zompist bboard

The website for my newest conlang, O Yis, is now live.

As ever, comments and feedback on the language and its presentation are always welcome.

Enjoy!

Just commenting as I go through it:

Awesome map.

Nice looking script.

Really like the derivational morphology.

Absolutely love the articles.

Honorifics are nice.

That pronoun system is clever.

Verbs are just unconditionally awesome in every respect.

THOSE CONJUNCTIONS ARE AMAZING.

....

If I had just one tiny criticism, it's that you could maybe expand the "Clauses" section a bit, but overall this really is an incredible conlang. There are just so many interesting features, and yet it still feels naturalistic. I haven't got this excited about a conlang since I don't know when ...

And I like the overall "look" of the language - it's quite unique, although that said it does remind me of my own conlang Viksen quite a bit (not enough that I could convincingly argue you've plagiarised anything though, I don't think ...).

I can't help but think of the Churchill dog adopting an Aussie accent...

Gemination, not germination.

What does a syllabic /t/ sound like? What's the difference between /i/ and /j=/?

Interesting article system.

Looks to me like a Celtic language, except even more insane. Fun. The one thing I'd suggest is glosses for the examples, or at least the ones where it's not intuitively obvious what's going on.

@Curlyjimsam - thank you! I'm planning to add some translations in due course, providing each clause with a full interlinear and adding comments linked back to the relevant grammar page when the clause demonstrates a particular syntax/grammar strategy. Hopefully this will make up for the brevity of the syntax page.

@Finlay - haven't done anything about intonation yet (except for the pitch marks in the native script, but they're more about facial expression). I'm torn between going for something a little more exotic to Brit/Yank ears (Anglo-Indian?) or just copying the Gevey intonation patterns.

@Nortaneous - thanks for the comments. Gemination spelling now corrected (alongside a number of other irritating errors that crept into the webpages as I rushed to complete them). Good call on the syllabic /t/ - I'm now calling the 'syllabic' stops clitics, though even that's not really right. Maybe a better explanation would be that they're consonant onsets with a (possibly voiceless) very short schwa as the nucleus?

Rik wrote: @Finlay - haven't done anything about intonation yet (except for the pitch marks in the native script, but they're more about facial expression). I'm torn between going for something a little more exotic to Brit/Yank ears (Anglo-Indian?) or just copying the Gevey intonation patterns.

Clearly you didn't get it. I'm just making fun of the name of your language.


OOOOOOOOOO YIS!

Rik wrote:@Nortaneous - thanks for the comments. Gemination spelling now corrected (alongside a number of other irritating errors that crept into the webpages as I rushed to complete them). Good call on the syllabic /t/ - I'm now calling the 'syllabic' stops clitics, though even that's not really right. Maybe a better explanation would be that they're consonant onsets with a (possibly voiceless) very short schwa as the nucleus?

Clitics? Those are a completely different thing that don't usually have much of anything to do with phonology...

Look at Burmese minor syllables. That might be what you're going for.

Although I think I have something that could be called "syllabic consonants" in my conlang Sérhes Kéttw. The protolang had a vowel system of something like [æ ɔ i ʉ] (I haven't decided what exactly; I've been writing them /a å e u/ and the important part is that they're +low +round, +low -round, -low +round, and -low -round) and an epenthetic vowel /o/ ([ə]?). Then roundedness transferred from the vowels to the preceding consonants and the epenthetic vowel merged with /e/. So, even though syllable structure is phonetically strictly CVC(:), there can be long strings of consonants phonemically, and the only ways to tell whether the vowel is underlyingly(?) there are metathesis (cécak /cécak/ king céckan /cécak an/ king.TOP, but éccek /éc:k/ sky éccek an /éc:k an/ sky=TOP) and behavior with affixes (cécakes king-INST, but écckes sky-INST).

finlay wrote:Clearly you didn't get it. I'm just making fun of the name of your language.


OOOOOOOOOO YIS!

Ah, 'kay.

Though 'jis' is clearly niw zilend or possibly sath efrikin.

O Yis => o(r t)ights

Rik wrote:

finlay wrote:Clearly you didn't get it. I'm just making fun of the name of your language.


OOOOOOOOOO YIS!

Ah, 'kay.

Though 'jis' is clearly niw zilend or possibly sath efrikin.

O Yis => o(r t)ights

yeah, kinda realised that as i was posting it. never mind. I think it's still raised in aus to [e] or something.