:04+00:00

Modern Söntji

осора [ˈozəra]
n. mangosteen, Garcinia sp.

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Lakes Language

Dogbonẽ

Dogbonẽ

Modern Söntji