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.
Name:
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..
Name:
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.
Name:
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.
Name:
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.
Name:
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.
Name:
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....
Name:
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.
Name:
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!
Name:
Khaos!!8djvqLidNzjGUwt2010-10-23 23:15
OBS: Where I wrote "rubew" [red], it's "sumurus" [green]. Wizard needs food and sleep badly.
Name:
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...
Name:
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.
Name:
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
Name:
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.
Name:
Anonymous2011-02-19 9:44
maybe the language would be easier to make if it was just 'ACK!' in different tones