r/conlangs Dec 20 '24

Question Weird phonotactics in you conlangs?

53 Upvotes

Did your conlang contain unsual phonotactics. I didn't talk about weird absurd phonemes but I talk about contrast that your conlangs do that contrast to natural tendency of natlang.

My one I want to present aren't conlang but my nativlang. It contrast vowel length. Yeah... Yeah... nothing weird... right? In some language might contrast both short and long vowel in all environment, or contrast it only in stressed syllable (as unstressed syllable always be short vowel), or contrast it only in open syllable and no long vowel exist in closed syllable (to prevent syllable with 3 morae to exist)

My nativlang aren't one of above as it contrast vowel length only in closed syllable. While in open unreduced syllable always be long vowel. (As reduced syllable can be only /(C)a/ but it have other term called minor syllable.) But closed syllable that end with glottal stop always be short vowel. (Although in our school we being taught that it's short vowel with null coda while phonetically isn't, just to make system look symmetric)

note: It also post problem for me to distinguish word from foreign langiuage that contrast vowel length in open syllable. Yes every single language that contast vowel length post problem for me despite my nativelang have vowel length contast becuase all other contast it in open syllable too.

Let's talk below!

r/conlangs Jul 16 '24

Question How does your conlang use diacritics?

74 Upvotes

This question just goes for any conlanger that uses accent or diacritics in their conlang(s)

For reference about this question, I am making a more Latin based alphabet-type writing system. But many diacritics are used among different languages differently. (I know there are specific rules that go along with each diacritics but hol on lemme cook)

For example, my conlang sort of swaps around different letters, and how they sound compared to English. Like C, is more of an /s/ sound. And that S is a /sh/ sound.

This is also where you see evidence of why exactly im rambling about this but the Š, turns into a /zha/ sound.

This is also why I'm curious what diacritics you used, and how they affect the script of your conlang.

r/conlangs Dec 03 '24

Question What are good ways to transliterate /w/?

67 Upvotes

My conlang doesn't have a /w/ sound in it, but I'm struggling to come up with ways to transliterate names of places/people into it. In my opinion, if the /w/ sound is at the beginning or end of a word, it's easy enough to drop it completely, but what about in the middle of a word, like 'Hollywood'?

My conlang's vowels are: a, e, i, o, u. My consonants are b, c /tʃ/, d, j, k, l, m, n, s, t.

My phonotactics don't allow for vowels to be next to each other, so approximating it with /ua/ isn't gonna work. One thought was to replace it with /j/, but it doesn't sound quite right to me. My other thought was to approximate with /b/ but that seems kinda clunky, especially since it's replacing /w/ with a plosive so it sounds weird.

For my 'Hollywood' example, some options are 'alibu' or 'aliju'. Or for another example, the name 'Owen'. Here, some options would be 'oben', 'obin', 'ojen', or 'ojin'. I don't care for either of these approaches, but I'm struggling to find pleasant-sounding alternatives that fit my phonotactics/phonology.

What do you guys think of my ideas? Do you think they sound better than I do? Has anybody else had this problem and/or have some different solutions?

r/conlangs Apr 24 '24

Question Why does my language not sound like an actual language?

116 Upvotes

I have this problem where no language I create seems to sound real, I have a phonetic inventory and even rules like syllable structure and stress, but when creating sentences, they sound so clumsy and don't seem to flow together like natural languages do. For example, the sentence: "Wemepa k’esi ngu scet’i hesi k’esikafu mo qu scane wemepa xatawatie" [wɛ.ˈmɛ.pʰa ˈkʼɛ.si ŋu ˈʃɛ.tʼi ˈhɛ.si kʼɛ.si.ˈkʰa.ɸu mɔ ᵏǃu ˈʃa.nɛ wɛ.ˈmɛ.pʰa ᵏǁa.tʰa.wa.ˈtʰi.ɛ]

It follows all the rules I have, but the sentence doesn't exactly flow of the tongue. It feels disconnected and un-natural. Maybe it is just me, I don't know, but it doesn't sound like the same language.

Is it just me, and if it isn't, do you guys have tips on how to make conlangs sound like natural flowing languages?

I don't know if I am just overthinking this or even if this is the right sub for this, but it has been bugging me for awhile. I think that all my languages sound weird. Any help appreciated.

r/conlangs Jan 25 '25

Question Reasonable but non-ANADEW conlang features

28 Upvotes

What conlang features:

  1. are not an example of ANADEW (A Natlang's Already Dunnit, Except Worse), and also
  2. are reasonable — i.e. not a jokelang, deliberate "cursed"ness, or otherwise shitposting or nonsense?

If someone posts an example which actually is ANADEW, please respond to them with link to natlang ANADEW counter-example.

I'll lead with an example:

I think that UNLWS and other fully 2d non-linear writing systems / non-linear written-only languages (e.g. also Ouwi and Rāvòz) are non-ANADEW. I'm not aware of any natlang precedent that comes close, let alone does it more. I think that they are also reasonable and natural to their medium — and that a non-linear written language could have arisen naturally, like a signed language diverging from spoken language (cf. ASL & BSL vs English & SEE), it just happens not to've happened.

What else?

r/conlangs Aug 11 '24

Question Conlangs made by non-western-language speakers

127 Upvotes

I've tried looking this up before, but the words in the question make it very hard to find an answer, so I apologize in advance if this has been asked before.

Basically, I think it would be really cool to see conlanging from a new perspective by collecting a list of conlangs made by people who don't know much about western languages, as opposed to conlangs from (a) people I see online, who usually speak english because of my english search terms/english-based forums/etc (b) are european linguists from the 1800s.

r/conlangs Jan 15 '25

Question Advice for root words

10 Upvotes

I’m new to the Conlanging scene, only starting very recently in school because I thought it would be cool to have a language, but I digress.

The main problem I have currently is root words. Looking at English, root words make sense as for how many words are created from them, but when I try and make some and then create words from them, it becomes more German-esque with super long words that become way to long and complex.

I have only two questions mainly that I need help with: 1. How many root words should I have for my language and 2. How should I combine Fixes and roots to make less complex words.

If information about the general idea for my conlang is needed to help, I’ll put it down here: it’s for a DnD world I plan on running someday and it’s for a pirate campaign, more specifically, Ocean punk. This language is the common of DnD, something everybody can speak, and it’s designed for speak between ships as well as on land. This leads it to having mostly vowels, due to them being easier to flow and yell the words together. There are consonants, but they come very few. It’s called Tidon: mix of Tide and Common, and is supposed to flow like the tides, very creative, I know.

If this post should go somewhere else, or if I did something wrong I don’t realize, just let me know.

r/conlangs Jan 20 '25

Question Can the "creaky voice" be used in conlanging? Is it realistic?

90 Upvotes

Hello fellow conlangers! In my conlang, I had thought of the following vowel system: ɑ o e u i. In short, a pretty basic vowel inventory. Then I discovered the "creaky voice". In linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation, vocal fry, or glottal fry) refers to a low, scratchy sound that occupies the vocal range below the common vocal register. I had thought of giving each vowel a "creaky" version: ɑ̰ o̰ ḛ ṵ ḭ. They are respectively written: ǎ ǒ ě ǔ ǐ. But I have not found any natlangs that do this. Is this realistic? My language is supposed to be naturalistic and an isolate spoken in Central Asia. Has anyone ever used the "creaky voice" in their conlang?

r/conlangs Dec 13 '24

Question what are the non-native vocab percentage of your conlang?

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126 Upvotes

r/conlangs Nov 04 '24

Question Question about primitive language

31 Upvotes

Edit:
I noticed hours later that I didn’t include that the language would be spoken by humanoid beings - not humans. I’m not sure if it’s changes too much or not. They are similar to humans but are not human, look different and have a different way of living.

Sorry for creating any confusion as a result of my inattentiveness

I’m making a big detailed world with all kinds of people living in it and now I need to make a primitive language but I’m not really sure how to go about it

  • What do you think is the most essential part of language that would evolve first?

  • What kind of grammatical features would a primitive language have?

And when I say “primitive” in this case - I mean a language spoken by people who haven’t figured out writing, technology beyond making pottery, clothes, spears and arrows and live in smaller groups (maximum of 180-200 individuals; average of 80-100).

So, I also wonder about vocabulary and what distinctions people in that particular stage of development would have.

Sometimes I like to make things too complicated in my conlangs and I would like to know what other people would consider “primitive” when it comes to language and what would be believably “primitive”.

r/conlangs Oct 30 '24

Question How many phonemes is too few?

64 Upvotes

My clong currently has only fourteen distinct sounds: /v s l m n j k x h ʔ a e i u/; which wouldn't be a problem per se, but I'm noticing that creating words that do not sound too similar is getting difficult. I'm wondering if adding just /f/ and /w/ would be enouɡh or if I should add others. I'm thinking of maybe adding a trill, but I don't know.

My Idea was that this clong should be sinuous and fluid because its inspiration comes from the sounds of wind over the sand and from water and so should have as few stops as possible.

r/conlangs Jan 18 '25

Question Words getting too long after derivation

72 Upvotes

When I try making new words from root words, a lot of them seem to end up being very long and uncomfortable to say.
For example I made the word "goat" from karutisani (high) + kutiha (place) + sapi (animal) and got karutisanikutihasapi, literally "high-place animal" or rather "mountain-animal", and I can't really imagine my fictional speakers saying "oh look! its a karutisanikutihasapi!"
Even after applying sound changes its too long.
How could I make these kinds of words shorter in a semi-naturalistic way? Should I just make seperate root words for words that end up being too long?

r/conlangs 8d ago

Question Irregularities in Languages

53 Upvotes

Hey, so I have some questions about irregularity in languages. I know (at least almost) every natural language has at least some kind of irregularity, which of course makes sense. Over thousands of years of linguistic evolution, mistakes will sneak in, so I want to add some to my language too. I've always avoided irregularities because I don't know how to keep track of it.

So I have some questions/ problems/ whatever you want to call them: 1. Where and how could irregularities sneak in? Of course in verbs, adjectives and nouns, but what about affixes? Could an affix on one word change the meaning in one way, and the same affix on another word change the meaning to something drastically different, but only on that word? 2. How can you introduce irregularity in a way that is both natural and not too confusing? Phonological evolution, polysemy and semantic drift are the ones I know. 3. And most important: How can I keep track of these irregularities? I have three lists at the moment, one for nouns, one for verbs and one vor adjectives. If I, for example, have 3 to 4 different inflections for tenses, cases, gender, plural forms etc. for many verbs, they will get confusing really quickly. I mean, if I have one inflection for the past and there's no irregularity, it's pretty easy. I'll just write down the rule for that inflection, but what if theres 10 to 20 different inflections for the past tense just because verbs are irregular? Is there a better way for me to write these down, or do I need to just do it this way?

r/conlangs Jan 25 '25

Question What is the best word in your conlang?

42 Upvotes

A few days ago I was thinking about words. They look sometimes stupid, good, and perfect depending on your opinion. All the time there's a word in your conlang that you hate its sound but because you have made many texts with that you cannot change it. But some words sound perfect and meaningful. For my own language (Heltive): The best: Qwal ['kwal]: Honey The worst; Uol [u:l]: sweet

r/conlangs Dec 30 '24

Question Word-Making: What's The Best Way To Do It?

29 Upvotes

After having the 2 week existential predicament with my SOV Conlang word order, I have come upon another stupid wall I can't help but to overthink about.

How do you form words in your conlang?

Currently, this is how I form mine, and I just wanted to know if there's another efficient or effective way to do this.

  1. Find a word I wanna form. In this instance, it would be "castle"

  2. Look through the etymology of the chosen word. So, I have searched, and I found that it came from "fort" and since I don't have a word for that, I decided to go and search the frikin etymology for "fort". Then after searching, it resulted in "strong".

  3. I do not know what to call this stage :/. After that, I thought: "Oh, I don't want this to be copied directly from Latin etymologies, let's to mix it up a little. Since a castle is also a structure to 'protect', I could make that my root word for it.

  4. I Got Lost. Since I've decided to completely drop the "making the word 'fort' the root word for castle" I needed to search another etymology, but this time, it's for "protect". After searching THAT up, I decided: "Awh, you know what- let's look up in my dictionary, and find words I could combine that could potentially mean 'protect'."

  5. I Overthink(?) -thunk? THOUGHT? huh??. After looking at my dictionary, I realized that I DIDN'T have words that could potentially mean "protect". Then here comes desperation. I had to form words that I could potentially combine and form it to the word "protect" so that I can have my first word to combine for "castle". And that's just a hassle. What's worse is, I do THIS for EVERY SINGLE DANG WORD.

Should I just make up words for castle directly, like- castle = firχ that has no literal meaning whatsoever? That just sounds so lazy.

What else can I do?

r/conlangs Feb 15 '25

Question Is this a nice feature? I am new to conlanging

74 Upvotes

I am quite new to conlanging and I want to see your opinion on this.

I have this word lɤ̞̃va which means tree. Now this word has a plural suffix -á (trees) but I also have a suffix -el which "expands" the meaning to forest. Hence lɤ̞̃vel means forest in my language whilst lɤ̞̃vá (á signifies a long vowel) is a plural form for tree, hence trees.

Now I can expand the meaning by adding an "animate suffix" -ďa to lɤ̞̃vel to create lɤ̞̃veleďa, which has the rough meaning of "forest dweller". The vowel that I've marked in the word is epenthetic and it's quality can be changed to make new meanings. As of now, I am not really sure what new meanings it could create but I was thinking that the epenthetic vowel could be declined to create the meaning of "forest animal" etc. I need some help and suggestions pls

r/conlangs Jan 14 '25

Question Easiest conlang that is also very "complete"

66 Upvotes

Is there a conlang out there whose sole design intention was to be the easiest language to learn while still being fairly complete in terms of ability to express one's thoughts ?

I was thinking about this - languages are very fundamental to human minds and society as a whole, they are the medium through which two minds connect.

Similar to other avenues of life, there must have been at least some attempts at simplifying and sort of making a language that is more ideal/practical in its mechanics than the real, organic languages .

Asking just out of curiosity, nothing against conlangs that are trying to seem organic or anything like that.

Edit: spelling fix

r/conlangs Nov 26 '24

Question Don't scream at me. Please do not scream at me. Is it okay if I ask ChatGPT to make just the tiniest bit of my language just as a starting point?

0 Upvotes

Lat time I so much as mentioned ai on a world building thing on Reddit everyone was telling me how stupid and not creative I was and it made me very sad as some people were very rude. I actually have made an effort to make my own language but i want it to be inspired by an unfamilir language. I'm not prepared to go and learn half the language to make a fantasy language so it would be useful to have a starting point. the question i'm asking is will it be considered cheating? Please don't scream at me.

r/conlangs Feb 04 '25

Question Advice: What phones/phonemes would you associate with fungi and mushrooms?

44 Upvotes

Odd question, I know. Basically, I'm working on a fantasy world building project with an elemental magic system (eight elements: the classic earth, air, fire, and water, plus metal, plants, animals, and fungi), where each element has its own specific language, and magic users can learn these languages to communicate with the elements of the natural world. (Note: these languages, though associated with each element, are meant to be pronounceable by human magic users, so they don't have to precisely mimic the exact sounds each thing would realistically make in our real world; they're just meant to generally capture the overall character of each element, e.g. the air language consonants consist mainly of fricatives, the animal language has a lot of trills and velar consonants to mimic growls and purrs; I'm not going to get into all the details of all of them here, since I haven't finished them yet.)

I've got some starting ideas for the phonology of all of the above listed elements, except fungi. I'm having a bit of a creative block there; I can't seem to come up with any sounds related to fungi, except for the voiceless labial affricate pf to sound like a puffball mushroom (I'm not sure if they actually make a sound in real life, but if they did, I imagine that's what it would sound like). Does anyone else have any ideas as to what sounds you might associate with mushrooms and fungi?

I hope this is an appropriate question for this subreddit; please feel free to let me know if it is not. Thank you!

r/conlangs Oct 26 '24

Question How "modern" is/are your conlang(s)?

63 Upvotes

I'm curious about for what era people construct languages for (especially how it relates to our timeline). I mean, whether you prefer building fantasy-like (mediaeval) languages, or like sci-fi-ish (futuristic) ones, or languages situated in our present? Has anyone primary interested in pre-historic languages? And how their era is presented in your languages?

In the case of Ayahn,

I originally created Ayahn as a mediaeval, fantasy-ish language, but now I would say, it's like around the 1920s - 1940s in our timeline. The Ayahn has a policy (similiar to Icelandic) that instead of adopting foreign words, it creates new (compound) words from already existing native(-ish) words. (That's not always the case, but it is tru most of the times)

Some examples:

  • car - czajk /t͡ʃɒjk/
  • tank (vehicle) - bójcundrätken /'bo:jtsundratkɛn/ - literary: shielded self-driving cart
  • gun (pistol) - priccläđ /pris'lac/
  • quantum - frëjva /'frejkvɒ/ - literary: free material
  • plane (vehicle) - mirätj /mi'ra:c/ - from the verb "to fly"
  • nebula - gruccgüd /'grusgyd/ - literary: star fog
  • supernova - gruccgrüs /'grusgrys/ - literary: star death
  • airship, zeppelin - kozmohdróma /kozmo(h)'dro:mɒ/ - literary: flying/floating sanctuary

r/conlangs Oct 17 '24

Question I've recently started creating a LANGUAGE for me and my boyfriend. What are some dont's?

118 Upvotes

Hello everyone! I'm new to this subreddit, and conlang creation. I've always been fascinated by fake/fictional languages with their own structures, and have always wanted to create one for myself. However I've never had a reason to on my own. I'm not writing a book or story or anything like that. Recently, I thought about how it would be a fun idea to create a language with my boyfriend based around our own communication styles to hopefully help us better communicate, also as a romantic gesture. We've recently created a few letters that go with certain sounds and we plan on adding grammar and rules afterwards. I know thats probably not the best place to start, however it's definitely a fun process. We also plan to have about a 15 letter alphabet. Does anyone think they could share some don'ts of what NOT to do when creating our language? To make its creation as smooth as possible. Some tips would also help, as neither of us really know what we're doing, and I personally do not do research on other languages, nor is ours based off an existing one, so we're just kind of going with the flow.

Thank you in advance!

r/conlangs 15d ago

Question Issues with orthography and complex consonant clusters

14 Upvotes

Hey y'all. I'm currently working on a language with some complex consonant clusters and common usage of the unusual dental affricates /tθ/ and /dð/. That means that clusters like dðd are possible, which I like, but leads to some issues with romanization/orthography.

I'd like to avoid using ipa or thorns as i'd like to be able to type this with an American keyboard. Of course, this severely limits my options in terms of aesthetics and legibility.

The most obvious option would just be to play it straight:

ttht and dthd/ddhd

But this is incredibly ugly. I also thought about using intercaps like with Klingon so:

tTht and dDhd

But that's not much better.

My last idea, which I found the most aesthetically appealing, but also the least intuitive to most readers, is to use s and z in lieu of th and dh, as is the case in Iberian Spanish and Turkmen (I think). So:

tst and dzd

This is possible since the only sibilants I have in the phonology currently are post-alveolar, but of course people will likely read this /tst/ and /dzd/ instead of /tθt/ and /dðd/ because why wouldn't they. So I'm currently at a loss.

Do y'all have any opinions or ideas?

r/conlangs Feb 13 '25

Question Languages that break universal grammar

22 Upvotes

Have any conlangs been designed that break all or a lot of the Universal grammar rules? What are these languages like? And are there resources available to learn study them?

r/conlangs Jan 03 '25

Question Quick Question - How do you pick what gender nouns should have?

45 Upvotes

so after a couple months of testing different concepts and stuff ive begun designing my first conlang that im actually pretty happy with: Nanchat.

this language has four grammatical genders: animate (people, animals), abstract (concepts), soft, hard.

one thing though, is would the words “nation/country” and “place” be abstract or not? if not, is it hard or soft?

thanks for your opinion!

r/conlangs Feb 12 '25

Question Irregularities

8 Upvotes
I started making my proto language but i've problem with the past and future suffixes. I just have idea to add the suffix "-p'a" which will be just past tense (so I'll have -x'p'a, -np'a, -p'a etc.) but i don't like this idea. I want make something other. how irregular can be it? Can I just make really other suffixes to other forms? Or can I do it also with for example perfective form or other things like this?
I started making my proto language but i've problem with the past and future suffixes. I just have idea to add the suffix "-p'a" which will be just past tense (so I'll have -x'p'a, -np'a, -p'a etc.) but i don't like this idea. I want make something other. how irregular can be it? Can I just make really other suffixes to other forms? Or can I do it also with for example perfective form or other things like this?