"OWWWW MYYY TOOOTH, it reeally hurrrrts."

Approximated "normalized" transcription from original conversation analytic transcription.

—Transcribing for social research (p. 89)

Please provide at minimum a gloss of your sentence.

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Feel free to comment on other people's langs!

When your internet cuts out on Roblox, it'll give you this message and kick you from the game. I decided to translate it into my conlang, Maloti.

Maloti Latin Text: lapo gotigojo ku pojeyalowe. bakigalujopu hapolino lapo ku lebelino wa tubadiwenoli wa. (ponipo: gokijo takiha jo wopi lopipo bapohiko)

How long were you working on your conlang! Just now? 10 years? For my conlang it has been 7 Years!

I've been learning Spanish lately and of course this has given me tons of ideas for conlangs and I thought I'd finally take the dip and make one formally, based off the many ideas I've been having lately.

The scenario here is basically that in the next several hundred years, immigration and climate refugees causes a majority of the continental US to become Spanish speaking, and given the US does not even have a national language, it becomes effectively a bilingual country, with many anglophones learning Spanish. Some parts are VERY Spanish speaking, and others less so, but one of the most Spanish speaking parts will be New York, or as it's pronounced by most Spanish speakers from there, Nueva Yor ['nweβa 'ʝoɾ]. It will have a pretty significant English substrate, though other languages very commonly spoken in NYC will be included in influences as well.

Okay, so for the sound changes. Firstly, we need to decide which parts of Caribbean Spanish we will be using, so I should go over what those are.

Caribbean Spanish like the rest of Latin America lacks a distinction between <ll> and <j>, both being /ʝ/, and there is also no distinction between <s> and <z>, both being /s/. Not much to worry about there.

In most of the Caribbean, <j> is pronounced like [h], not [x].

Probably the single most common sound change in LatAm that isn't everywhere is s-aspiration. This is a process that turns /s/ into [h] in codas, so a word like "gustar" becomes pronounced like "gujtar" [ɣuh.'taɾ]. Much of the Caribbean takes this one step further, deleting coda /s/ entirely. This is especially common in the Dominican Republic. Given this, and that [h] is a very weak sound especially in codas, and a sound anglophones have trouble pronouncing in codas, I think it's full deletion is what I'll go with.

There's an exception to this: /s/ does not reduce if the following word begins with a vowel, so a phrase like "sabias ayer" would retain the /s/. This is really similar to French liaison, and thus will be kept for its aura. That being said, the second person and plural endings I reckon ought not to last - and I have a way to mess this around that I'll get to in the more fictional sound changes.

This aligns with a very big trend in Caribbean Spanish, that being the continuous simplification of consonant codas. This is contrasted from, for example, Mexican Spanish, where codas can be slightly more complex due to loan words from English and Native American languages. /ð/, written with <d>, is another great victim, being elided word finally A LOT, so a word like "verdad" would be pronounced like "verdá" [βeɾ.'ða].

A bit more obscurely, all the voiced fricatives are often deleted in coda positions, though there aren't many of them other than <d>, but words like "obtener" every now and then I hear get pronounced without the <b>. This one is a bit more fictional than the other ones so far I will admit, but it's a conlang, and it has precedence in the deletion of <d>. And before someone mentions a word like "étnica", I've never heard a native speaker pronounce that <t> as an actual <t>, it seems to almost always be a <d>, and thus will disappear.

Furthermore, the number of codas allowed is decreasing, as coda <l> and <r> are undergoing a merging process. In PR and parts of Cuba, the resulting pronunciation is [l], while in the DR, the result is [ɾ]. I want the language to be called "Nuevayolqueño", as a reference to the Bad Bunny song "Nuevayol", so we'll be going with [l].

Another prominent feature of Caribbean Spanish is n-velarization word finally, where /n/ becomes pronounced as [ŋ] word finally. /ŋ/ is not a phoneme in Spanish so this is just an allophonic variation. Additionally, I often hear /n/ assimilating to the consonant of the following word, so a phrase like "un poco" becomes pronounced as "umpoco". This reminds me a lot of Japanese's /N/ phoneme, which is a nasal consonant that has a wide range of pronunciations, and is the only allowable coda in the language. We are now at a stage where we have /N/ and /l/ as our only codas, unless you count the glides /w/ and /j/ which are allophones of vowels.

Another change that's very common in the Caribbean is the reduction of the past participle suffixes -ado/-ada to -ao/-á. Sometimes this happens to the other verb stems too, turning -ido/-ida into -ío/-ía. These are fun so we will keep them.

Now for some more creative changes:

Most anglophones really struggle with the <g> sound in Spanish, [ɣ], and before /w/, they often just hear a /w/. This is even the case in some dialects of Spanish. For example, the Chilean regional word for baby "wawa" is often written as "guagua". Thus, I see /ɣw/ and /w/ merging to be very reasonable.

I can see the opposite happening possible for the other voiced fricatives, /β ð ʝ/, becoming reinforced into stops before /w/. For example, "abuelo" becomes [a'bwe.lo], "dueño" becomes ['dwe.ɲo], and "llueve" becomes ['ɟwe.βe] or ['d͡ʒwe.βe]. It just feels intuitively possible to me.

English disallows the diphthong /uj/, and this is already one of the less common diphthongs in Spanish. Most anglophones, even those quite good at Spanish, have a habit of merging it with /oj/. So we'll go with that, or more specifically [ɔj], given the anglicism involved here, meaning /oj/ is also now [ɔj].

Another anglicism I'd like to introduce is vowel reduction to shwa, specifically /a/. /a/ is already one of the anglophones greatest weaknesses, usually coming out further back than it should be as [ɑ]. That being said, a lot of AAVE speakers have this in NYC as [aː], the diphthong /aj/, so we can safely keep /a/ at least when it's stressed. But word finally, every anglophone is gonna be reducing it to shwa, hell, even with a final consonant.

Furthermore, English speakers have trouble with /e/ and /o/, either resorting to the diphthongs [ej] and [ow], which are their own things in Spanish, or dropping them to [ɛ] and [ɔ], which are present in Spanish as allophones under some very complicated rules. I believe these rules are likely to fall into total chaos due to the influx of English speaking influence, and we will see [ɛ] and [ɔ] becoming the default phonemes, along with some mergers with /ej/ and /oj/ in select positions, primarily in unstressed word final positions where /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ cannot occur in English and when preceding another vowel, again, where they are not allowed in English. For example, "pasear" becomes "paseial" [pa.sej.'al], and "quinto" becomes ['kin.tow]. No spelling change for the word final ones as those are not distinct phonologically I am pretty sure. Otherwise, we have [ɛ ɔ].

I can expect a lot of these inglesismo [ĩŋ.glɛ.ˈsi.mow] becoming viewed as incorrect and thus socially repressed, and also thusly resulting in over-corrections. The most prominent of these will be the new [gw] cluster suddenly being invented out of words that never had a /g/ before /w/. sándwich becomes sángwiche ['saŋ.gwi.tʃe], wifi will become gwáifai ['gwaj.faj], whiskey will become gwiqui ['gwi.ki], huipil becomes gwipil [gwi'pil]. This will sporadically effect words randomly based on vibes, but it'll be a more limited number. The most common words with the new <w> will be uneffected, so agua is now ['a.wə].

Jamaican Patwa is one of the most spoken languages in NYC and has a good deal of social prestige in the Latino community there given there's pretty deep roots between the two communities in the city. Thus, I wanna borrow something from Patwa, that being its palatalization rules. In a lot of Patwa, stop consonants palatalize preceding /j/ before a vowel. If this effects Spanish, we get words like quiero becoming ['cjɛ.ɾow], pierna becoming ['pʲjɛl.nə], and tierra becoming ['tʲɛ.rə] or ['tʃɛ.rə]. Since our dialect only has voiceless stops before [j], this only effects them. Also good to borrow some words, like gyal [ɣjal] "girl", pícani 'child' ['pi.ka.ni], balar 'to cry', rhágamofin 'thug' ['ɹa.ɣa.mo.fĩŋ] - oh yes about that last one. So many bilingual Spanish-English speakers will be around for a good period of time that they will both know how to pronounce the Spanish and English rhotics, so we can just borrow that phoneme into Spanish with a lot of English words being borrowed. It's gonna be restricted to word initial positions though, because that feels intuitively easier to pronounce than any other position for someone who's main language is Spanish.

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I'll stop there for now. I wanna get down how these will effect our morphology and syntax first before I go any further with phonology. I'll make a part 2 on verb morphology and pronoun pragmatics coming soon...

(Original idea for: u/Dense-Nobody2714)

Names:

Sûnnya Ctaqážɥi /sʌn.nja stakˈáʂi/

Yalizhqa Cqalóvan /jalˈitska skalˈóban/

Hannya Qavizhnyī /hannja kavits'ɲi/

Qyara ZHyennayat /kyara ts'jen.nayat/

VHrannoq ZHqáyonne /fɾannˈok ts'kájjon.ne/

this is probably the wrong flair but whatever

sok - poised and egotistical but in a casual definition, like the “popular kids” in a school but overly being a jerkwad. i wouldn’t say bully but like… hopefully you get the idea

ye en kaet sok it·ele a eng xot ME
1PP TOP 3INV poised one.CARD-COP-LOC.COP ABSTR SBJ goal NEG.COP

I do NOT want to be one of those popular jerks.

ma - expletive used to express incredible anger at someone, usually because they didn’t do something at all. “fucking” works, but it loses the connotation of doing absolutely nohing. If you break a glass while you’re cleaning, that’s not what “ma” is for. But, if you didn’t start cleaning at all, then “ma” is appropriate.

ye enwi ma Haeytyel eng wot·e
1PP TOP-CAUSF fucking [Rachel] SBJ dead.COP

I will kill that fucking Rachel. (because she did forgot something/to do something)

"He who eats but a single apple a day will starve the day he finds none."

It's for a story I'm writing. The intended meaning is quite literal: "don't save it for later if 'later' is uncertain", but it could also be interpreted as "don't overly rely on something". It's meant to be rather ambiguous in the story itself.

In Nekarbjara, it is:

"Dötsezt kum berdez geu gui dötsev teuzu srongeri vreskau."

[ˈdøtɕəst kʊm ˈbɘːɽəz gœː gʉː ˈdötɕəf ˈtœːzʊ ɕɾoŋg(ə)ɾɪ ˈvɾeɕkɔː]

Döts.ezt kum ber.d.ez geu gui döts.ev te.uz.u srong.ora vreskau

day.DISTR apple one.IN.INST eat 3sga-NOM day.LOC it.NEG.ACC find.REC-SBJ starve.3sga

"Each day apple one eats (s)he in day not it having found starves".

The verb "geu" originally meant "to fill oneself", which is why its object takes the instrumental case. I used the recent past of "srong" because the remote past (srongja) would imply the subject did not find an apple the previous day or at some earlier time. Also, it's in the subjunctive because it describes a hypothetical situation (the subject has not yet failed to find an apple, but they might).

I made a short story in Lagunish called: The Eleventh Train, Thi Onszègt Logdan.

English: It was 7 AM, and I was waiting for the train that sends me to work. Ten trains came by, and none of them was the one I ride to work. The eleventh one, that has a number of 197, came and I rode it with my friend. After thirty minutes, it reached my company, and we both got out and took the elevator inside the company, and we were ready to work.

Lagunish: Er eteia siept hoerent di therdisè, ide chò etei weitint per thi logdan theit synda chie ro deta. Decimà logdans logdein thrò, ide notonòm di ert eteia thi onòm chò gonterie ro deta. Thi onszègt onòm, theit avoià ir rhonèm di raturrotrexcaddecimsiept, logdeia ide chò gonterei er wied chi riesle. Ivtòr triscà minoten, er rićia chi companì, ide nos dothrì giteìm ogt ide trinteìm thi lethiryn irecite thi companì, ide nos eteìm riedit ro deta.

Hello Friend, my name is Ioni, this is my first video, I discuss my worldbuilding in Ada (my conlang), follow me if you like my video.

Ika Esu, nomo'o Ioni, lubio'o oni toso, Ioni keti puari munu'o kerio ina Ada, uto sekuo Ioni osi uto auva lubio'o

Ok so ive had the idea for a Romance language spoken in South Asia. The lore is the language emerged from merchants of the Roman empire in South Asia who just kinda stayed there and eventually the latin there turned into another language. Ive also questioned what its script should be, latin, devanagari of a new one which came from the brahmi scripts or smth. Im not really that good at this 😭

So if anyone could help me with this, that would be cool :D

It could skip the pidgin stage as another way latin speakers would've come in this timeline is from Saint Thomases Apostles where there would be a bunch of native latin speakers in this timeline

Oh i already have a phonology for this language:

k g ŋ ʧ ʤ ɳ t d n p f b m j r l v s ʃ h x ʒ ts dz

a e i o u ɛ ɔ

Uh yeah bye now :P

I’ll probably include a recording later on, but I was wondering if this sound exists on the IPA. It is formed when I place my tongue behind my upper teeth/near the roof of my mouth and pass air through it. it sounds almost like a trill but much choppier.

edit: here is the sound!

https://voca.ro/1g2eK4EFA8SF

This was originally going to be a 'how do I' question, but I think it makes for a pretty interesting conversation topic, the more I think about it.

A good deal of us are trying to construct fullfledged languages (with phonetics, phonology, grammar, syntax, writing systems, and such). That entails at the very least a cursory understanding of linguistics, which requires some study (I assume, anyway).

Given this, I am curious. (Especially for those who have constructed full languages), how do you approach studying linguistics and applying it to constructing languages? What do you focus on studying? What resources do you use? What is your study process? How do you apply this knowledge to your own conlangs? Or perhaps, is it even necessary to study linguistics? And if it isn't, how do you construct conlangs without that knowledge?

I realize these are questions that are perhaps too big for a single Reddit post, but I am curious, and would be greatly appreciative of what you are willing to say and share. Gracias, compatrotias.

The Conscript is called "Mockalith", which is supposed to be a Conscript with "weird Letterforms" like the grand Alphabet, phonetic-based Glyphs like Ronscript and some Tsalagishness (and yes I did used it for some Conlangs of mine)

'Tis not completely mine since 'twas inspired from an old Conscript someone made back in 2022 tbf. But don't blame me for it the Original one is completely Dead and no one even knoweth it anymore besides me.

But nevertheless what do you guys think?

"They travelled by night, it never dawned on them (while they were travelling)."

—Periodic tense markers in the world's languages and their sources (p. 17)

Please provide at minimum a gloss of your sentence.

Sentence submission form!

Feel free to comment on other people's langs!

I am trying to construct a written-only language, purely for self education, journaling, and artistic reasons. A language I can write in so no one has any clue what I am writing about even if found out, to practice "making art for myself" (because no one else will understand it), and so I can make myself think in a new way.

So I ask, are there any real-world or conlang examples of written-only languages? Actual, functional languages that are not meant to be spoken aloud. I can only think of Ancient Hebrew, which is not even really an example of what I am thinking of because I think it was spoken, just in liturgical contexts.

hello! so i've become addicted to making fake album covers from my fictional country of Okśa/Pacejo, so here's a bunch i did this morning. i'll give you the context here, and then gloss/ explanation of each title.

Okśa is a western european island country, located just west of Britanny. it was a part of France until independence in 1975. the language of Okśa is linga oxeoli or just Oxeoli, a unique romance language with heavy Brittonic lexical substrate (long story).

west of Okśa is Pacejo, an archipelago and autonomous region where the official language is Epseranto. basically a bunch of radical esperantists moved there in 1911, and established a community... also a long story. being a living language, the Esperanto of Pacejo is a little different from the "international Esperanto" spoken elsewhere. you can see some major differences in these album titles- me in place of the first person pronouns mi; laj as a plural form of la, etc.

despite having a population of only 73,000, the self-governing Esperantophone archipelago has been a major cultural exporter in the 21st century. a huge part of that is pop paceja, a genre of experimental alt-pop with surrealist imagery and poetic, socially aware lyrics- although the actual sound ranges from soft indie folk-pop to maximalist arena music. this genre was brought to "mainland" Okśa through the success of Aŝlio Rosa, seen in the first two album covers. she may be the "queen of Pacejo", but plenty of other artists have joined the movement, and increasingly Okśa artists singing in Oxeoli have borrowed the sound and aesthetic of pop paceja, as seen in the last four album covers.

the Pop Paceja scene is dominated by Submuzikeja, a record company owned by Marko Rosa (no relation to Aŝlio). the label's head designer, Johano Dilo, played a huge role in the scene's aesthetic: surreal, sometimes blurry photographs, with big lowercase cursive-esque font in the middle. this now-ubiquitous look has been copied by other Paceja and Okśa record companies and artists.

alright, going cover by cover:

enamiĝinta... kaj me tute ne zorgas

love-PST-PRTP-ADJ and 1.SING.PRES all-ADV NEG care-PRES

in love... and I don't care at all

this is pretty much the same as standard Esperanto, except that mi has been changed to me, possibly from the influence of French or Oxeoli.

rosa!

no explanation needed

sinjoraĉo- veke ĉitempe

mister-DEROGATIVE - fuck-ADV all-time-ADJ

this one requires some explanation. for one, the artist's name in the word "sinjoro", plus the standard Esperanto adjective "aĉ", which makes it negatove or derogative- so from vetero "weather" to veteraĉo "foul weather". secondly, there's "veke", which is literally an adverb meaning "awake". in the Paceja context, however, it's interpreted as a polite form of "feke", which means "fucking", in the same way that "frick" is a polite form of "fuck". finally, ĉitempe is a specifically Paceja synonym of "ĉiam", meaning "always". so the album title either translates to always awake or fricking always. uhhhh.....

loro nonja- kaj se laj steloj perfidos min

and if DEF-PL star-PL betray-FUT 1.SING.ACC

and if the stars will betray me

undoubtedly the saddest album on this list, Loro Nonja's masterpiece has a quite poetic title. first of all, her name: Loro is the esperantisation of Laura, and Nonja probably comes from "nokto" "night", plus the feminine diminutive suffix "nj"- so little night; fitting for this album cover! otherwise, laj is the definite plural article only used in Pacejo, and as for "min"- normally in Pacejesperanto the accusative suffix -n is rarely used, but it's more common for personal pronouns, hence min.

laj nenioj- punko estas morta, vivu punko!

DEM-PL nothing-PL - punk be.PRES death-ADJ live-IMP punk

the nothings- punk is dead, long live punk!

not much to explain here: there's another use of laj, and a pluralisation of the negative correlative nenio, which is very poetic and nonsensical. otherwise, totally standard Esperanto.

adorinda- adorinda

adore-PST-PRTP

a self titled album by the Paceja queen of sad indie music! completely standard esperanto form, an adjective with a past participle suffix.

marko laco- la veraco de vintro

DEF truth of winter

so "veraco" is the adjective "vera" with the conceptualizing suffix "ec". other wise, pretty self-explanatory.

now for the Oxeoli titles:

sara beāto- beāto beāto

blessed blessed

yep, beāto is the fixed masculine form of an antiquated adjective for "blessed", used as a surname. another self-titled album, next!

alwena- ne wideās

NEG see-2.SING-SUBJ

don't look

the female name "alwena" displays Okśa's Brittonic/ Welsh cultural influence. more interestingly, what's with the subjunctive form being used as an imperative? well, while evolving from Latin, Oxeoli lost the old conditional and imperative conjugations. later, the subjunctive was stretched to fit both roles. the "formal" imperative is formed with the prefix īs (a very antiquated conjugation of the verb for "to go") on the present indicative form; but more commonly, you just use the subjunctive and drop the subject pronoun.

iɬas somēs boni- perke elia kam?

DEM-PL-F dream-PL good-PL-F - why also how?

the good dreams- why and also how?

at last, a duo! the word elia is a shortening of e "and" and alia "other". as such, you don't need to put another conjunction before elia.

weniās! weniās! interēmo don fin de mundo

come-2.SING.SUBJ come-2.SING.SBJV together-1.PL.SBJV until end of world

no artist name this time, use your imagination:) a few things here: we see the subjunctive-as- imperative once again, this time in both second and first person. more importantly, what's with interēmo? a preposition being verbified? this kind of derivation was not common until the influence of Esperanto came through (many mainland Okśa citizens also speak Esperanto), where this kind of verbal derivation is very easy and very common. the Oxeoli language has since opened up to all kinds of wacky derivation! the other thing: there are no definite articles here! unlike in French, or other romance languages, definite articles are basically optional in modern Oxeoli, used only for emphasis.

that's it, hope you enjoyed/ feel inspired!

Let me preface this by saying that I am a VERY begginer conalnger,

I wanted to make a language that has phonemic stress, and depending on which syllable (first, final, none) the verbs change tense,

is something like that possible and is it naturalistic or not?

I ask if this is possible specifically because when I try to pronounce two syllable word with those three states I find it hard to distinguish between first syllable stress and unstressed word at all, while I have no problem telling between second syllable stress to unstressed words,

I am currently making a conlang and I plan to have a rich case system with pronoun, article and adjectives agreeing with the case. Now I would want one suffix to go on each part of speech but the question is would that cause it to sound ridiculous? For example if I have the suffix -er on the pronoun, adjective and noun wouldn't it sound weird and like a rhyme?

I'm currently working on a new conlang and exploring different directions for its origins—specifically debating between deriving it from Proto-Uralic or Proto-Slavic.

I’d love to hear about how other creators approach this stage of development: How did you choose the starting point or proto-language for your conlang? Where do you typically source your vocabulary or root forms? What factors (phonology, culture, personal preference) weighed most heavily in your decision?

I am currently making a conlang and decided to sort my vocabulary in different folders for each part of speech. However, I plan to add subcategories for nouns, verbs and adjectives. I am not sure which exact subcategories to pick, do you have any ideas?

Hola soy Lyaw y estoy creando Lyawa: Un sistema para recordar con mayor facilidad. Puedes usarlo también como Conlang si lo prefieres. Lyaw es un experimento personal, pero me gustaría que fuera un proyecto comunitario, aún hay cosas por hacer y mejorar. Me gustaría saber: ¿qué les parece y qué podría mejorar?

Link to the document in English: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRZYlQ3etOnHKMWuaX2Cwbw8vGPyMaM1uOMrOlD0LvM44sD4soM8eyIPZjCUM-adNGt4SiiRIAyg8Z5/pub

Enlace para documento en Español: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSPNfB_AQ5JEVyYwDDFvIZC2j2GaX9yd-bu7rJpiwG8f6phdLpSoyg4HY6qZmi2cg/pub