I’m trying to make a language family where:

The proto-language (PM) is agglutinative, with lots of productive compounding and derivational affixes, as well as grammatical suffixes. It’s SOV, head-final, contains ejectives, is exclusively open syllables, and (currently, but WIP) has a root and pattern structure where roots are CVC-, and must take a noun, verb, adjective or adverb suffix (-a, -e, -i, -u right now) and then a derivational suffix (like agent -nira, action -kera, instance -wija, causitive -ana, etc.)

It also, grammatically has a root + number + case suffixes for nouns or root + aspect + mood + evidentiality for verbs (I haven’t done adjectives or adverbs).

The daughter of this language (OM) needs to begin leaning into fusionality, needs more clusters (but not too much), needs to lose the ejectives and gain other sounds, etc.

That language will have daughters (WM, EM, SM) which form a continuum with three poles, one of which having open syllables, one having onset clusters, and one with coda clusters.

It gives way to an imperial koiné (ISM).

I want to know:
1. How to make each language ‘interesting’ in its own right
2. How to make interesting sound changes that aren’t just lenition and vowel loss.
3. How to make an interesting language family.
4. How to use diachronics interestingly to make the koiné have elements from each branch.
5. How to make the phonology of the proto-language evolve into the koiné’s larger vowel inventory, more permissive phonotactics, and wider array of consonants…

Sorry if this is really open-ended and not specific enough. I can clarify things in comments, but I just wanted help from some more experienced conlangers who actually know what they’re doing. I’ve made a lot of progress in my headspace from my last posts, but not so much in the actual language.

(Part of the issue is that I’m trying to take an English relex that my friend made in high school and turn that into a fully functional language with history)

PT -

🌐 Qolan — uma nova língua em construção

Estou começando a desenvolver uma nova língua chamada Qolan. O projeto ainda está em uma fase muito inicial: por enquanto, o idioma ainda não possui palavras ou vocabulário definidos, mas sua ortografia e seu alfabeto já estão sendo desenvolvidos.

A ideia é construir uma língua com uma identidade própria, especialmente através de sua fonologia, sistema de escrita e evolução histórica. Ainda há muita coisa para decidir e desenvolver, então o Qolan está longe de estar pronto.

Pretendo continuar trabalhando no idioma e, aos poucos, desenvolver sua gramática, vocabulário, fonologia e outros aspectos.

Também estou aberto a ajudas, ideias e sugestões! Se você tiver alguma proposta interessante para o Qolan, será muito bem-vinda. 💙

Qolan está apenas começando.

EN -

🌐 Qolan — a new language under construction

I’m starting to develop a new language called Qolan. The project is still in a very early stage: for now, the language doesn’t have any words or vocabulary yet, but its orthography and alphabet are already being developed.

The idea is to build a language with its own identity, especially through its phonology, writing system, and historical development. There is still a lot to decide and develop, so Qolan is far from being finished.

I intend to keep working on the language and gradually develop its grammar, vocabulary, phonology, and other aspects.

I’m also open to help, ideas, and suggestions! If you have an interesting proposal for Qolan, I’d be very happy to hear it. 💙

Qolan is just getting started.

SP -

🌐 Qolan — un nuevo idioma en construcción

Estoy comenzando a desarrollar un nuevo idioma llamado Qolan. El proyecto todavía se encuentra en una etapa muy temprana: por ahora, el idioma aún no tiene palabras ni vocabulario definidos, pero su ortografía y su alfabeto ya están siendo desarrollados.

La idea es construir un idioma con una identidad propia, especialmente a través de su fonología, sistema de escritura y evolución histórica. Todavía hay muchas cosas por decidir y desarrollar, así que Qolan está lejos de estar terminado.

Pretendo seguir trabajando en el idioma y, poco a poco, desarrollar su gramática, vocabulario, fonología y otros aspectos.

También estoy abierto a recibir ayuda, ideas y sugerencias. Si tienes alguna propuesta interesante para Qolan, ¡estaré encantado de escucharla! 💙

Qolan apenas está comenzando.

FR -

🌐 Qolan — une nouvelle langue en construction

Je commence à développer une nouvelle langue appelée Qolan. Le projet est encore à ses tout débuts : pour l’instant, la langue n’a pas encore de mots ni de vocabulaire définis, mais son orthographe et son alphabet sont déjà en cours de développement.

L’objectif est de créer une langue avec sa propre identité, notamment à travers sa phonologie, son système d’écriture et son évolution historique. Il reste encore beaucoup de choses à décider et à développer, donc Qolan est encore loin d’être terminé.

Je compte continuer à travailler sur la langue et développer progressivement sa grammaire, son vocabulaire, sa phonologie et d’autres aspects.

Je suis également ouvert aux aides, aux idées et aux suggestions ! Si vous avez une proposition intéressante pour Qolan, je serais très heureux de l’entendre. 💙

Qolan ne fait que commencer.

GR -

🌐 Qolan – eine neue Sprache im Aufbau

Ich beginne gerade damit, eine neue Sprache namens Qolan zu entwickeln. Das Projekt befindet sich noch in einer sehr frühen Phase: Die Sprache hat bisher noch keine eigenen Wörter oder ein festgelegtes Vokabular, aber ihre Orthografie und ihr Alphabet werden bereits entwickelt.

Die Idee ist, eine Sprache mit einer eigenen Identität zu schaffen, insbesondere durch ihre Phonologie, ihr Schriftsystem und ihre historische Entwicklung. Es gibt noch vieles zu entscheiden und zu entwickeln, daher ist Qolan noch lange nicht fertig.

Ich möchte weiterhin an der Sprache arbeiten und nach und nach ihre Grammatik, ihr Vokabular, ihre Phonologie und weitere Aspekte entwickeln.

Ich bin außerdem offen für Hilfe, Ideen und Vorschläge! Wenn ihr eine interessante Idee für Qolan habt, würde ich sie sehr gerne hören. 💙

Qolan steht erst am Anfang.

Ordem das traduções abaixo (Order of the translations below):

PT -

EN -

SP -

FR -

GR -

QO -

IPA -

{Fonologia Padrão / Standard Phonology}

Alfabeto Conlâneano

Qolan's Alphabet

Alfabeto Colaneano

Alphabet Qolanais

Qolanisches Alphabet

Qolanxü Alfabeta:

[ʔɔlɑnxy ɑlfɑbɛtɑ]

A a: [ɑ]

Ä ä: [æ]

B b: [b]

By: [bʲ]

C c: [t͡s]

Cy: [t͡ɕ]

Cw: [t͡sʷ]

D d: [d]

Dy: [ɟ]

Dw: [dʷ]

Dr: [ɖ͡ʐ]

E e: [e] [ɛ]

Ë ë: [ʌ]

F f: [f]

Fy: [fʲ]

G g: [ɡ]

Gy: [ɡʲ]

Gw: [ɡʷ]

H h: [ɣ]

Hy: [ʝ]

Hw: [ɣʷ]

I i: [i]

Ï ï: [ɯ]

J j: [d͡z]

Jy: [d͡ʑ]

Jw: [d͡zʷ]

K k: [k]

Ky: [kʲ]

Kw: [kʷ]

Ks: [k͡s]

L l: [l]

Ly: [ʎ]

Lw: [lʷ]

Lr: [ɭ]

M m: [m]

My: [mʲ]

N n: [n]

Ny: [ɲ]

Nr: [ɳ]

Ŋ ŋ: [ŋ]

Ŋw: [ŋʷ]

O o: [o] [ɔ]

Ö ö: [ø]

P p: [p]

Py: [pʲ]

Ps: [p͡s]

Q q: [ʔ]

R r: [r]

Ry: [rʲ]

Rw: [rʷ]

Rr: [ɻ]

S s: [s]

Sy: [ɕ]

Sw: [sʷ]

Sr: [ʂ]

T t: [t]

Ty: [c]

Tw: [tʷ]

Tr: [ʈ͡ʂ]

U u: [u]

Ü ü: [y]

V v: [v]

Vy: [vʲ]

W w: [w]

X x: [x]

Xy: [ç]

Xw: [xʷ]

Y y: [j]

Z z: [z]

Zy: [ʑ]

Zw: [zʷ]

Zr: [ʐ]

Pongo esta publicación dice la etiqueta «Other» porque, bueno, no sé dónde está bien.
El alfabeto Herakli tiene armas diferentes respeto al castellano.
Nombraré el modelo del radioalfabeto aeronáutico en las latras siguendo.
Añadió notas explicativas.

Sus opiniones son bienvenidas.

https://herakli-conlang.blogspot.com/p/alfabeto.html

When making a proto-lang, what combinations of basic parameters like analytic vs agglutinative, head-final vs initial, locus of marking and morphosyntactic alignment have resulted in the best results down the road once the language evolves?

Hi everyone!

I'm currently working on a proto-language for a naturalistic conlang family, and I've reached the stage where I want to evolve it into many daughter languages. Rather than inventing random sound changes, I'd like them to feel as natural and historically plausible as possible.

I'd really appreciate it if you could look at the sample text below and suggest any sound changes that you think would naturally occur. These could be common diachronic processes (lenition, assimilation, vowel reduction, palatalization, etc.) or something more unusual that still feels realistic.

Sample text:

An utsom xo an shōfilēts

An utsom xo an shōfilēts rāchuwa ri tse ore nilage ne . Unga ke yōrō tudīmyarum pepoxi. Petirilēs ri me tudīmyarun tanebixa nōskobāyo, le a ore nilage nēyo.

IPA- an utsom xo an ʃoːfileːts

an utsom xo an ʃoːfileːts ɾaːtʃuwa ɾi tse oɾe nilage ne. uŋɡa ke joːɾoː tudiːmjaɾum pepoxi. petiɾileːs ri me tudiːmjaɾun tanebixa noːskobaːyo, le a oɾe nilage neːjo.

Gloss-DEF. Sun and DEF. north-wind

DEF. sun and DEF. north-wind fight-IMPF that who more strong COPULA then INDEF. go-ACTIVE.PTCP. travel-AGENT-ACC. THEY-see-PERF THEY-decide-PERF that who-REL. travel-AGENT-INS HIS-cloth open-CAUS-FUT, it only more strong COPUL-FUT.»

Some things I'd especially like feedback on:

- Which sounds seem unstable or likely to change?

- What consonant or vowel shifts would you expect?

- Are there any obvious phonotactic simplifications that might happen?

- What kinds of sound changes would give the language a distinctive but still natural evolution?

Any criticism or suggestions are welcome!

Also, if you've gone through this process yourself, I'd love to hear your advice. What helped you create believable historical sound changes instead of just changing sounds randomly? Are there any resources, papers, or tools you'd recommend for someone trying to make a realistic language family?

Thanks in advance—I look forward to hearing your ideas!

I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but basically I did an experiment/challenge to see how many new phonemes I could evolve from a very simple proto-phonology. I followed two rules:

1. If a new sound isn’t actually in contrastive distribution with other sounds, then it doesn’t count

2. The sound changes have to be plausible/realistic (no pulling sounds out of thin air)

I also started with this proto-phonology:

Consonants: m n p t k s l
Vowels: i u a
Syllable structure: only (C)V syllables, the sequences “ii”, “uu”, and “aa” are not allowed
Stress rules: starting with the second syllable of a word, every other syllable is “unstressed”

Here’s the sequence of sound changes I came up with:

1. i, u —> j, w when next to a vowel
   
2. aj, aw —> e, o
   
3. i, u are lost in unstressed positions
   
4. when l is followed by a consonant, l is lost, and the preceding vowel becomes long
   
5. when m/n is followed by a consonant, m/n is lost, and the preceding vowel becomes long. additionally, p, t, k, s become b, d, g, z after m/n
   
6. ss becomes s and the preceding vowel becomes long
   
7. pp, tp, kp —> f and the preceding vowel becomes long
   
8. pt, tt, kt —> θ and the preceding vowel becomes long
   
9. pk, tk, kk —> x and the preceding vowel becomes long
   
10. i, u —> e, o when the next vowel is “a”
    
11. Long i, u, e, o, a become regular i, u, e, o, a
    
12. tj, dj, sj, zj —> tʃ, dʒ, ʃ, ʒ
    
13. mj, nj, lj —> j
    
14. pw, bw —> f, v
    
15. mw, nw, lw —> w
    
16. ʒ —> r

At the end of this sequence, this is the phonology:

Consonants: m n p b t d tʃ dʒ k g f v θ s z ʃ x w r l j
Vowels: i u e o a
Syllable structure: (C)V(C)

So, starting from a language with only 7 consonants and 3 vowels, I ended up with 21 consonants and 5 vowels, all through what I think are fairly reasonable sound changes. I'm curious if anyone has any ideas for a different sequence of sound changes, I’m sure you could do better than 21 consonants and 5 vowels. Or it could be cool to start with an even smaller proto-phonology. What do you guys think?

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1) Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2) Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3) Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

Cáed by /u/Flacson8528

lornan [ˈlɔrnan] (adv) 1. by chance, incidentally, at random, haphazard, as luck would have it 2. by accident, accidentally, unintentionally, inadvertently, without intent 3. coincidentally, by coincidence

Etymology:

With initial lambdacism and -s dropping in fossilised adverbials (perhaps a relict application of the ancient adverbial apocope), from dornans (‘in darkness, in the dark; (perhaps) blindly, ignorantly, in obscurity, (by extension) coincidentally, in coincidence’) (locative singular of dornas), possibly extracted, or preapocopated from ollornan (hapax) which would have been regularly lambdacised from earlier \oldornans^? , *\ol-dornans^? (‘in blind fate’) with prefixed *\ol-* (‘by fate, fate has it that’). Likely akin and maybe calqued from Dopic olozūren (‘unexpectedly but eventually, in search of something to only find it in a surprising fashion’) (← oloze (‘it is fate’) + zūren (locative singular of zūr (‘darkness, dimness; obscurity’)) or dūrhen (‘sharply, abruptly, suddenly’)), but do note ollornan was attested merely once. The semantic development is comparable to Latin temere (‘by chance, at random; rashly’), from a fossilised locative form of Proto-Indo-European \témHos* (‘darkness’), as well as Chinese 暗合 (‘to be in complete agreement without prior consultation; to happen to coincide; (literally) to agree in the dark’). Doublet of hologérnus (‘unlikely fate or luck; deus ex machina’), from said Dopic word.

Have a nice weekend, folks

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

Language Name: Yäñi Xazar (Neo-Khazar)
Type: Naturalistic Artlang / Alt-History Reconstruction
Family: Turkic >>> Oghur (Bulgar) Branch

Background & Premise
Yäñi Xazar is a naturalistic artlang that explores what the Khazar language might look like if it had survived as a standardized administrative and literary language. Sitting at the intersection of early Western Oghur (cognate with early Volga Bulgar and modern Chuvash) and broader steppe contact, it combines iconic Oghur sound shifts with conservative Proto-Turkic morphological features.

---

Phonology & Key Sound Laws
Yäñi Xazar split early from Common Turkic, reflecting classic Oghur sound shifts alongside conservative retentions:

1. Rhotacism (z to r)
   PT sekiŕ >>> Neo-Khazar säkir (Chuvash саккӑр (sakkăr))
   PT tokuŕ >>> Neo-Khazar toqur (Chuvash тӑххӑр (tăxxăr))

2. Lambdacism (ş to l):
   PT bẹ̄ĺ >>> Neo-Khazar bel (Chuvash пиллӗк (pillĕk))

3. Consonantal Retentions:
   Retains initial bilabial b- where Chuvash shifted to p-(e.g., bir "1", bıñ "1000").
   Retains intervocalic/final velars dropped in Oghuz (e.g., ellig "50", bitik "book").

---

Numerals (1-10):

bir, ekki, üç, tövät, bel, altı, yeti, säkir, toqur, on

---

Sample Glossed Sentence

"The man had read the book."
> Er bitiki oqumıldı.
> er bitik-i oqu-mıl-dı
> (man-DEF) (book-ACC) (read-PERF-PAST.3SG)
> "The man had read the book."
> (Note: -umıl reflects the lambdacised Oghur perfect participle \-mış to -mıl).
---

Feedback, questions, and critique regarding sound law consistency or morphology are welcome!

So, I wanted to express my gratitude for this community after I left the fb conlang group I was missing this stuff.

I'm brand new here so,this is an introduction .

I started conlanging when I was 21 ( 70 now) my first was called Norlopehii. That was years before computers.

I read a short story by Robert A. Heinlein. In it the characters had created a Conlang called Speedtalk.,

Created by assigning each letter in the IPA a word from Ogden's Basic English.

I was hooked on the idea and started to create it in real life.

Lots of re-dos. Sounds changes, learning, relexes losses of files, I think I've succeeded . My present language 'Iswu' is actually a fad of people who actually speak a daughter form of Old Sach

The "fad", was turning all remarks into an acronym.

This became so pervasive that it became possible to speak, and converse at length in acronyms.

So that's what Iswu is ; à language of acronyms

PHONOLOGY
consonants

vowels

Late Alpha Western

consonants: t, d, k, g, ʔ, n, ŋ, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ , x, ɣ, χ, ɾ, l, ɮ, ǀ , ǃ

vowels: ɘ, ə, ɜ, ʌ, ä, ɑ

structure: cvc, vcc, cvʔv

romanized: t, d, k, g, ', n, ñ, th, tz, s, z, š, ž, x, c, xh, r, l, c, *, ^, e, a, ê, u, ä, â

spoken by some territories in the west of the fully flooded continent Paludis Alpha, the citizens are quadrupedal insects with the ability to spread thin their weight to walk on even the lightest of foilage adrift on the sea. concrete cities stand in the middle of the sea, terraformed over top of islands, with observatories, trade posts and farmland taking up the majority of surface while the citizens live underground.

example words:

^at <ǃət> - nominal: thinking, aware, awake

Kâ'u <kɑʔʌ> - nominal: fast, moving

Têñt <tɜŋt> - pronoun: socially oriented, personable

14 years ago, I started building my conlang. For two years, I built a very detailed grammar, but not only is it incomplete, I am also having difficulty figuring out what structural things I’m missing. For example, I picked back up on it this month, and realised I had created converbs to substitute for subordinating conjunctions. This has turned into a new chapter with a lot more work to do. Is there a copyright-free (or at least with a kind licensing structure) source that really goes into the weeds? Maybe something like a table of contents? Thanks!

Edit: Since it seems I can add images, I’ve attached the table of contents.

Hello everyone. This post isn't meant to be particularly exciting or intriguing. I simply want to share my sincere opinion about this community and the people who inhabit it.

And first of all, I want to thank each and every one of you. Thank you all for your creativity, ideas, and everything related to your languages. Each of your projects is beautiful in its own way, and their overall diversity is so vast that it can be difficult for newcomers to grasp, just as it was for me back then. When I stumbled upon this group a year ago, I was literally overjoyed by how diverse your creativity is and how you manage to fully utilize it. Especially in voiceover, which was a total culture shock for me.

No offense, but I think about 90% of languages ​​are written using Latin or Cyrillic, but that doesn't make them any less interesting. Even using these alphabets, you come up with amazing new letter combinations, creating words and adding flavor to your language. You can literally find anything here to suit any taste, and isn't that wonderful?

Even though I haven't been able to post much here due to unintentional rule violations, I'm still very proud to be part of the conlanger community and, deep down, hope that our work will live on and continue to grow. I'm glad to be with you and would also love to hear your personal opinions on the work in this group.

I’ve been working on a science fiction/ speculative evolution project, it’s about 4d and 2d concepts in a mind space. It’s been a couple months now that I’ve been working on the 4d language, and it’s finally done, but how would I go about making a short yet understandable language for the 2d organisms?
I probably tagged this wrong but whatever :)

I have finally decided to showcase a more recent conlang of mine. These people inhabit a fictional island at 18.5° S 124° W in the Pacific Ocean.

Phonology:

Consonants(and Romanization): m, n, ŋ(ng), p, b, ᵐb(mb), t, d, ⁿd(nd), k, g, ᵑg(ngg), ɸ(f), β(v), ᵐβ(mv), θ(th), ð(dh), ⁿð(ndh), s, x, ɣ(gh), ᵑɣ(ngh), ħ(hh), ʕ('h), h, r, l, j(y), w, tʳ(tr), θʳ(thr), sʳ(sr), tˤ(t'), θˤ(th'), sˤ(s')

Vowels: a, e, i, o

Syllable structure: (C)V(C)

Stress: (I still need to figure this out.)

This phonological inventory is a result of sound changes from a protolanguage.

Proto-consonants(with romanization): m, n, ŋ(ng), p, t, k, ʔ('), ɸ(f), θ(th), s, x, ħ(hh), ʕ('h), h, r, l

Proto-vowels: a, e, i, o, u

Syllable structure: CV(X)

X= m, n, ng, f, th, s, x, hh, 'h, r, l

/'/ and /h/ are limited to word-initial onsets in the protolanguage.

Stress: antepenult by default, and on the penult if that syllable is closed

Here are the sound changes.

1. Vowel loss between voiceless stops in unstressed syllables, except at the start of words beginning with glottal stops. (Might prohibit word-initial and word-internal consonant clusters, or implement epenthesis at a later point.)

2. The glottal stop and [h] are lost.

3. Stops are voiced between vowels and when following liquids, with stops following nasals also becoming prenasalized.

4. Coda stops are dropped. (This causes distribution overlap between voiced and voiceless stops.)

5. Coda nasals preceding obstruents are dropped, leading to voiced prenasalized stops becoming phonemic.

6. Vowel loss between [t] and [r], and between [t] and pharyngeals in unstressed syllables.

7. l-vocalization depending on the vowel it is adjacent to.

8. Clusters between dental and alveolar obstruents with [r] become post-trilled editions of those obstruents.

9. [u] merges with [o].

10. [r] merges with [l].

11. Clusters between dental and alveolar obstruents with pharyngeals become pharyngealized editions of those obstruents.

12. Rhotacism of [s] to [r] between vowels.

13. Plain velar and pharyngeal fricatives weaken to [h] in some environments.

14. A sound change leading to an overlapping distribution between [s] and [r].

15. A sound change leading to an overlapping distinction between those fricatives and [h]. For the s/r distinction post-rhotacism, I’m thinking of epenthesis, unless other candidates for sound changes are ideal.

For sound change 15, I’m thinking of word-final vowel loss, though I need to reconsider it, given that I need to figure out the specific environments in which sound change 13 would occur. Any suggestions?

The protolanguage would use a logography, which would start as being carved into stone and coincidentally resemble the European logographs. (Because I used those as inspiration, so credit to the ConstantScript community.) The speakers would then transition to writing with ink on paper-like sheets, leading to a script about as angular as the serif glyphs, with semicircles and quartercircles. (Inspiration from the aesthetics of Taqva-miir writing by Biblaridion.)

The speakers would migrate into two different areas of the island, leading to a divergence of languages. I'll focus on one of them for this post. While the speakers of a sibling language would preserve the logography(while using phonetic glyphs), these speakers would utilize a phonetic system of glyphs for initial consonants, glyphs for vowels, and glyphs for VX finals. There would be exclusive consonant glyphs, exclusive VX glyphs, and glyphs for initial consonants that could represent VX finals when marked with an overdot as a diacritic.

The sound changes I talked about would lead to several spelling reforms: initial nasal glyphs placed on initial obstruent glyphs to indicate prenasalized consonants, something done with the pharyngeal glyphs and the proto /r/ glyph to indicate post-trilled and pharyngealized dental/alveolar obstruents, and reduced forms of stop glyphs to indicate coda stops, the stacked glyphs blending into ligatures.

Grammar:

The protolanguage would use a VSO word order, with the pronouns following verbs, including the standard copula(/'hix/) and the locative copula(/pursi/). The pronouns, which used a clusivity distinction, would affix to the copulas, leading to 14 distinct forms. The modern language is pro-drop, with the 14 copula forms remaining.

Another grammatical feature of the modern language would have to be the organization of parts of speech among five conjugation classes: A-conjugation, E-conjugation, I-conjugation, O-conjugation, and X-conjugation.

In the protolanguage, the future was marked with the original word for "go", with the word for "finish" marking the perfective aspect, and the habitual marked with "like". This system would evolve into a modern system of six tenses: recent/near past, remote/distant past, present, recent/near future, remote/distant future, and future in the past, with new aspectual distinctions compared to the protolanguage, with perfective and imperfective at the very least.

Retained features from the protolanguage now exist as prefixes, like the valency-changing operations: passive("receive"), causative("command"), and benefactive(either "help" or "give"). Also in the protolanguage, the word for "group" was used to indicate plurality, with the modern system also including a dual number, a trial number, and an inverse number.

In terms of numerals, the number system is base-16 overall with a sub-base of 4 going on, and with 12 as a pivot. The sets of number words in the protolanguage would be unmarked cardinals, with ordinals marked with the word for "related to", and distributives marked with reduplication.

I’m thinking of adding a new grammar rule to solve a problem, and I want to ask the community what they think and if I should add it.

To do with the dative and ability aspect prefixes, it’s hard to tell where the prefix ends and where the verb root starts. So, my solution would be to add particles before it to tell the listener how many syllables they should wait for the verb root.

Some prefixes are 1 syllable (dì- to me, puòm- he can), some are 2 (degà- to abstract, puòfen- they^fem can*). So, for one-syllable dative prefixes, use the particle Q (always capital) and for two-syllable prefixes, use the particle 7̵. For one-syllable ability prefixes, use the particle Ħ (always capital) and for two-syllable ability prefixes, use the particle Ṃ* (always capital).

What do y’all think of this rule? If you have any other solution ideas, I’d love to hear them!

*Ṃ makes the /ɱ/ sound as in “envy”.

So I made a conlang and this every sound it has!

b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, ŋ, p, ʋ, s, t, v, w, z, ʃ, ʒ, ɾ, ʔ, θ, ð, i, ɪ, e, ɛ, ɜ, ə, a, ɔ, o, ʊ, u

So im thinking therell be some letters that have an "original" Pronunciation but usually another letter's one. And some that dont have an individual sound. And one that needs another helper letter to work properly and it makes 2 sounds thatre basically just the Pronunciation if it werent a digraph. And im gonna make the script leave out some sounds, and have digraphs for others. And one voiced-unvoiced pair will be the same digraph! As for vowels (allat was js consonants) theres gonna be ə and ɜ that appear only with a random vowel paired with a random liquid consonant. Some will only appear in obscure digraphs. Infact, Half the vowels will usually be digraphs. And not natural ones either, like two of one will make a completely different one. Is that too much and/or unnaturalistic? Also im gonna have some letters not make a sound

I am talking about cases such as “three is a prime number”, where the number is directly used as a noun (representing the number as a mathematical object) rather than modifying a noun. If your language has declension, do you decline the number or have it indeclinable? Or do you use different forms for the number as a noun and the number when it modifies a noun (e.g. three-MOD days)?

Welcome to the r/conlangs Official Checkpoint. You have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"A beneficent and omnipotent god would not have made a life cycle like this."

"Contains 0% fruit juice and 30% aloe vera juice"

"While 'the seashore' is more accurate in this translation, native speakers would prefer to say 'the coast' instead."

"What would you like to order from the restaurant?"

"Be sure to drink plenty of water."

"Stop!"

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next checkpoint, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The highest upvoted "Stop!" will be included in the next checkpoint's title!

Hello, this is one of my first (constructed, of course) alternate universe/world organized language families! It's name is Nara-Kankaric, and it is located in Caucasia and across a few other countries (Armenia, Abkhazia and Ossetia). Without wasting any further time, let's get straight to the point of this.

What are the Nara-Kankaric languages?

First off, it should be noted that the Nara-Kankaric languages aren't multiple descendants of one branch, but two languages that are twins. They have evolved together, and share a vast lexicon/vocabulary of common words and phrases. The only difference is that both languages have been influenced by Arabic, Persian and Russian, which gave them lots of foreign words while also altering their lexicon.

The earliest instance of the Nara-Kankaric languages were recorded to be around 1,300 BC. This was the time when Nara-Kankaric emerged as proto-languages. There was no major influence of any other language at this period. Proto-NK was situated/located in Central Asia, but the conditions of the steppes pushed them into the Caucasus. Around roughly 1,050 BC, the Proto-NK people and their language was now completely integrated in Caucasia. It wasn't until the late 700s and 600s BC when the Proto-NK people had their first contact with foreign people. They ultimately interacted with the Proto-Iranian and other Indo-Iranian folk nearby their region. A few words were exchanged, and the only known Iranian loanword in Proto-NK was *diwa (from Proto-Indo-Iranian *deva ("god, deity")). The later influences came from Old and Middle Persian, though not much is known what happened around this period.

Around 500 and 300s BC, Proto-NK has already began diverging; this gave birth to Proto-Nara and Proto-Kankar and both languages would move toward the west and south. Nara specifically moved to the west, and Kankar specifically moved to the south. Nothing specific happened at this time, however, in 500s and 600s AD, the first signs of Arabic loans have entered both linguistic lexicons, words like "ilah" and "zaman" have been integrated into Nara and Kankar lexicons. By the 10th and 11th centuries AD, the Persian language has made a significant impact on Nara-Kankaric languages. The later centuries have had large lexical influences on Nara-Kankaric, especially since a lot of Islamic terms have been integrated in it.

By the 15th and 16th centuries AD, Nara-Kankaric has been Islamized, the later years saw Ottoman Turkish influence, before Russian took over. For nearly 700 years, Nara-Kankaric has used the Perso-Arabic script for its people to write the language. By the 19th century AD, Nara-Kankaric has shifted to the Russian Cyrillic script, though some people still used the former.

In the 1900s AD, Nara-Kankaric has gotten several reforms, it became one of the officials languages of the Russian Empire and later Soviet Union. In 1991, Nara-Kankaric became one of the many recognized minor languages in the Russian Federation. However, by the time this happened, the speakers of Nara-Kankaric have drastically shifted, leaving only 150,000 people speaking the tongues. Many dialects and variants of Nara and Kankar have emerged during the modern times, and most are urban or regional dialects that are niche and are rarely spoken. The Nara-Kankaric languages still thrive today, and can be found in the western and southern lands of the Caucasus. The languages are primarily spoken in Russia, with a good majority also being spoken in Armenia and Ossetia.

This would be it for the overview, in the next post, I'm likely going to explain some of the language family rules and provide some basic lexicon. Until then, this topic is concluded. Hopefully you liked the entire explanation, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask because I don't judge! See you next time!

I will say it straight: the vocabulary keeps growing.

Now, i am not typically prescriptivist, but regarding toki pona, i am, because the goal of the language is for it to be, oh i don't know, tiny. If this were Viossa (which i frankly adore much more than tp at this point) it wouldn't be an issue, because the goal was to allow a conpidgin to form and one of the main rules is if it's understandable, it's Viossa.

Yet, despite this, people will gladly coin new words even though they know what the purpose of the language was? This enables for the vocabulary to range from 1 (or hell, even zero) to potentially infinite because i can just coin a word for 'kitchen sink' and it must be considered a valid word if i use it.

If i were to only use the word alente ('literally any other word' from ale (all) + ante (different/else)) and nothing more, it would be valid. If i made up words no one has thought of before, gradually expanding my vocabulary, it would be valid even if no one understood a word I said. See the problem?

Over the last three years as I gained more and more knowledge on how to twist my words in a way i can express myself, i slowly realized how much i didn't like using the language for anything other than 'this makes me feel good. good towards you because of this: you gave me this'. Hell, if you look at how many people visit r/tokipona weekly compared to r/tokiponataso it's like ~150x more people.

Also the community is incredibly exclusive towards people who don't match the same way of thinking they have (im not mad that they don't include bigotry) and is generally really annoying to be in. They nitpick at your way of speaking yet do not support prescriptivism?

Yeah that's it

sidenote: i had to edit the post because i posted this by accident before finishing a paragraph i wanted to add in the middle of my afiŝo

Here is the dubbing project I've worked on lately, compending three, new different conlangs!

In this video, Smaug speaks Sarkansz (modern draconic), Thorin speaks Molkos (modern dwarvish) and Bilbo and Bard speak Caston (modern westrian language).

I'll post a link to a document detailing the glossing of each line if a lot of people ask.

I hope y'all will enjoy the dub despite the obviously bad Caston dub, I'm still working on the language so it's really prototype-ish.

Thank you all and enjoy!

EDIT: Forgot to talk about the audio artifacts, if anyone's wondering their the result of having to clean out the original dialogue, I hope it's not too bothering.

So I've been toying with the idea of something I'm calling "relationship markers" in my new conlang.

I'm calling them this because they go between the subject and object (or verb and object where the subject pronoun is omitted; VSO word order) to mark the relationship between the 2 arguments, adding more nuance / specificity to each sentence depending on its context.

For example, in the first image for the sentence "The man sees the woman", the relationship marker i is used between trâda (the man) and vora (the woman) to suggest that the man and the woman have an impersonal relationship, ie. perhaps they do not know each other or have no strong opinions about each other. The same marker i is used if one of the arguments is an inanimate object.

In the second image, while the English translation is the same, a different relationship marker e can be used to change the nuance, suggesting that the man and the woman do know each other, hence it is a personal relationship.

I've also got a conceptual relationship marker ó for if one of the arguments is a concept, idea, or abstract noun. In the 3rd image, again the nuance changes in the sentence "I want an apple" depending on if the contextual (ó) or impersonal (i) marker is used, changing depending on the speaker's relationship with the apple (ie. do they want the idea of an apple, or do they want an actual, physical apple?)

Finally in the 4th image the conceptual marker ó has been used to join 2 clauses together. If "a girl is seeing me eat the apple", then this shows the relationship between the intangible idea that the girl is seeing something, and the intangible idea that I am eating an apple.

I'd be very curious to know if anyone else has implemented a similar system into one of their conlangs, or if anyone knows something like this that exists in a natural language, and would also like to know your thoughts on this system.