cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/48258220

Here's something I haven't done yet surprisingly enough. This is the word for the Commonthroat language in Commonthroat itself.

It's romanized rJhqjHcMr which is pronounced /chuff, late falling strengthening growl; huff, early falling strengthening growl; short low strong whine; long low strong grunt, chuff/

It's a compound word that consists of the roots rJhg meaning throat or language and qjHc, which is the adjective universal or standard. gjHc in turn consists of the adjective qjH whole and the suffix -c meaning related to or associated with (compare English -y or -ish). Etymologically it means pertaining to the whole. -Mr is the 3rd person proximal noun suffix, roughly meaning this or this thing here. The dictionary form of a word is usually the indefinite 3rd person form ending in -g, but Commonthroat is a proper noun, so it can't really be indefinite.

Commonthroat is read right to left. The blue glyphs are vowels and the red diacritics (and the red glyph at the end) are consonants. If a consonant begins a syllable it's written as a diacritic. If it ends a syllable it uses a full letter.

The six basic color terms of Kenlin, my current project that will probably just be for later conlangs to be based on as a family. The Terraria sprites are examples of each term, and the color blocks next to the English words are from blending the examples together.

The words come from Proto-Kartvelian, -Celtic, -Japonic, -Turkic, -Mongolic, and -Hellenic respectively. This is a romanization since i don't have a font for the script i made.___

Here's a minimal multilingual conlang database idea.

All words in all languages use the same lexeme table and the same pool of IDs. There is a language column to indicate which language a word belongs to. The words and meanings are stored in separate tables and connected via a senses table. If two words from the same language share a meaning they're synonyms. If two words from different languages share a meaning they can be translated back and forth.

The senses table has a rank column indicating how salient a particular meaning of a word is, with lower numbers being more salient. A sense with a rank of 1 is likely the meaning inferred by a listener without further context, and higher numbers refer to rarer senses of a word.

Importantly, lexemes and sememes can have zero or more entries in the senses table, meaning you can enter words or meanings on their own. Maybe you have a particular string of sounds but don't know what they mean yet, or have a particular concept you want to have a word for but don't know what that word is yet.

Just for fun, I imported the lexicons of two of my conlangs as sqlite database tables and inner joined them on the definition column to see how much semantic space they shared. Here are the results.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/41471370

I'm trying to make a single comprehensive IPA chart for all the phones, since trying to find everything in the official charts means looking across several charts that aren't all easy to find (really, i have no idea how to get to the ExtIPA chart from the IPA's website). As of now, my chart has parity with the chart here, and it'll continue to grow.

Wikipedia's charts are still better if you need audio samples with the chart, i haven't done that yet.

My chart can be found here (i'm changing how i link to my site so you have to find the page yourself).

(Everything is subject to change!)

Rough Ideas / Goals

• A few emphatic consonants.
• Syllable structure:
  • CVC or C(G)VC; where G is glide
• Voicedness or voiceless distinction for certain consonants
• Voiceless plosives may be aspirated
• Symmetrical voice, i.e. Austronesian alignment
• Two or three grammatical numbers: Singular, (Dual), Plural
• No grammatical gender
• Affixes galore. Maybe also infixes too

Phonology

Consonants

This conlang takes inspiration from Middle Chinese and Proto-Semitic for its three-way distinction of certain consonants into tenuis, voiced, emphatic (i.e., ejective) consonants.

There is a lot of ejective consonants here, since I have plans for at least one daughter language to have pharyngealized consonants like in Arabic.

Vowels

Schwas often show up as a result of epenthesis, especially between two consonants within a word boundary. Outside of epenthesis, the schwa seldom occurs.

Front and back vowels in this conlang will also have higher vowel height. This is somewhat inspired by modern English spelling, e.g. a single ⟨e⟩ is usually a plain /e/ but a pair of ⟨ee⟩ often represents /iː/.

However, a lengthened central vowel instead falls in vowel height from /ə/ to /ɐː/.

Potential tonogenesis in daughter languages:

• Rising tones from lengthened mid-close and close vowels
• Falling tones from lengthened central vowels.

(There might be traces of vowel anti-harmony in conjugation and declension. Unconfirmed.)

Potential loss or gain of vowels in daughter languages.

Syllable Structure

The syllable structure for the conlang is C(W)VC; where C is consonant, W is medial glide (approximant), and V is vowel

Guide to Derivation

In planning this conlang, I took great liberty in appropriating sound changes across different language families.

• Proto-Austronesian ⟨S⟩ > Conlang /ɬ/
  • Remarks: /ʂ/ Shibata (2025); /s/ Blust (2013)
  • Huh: Arabic ⟨ش⟩ /ʃ/ comes from Proto-Semitic ⟨ś⟩ /ɬ/.
  • Huh: Proto-Semitic ⟨š⟩ /ʃ/ and ⟨s⟩ /s/ are merged in Arabic.
• Proto-Austronesian ⟨h⟩ > Conlang /ħ/
  • Huh: Because Arabic is lovely and heavenly, and the sound /ħ/ is a well-known exotic sound from Arabic.
  • Huh: Shibata, Kye. (2025). A reconstruction of Proto-Austronesian coronal consonants: Phonetic evidence from Formosan languages. Dissertation submitted to the Institute of Linguistics, National Tsing Hua University, January 2025.
• Old Chinese /hʷ/ and Proto-Indo-European ⟨h₃⟩ > Conlang /ʕ/
  • Huh: When I tried to play around with similar sounds to /hʷ/, I feel my pharynx sinking downwards and my tongue going backwards.
  • Huh: Proto-Indo-European ⟨h₃⟩ was quite likely rounded and voiced. Also see above.
• Proto-Austronesian ⟨R⟩ or ⟨ɣ⟩ > Conlang /ɣ/
  • Remarks: /r/ Shibata (2025); /r/ or /ʀ/ Blust (2013); /ʁ/ Wolff (2010)
  • Huh: /r/ becomes /ʁ/ in Perak Malay, which is close enough. In the Roman script, the spelling for /ɣ/ is also used for /ʁ/.
• Old Chinese /r/ > Conlang /l/, /ɣ/, /ə/, /a/ or /ː/
  • Huh: There is no /r/ in Cantonese.
  • Huh: Also in this conlang there's /ɣ/ anyway that sounds close enough. (Refer to Malay varieties in northern Malaya)
  • Huh: I love the Johor-Riau and Received Pronounciation accents, and I especially enjoy how they treat final /r/.
• Proto-Semitic /r/ > Conlang /ɲ/
  • Huh: Mandarin /r/ is related to Middle Chinese 日 initial which would sound more like /ɲ/
• Proto-Austronesian ⟨N⟩ corresponding to Malay /l/ > Conlang /ɬʼ/
  • Huh: Crap, I ran out of alien space bats… Hey, don't you think the Bopomofo symbols ㄌ and ㄉ look very similar?
  • Huh: Also folks are saying Arabic ⟨ﺽ⟩ /dˤ/ came out of the sound /ɮˤ/, ultimately from Proto-Semitic /ɬʼ/.
  • Huh: In some Hokkien varieties, /d/ and /l/ are somewhat allophones.
  • Huh: Oh, and in modern Cantonese, people are replacing initial /n/ with /l/ — the lazy sound phenomenon.
• Proto-Austronesian ⟨C⟩ > Conlang /tʼ/ or maybe /sʼ/
  • Remarks: /ʈ/ Shibata (2025), /t͡s/ Blust (2013)
  • Huh: ⟨C⟩ is usually a letter for /t͡ʃ/ in Malay.
  • Huh: It is speculated that Arabic ⟨ﺽ⟩ /sˤ/ was once pronounced /t͡sʼ/.
  • Huh: Also Hebrew ⟨צ⟩ with the sound /t͡s/, and the earlier letter used to stand for some emphatic consonant. The Hebrew letter is cognate to Arabic ⟨ﺽ⟩ /sˤ/ by the way.
  • Huh: /tʼ/ and /sʼ/ both are alveolar sounds.
• Proto-Indo-European ⟨h₂⟩ > Conlang /x/ or maybe /ħ/
  • Huh: It is speculated that ⟨h₂⟩ is somewhere between /x/ and /ħ/, most likely being /ħ/.
  • Huh: But /ħ/ is already assigned to Proto-Austronesian ⟨h⟩ for conlang derivation.

Grammar

Nouns

• Two to three grammatical numbers
  • Singular
  • (Dual)
  • Plural
• No grammatical gender
• Nouns come before adjectives
• Three cases
  • Direct
  • Indirect
  • Oblique

Pronouns

akū // -kū

• First-person singular
• Velar consonant prominently featured
• Ends with a rounded vowel
• Inspirations:
  • Standard Malay aku اکو, -ku ـکو
  • Proto-Semitic *ʼanākū̆, *-kū̆
  • Cantonese ngo5 我

naɬū // -ɬū

• Second-person singular
• One prominent consonant likely lateral and fricative
• Ends with a high vowel
• Inspirations:
  • Hokkien lí 汝, lú 汝
  • Indonesian Slang lu
  • Proto-Austronesian *[i-]Su, *[i-]ka-Su, *=Su (Ross, 2002; cited in Blust, 2013, pp. 454)
  • Cantonese nei5 你‎
  • Standard Malay -mu ـمو
  • Proto-Semitic *-tī̆

sia // -ia

• High front vowel followed by a low vowel
• Inspirations:
  • Proto-Semitic *šiʼa
  • Proto-Austronesian *s(i)-ia, *=ia (Ross, 2002; cited in Blust, 2013, pp. 454)
  • Standard Malay ia اي‎‎

aŋi // -ŋi

• First-person exclusive plural ("me and them but not you")
• Nasal consonant prominently featured
• Ends in a high front vowel.
• Inspirations:
  • Old Chinese *ŋajʔ 我
  • Hakka ngai2 𠊎
  • Standard Malay kami کامي‎
  • Proto-Semitic *niḥnū̆, *-nū̆, *-nī̆, *-nā̆
  • Standard Arabic naḥnu نَحْنُ‎, -nā ـنَا‎‎
  • Proto-Austronesian *i-ami, *[i-]k-ami, *-mi (Ross, 2002; cited in Blust, 2013, pp. 454)

qiħtā // -tā

• First-person inclusive plural
• Inspirations:
  • Proto-Austronesian *([i])ita, *[i-]k-ita, *=ta (Ross, 2002; cited in Blust, 2013, pp. 454)
  • Standard Malay kita کيت‎‎
  • Proto-Semitic *-niḥnū̆, *-nū̆, *-nī̆, *-nā̆
  • Standard Arabic naḥnu نَحْنُ‎‎, -nā ـنَا‎‎
  • Informal Malay kiter

naɬin // -ɬin

• Second-person plural
• One prominent consonant likely lateral and fricative
• Inspirations:
  • Hokkien lín 恁
  • Proto-Semitic *-tin

siɲa // -ɲa

• Third-person plural
• Inspirations:
  • Proto-Austronesian *si-da, *n(i)-ia (Ross, 2002; cited in Blust, 2013, pp. 454)
  • Proto-Semitic *-šinnā
  • Malay -nya ـڽ‎‎
  • Cebuano silá

Enclitic pronouns may depend on the attached verb or noun for its case.

In the oblique case, enclitic pronouns may appear:

• after verbs in the dative voice, instrumental voice, or after prepositions, where they will mean the destination, beneficiary, goal, or instrument of the prepositions. (e.g., "to me", "with you", "to him");
• after nouns in the construct state, where they will become possessive determiners. (e.g., "my", "your", "her").

In the indirect case, they may appear:

• as suffixes to verbs in the active voice, where they assume the role of direct objects. (e.g., "me, you, her").

Cases

Nouns assume grammatical cases according to their role in a clause or a sentence. A preceding article ~~(or the lack thereof)~~ marks the case of the noun.

There are four cases in this conlang, namely: direct, indirect, oblique, and construct.

Here, the noun's semantic nuances is tightly dependent on the verb. The same noun under the same case may reflect different semantic roles when the voice (or trigger) of the verb differs.

• Direct:
  • The direct case marks the main focus of the clause.
  • For the actor voice, the noun in the direct case assumes the role of an actor, agent, or performer of the verb's action.
  • For the patient voice, the direct noun is the patient or target of the action.
  • For the instrumental voice, the direct noun is the instrument involved in the action.
  • For the dative voice, the direct noun is the location. the recipient, or the goal.
• Indirect:
  • Outside of the actor voice, the indirect noun is usually the actor, agent, or performer of the verb's action.
• Oblique:
  • The oblique case covers nouns which are neither the focus of the clause, nor assuming the role of the actor, agent, or performer.
  • For example, a noun in the oblique case may be an instrument of an action, an origin of departure, a target destination, and an object.

Shoutouts:

• Blust, Robert. (2015). The Case-Markers of Proto-Austronesian. Oceanic Linguistics 54(2): 436-491, December 2015.****

So, I've been toying with this idea of applying the anarchist concept of means ends unity to art (to be honest, mainly as a theoretical justification for doing what I wanted to do anyway). So, if you want to do art, and especially anarchist art, shouldn't your tools also be artistic and preferably anarchist?

I'll give an example. Poetry is art. Tools of poetry include things like language and font. Constructed languages can be seen as art projects, and they can implement and emphasize the values of anarchism. Fonts are also art projects and they can for example be inspired by anarchism and be freely distributed etc.

Other examples could include making specific image manipulation programs and algorithms and creating new image formats for visual arts, making esoteric programming languages for programs etc.

So, my idea is starting an avantgarde group/movement where we make art with artistic DIY tools and document the process in the art itself so that it doesn't hide its structure but shows how it was made.

Attached is the first poem I made specifically with this project in mind. But of course, not everything we produce as a group needs to resemble these little examples I came up with. The main thing is to try to break the expectations of art (if such a thing is possible anymore) and also to be an anarchist.

If any of this inspires you, hit me up. Perhaps we can start the group together.

Þere's a bit of Sapir-Whorf assumption here, but: is anyone aware of papers which explore suffix vs prefix use in natural or constructed languages, and what effects þese have? Effects on culture for natural languages would be þe S-W part.

I was þinking about esperanto, and how it strongly favors suffixes, and how it's might be a consequence of þe western bias þat runs þrough þe language; and wheþer þere are languages which use prefixes more heavily. For example, "loĝ-" (dwell), "loĝi" (to lodge), "loĝas" (lodges), "loĝadas" (to keep lodging), "loĝe" (lodging-ly?), "loĝado" (habitation). There are, of course, prefixes, "maloĝadi" (disinhabit? Displacement?), but þey're far fewer; suffixes do most of þe heavy lifting in Esperanto. English borrows from French þe habit of just picking entirely new words for verb tenses, but German tends to use suffixes more þan prefixes.

Surely, someone has studied þis. Anyone happen to have a bookmark to a paper studying þe topic?

https://conworkshop.com/view_language.php?l=DOIKA

Someone did an IKEA logo on the canvas. In a nod to toki pona, I´d like to move the A to the right, so it says IKE A instead. That would mean "How ugly!" in toki pona. I hope this doesn´t go against community rules. If so, please remove the post.

Anyway, the logo is here: https://canvas.fediverse.events/#x=218&y=457&zoom=25

Translation:

[image of a svobenian google search result saying earth's age is 4.543 billion years]

A: how is it

A: (that) the earth is 4543 [sic] billion years old but the year is (only) 2025

B: idiot 🤦

Also a bit of a context, Svobenian is my Germanic conlang with strong Slavic influence (basically a descendant of Proto-Germanic with Slavic sound changes and many proto-slavic borrowings). I made this joke to demonstrate the difference between “vėtar” (year, cognate to English winter, used only as a time unit, e.g. 4.543 mlrd vėtř, meaning 4.543 billion years) and “jero” (cognate to English year, used in other contexts, e.g. jero 2025 “year 2025”)

Abstract:

“Can a language exist without verbs? What would such a language look like?” These are perennial questions in many conlanging communities. They do not, however, have a single unique answer. Whether a language can exist without verbs, or what that question even means, fundamentally depends on how one chooses to define “a verb”—something which is not universal between language or between linguistic theories. Under any given definition of “a verb”, however, a number of different strategies have been investigated by different conlangers over the years for eliminating the category from their languages. In this article, Logan Kearsley surveys some of the strategies that have been tried, with an analysis of which definitions of verblessness they do or do not meet, and provides reference materials and recommendations for other conlangers who may wish to tackle this kind of project themselves.

The main idea behind this language is to become evolutionary food for other languages of my conworld. As such I'll probably never flesh it out completely, only the necessary to make its descendants feel a bit more natural.

Constructive criticism is welcome.

Context and basic info

The conworld I'm building has three classical languages, spoken 2~3 millenniums before the conworld present: Old Sirtki, Classical Tarune, and Mäkşna. And scholars in the conworld present are reconstructing their common ancestor, that they call "Proto-Sitama".

What I'm sharing here, however is none of their fancy reconstructions. It's the phonology of the language as it was spoken 7 millenniums before the conworld present. Its native name was /kʲær.mi.'zɑst/, or roughly "what we speak"; the language itself had no written version but it'll be romanised here as ⟨Cjermizást⟩.

Its native speakers were a semi-nomadic people, who lived mostly of livestock herding. They'd stay in a region with their herds, collect local fruits and vegetables, and then migrate for more suitable pasture as their animals required.

It was quite a departure from the lifestyle of their star travelling ancestors, who were born in a highly industrialised society in another planet.

Grammar tidbits

Grammar-wise, Cjermizást was heavily agglutinative, with an absolutive-ergative alignment and Suffixaufnahme. So typically you'd see few long polymorphemic words per sentence. Those morphemes don't always "stack" nicely together, so you often see phonemes being elided, mutated, or added to the word.

Consonants

Cjermizást features a contrast between "soft" and "hard" consonants. "Soft" consonants are palatalised, palatal, or post-alveolar; "hard" consonants cannot have any of those features. Both sets are phonemic, and all those consonants can surface outside clusters.

Palatalised consonants spawn a really short [j], that can be distinguished from true /j/ by length.

Although /j/ and /w/ are phonetically approximants, the language's phonology handles them as fricatives, being paired with /ɣ/ and /vʲ/ respectively.

/r rʲ/ surface as trills or taps, in free variation. The trills are more typical in simple onsets, while the taps in complex onsets and coda.

The contrast between /m n/ is neutralised when preceding another consonant in the same word, since both can surface as [m n ŋ]; ditto for /mʲ nʲ/ surfacing as [mʲ ɱʲ ɲ].

Coda /g/ can also surface as [ŋ], but only in word final position; as such, it doesn't merge with the above.

Liquids clustered with voiceless fricatives and/or stops have voiceless allophones.

Vowels

Proto-Sitama's vowel system is a simple square: /æ i ɒ u/. They have a wide range of allophones, with three situations being noteworthy:

• /ɒ u/ are typically fronted to [Œ ʉ] after a soft consonant
• /æ i/ are backed to [ɐ ɪ] after a hard velar
• unstressed vowels are slightly centralised

Accent

Accent surfaces as stress, and it's dictated by the following rules:

1. Some suffixes have an intrinsic stress. If the word has 1+ of those, then assign the primary stress to the last one. Else, assign it to the last syllable of the root.
2. If the primary stress fell on the 5th/7th/9th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 3rd-to-last
3. If the primary stress fell on the 4th/6th/8th/etc.-to-last syllable, move it to the 2nd-to-last.
4. Every two syllables, counting from the one with the primary stress, add a secondary stress.

Phonotactics

Max syllable is CCVCC, with the following restrictions:

• complex onset: [stop] + [liquid]; e.g. /pl/ is a valid onset, */pw/ isn't
• complex coda: [liquid or nasal] + [stop or fricative]; e.g. /nz/ is a valid coda, */dz/ isn't

If morphology would create a syllable violating such structure, an epenthetic /i/ dissolves the cluster.

Consonant clusters cannot mix hard and soft consonants. When such a mix would be required by the morphology, the last consonant dictates if the whole cluster should be soft or hard, and other consonants are mutated into their counterparts from the other set. For example, */lpʲ/ and */ʃp/ would be mutated to /ʎpʲ/ and /sp/.

Stops and fricatives clustered together cannot mix voice. Similar to the above, the last consonant of the cluster dictates the voicing of the rest; e.g. */dk/ and */pz/ would be converted into /tk/ and /bz/ respectively.

Gemination is not allowed, and two identical consonants next to each other are simplified into a singleton. Nasal consonants are also forbidden from appearing next to each other, although a cluster like /nt.m/ would be still valid.

Word-internal hiatuses are dissolved with an epenthetic /z/. Between words most speakers use a non-phonemic [ʔ], but some use [z] even in word boundaries.

Romanisation

As mentioned at the start, the people who spoke Cjermizást didn't write their own language. As such the romanisation here is solely a convenience.

• /m n p t b d g s x w z l r/ are romanised as in IPA
• /k ɸ ɣ/ are romanised ⟨c f y⟩
• "soft" consonants are romanised as their "hard" counterparts, plus ⟨j⟩
• ⟨j⟩ is omitted inside clusters; e.g. /pʲʎ/ is romanised as ⟨plj⟩, not as *⟨pjlj⟩
• /æ i ɒ u/ are ⟨e i a u⟩

One big advantage of phonemic scripts (alphabet, abjad, syllabary, abugida) over semantic ones (logography, idiography) is that they're simpler, smaller, and easier to learn. Languages have fewer sounds than concepts they can express with those sounds. But at what point would a language have so many different sounds that having a semantic script would be simpler than a phonemic one? Is this at all realistic?

This is more hypothetical than a lot of stuff to do with conlangs. It seems to me that this would only be the case in a language with thousands of distinct phonemes. Wikipedia's list of languages by number of phonemes doesn't mention anything close to 200. Even with lots of digraphs any phonemic system for a remotely naturalistic language should be simpler than a logography.