This is going to be a long post. I might separate it into parts.
/lang/, stay with me for a second here, what if we (the /lang/ collective) were to write, publish, and fluently speak our own language? Wouldn't that be interesting? You remember when you were kids you always had dreams of concocting your own language to speak with your friends and stuff? Same concept, only you probably have the capacity, with a little patience, ingenuity, and help from others, to actually ACCOMPLISH it. This thought came to me a couple days ago, I was listening to "Prenzlaurberg" by Beirut, and since the song sounds like slurred gibberish, I decided to transcribe it the way I heard it/maybe fudge what I hear a little and have it take on its own meaning. I'm going to post a small portion of the song, what I think it would say in the new language. Completely by ear, make your own assumptions for any loanwords that it looks like I used
Prenzlaurforue / District of Prenzlaur (forue being a suffix)
Sol la vor ' manie fonore / The sunshine ' [on] balcony's edge
Zlait crie eurnre remoir / Even when people lament
Sol la vor ' manie fonore / The sunshine ' [on] balcony's edge
Zlait crie em nol dem deed / Even when I'm old and dead
Aicanter toni, zlait au crie / Singing tonight, even still
An lo eisis vai ensom foture / And look, [the] moon's face tells [of the] future
Addolot sem sair por la vire, soilar / [The] neverending sea dances at lit. "the"; in context: "its" call, shaking
Em wachet ver por la vire, taim, taim.../ He abruptly stills at his call, wait, wait...
Literally any question/comments/criticism are welcome, I really hope it can become a success.
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Anonymous2010-10-19 21:07
Lets fucking do it
All 3 of us (HUEHUEHUE)
But really, I think this board is small enough, without being too small, that we could actually do something if we tried.
First of, what will we call it? What sounds will it have? What alphabet (we could always make one)? Will it be agglutinative or what? Will we have declensions, conjugations?
I'd love to do this (although I'm still new to language and linguistics in general), but we gotta get some basics ironed out.
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Anonymous2010-10-19 21:08
>>2
Oh, and what type of course in our language are we gonna have so /lang/ lurkers can learn it?
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Anonymous2010-10-19 21:13
>>2
and >>3
here. We could make a language for discussing languages and linguistics, call it Linguanese or something. Since it'd be used only here (maybe other foreign language image and text boards eventually), we don't have to worry about too many terms that don't deal with basic shit and linguistics, we wouldn't have to make words for higher level math or science or anything. But we could make a system for making new words so that in the future we could expand it, if needed.
Also, what will the vocab be based on? Any language or language families? Latin, Greek, Igbo, where will the words come from?
If it's for discussing languages, then the vocab can come from a mix of Greek, Latin, German, and French, maybe with some English. We could possibly add more classical languages to that.
>>4
Vocabulary source: if you borrow words from French or English, and your language has a decent spelling, they'll be distorted until be unrecognizable.
I suggest using Classical langs - Latin, Middle Chinese, Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 21:37
I have some ideas. I'll put them here.
1) Default script
*Latin alphabet is overused and its letters change values from lang to lang (like, Z is /ts/ in German, C is /s/ and /k/ in English but /tS/ and /k/ in Italian, this kind of thing.
Greek is more consistent, but isn't flexible.
Georgian is confusing, too similar letters.
Syllabaries [Hiragana] is only good for CV languages like Japanese or Tsalagi. Too restrict to use with a conlang.
Abjads [like Arabic and Hebrew scripts] doesn't mark vowels, this increases the learning curve.
Solution: use Cyrillic as default, but people can just transliterate. Only minuscules - meh, there's no reason to double the graphemes.
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Anonymous2010-10-19 21:45
First off, I think this is a great idea and could end up being really awesome (or comepletely fail)
>>5
I agree that vocab should come from Classical Languages - Latin and Greek would seem to be the best options as I'm guessing most people here speak an Indo-European language as their first language.
>>6
Greek would be better if it were to be spoken, but I think Cyrillic would also work, as long as we don't use accents like in Russian. Pronounciation should be consistent.
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Anonymous2010-10-19 21:48
>>7 again
Also there should be some degree of inflection to give us freedom with word order. Not as complex as Latin though - eg form passives like French/English with an auxilliary verb etc..
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Anonymous2010-10-19 22:08
>>5
We'd make spelling phonetic, and if we borrowed from French or English we'd use our script (Maybe we could use Cyrillic?) and make it phonetic, no silent letter bullshit.
>>6
I agree with this, Cyrillic is fairly easy to learn, much easier than the Arabic alphabet or Hebrew alphabet.
>>7
No accents needed if we don't make stress phonemic :D
>>8
I disagree. I think it's better to use fixed word order: few languages use inflections, but all languages use word order in some degree. Yes, even Latin - "est Claudia" (here is Claudia) is different from "Claudia est" (this is Claudia).
About verbs: mark tenses like English, but with adverbs and not another verb. Like, "I 'after' eat a bread" instead of "I will eat a bread".
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Anonymous2010-10-19 22:10
>>9
again (I'm 2 and 3 also)
If we do use the Latin alphabet, we have to bring back þ and ð, assuming we have those sounds.
But the Latin is alphabet is pretty overused...anyone wanna make a fairly simple, but cool looking alphabet just for us?
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 22:19
Guys, I've made a phonology. This is a mess to explain in English, however :P
This is a mess to explain in English... I'll only explain DEFAULT pronounce, but it's OK if yours differ a bit.
VOWELS - more or less like in Spanish or Italian. Roughly,
а/a - AH (open center unrounded)
е/e - EH (mid front unrounded)
и/i - EE (closed front unrounded)
о/o - OH (mid back rounded)
у/u - OO (closed back rounded)
SEMIVOWELS
й/j - like Y in Yes
ў/w - like W in Was
CONSONANTS
п/p - like P in 'sPill'
т/t - like T in 'sTill', never a tap as in USA
к/k - like K in 'sKill'
б/b - like B in 'Big'
д/d - like D in 'Dig', never a tap as in USA
г/g - like G in 'Give', never "soft" as in 'edGe'
м/m - like M in 'My'
н/n - like N in 'No', end-syllable can be as 'M' or 'NG' if speaker likes that way.
ф/f - like F in Spanish 'Fuego' (both lips), but English 'Fire' is OK.
с/s - like S in 'Sour', never "soft" as in 'eaSy'.
х/h - like CH in German 'baCH' or Scottish 'loCH', but as English H in 'Horse' is OK.
р/r - like R in USA's English 'boTTle' or Spanish 'peRo', but English Real is OK too.
ч/z - like CH in 'CHurCH' or TS in 'caTS'
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Anonymous2010-10-19 22:20
>>11
Few langs use them. When it's about phonology, less is more.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 22:24
>>11
I can make some alphabet, but first I need some phonology... are the phonemes I suggested above OK?
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Anonymous2010-10-19 22:35
>>13
Yeah, I know, but those letters are cool as fuck
>>14
That seems fine, as long as we have a trilled r, I love the trilled r and it's not even in my native language.
We should include the sound of the voiceless alveolar bilabially trilled affricate
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Gadget2010-10-19 22:37
Hey OP here, first of all thanks for the support, you guys are awesome, here are my thoughts:
Cyrillic could be interesting, also might be our best option, my first thought was Latin, but as >>6 said, its WAY too overused, but I always thought that constructing original characters might be too daunting. I would really enjoy using inflections. I was originally taking influences from Latin, Old French, all the usuals, but it would be engaging to use several oddball influences as well.
A supposed title (of course merely a working codename)
Лангиан
Grammar might have to be decided as we go, mainly because I'm kind of inexperienced in advanced linguistics (fancy way to say "lazy"). I also wanted to make myself available to answer any questions on the pronunciations of those lyrics I made up. Mite b cool if someone were to put them into Cyrillic...just saying
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Anonymous2010-10-19 22:40
>>16
That's Langian, when transliterated for you guys if you don't know Cyrillic yet.
Let's try and make this language pretty simple, easy to learn. We can use some inflection, but not crazy amounts.
Maybe we could use the Latin alphabet at first then change it once we decide on some basic vocabulary?
Oh, and I could probably transliterate those lyrics but I really should be writing a paper for English class.
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Langian Anon (OP)2010-10-19 22:47
>>17
No problem, I'll get around to doing it myself I guess.
Also for future reference, all honest contributors/interested persons please put on a name so we can keep track of your posts/make note of contributions/criticisms. Again I can't thank you anons enough for your interest, it really means a lot to have support.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 22:50
>>15
Tap R (peRo) and trilled R (peRRo) can be used as allophones in this phonology - use whichever you want :D
About a "brrrrr" [trilled alveolar]... no :P
>>16
Well, it's something like this... I made these bits of conlang about 2 years ago, and forgot to continue working on them. I named "синпйо" (Sinpjo), but well, I think the name must be collective decision... it was to mean "simple" (until I wiped out adjectives :P)
About your song: I'll use Russian Cyrillic... note that Sinpjo/Langian's doesn't have an L or a V.
Прензлаурфоруе
Сол ла вор ' мание фоноре
Злаит црие еурнре ремоир
Сол ла вор ' мание фоноре
Аицантер тони, злаит ау црие
Ан ло еисис ваи енсом фотуре
Аддолот сем саир пор ла вире, соилар
Ем ўачет вер пор ла вире, таим, таим
>>18
I'll start a trip (I normally don't tripfag)
Just for reference, these are my posts >>2 >>3 >>4 >>9 >>11 >>15 >>17
shit thats a lot
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 22:53
>>17
We can use both for now :D
But before vocabulary, we'll need phonotatics - like, which syllables are OK and which not. So it doesn't become a mess like Esperanto's majskstribo [or something like that].
>>18
Serious... making a conlang is like, like... playing Lego with language! :D
Oh, just in my opinion here, but please feel free to convene.
Tap R = good
Trill R = ...ehn.
Also, Khaos is right, t'would be advantageous to actually construct some basic phonetics before we get ahead of ourselves...also the Language construction webpage that might be a nice building block, download/bookmark if you want.
Well, I'll show what I made until now for Simpjo that can be used for Langian. Disagree with me when you find better solutions, ok?
Primary source languages - Middle Chinese, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit. Because:
1. Together, they're culturally comprehensive.
2. All of them are dead - so no faggot will whine about national bias.
3. They have been used as linguae francae for millenia, with many borrowed words in other langs.
We'll need more languages for vocabulary like "chocolate", "computer", etc., but as basis, they work great.
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-19 23:07
Another thought...vocaroo for pronunciation ideas in the future
http://www.vocaroo.com/ Note: they've announced that they'll only keep recordings for 6 months before they get deleted, but I don't foresee that as being a problem you can always DL.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 23:11
>>26
This is nice for those who doesn't know IPA ^^
We can just demonstrate the sound when doesn't exist in English.
>>26
Alternatively, this doesn't have to be a spoken language and we won't have to worry about pronunciation, since we will probably just be using it via text.
But I'd like spoken too.
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Anonymous2010-10-19 23:12
>>25
Very comprehensive, love that idea. I saved the phonology as a .txt that has been pastebinned, http://pastebin.com/Nmtvta0a
>>28
Oh. Very true. I always thought that speaking is an essential tool in language comprehension, (i.e. saying words in your head as you read them) but thinking realistically when will you ever speak it, lol
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Anonymous2010-10-19 23:17
>>30
I also read it in my head (internalizing is what it's called I think). But it wouldn't really matter whether you read it with Spanish vowels or English vowels, as long as you understand the word and its meaning. If anything, we could put of precise pronunciation until much later and focus on making the language itself.
So, does anybody here know any of these: Middle Chinese, Latin, Greek, Arabic, Sanskrit.
I know a little of Latin myself. We need some basic vocab.
>>31
Forgot my trip, I hate retyping it for this shit!
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-19 23:25
>>32
Haha, I think it would be safe to assume its just us three (as scarily foretold by >>2) until we gain a little more momentum.
We can gain a liiiiiittle basic vocab from the lyrics I posted and their Cyrillic equivalents, but before we assume those are actual words, any suggestions/objections? Also, the grammar/overall placement of words isn't set in stone either.
Does someone want to start a Wikia so we have somewhere to record grammar and vocab?
Also, will we use affixes for word-building, like Esperanto?
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 23:27
PHONOTACTICS
Restrictions to word/syllable construction. This is why most people struggle to pronounce English "strength" or Russian "spravdi" ("serious?").
If they're too lax, it's hard as English or Russian to pronounce. If they're too restrict, words get too big and with many homophones like Japanese.
SYLLABLE START/ONSET:
Ø - no consonant OR
C - any consonant OR
O+r - occlusive (p t k b d g) plus 'r' OR
C*+(j,w) - any consonant except 'z'/ts/ plus semivowel
(like, /rja/ is OK, /pja/ is OK too, but /tsja/ no - gets too heavy)
SYLLABLE CENTER:
V - any vowel
SYLLABLE END/CODA
Ø - nothing OR
(f,s,x,j,w,n) - one of these consonants
We could get some vocab from Old English too.
No matter what our language turns out to be like, it has to sound AT LEAST as epic as this when stories are being told :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y13cES7MMd8
Anyway, >>36, prefixes are probably the best way to modify nouns as we'll be using the end of the word for any inflection and infixes just confuse the root.
If we adopt this method then we only need a few hundred root words.
>>31
I speak Classical Latin, I was even correcting people's at Locutamus Latina.
I'll take Attic Greek course next year, so I can help with it a bit.
Arabic isn't hard to find since many Muslim study proper Quranic pronounce.
Sanskrit, well, drag Indian people in the project :D
Middle Chinese can be tricky, but in worst-case scenario, we use Mandarin in its place.
About reading with English or Spanish vowels, well, there's just 5, not a lot, so mispronouncing them isn't a great deal.
>>33
I have some objections... L vs. R, I would make both a single phoneme, like East Asian languages do. And "helio" (Greek) instead of "sol" (Latin) is easier to adapt.
And, even if we're only 3, it's OK for me, but if this project gets more serious, we'll NEED more people.
>>34
Why not separate words? Like, instead of "ĉevalino" (she-horse), use "female horse"?
(BTW, not ĉevalo, please... ekwo - see Equus equus :D)
Also, here's an idea, pronouns can be one letter, and we can have 3 genders, male, female and neuter. Male and female are only used for living things (for clarification purposes) and neuter is for nonliving things. The pronouns can be like this:
a-she, her
e-his, him
o-it
>>45
I know that Old English is Germanic -__-
I just meant that other conlangs like Esperanto talk almost all their words from Romance roots, thus making it not culturally neutral and defeating the purpose.
>>47
Why have genders at all? They serve no purpose and only exist because of the evolution of natural languages.
Also, we definitely must not have any articles!
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-19 23:54
>>38
Instead of Old English, somewhat understandable only for English users, why not Germanic, understandable by German, English, Dutch?
(YES: it still sounds badass :D)
>>42
Well, it's something like this. All languages has some restrictions in "what is a valid syllable". So, while in English /sprait/ (sprite) is an acceptable syllable, it isn't in Japanese or Portuguese that allows essentially consonant+vowel syllables.
However, some languages allow syllables not allowed in English, like Arabic /wahda/ - yes, this /h/ is like in Hung, the sound exists in English, but not in syllable ending.
>>49
It doesn't have to be culturally neutral, that kind of shit is faggots anyway.
We aren't trying to be culturally neutral, we're making a language to discuss languages. IMO classical langs and former lingua francas would probably be best suited for this.
And for genders, they would only be there for animals really, just because I think it'd be simple and cause no confusion in conversation. But everything inanimate would be neuter.
Just throwing out ideas.
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-19 23:57
>>47
Hmm...one letter pronouns...i dunno about that. But it's not my language, if the majority prevails, i wouldn't mind. >>44
Sure sure, no problem. That was just by ear, to be honest I actually always liked helios more than sol.
>>50
Old English is hardly understandable for us Anglophones. The only line I understood was "That was a good king" because it sounded like "That vas gud kinging" and the subtitles still help me there. Hardly any Anglo-Saxon words are understandable to us, those words that we still use from Anglo-Saxon roots have been changed quite a bit (in pronunciation and spelling).
>>52
In my opinion as well, Greek sounds a lot better on the ear than Latin
I'm think Japanese should be the base for the grammar i.e. monosyllabic particles to denote case, dropping pronouns.
>>49
I can see why you'd need genders for certain things... perhaps make every word neuter and then use masc/fem prefixes when you need to be specific (that way it's not sexist like Esperanto either)
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 0:04
>>53
Old English is closer to the Norse languages than modern english, but I think it's inferior in that it has too much inflection. But I do think we should use eth and thorn as they are badass letters.
>>54
I guess that'd work, the prefixes. But I'm honestly not big of a fan either, but I don't like how you can be talking about "my friend" in English and kind of have to guess the gender. It's not a big deal, but it can get annoying sometimes.
Aight, well I'm out, I got school tomorrow (HS senior, you probably didn't see that coming).
>>55
Old English is closest to Old Dutch, if I recall correctly. Apparently, if it wasn't raped by the Normans and subsequently the Norse, it'd be pretty mutually intelligible with Dutch.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 0:06
>>46
NOTE - I'll use Latin vocabulary to explain this idea, but most of it will change, so stick in the adverb, ok?
EGO - I (from lat. "ego")
WIDE - see (from lat. "uideo/uidere")
EKWO - horse (from lat. "equus")
"ego faj wide ekwo" - F means "past", AJ means "continuous". So, I was seeing a horse, watching it for some time.
"ego zaj wide ekwo" - Z means "future", AJ is still "continuous". So, I'll watch/see/observe the horse for some time.
"ego fu wide ekwo" - F means "past", U means "non-continuous". So I saw the horse, but was only an instant.
Something like this... making adverbs decomponable in tense [past, present, future], mood [continuous, not-continuous, hypothetical], or even like Arabic running vs. steady (so the same verb is used both for "ride a horse" and "sit in a horse").
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 0:08
>>56
I'm gonna go too. I'm on my holidays but it is 5am xD
Hopefully the language will have advanced somewhat by the time I wake up!
Oh and we must decide on the default word endings for noun, adjectives, verbs and adverbs so we can start inventing words.
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-20 0:11
>>54
I actually know a lot of JP, in this element I can be useful :D
And yeah. +1 for neutral nouns excepting animals
>>58
Oy vey. singular letters being full concepts? I dunnoooooo....
Also, I updated the wikia.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 0:17
>>47
Made some classes in Linguistic course... I was forced to abandon the university (it was in other city and momma got depressed :-/ don't laugh, please), but I continue studying with Wikipedia, Catullus, a bit of Wiktionary, Plauto's Aulularia... BTW, Aulularia for English speakers works great.
About genders: I think using "it is a female kid" is better in this case tha "she is a girl". Many language works well without genders, nor in pronouns neither in substantives.
>>52
From Greek and Latin words, we can wipe out last -S and -M since it's only declension... so helios>herjo
And if we change Latin -US/-UM to -O, it gets closer to Romance langs, so forum>foro
>>55
Þ and ð are cool to see, but will Langian use THink and THe sounds? I vote "no", but majority decides...
>>57
Not only Normans... Vikings and Renaissance borrowed Latin helped too. English has far more Latin vocabulary than Dutch.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 0:20
>>60
Single letter: It's just a letter, but we can expand them... like, using a syllable for each concept. What do you think?
Japanese: yes, it is. Especially because where English is hard, Japanese is easy, vice-versa...
And now you're entitled to care the Wikia :D
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 0:31
About the name: lan.gi.an? Or lan.gjan?
And what about we only use minuscules?
About vocabulary - found some .txt here, colour names (it's still from Sinpjo):
rubew - red, from Latin "ruby"
dahaf - yellow/orange, from Arabic "gold" (ðahab)
sumurus - green, from Arabic "emerald" (zumurrud)
sama - cyan/sky blue, don't remember source (maybe kwano<Greek "kyanos"?)
asayar - blue like HTML links, from Arabic "lapis" (laazaward)
mazenta - magenta/fuchsia, from Italian "magenta"
abjas - white, from Arabic
sowdo - black, from Arabic
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 0:38
correcting: asayar>asaWar (I was using Y for /w/)
Numbers (from PIE). Radicals are nice but composed numbers need fix badly:
0 zero
1 ojno
2 dujo
3 trewe
4 kweta
5 penka
6 sweko
7 hefta
8 johto
9 newe
10 ojno-zero (lit. "one zero")
11 ojno-ojno
20 dujo-zero
123 ojno-dujo-trewe (lit. "one two three")
1,234 ojno-kiro dujo-trewe kewta (kiro<kilo)
1,005,000 ojno-mega penka-kiro
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-20 0:48
I really hope Langian doesn't turn out like Lojban for a lot of reasons. Also I think th would be a nice sound to have in the repertoire.
>>65
Lojban's objective is help with artificial intelligence, so many of its features are unnatural by design, not by mistake.
However, Langian IMO must avert this, since we're making it to use with other humans.
My worst fear is Langian becoming a second Esperanto - obscure with all unsaid rules, using hard to contrast sounds (like h and ĥ), and plain ugly both to read as to listen.
>>63
Very very cool. I agree with those constructions. Although! Once you get to 10 on, and I suggest it might be "ojonjo" 20 being "odunjo" but I dunno. It's late, I'll probably cut out soon.
>>62
I would think general two-letter, three-letter...OH PRONOUNS! I'm such an idiot. One letter pronouns are fine, one letter PARTICLES is what I'm hesitant about.
"Lojban's objective is help with artificial intelligence,"
From the site: "Lojban is a carefully constructed spoken language designed in the hope of removing a large portion of the ambiguity from human communication.
# Lojban is designed to be used by people in communication with each other, and possibly in the future with computers.
# Lojban is designed to be culturally neutral.
# Lojban has an unambiguous grammar, which is based on the principles of logic.
# Lojban has phonetic spelling, and unambiguous resolution of sounds into words. "
>>70
Making the language is part of fun, at least for me.
About Lobjan: I'm reading some about it, seems like major improvements from Volapük, Ido and proto-Ido, using capital letters to mark stress is a nice hack, but I would make some few improvements...
*vowel vs. semivowel - different letters help syllabification.
(This is one of reasons I like Cyrillic - while you have different letters for vowels and semivowels, their conection is pratty obvious.)
*wipe out schwa sound - a e i o u is the single most common ground for vowels, showing itself in many languages (Latin, Japanese, Hawaiian...)
*Wipe out v/w distinction - few langs use it.
*Tidy phonotactics - I understand that CVCCV and CCVCV has a reason, but assimilation can mess badly with it (like /nm/>/n/ or /m/, and /Sn/ (written cn) > /sn/ (sn))
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Anonymous2010-10-20 1:40
Khaos, why consonants that represent multiple sounds? Doesn't Cyrillic have enough letters to avoid that?
>>77
If "same sound" you mean ч/z (/tʃ/ like in CHurCH), I made it to act as an unity... having an affricate helps with loanwords, and it's a common feature.
If you mean x/h sounding as German CH (/x/) or English H (/h/), they're just allophones - default is /x/, but if one finds hard to pronounce, I suggested using /h/ instead.
If it's none of above, care to explain? :D
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Anonymous2010-10-20 1:55
Sorry, forgot to specify. I meant 'z being ch as in church and ts as in cats'.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 2:05
>>81
Nah, default is like CHurCH, but if one like to pronounce it as TS, no problem :D
It's like Langian "sees" both as the same thing, unlike English that opposes them (ex: caTS vs. caTCH). You choose which one you like better :D
I set the allophonic rules lax for a reason - you're still understood, but let bits of your native lang to "color" your speak. I think this gives a subtle "respect the differences" message.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 2:09
>>81
Contrasts languages use differ from language to language...
So, while English sees /kh/ and /k/ as the same phoneme/thing (like in Kill vs. sKill - note the aspiration), Mandarin contrasts both as different phonemes.
/ts/ and /tʃ/ in Langian could work same way, while English contrasts them, Langian see them as the same thing...
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-20 2:21
>>82 >>83
Thanks for clearing that up. Interesting concept of Langian as more of a "communication tool" than a black and white "language". I like the idea, but something tells me it might get a little lost as development progresses. Also, I'm out for the night, the thread'll be here in the morning. Again, thank you thank you THAAAAAANK YOU for the ideas/comments/friggin EVERYTHING. Everyone. This will be great, I'm sure of it.
This has been /lang/ian Day 1, 10/19/2010 19:55 4chan time.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-20 2:36
Made some random vocabulary... I'm a bit bored, 4AM and no sign of sleep... see if you like...
>>84
Good night... till tomorrow. I'll see if I get some sleep too.
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 6:14
Alright, I put some of the numbers on the wiki.
>>85, this vocab's great, but not all that common... we need to decide how to form the accusative case.
>>58 I like this way of forming verbs, by using a seperate auxilliary word to denote tense. So:
F- for past
Z- for future
B- for present
-AJ for continuous
-U for non-continuous
-ON for hypothetical/subjunctive
Just throwing out ideas...
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 7:02
>>87
Few more ideas about verbs:
The verb on its own isthe infinitive i.e. WIDE = to see
The auxilliaries on their own form the verb to be:
BAJ/BU = I am
FAJ/FU = I was
ZAJ/ZU = I will be
And with the hypothetical suffix:
FON = past conditional
ZON = present conditional
BON = present subjunctive (useful for a few constructions)
Holy shit guys, good work. I gotta go back to class in a little but maybe we can work on this more tonight...
I also think that we should not have many synonyms, like we do in English. We have several different words that mean almost the same or the same thing, since we borrow from a lot of languages, but I think Langian should avoid that because it's more about communication than expressiveness.
I figure I should contribute some vocab, so here is some from off the top of my head...
mater, pater (Latin)
matre, patre
mother, father
Or we could have one word for "parent" with a suffix or prefix denoting gender, if the gender is needed for context.
Well I've had nothing to do all day so I've come up with some ideas for pronouns and also prefixes:
эху = I
тйу = you (s)
дйу/гйу/йу = he/she/it
кэху = we
вйу = you (pl)
кйу/докйу/гокйу = they/(all masc)/(all fem)
D(o)- = masculine
G(o)- = feminine
K(o)- = plural
I hope this makes some sense...
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-20 13:17
I'm awake as well, I also have to step out for class for a bit, and I also would've felt like a douche if I didn't contribute some preliminary vocab.
heartbeat = vitarith (from Latin "life" and Old French "rhythm")
house = chambrul (Old French' "house")
sing = utamuz (Japanese "song" and Russian "music")
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-20 13:22
>>93
I'll work on those with what we've already gathered from the thread, good building block.
internet = nebul (from Latin "web")
thread = caten (from Latin "chain")
friend = fere (Old English "companion") - could become dofere/gofere if we use the prefixes I proposed above
We need some sort of consensus on what should stick..
What structure are we using? Are we just making up words?
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Anonymous2010-10-20 16:26
...The development of this is going to take as long as an actual language. I.E. Hundreds if not thousands of years. Can't we just bastardize another language outright and call it our own?
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Anonymous2010-10-20 16:48
>>99
Frankly, there's no structure at all at the moment.
We need common noun, verb, adjective etc endings for starters..
>>107
Prefer this to mine. I couldn't find any hi-res 4chan logos...
But I think ultimately we need to come up with something entirely original.
Can we finally decide on endings??
-o(s) for nouns
-a for adjectives
-e for adverbs
-en for infinitives
Anyone disagree or shall we set these in stone?
>>92
My bad, I used the Russian Cyrillic alphabet (where the backwards E looking thing corresponds to our E sound).
I dunno what we're doing, I thought we'd be using the Russian Cyrillic and the Latin alphabet.
>>94
How will we add the plural marker to the feminine and masculine? Would we just add both on to the verb?
And can we shorten the pronouns? I like how in English they're two and three letters, we should make 1 and 2 letter pronouns.
>>100
Because that's how long every other conlang has taken to make.
Just a thought, was thinking about this earlier...
It might be advantageous to end verbs in some type of suffix (i.e. I love the way the Japanese language does this) That way it would be easier to learn, and I just like it better, as apposed to different words for different tenses on the verb itself. The solution would be to have particles that denote such changes directly before the verb word, that doesn't change, is used.
>>113
Something like:
>vulpos marroa celera hoppen supe kanos pirassa
Verb is in infinitive (need to decide on tenses), vocab could be better - mostly from Latin/Romance/Greek
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 20:16
>>114
Exactly what I was thinking about the verbs. And just like Japanese we should have past/non-past positive/negative, we a base te/ta-y type thing to add to other words for more complez constructions.
>>115
Вулпос марроа кэлэра хоппэн супэ канос пирасса
First sentence in Langian, in Cyrillic. That's assuming the ce in celera sounds the same as ke would.
I think we should stick with the Latin alphabet, we all already know it and we won't have to switch keyboards and shit. But Cyrillic does look cool as fuck.
>>116
Can I get a link explaining that? I know shit all about Nip
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Anonymous2010-10-20 20:36
>>118
Cyrillic can be the official alphabet but we should probably do all the designing in Latin to save time and make it easier to read.
>>119
Okay cool, we can work to transliterate it later.
I just make a page on the community portal for this too, but I like this idea if we do decide on Cyrillic.
If we're ending the infinitives in -en, should we not have nouns end in that to avoid confusion?
I like the -en ending, but I noticed some of the verbs already have it -.-
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 20:47
The wiki's coming along pretty good.
Words endings are decided so existing vocab needs to be adjusted accordingly. Also, that would make the language 'langianos' or 'лангианос'.
We just need to sort out verb endings now.
I think we should have four main tenses:
Past negative, post positive, non-past negative, non-past positive
Also a compound form which can be placed before other words to form conditionals, imperatives, exhortations.. (like te+kudasai etc. in Japanese)
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-20 20:51
>>121
Most of the ones I took directly from Latin end in en
As for word endings, I was jsut throwing out random sounds; existing vocab can always be changed.
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Anonymous2010-10-20 21:12
>>122
Wouldn't that be the plural of Langian? Wouldn't Langian become Langiano? Sounds Italian.
>>122
I was saying just change nouns ending in -en, because that's what the infinitive ends with, so Langian (and other words ending in -n but not -en) are fine.
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Anonymous2010-10-21 1:11
>>87
About accusative: I don't think it's a good idea using a suffix or something like that, I like using word order for this, like most languages do... so, something like SVO [subject verb object] would already work.
But if we're going to use accusative marking, why not a preposition for it? This allows free word order, but uses no inflection. Dunno, I suggest ба/ba because it sounds cool (source: Mandarin's object marking /pa/).
But still... word order is more intuitive... :D majority decides.
>>100
Needs some years, yes. But no way over 9000. In the first year, we already have something brute, enough to play around but not enough to use without other languages.
Vocabulary is the single most boring and time-consuming part, the rest is somewhat straightforward.
>>101
About grammar classes: I think using
nouns [almost obligatory], verbs [needed too], SOME adverbs [so we doesn't need to conjugate verbs], but NO ADJECTIVES.
We can use substantives for both things and characteristics. So, instead of saying "the girl is beautiful", we use "girl has beauty". Got it?
In this case, we won't need even a "to be" verb, just "to have" verb make its role.
I see this as a brainstorming... first, we throw all our ideas, after this we work them as a language.
ABOUT THE FLAG: pure awesomeness. You guys are GREAT.
>>115
Grammar-wise, what about something like
"fox with brown [past] with quickness jump over dog with lazyness"?
Vulpos is tricky because of /v/ and /l/ sounds, we can use another source for it. Chinese uses "huli", we can adapt to хури/huri.
Marroon here is acting as an substantive, not as adjective. And we can keep it simple using "dark red" instead - like, соў-рубеў/sow-rubew (see >>63 for my proposed colours).
"With" preposition can be worked as кун/kun, from Lat. "cum".
Repeating кун/kun to say that it is both quick AND brown is tiring, so I suggest using an "and" particle - aw/аў, from Hindi "awr".
So, using these changes in your phrase, goes as
huri kun sow-rubew aw kerera hopen supe kane kun pirasa
хури кун соў-рубеў аў керера хопен супе кане кун пираса
GUYS, GUYS, IMPORTANT: for those using Linux, like me, Gedit can transliterate as you write. Just right-click in text, select "input method", ?????, profit!
>>121
We don't need an infinitive concept, if we use just one verb form. So, past/infinitive/future/etc. will just be ruled by adverbs.
I.e. infinitive can be made with NO ADVERB.
>>123
Latin endings: we can wipe them out ^^ I did it with Greek's planet names...
ABOUT PLURAL: we can make it like Japanese. One ninja, two ninja, three ninja, few ninja, many ninja. The plural/singular is already told by the number.
And Quechua uses an optional particle "kuna", as another word... so thing kuna = things.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-21 1:22
ABOUT SOUNDS
v/w distinction is tricky for most people, so when a loanword uses /v/, I suggest changing it to /w/.
l/r is too, so we can use /r/ instead of both.
"c" letter is a mess. Avoid it. If you want /k/ sound, use "k". If you want /ts/ sound, use "z". If you want /s/ sound, use "s". This is not Langian's fault, but Latin's - Latin /ke/ become /tshe/, most Romance changed it further to /tse/, and some changed to /se/. English took French's "ce" = /se/.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-21 1:29
LETTER NAMES:
Will we use short names, like English? This is quick-and-dirty, gets confusing with background noise ("did he mean a D or a T?")
Or will we use long names like Greek? Alpha, beta, gamma... this is cleaner, but longer.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-21 1:39
Guys, just for info.
"Konungrkhaos" at Langian wiki is me.
I'll throw here my e-mail, use them if you need to talk with me:
LVCIFER [at] BOL . COM (dot) BR
(^ V, not U)
Now I'll edit some things there... :-D
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-21 1:47
Hey guys
Wanted to say I won't be participating in the project anymore due to my own reasons, I know you probably don't care...
I'm glad to see my little brainfart has influenced solid work and a chunk of actual 4chan history, thank you guys so much for all your hard work.
Keep up the good work in my stead, I might just learn your cool new language in the future...
Его зай демукуз, ганбазу (I will leave, work hard)
>>131
:-( ARE YOU MAAAAAAAAD???
Yes, we DO CARE!
But serious, take your time. Rome was not made in one day...
Take your time, but come back to help us when you can, ok? :-D
>>132 >>133
I'm first lern2wiki, changing some few things until it gets familiar to me.
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-21 6:38
>>126
These are all excellent ideas. So 'kun' is going to work like a modifier ('no' in Japanese) meaning that all adjectives are nouns by default? This also means consistent word endings are not needed.
Also I agree with you on the verb structure; so someone needs to come up with the adverbs.
However, we can't do away with the verb to be. We need something to suggest existence. Perhaps jsut the adverbs on their own?
>>134
Thanks for the encouragement, I will slip in from time to time. Heaven knows you guys need the help.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-21 23:16
>>135
It's not a modifier. It's just "with" preposition, worked in a way English allows but don't use often. See:
"Mary is that girl WITH BEAUTY."
"Mary is that BEAUTIFUL girl."
It's not like "with + substantive = adjective" in English - 1nd phrase have NO ADJECTIVE, and yet, carry the same meaning as 2nd phrase. кун/kun works this very way :D
We don't need to use кун/kun everytime you would use an adjective in English, see:
домо хабе рубеў. (original)
domo habe rubew. (transliteration)
House has "redness". (literal translation)
The house is red. (sensible translation).
What do you think? This makes a "to be" verb useless in Langian, since "to have" can do all the dirty work.
"Few", "many", "no" can be worked as the numerals.
(BTW, "domo" is Russian, "habe" is Latin "habere" without infinitive -re, "rubew" I told above :D
>>137
Haters gonna hate... e tô pouco me fodendo pra isso (I don't fucking care). :P
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Langian Anon!JSN8X5.Us.2010-10-22 2:34
I'm not trying to be a pain in the rear here, but can we drop Greek Cyrillic? Pусский kириллица is so much easier to read imo...
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-22 13:56
>>140
I don't understand what you mean by "Greek Cyrillic"... exemplify, what could we change?
>>143
Ah, the ў? I took it from Belarussian, since Russian doesn't have /w/ sound. So the pairings
ў(semivowel)-у(vowel)
й(semivowel)-и(vowel)
get symmetrical :D
However, the pairings aren't serious business, I'm happy using "в" for the semivowel instead, and I think most people will agree with you.
About capital letters: we can use them too - for word start, and/or for proper names, and/or all names (like German), or pronouns... we just need to agree where use them.
___________________
Guys, have you tried to pronounce Langian? At least, the vocabulary until now? How does it sound? Badass, boring, cool, funny...? We still can change this, add bits of complexity to color the language the way we like...
There's still time to do these kind of changes, so hurry up :D
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Anonymous2010-10-22 18:55
>>144
I have for a few of my words, I'll go through the dictionary and read some in vocaroo and post here later.
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Anonymous2010-10-23 10:48
Hey guys, I tried making a conlang once with some friends but they quit on me.
I suggest making it based on suffixes, like Persian. The grammar will be extremely easy.
* All verbs end in -tan or -dan in the infinitive.
* Take off the -an from this to get the past stem.
* Now we add a suffix to this. Suffixes are: -am for I, -îd for you, -îm for we, -nd for they, and no ending for he/she/it.
* All done! Close your book, there's no more learning the past tense anymore.
>>145
Let's do this: you bring the words, I try to adapt to Langian's phonology until now. You see the results; if you like them, OK, if you don't like, we make some changes. Deal?
>>146
>I suggest making it based on suffixes, like Persian.
Inflecting language... most we've made until now is more isolating... person-agreement suffixes are redundant if you use the pronouns, and tense can be made with adverbs or auxiliar verbs (like English "i WILL eat").
This adds complexity to the language, but brings succinctness - see Spanish "quiero" [I want] - where -o means "present tense, indicative mood, first person, singular", all together. This is pretty cool ^^
Langian Anon and others: what we'll do? Isolating or suffixing?
Some more observations about your suffixes:
*Infinitive isn't all common... we could live without one.
*Most languages with singular/plural contrast have a singular "thou" and a plural "you all" pronouns (English is exception here - English, thou art strange...). We'll need to mark both separatedly, like with "he/she/it" and "they";
*Or instead we can use just 3 endings - one for I/we, one for thou/you all, one for he/she/it/they.
*Until now, Langian doesn't allow syllables endings in -d or in -m, so we would need to adapt them (I suggest -s and -n);*The circunflex accent (î) stands for what in Persian? If it's a long vowel, we can swap î for "je" or "ej".
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 18:24
>>148
I would be all for complex verb conjugations. It makes the language more exciting - part of the reason I love Latin and Icelandic. Also, we're making this language for fun and not as an easy-to-learn auxilliary language so why not? However, I think this should still be achieved through adverbs as it just makes the language a little bit more different from Indo-European languages.
In that case the verb minus a conjugating adverb can be the infinitive, which will be necessary if we need more than one verb in a clause.
In any case, the adverbs/suffixes need to be decided upon so we can actually start forming grammatically correct sentences! I suggest we do it alphabetically i.e.
I=-a you(s)=-e he=-i we=-o you(pl)=-u they=-ej one=-ew
If we use adverbs to conjugate then the starting consonant can denote tense e.g v=imperfect therefore va=I was...
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 18:29
>>149
Using case-agreeing adverbs also does away the need for personal pronouns and also means that the stem is always instantly recognisable.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 19:03
>>149
Cool, let's do this way.
However, the endings are sounding too similar [at least for me, e/i and o/u pairings are tricky]... what about
I = -a
thou = -e
he/she/it = -o
We = -as
You all = -es
They = -os
One = Ø (nothing)?
We can even work -s as plural mark, if Langian will have a plural ^^ so "domo" = house, "domos" = houses, like in English.
The consonants for tense/mood can like you made in >>87 (f- past, z- future, b- present), and we can use mood particles if we change them a bit, so:
-aj is continuous, ow is instant/non-continuous, on is subjunctive/hypothetical. So,
"the houses used to be red, now they're green" can be translated as
Domos fajos habe rubew, bajos habe sumurus.
Домос файос хабе рубев, байос хабе сумурус.
Lit. translation: "houses past-continuous-it-plural have redness, present-continuous-it-plural have greenness." The "now" isn't present, however it's pretty implicit.
If you agree, this can be the first grammatically correct sentence in Langian ^^
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 19:12
>>151
It's perfect! Our verbs are almost finished! ^^
But what about the passive voice? I would suggest a prefix starting with a hard consonant like 'de-'
>domos defajos ajdifike
>домос дефайос айдифике
>the houses were being built
If you agree with this, I'll begin writing out all the conjugations on the wiki...
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 20:08
Okay, I've gone ahead and made the page on the wiki.
It's basically just a complete list of tense particle conjugation and I haven't explained any of the tenses, so it assumes a reasonably good knowledge of linguistics.
I've read it out loud and pronounciation is easy, and gives the language a weird, quirky accent...
If you think there's any problems with the page, feel free to edit it.
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 20:14
>>151
One extra point - shall we say that all nouns take -o (s in plural) and all verbs take -e in the root/infinitive? I'd like a bit of regularity, even if it isn't necessary with our structure...
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 21:12
>>152
de- = passive verb? Wonderful idea.
We can extend its meaning, so phrases like "I was traveling by car" uses active mood if you were driving, and passive mood if you were just a passenger.
>>153
Sounds quirky to me too, but I like it, sounds like it's getting its own color...
>>154
What about a prefix instead of suffix? It's still regular, but we don't need to spoil the endings like Esperanto did.
Or we can go fancy and make instead some pattern - like, all nouns start with "hard" (occlusives [ptkbdg] and Z) consonants, all verbs start with "soft" (the other consonants) or no consonant at all... numerals, adverbs, etc. goes out of this scheme and can start with any...
The possibilities are infinite.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 21:17
And I was thinking in one thing. What about a new set of aspirated occlusives, like Attic Greek, Hindi and Mandarin? English has these too, but doesn't use for contrast.
To write them, we can just pick leftover letters - there's a lot of them ^^
(Is this too fancy? :P)
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 21:31
About verb particles @ wiki:
Weren't we using "в" instead of "ў" for the semivowel /w/?
Langian Anon proposed that in >>143 , he says reading become easier. We need some agreeing in this ^^
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 21:35
>>155
I love the idea for noun and verb pattern. It's pretty awesome and original; definitely sets Langian apart from any languages I know.
Also the idea of using passive for 'passive' actions is a good idea - it reduces the number of verbs we need.
>>156
I'm not too hot on phonology... an aspirated occlusive, is that a consonant without the /h/ phoneme after it? Or a consonant followed by a stop? Could you give me some examples in English? I'm sure I'll understand it and I don't see why we can't add them. Maybe use archaic Cyrillic letters for them, just to make written Langian even more awesome?
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 21:38
>>157
Fair enough. It's definitely easier to pronounce. I'll change the wiki page.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 21:39
And other thing... LangianFag, "z" is transliteration to "ч", not "з". I remember I did it so doesn't use dygraphs (like ch) or diacritics (like ĉ).
Until now, Langian lacks a /z/ sound, we can add it if you want, but in this case I propose adding a /v/ and a /ɣ/ too (voiced velar fricative) for symmetry.
BTW, how are you inputting the Cyrillic?
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 21:46
Ah I keep mixing up Russian and Langian phonology.
I tranliterated the в as /v/, leaving the option open whether to pronounce it as a consonant or semi-vowel (much like /v/ is pronounced in Latin these days).
So, ч is a /ts/ sound? If so, we don't need a /z/ sound..
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 21:48
>>160
Oh, I'm inputting the Cyrillic using a Firefox addon called abctapju which has a keyboard for the extended latin alphabet, greek alphabet and cyrillic alphabet. It's not very quick and I did a lot of copy-pasting, but I just can't get used to the layout of the Windows Russian keyboard.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 21:49
>>159
The pronounce would still be the same, but pronouncing it as a /v/ would be OK too, both are pretty similar (Russian even adapts /w/ from loanwords to /v/).
Just added something to the basic grammar page of the wiki, wanted to check it with you.
>Abverbs are inserted between the tense particle and the verb.
Keeps the sentence tidy and prevents them from being confused as adjectives.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 22:16
>>161
Man, the thing is, there's not so much ways to mispronounce Langian... this is the beauty of simpler phonologies, you can use lots of allophones based in your native language, and still be understood.
IMO allowed pronunciations:
*aspirating /p t k/ like English does;
*using [v] or [w] for в/w;
*using [x] or [h] for x/h;
*using [tʃ] or [ts] for ч/z;
*using a tap, a trill of even retroflex р/r;
*opening or closing the vowels a bit;
*making end-syllable /n/ sound like [m], [n] or [ŋ] (in that context, there's no distinction);
*using sound fricatives before sound stops/occlusives (so pronouncing /sb sd sg/as [zb zd zg] is allowed)
Which ones you choose? The ones you want.
There's a "default" way, not a "correct" way.
>>162
This is nice, I'll search it too - it's annoying going back and forth Gedit just to type one or two letters.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 22:20
>>165
This sounds good for me. But in some circunstances, I think most people sometimes will just omit the adverbs - there's no use for them in phrases like "I born in 1960", the tense here is obvious.
Confusion can be avoided if we use too some general rule, like "modifier comes before modified thing", so adverbs are always before verb, and adjectives always before nouns.
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 22:24
>>166
These rules are perfect. It's not going to sound too different, but it doesn't mean that people of any native language have to spend ages perfecting pronounciation. I totally agree and seeing as it appears to be just us two left that's 100% in favour so I'll add it to the wiki.
By the way, I just realised we never came up with a way to negate verbs. xD Kinda necessary, unless Langian is going to be a relentlessly optimistic language....
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 22:26
>>167
I agree, most prepositions are unnecessary if it is implied in the verb. This is going to be a very simplistic language - I like it.
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 23:14
>>168
Most Indo-European langs agree in n+something, but we can use too:
*Middle Chinese reconstructed particle 不 (*biət) > бйас/bjas
(see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/不 )
*Arabic have lots of particles to use in this case, but "lam" (adapted to "ran") sounds good for me...
Dunno. But we can one of them as yet another adverb :-D
Speaking about Chinese, there's some cool things to borrow...
1) "Ma" particle - make interrogative phrases, so while "ní hâo" is "you-good", "ní hâo ma" is "are you good?" [i.e. "how are you?"].
Domo baja habe sumurus. --> "the house is green"
Ma domo baja habe rubew? --> "is the house green?"
Dunno position - as first thing in phrase, as last thing, or before verb?
2) "Wu" particle (adapted to wo/vo) - when the question doesn't make sense. Great to use against trolls, see:
[Troll asks] --Do you like the dick that is in your ass? Yes or no?
Both answering "yes" or "no" would imply there IS a dick in his ass, so one can answer:
[Person] --Wu. There's no dick in my ass.
Well, it's past 1AM here, so I'm going to sleep. Tomorrow will be a busy day, so until Monday!
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Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 23:15
OBS: Where I wrote "rubew" [red], it's "sumurus" [green]. Wizard needs food and sleep badly.
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-23 23:34
>>170
I think we should use the word of arabic origin for negation. So:
домо байо ран хабе сумурус = the house is not green
As for the 'ma' particle, I think it should also be sandwiched in the verb, just to keep the sentences tidy. i.e.:
домо байо ма хабе сумурус = is the house green?
'Wo' would be very useful. In Japanese it is 'mu' which has been used in english to some extent. It can be used, for example, for answering the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?": where yes implies you were beating her in the first place; and no suggest you are continuing to beat her.
We should therefore also have a word for yes in contradiction of a negative suggestion like 'si' in French and 'doch' in German.
Hmm, it's 4.30am here. I have to go visit relatives tomorrow so nothing from me until Monday either...
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LangianFag!!wZYgQex4QcHMk7J2010-10-26 19:35
Right, I've had a think and come up with 3 problems, and possible solutions, resulting from not having a verb 'to be':
1. Saying 'there is something' - use the particle on its own, before the noun
i.e. байо домо - there is a house
байос домос - there are houses
[2. Linking noun+adjective - use хабе]
3. Link noun+noun - again just use the particle?
хелио байо стеоро - the sun is a star (note, same word order as english)
патер файо бйуроманн - (my) father used to be an office worker
[bjuro+mann, where mann is the suffix for professions, like in Jewish surnames]
Also wanted to consider the use of infinitives...
фово дике домо рубеў хабе - he said that the house is/was red (notice verb to end as in German)
бова волйе домо хабе - I want to have (own) a house [may be read as 'I want to be houselike' - doesn't make sense, but we may have to revise this is we meet ambiguity in the future]
Well, any issues with the grammar or vocab just bring them up. Apart from this is think the grammar is pretty complete so it's just a matter of coming up with more basic vocab. Then we can begin translating stuff and coming up with vocab as we do that.
Personal shit keep me away from 4chan and internet in general about a week. Sorry ^^
>>173
1. English is pretty untypical with the "there is" thing. Most languages use a own verb for this... AFAIK, only English and French use demonstrative+verb in this case.
[And in French, it's the avoir ("to have") verb, to add confusion.]
Solution: why not just хабе/habe? So we can just point and say:
хабе домо - lit. "have house", sensible tradution "there is a house". If needed, adverbs can be put, as usual :-D
йо for example is just two phonemes - sounds like "YOrk" in English. Using "ë" in its place would mean they are a single phoneme together, that's not the case.
>>177
Why does it suck to you?
Do you have some suggestions?
Lol. I thought this would lose interest really fast. Oh well. Maybe next two years, guys.
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Anonymous2011-02-16 7:53
>>183
Maybe never. No-one wants to learn a language that only ~50 people will ever know. Even if 10,000 people were to know it, it still wouldn't be worth learning.
I was thinking of making my own constructed language. It would be called BIG PENIS GIGANTOS. I had a few ideas for it: Adjectives would behave like verbs. Verbs would have three tenses - past, present, and future. There would be case endings to show whether a noun is the subject or object.
I got as far as coming up with these verb endings:
-os (past tense)
-is (present tense)
Examples:
Fakabimenes: I will not fuck myself
Penis Bigti Vulvani Fakini: The penis fucks the big vulvas
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Anonymous2011-02-18 22:44
It'd be hard to do, but ultimately all it takes is to determine some syntactic parameters, a phonological inventory (and rules), and morphemes. From there it's mixing and matching.
We never did it in my linguistics program (we did mostly sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and diachronic linguistics), but I know there are some linguists out there that have developed frameworks/workbooks on creating your own constructed language.
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Anonymous2011-02-19 9:44
maybe the language would be easier to make if it was just 'ACK!' in different tones