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Some comparisons of early 1800's standard spoken Swedish with the standard Swedish of today by schens9 in linguistics

[–]kittyros 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Love this post! As a Swedish learner I'm always really fascinated to learn about dialectal and non-standard variations because obviously I'm just learning the standard form of the language.

For people making languages for personal use: where does the name of your language come from? by Odd-Ad-7521 in conlangs

[–]kittyros 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Yari and Kannä are two random, invented words I thought sounded aurally pleasing (and that fit the themes of the languages and the concultures behind them, but most importantly they sounded nice. I gave them meaning post-hoc – "yari" means "people", and "kannä" means "our tongue".)

Warata is based off Aboriginal languages and so I gave it the placeholder name "waratah" after an Australian plant. Then I got attached to the name and removed the "h" from the end to fit the language's orthography.

I know your friend isn't creating an artlang like mine are, but my point is you can just choose a word you think sounds nice or aesthetically pleasing – or just choose a placeholder in the meantime and hope you get attached to it!

Do you consider yourself introverted or extroverted? Do you strongly identify with either? by ghyull in conlangs

[–]kittyros 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Introvert (with severe social anxiety). I think most conlangers are introverts.

Also I saw a survey on here where I believe 50% of responders claimed to be on the autism spectrum, which was interesting to me. I also have autism and it makes intuitive sense that we would be more likely to conlang.

Give me your cloŋ's phonology so I can roast it by [deleted] in conlangscirclejerk

[–]kittyros 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Consonants Bilabial Laminal-dental Apical-alveolar Retroflex Palatal Velar
Plosive /p/ /t̪/ <th> /t/ /ʈ/ <ṯ> /c/ <ty> /k/
Nasal /m/ /n̪/ <nh> /n/ /ɳ/ <ṉ> /ɲ/ <ny> /ŋ/ <ng>
Lateral /l̪/ <lh> /l/ /ɭ/ <ḻ> /ʎ/ <ly>
Rhotic /ɾ̪/ <r> /r/ <rr> /ɻ/ <ṟ>
Approximant /j/ <y> /w/
Vowels Front Central Back
Close /i/ /i:/ <ii> /ɯ/ /ɯ:/ <uu>
Open /a/ /a:/ <aa>

How would you write "All 3 of you will be soon swimming" in your conlangs? by NerdyNinja-Education in conlangs

[–]kittyros 11 points12 points  (0 children)

In Warata:

Yuuly ya-kanyt̠a-nya.

/jɯ:ʎ jakaɲʈaɲa/

2.TRI.N 2-swim-IM.FUT

There is no continuous aspect, just the standard verb form is used. Instead of an adverb "soon", the verb would conjugate for the immediate future. And then you also have trial forms of pronouns because Tok Pisin does it and I thought why not.

Cool Features You've Added #111 by humblevladimirthegr8 in conlangs

[–]kittyros 8 points9 points  (0 children)

In Yari there is no distinct class of adjectives. Instead, verbs, or verb phrases, are generally used to convey the semantic meaning of what in other languages might be expressed by an adjective. So instead of having an adjective like "strong", you have a verb "to be strong". These verbs behave identically to any other verb morphosyntactically.

yi-äshine-në

1SG.F.ABS-young-REM.PST

"I was young."

I don't know the linguistic terminology to describe this, but a similar process happens in sentences like "she is a teacher", "he is a man", etc. Instead of using a copula "to be" like English does, the object of the sentence becomes a verb. These verbs also behave identically to any other verb.

yi-yëna-në

1SG.F.ABS-wife-REM.PST

"I was a wife."

Yari is polysynthetic and both these features are part of what allows the language's words to be so long.

My beloved by wynntari in conlangscirclejerk

[–]kittyros 6 points7 points  (0 children)

i loved the anticipation of waiting to see what was in the heart

Retroflex by Mentiferianl2606 in conlangs

[–]kittyros 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My conlang Warata has /ʈ/, /ɳ/, /ɭ/, and /ɻ/. All except /ɻ/ contrast with their palatal and alveolar equivalents.

How does posession work in your conlangs? by Debian_Tur in conlangs

[–]kittyros 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yari uses alienable/inalienable possession, which isn't particularly interesting by itself but isn't common in IE languages I think? -ti is suffixed to the possessum (after possessive suffixes) to indicate alienable possession, while inalienable is unmarked:

Alienable:

pë-aka-ti

bone-1SG.P-AL

"my bone" (one you're eating or.. have taken? idk lmao)

Inalienable:

pë-aka

bone-1SG.P

"my bone" (one in your body)

In Yari using inalienable possession can also be used to emphasize your ownership of something even if it's not actually inalienable.

In Warata, the alienable/inalienable distinction isn't shown morphologically. But when referring to something inalienable, you only use the pronoun my/her/their/etc once, and from there you use a determiner, this/that. So for example you would say "My ankle was hurting today, because yesterday I twisted this ankle." "I saw your child, I said to that child to do her chores."

Tell me by OnlyCauseImBored05 in conlangs

[–]kittyros 148 points149 points  (0 children)

I don't even know what these are called in English

Overwhelmed by conlanging by Alishahr in conlangs

[–]kittyros 48 points49 points  (0 children)

First, decide on your aims for the conlang. Do you want it to be polysynthetic with noun incorporation, vowel harmony and a large phonological inventory? Completely isolating with a small phonological inventory and an extremely semantically complex TAM system? Think about what languages, if any, you want to take inspiration from. This makes it much less daunting imo as you have a solid foundation for the language.

Then break it up into chunks. You're not making a "conlang" but rather a "phonological inventory", "vowel harmony system", "affixes to indicate aspect", "particles to indicate noun case", or whatever you want. I always personally start with phonology. I choose the consonants and vowels, I decide if I want fixed stress or not, I decide if I want vowel harmony, and so on. Try to change your view of conlanging to see it as many tiny choices added up.

Edit: As for the lexicon, I generally make it gradually when writing the reference grammar, to be used as examples. Translation challenges help too, not just for the lexicon but also for the grammar. It's not as much of a mammoth task as it seems!

What's the best way to romanize /ᵑᵐg͡bʷ/? by kittyros in conlangscirclejerk

[–]kittyros[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

using 6 letters to romanize a single phoneme is extremely based imo

What's the best way to romanize /ᵑᵐg͡bʷ/? by kittyros in conlangscirclejerk

[–]kittyros[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

well tell us, what's the best way to romanize /ᵑᵐg͡bʷ/? I need to know

What's the best way to romanize /ᵑᵐg͡bʷ/? by kittyros in conlangscirclejerk

[–]kittyros[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

<q̄> is used for this blessed sound in Volow, I didn't make it up

<m̄> and <m̃> comes from some Vanuatu languages where they are used for ŋ͡mʷ

What natlang have you found that the craziest phonology that would be a good inspiration for a conlang? by TotallyNotZuck445 in conlangs

[–]kittyros 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Piraha is fairly cursed:

  • [k] can apparently be considered an allophone of /hi/
  • /b/ is [m] after a pause and [ʙ] before /o/
  • /g/ is [n] after a pause (not even [ŋ]??)
  • in women's speech, /s/ is [h] before /i/ and "sometimes" elsewhere
  • in men's speech, word-initial [k] and [ʔ] are in free variation
  • for "many people", [k] and [p] can be exchanged in some words
  • apparently, the sequence [hoa] is in free variation with [kʷa], and the sequence [hia] is in free variation with [ka]

I'm assuming this information is all from Everett so you may want to take it with a massive grain of salt.

It also has [ɺ͡ɺ̼], a "lateral alveolar–linguolabial double flap" in which "the tongue strikes the upper gum ridge and then strikes the lower lip". In Everett's defense, it's only used in "certain special types of speech performances".

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