zompist bboard

Mantid, my first, failed conlang, has this example of a kind of Easter egg in its lexicon: darek (dʌɹekʼ)= exterminate In reference to a certain race of cybernetic omnicidal maniacs who use the term quite a lot. It's kind of sad that the Mantid language has a two syllable word for exterminate but it...

I have just one question: Why should mantis-like aliens use human speech sounds in their language? An excellent question. I didn't consider that until I'd already made part of the language. My current justification for this sort of thing is that it's the closest approximation to humans trying to co...

menekak. sak mek thik. mantik sak mek rishgasek roth. lek mek plezrekat. lek sak sazap plesh lek plentak serek rak rugek. menekækʼ. sækʼ mekʼ θikʼ. mæntikʼ sækʼ mekʼ ɹiʃgæsekʼ oθ. lekʼ mekʼ plezɹekæt. lekʼ sækʼ sæzæp pleʃ lekʼ plentækʼ seɹekʼ ɹakʼ ɹugekʼ. Hello. I is new. Mantid I is [ing]-talk in....

True, I could revise it if I really wanted to, but I've sort of lost interest in this particular language for now. There are so many interesting aspects of language, after all, and it'd be remiss of me to not explore as many as I can, even if unsuccessfully. That also applies to triconsonantal roots...

My first version of Janaharian was based around a thorough misunderstanding of how triconsonantal root systems work and had "do everything analytically that English does inflectionally and vice versa" as a design ethos. To the extent that much of it was ever made, it was a right mess. It also had a...

Fair enough, everyone does need to start from somewhere. Mantid as a conlang was phonetically similar to English, except the velar ejective I suppose. Morphological it was also similar except in areas where it become ridiculous bloated (as was mentioned previously, it took three words and nine sylla...

I'm glad to hear that I'm not completely alone (does saying that count as a kind of insult since it means I'm glad some people had failed conlangs?). 5,000 words it's quite a lot. Mantid has...let me count. Probbaly somewhere around 75 (not very many), although I'm not sure how many of those include...

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum and I would like to share the story of Mantid, my first conlang- and my first failure in conlanging. I suppose I kind of gave away the ending here, but let's face it, I'm a newbie at this entire conlanging business, and Mantid was pretty much a nooblang. However...