Search found 437 matches

by Chengjiang
Sat Jan 06, 2018 4:41 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Twakani verbs
Replies: 1
Views: 1954

Twakani verbs

I thought it was time for a new topic on my conlang, since there’s a lot to say about verbs and i also decided the conlang’s name needed to be changed. What was once Chavakani is now Twakani from twá “language; dialect” and kání “marketplace”. We’ll begin with... Verbal aspect Verbs in Twakani do no...
by Chengjiang
Sat Dec 30, 2017 5:27 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Renaming conlangs
Replies: 17
Views: 6315

Re: Renaming conlangs

I noticed an additional reason to change Chavakani’s name: It’s uncomfortably close to the name of an actual language, Chavacano. I’m going to change it to Twakani, which doesn’t appear to be the name of anything notable. Two additional syllables is far enough from Twa that I’m not terribly concerned.
by Chengjiang
Sat Dec 16, 2017 2:51 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Indo-Semitic concept bogolang
Replies: 23
Views: 6439

Re: Indo-Semitic concept bogolang

[*]Make voiced stops emphatic, then make the voiced aspirates simply voiced. That seems possible but unlikely IMO. I think a more Armenian-esque shift would make more sense: P > Pʼ B > P Bʱ > B The reason why I suggested converting the plain voiced stops to emphatics is it preserves the relative ma...
by Chengjiang
Fri Dec 15, 2017 1:02 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Indo-Semitic concept bogolang
Replies: 23
Views: 6439

Re: Indo-Semitic concept bogolang

Leaving aside the morphological issues, I can think of some sound changes that might help: Make laryngeals 1-3 into [h x ħ] respectively, with allophonic voicing (and possibly also [h] versus [ʔ]) that becomes phonemic later. Then merge /e o/ into /a/. Insert /i/ or /u/ before formerly syllabic cons...
by Chengjiang
Tue Dec 12, 2017 4:02 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Getting rid of grammatical features
Replies: 12
Views: 4454

Getting rid of grammatical features

There are a number of grammatical features that I have good examples of languages gaining, but not of them being lost. I’d like to ask about how best to remove certain features, since in some cases an ancestor language needs to have the feature but I don’t want the descendant to have it. How does on...
by Chengjiang
Mon Dec 04, 2017 3:49 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

Personal pronouns jesh I org we kram you (singular; orc) krang you (plural; orc) ku he/she (orc) kug they (orc) et non-ego (singular; non-orc) etk non-ego (plural; non-orc) Note that only the first person plural is suppletive while the others are regular, and even then the first person plural appea...
by Chengjiang
Mon Dec 04, 2017 2:40 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

By the by, what does this sound like so far? I’d kind of been going for “Slavic-influenced Germanic language”, but I don’t know if that’s what it actually sounds like. From what I've read so far, it feels heavily Slavic in character to me. I'm not quite picking up on Germanic (yet) but the corpus h...
by Chengjiang
Thu Nov 30, 2017 5:11 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

So the -/g/ morpheme marks plurality on both nouns and verbs? And predicate adjectives, too! The verbs are former deverbals and conjugate for number (of the subject) but not person. The mention of /p/ was just sloppiness; there’s still no /p/. Also, the description I’ve given for the syllable struc...
by Chengjiang
Fri Nov 24, 2017 9:00 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

Note: I slightly modified the vowel system from my original post: /ɤ/ now has significant allophony and some level of vowel reduction in unstressed syllables exists. Morphophonology: The Great Terghbaz Vowel Shift Rather like English, Terghbaz had a chain shift of long vowels to new values at one po...
by Chengjiang
Sat Nov 18, 2017 5:22 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Renaming conlangs
Replies: 17
Views: 6315

Renaming conlangs

Do you try to avoid having the name of your conlang sound like other things? I ask because I belatedly Googled Chavakani and while my conlang is the top result, it also appears to be at least a few people’s name. I’m considering renaming the language, although most of the new names I come up with se...
by Chengjiang
Sat Nov 18, 2017 4:15 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Chavakani
Replies: 28
Views: 10777

Re: Chavakani

Numbers, revisited I decided after thinking more about my conlangs that way too many of them have essentially the same Sinosphere-style numeral set. It’s getting boring. Thus, I’m overhauling the number system to be sexagesimal! The numbers from one through ten are the same as before, although sinc...
by Chengjiang
Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:17 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

This looks pretty well made so far. The phonotactics seem well thought out, and while the sturdiness of /ʌ/ seems odd, Im guessing you chose that on purpose fully aware that it stands close to two of the other vowels. I did. It’s actuslly inspired somewhat by Bulgarian’s /ɤ/, and like that vowel it...
by Chengjiang
Tue Nov 14, 2017 5:13 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Re: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

Interestingly, the Black Speech may be SOV, and at least puts prepositional phrases before the verb; it also has plenty of synthesis, and a very restricted number of clusters, although it does seem to like closed syllables. I’m quite aware of this. As I said, I wanted this language to fit the stere...
by Chengjiang
Tue Nov 14, 2017 2:39 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)
Replies: 12
Views: 5786

Terghbaz (Generic Orkish)

I felt like doing something a little different, so I’m making a less serious “world-free” conlang that could reasonably be inserted into various fantasy settings. Since I’ve always been fond of Tolkien’s Black Speech, this is a language that would be spoken by standard fantasy orcs or other “monster...
by Chengjiang
Fri Nov 10, 2017 2:19 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: On borrowing pronouns
Replies: 5
Views: 2648

Re: On borrowing pronouns

It did occur to me some time after I wrote this that they, like she, probably owes its existence to Old English’s original personal pronouns becoming homophonous or nearly so, and wouldn’t have been borrowed otherwise. I’ll have to look into Indonesian pronouns, though.
by Chengjiang
Fri Nov 10, 2017 1:19 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: On borrowing pronouns
Replies: 5
Views: 2648

On borrowing pronouns

So an idea I’m considering using in one of my remade conlangs is having two full sets of pronouns: A familiar set that are native to the language, and a polite set that are borrowed. Does this make sense as something that could happen? I know that while pronoun borrowing is rare, it is attested, e.g...
by Chengjiang
Thu Nov 09, 2017 8:23 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Post your conlang's phonology
Replies: 2278
Views: 499864

Re: Post your conlang's phonology

Here’s Shadda , a relative of Janaharian. /m n ɲ/ m n nh /p b t d ts tʃ dʒ k g q/ p b t d tz ch j k g q /s ʃ ç χ h/ s sh kh qh h /r l/ r l /j w/ y w /i e ɛ a ɔ o u/ i ê e a o ô u /ĩ ɛ̃ ɔ̃ ũ/ į ę ą ų The alveolar affricate and palatal fricative are romanized the way they are to link them to their mai...
by Chengjiang
Sun Nov 05, 2017 12:38 pm
Forum: Almea
Topic: Unusual Almean sound changes
Replies: 2
Views: 4368

Unusual Almean sound changes

Zomp, I was curious about the real-world inspiration (if applicable) or the motivation for some of the stranger sound changes in Almean languages. In particular, I was wondering about the cases in Cuezi and Cadhinor where certain consonants voice or devoice in apparent response to a combination of t...
by Chengjiang
Mon Oct 23, 2017 6:31 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name
Replies: 26
Views: 7380

Re: Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name

An update: I got an opportunity to talk to Weijun alone. His name is pronounced in the standard Mandarin way. He just isn’t interested in correcting anybody, which is understandable. There is also one other employee who uses more or less one of the mildly Anglicized “logical” pronunciations posted. ...
by Chengjiang
Tue Oct 17, 2017 6:57 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name
Replies: 26
Views: 7380

Re: Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name

People seem to think that Mandarin spellings must be made even more exotic , and I expect that's kicking in here. "Oh, a j — that can't possibly be our j, it must be something else!" That seems more likely than anything else I’ve been able to think of; somebody’s hyperforeign guess spread to the re...
by Chengjiang
Sun Oct 15, 2017 12:54 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name
Replies: 26
Views: 7380

Odd pronunciation of a Chinese name

One of my coworkers has a name spelled Weijun. Now, the standard Mandarin pronunciation of this name is obvious, as are a number of approximations or guesses that English speakers might use, but for some reason everyone who works here pronounces his name [waI.ju:n]. I have no idea how they would hav...
by Chengjiang
Thu Oct 05, 2017 7:15 pm
Forum: Languages & Linguistics
Topic: Spanish 1SG verbs in -oy
Replies: 3
Views: 2387

Spanish 1SG verbs in -oy

Where do the verb forms ending in -oy in the first person singular present indicative come from? It seems to be whenever you’d get a stressed -o , but nothing I know about the history of Spanish points to [o] breaking to [oj] or anything like that. I feel like hay is probably related to this process...
by Chengjiang
Fri Sep 22, 2017 3:00 pm
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Romanization challenge thread
Replies: 3842
Views: 842400

Re: Romanization challenge thread

Here's my own current romanization of Orja, which I'm not entirely happy with: /m n/ m n /p t k q/ p t k q /f s x χ/ f s h ḥ/x /v d g ɢ/ v d g ġ/gh /l r/ l r /j ɥ w/ j y w /i y (ɯ) u/ i ü (ï) u /e ø ɤ o/ e ö ë o /æ ɑ/ ä a In particular, I'm not entirely happy with the dotted letters for the uvulars....
by Chengjiang
Sun Sep 10, 2017 4:01 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Romanization challenge thread
Replies: 3842
Views: 842400

Re: Romanization challenge thread

Orja: /m n/ /p t k q/ /f s x χ/ /v d g ɢ/ /l r/ /j ɥ w/ /i y (ɯ) u/ /e ø ɤ o/ /æ ɑ/ And numerous diphthongs made from these vowels Syllables are (C)V(C). Glides cannot end a syllable, /d g ɢ/ cannot begin a word, and only /m n p t k q s l r/ can end a word. Of the diphthongs, most can only occur in ...
by Chengjiang
Wed Aug 09, 2017 4:09 am
Forum: Conlangery & Conworlds
Topic: Sound Change Quickie Thread
Replies: 2827
Views: 614044

Re: Sound Change Quickie Thread

What about fricatives undergoing fortition before [r], specifically [fr sr hr] > [pr tr kr]? I have fricative + rhotic clusters and I'd kind of like to get rid of them this way. [hr] > [kr] seems pretty natural to me, as does [sr] > [tr], but I'm less sure about [fr] > [pr] when [f] is unchanged in ...