A conlang interpretation challenge

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Bedelato
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Bedelato »

finlay wrote:Here's another possible transcription:

ik had en openbarun (I had a revelation)
got stud efor ik (God stood before me)
he sa (:) ik eksisti nix (he said?? : I exist not)
so ik beglefi nix got (so i believe not God)
ik vet he eksisti nix (I think he exists not)
I can't really work out half of this.
ninja edit: oh right, it was because I thought "goat" instead of "God". :mrgreen:

tes var en bindar (this was a farmer)
he had fil tire (he had many animals)
XX heste (XX horses - I think -e is a plural marker incidentally)
XX kue (XX cows)
XX svine (XX pigs)
en kat (a cat)
total XX tire (total XX animals)

tes var en ban (This was a man)
tes var en bi (This was a bee)
te bi saget "bsss" (The bee said "Bzzz")
te bi stak te ban (The bee stung the man)
te ban saget "aaa" (The man said "Aaa")
It looks like the language is Germanic.

Going by that assumption, I notice several things, like there's a strong verb stak "stung" ("stuck"?) in the third one.

I also see some sound changes there:
*þ > t
*m > b (judging from ban "man")

All this is tentative of course, but yeah. Hope I've done something useful :D
At, casteda dus des ometh coisen at tusta o diédem thum čisbugan. Ai, thiosa če sane búem mos sil, ne?
Also, I broke all your metal ropes and used them to feed the cheeseburgers. Yes, today just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

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finlay
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by finlay »

Not particularly, to be honest. :P But it's good to get thoughts out there in a more coherent fashion to me, lol. As for the translations to the third part, faiuwle already established what they were likely to be, which is why i didn't write them in.

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finlay
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by finlay »

faiuwle wrote:If that guess is right, than B probably is 5 (since it's the equivalent of the presumed 0, but with the dot). If E > 5 then D has to be 1 (per previous post). If D is 1 and the dot adds 5 more, that means that E has to be 6, so the total is 16. That leaves us with {2|3|4} + 5 + {7|8|9} + 1 = 16, or {2|3|4} + {7|8|9} = 10, so A and C are either 2 and 8 respectively, or 3 and 7 respectively.

Ninja Edit: finlay worked it out on paper while I was typing. :P
I went for 3 and 7 because assuming that D is 1, A seems to be the inverse, and if you count in a circle, it would have to be 3. This is consistent with 7 being inbetween the two, so 2, with a central dot, so 2+5.

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Chuma
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

Most impressive, guys!

I thought I would have to give a lot more hints than that. Next time I'll make it apriori, so it'll be more of a challenge to guess. :P

Here's a quirky one just to mess with you a little:
gscript4.jpg
gscript4.jpg (7.46 KiB) Viewed 2994 times

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finlay
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by finlay »

en livpot?

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Herra Ratatoskr
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Herra Ratatoskr »

my guess would be "a lifeboat".
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Bedelato
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Bedelato »

Wait... There's two symbols for /v/?
Apparently the [+voice] diacritic applies to fricatives too.
At, casteda dus des ometh coisen at tusta o diédem thum čisbugan. Ai, thiosa če sane búem mos sil, ne?
Also, I broke all your metal ropes and used them to feed the cheeseburgers. Yes, today just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

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Chuma
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

You've pretty much figured it all out, and with much less difficulty than I imagined. I hope you enjoyed my little challenge. As you noticed, the language is Germanic - let me know how realistic you think it looks.
Here is a short description of the language, and the correct interpretations of the texts.

phonemes are: aeiou tdpbkg sfx rlnhjw
no stress, length or tone distinctions
semivowels are more consonant-like when before vowel, like in English
POA of nasals and voicing of fricatives are allophonic
initial or final clusters can be fric+plos or plos+fric, medial can also be fric+plos+fric; the whole cluster gets the same voicing
most verbs are inflected either with a suffix (pres -i, past -et) or with umlaut
a common sound change is loss of tone for fricatives, since it's not phonemic
often v -> w and m -> p to avoid loss of distinction from f and n
there are no object forms, even of pronouns
writing is basically phonemic
dash above means voiced
hook means fricative
in clusters, the first consonant gets the dash, thus fricatives can occasionally also get it
the round things are digits; the spot on the side goes none-right-up-left-down to mean 0-1-2-3-4, and the spot in the middle adds five

Picture 1:

ik had en openbarun
got stod efor ik
he sa: ik eksisti nix
so ik beglefi nix got
ik wet he eksisti nix


I had a revelation
God stood before me
he said: I exist not
so I believe-in not God
I know he exists not

(be- is here a prefix which makes transitive; glefi "believe" -> beglefi "belive in")

Picture 2:

tes war en bondar
he had fil tire
3 heste
5 kue
7 swine
en kat
total 16 tire


there was a farmer
he had many animals
3 horses
5 cows
7 pigs
a cat
in-total 16 animals

(-e is plural. -ar is originally an active suffix, like English -er; bondar comes from bondi, "to live, to dwell")

Picture 3:

tes war en ban
tes war en bi
te bi saget "bsss"
te bi stak te ban
te man saget "aaa"


there was a man
there was a bee
the bee said "bzzz"
the bee stung the man
the man said "aaa"

(notice that the cluters all have the same voicing, so /bsss/ = [bz::])

Picture 4:
en livpot
[ɛn li:vbot]

a lifeboat

Good job everyone!

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Qwynegold
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Qwynegold »

Is it a future Swedish or something?
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finlay
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by finlay »

So "saget" and "sa" both mean "said"?

and oh god why do I mix up "think" and "know" when translating from other languages? I've done that with French before... now I'm doing it with vocab that I know via Dutch...

Also @bedelato, frankly <v> was a guess – I thought it could be either v or w and went with v because it looks more Scandiwegian. Chuma meant it to be a <w>, apparently.

tezcatlip0ca
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

finlay wrote:Scandiwegian
What </break length="4s"> is that?
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

finlay wrote:So "saget" and "sa" both mean "said"?
Yeah, it's the weak form and the irregular form... Actually, it was unintentional, but it looks kind of naturalistic.
Qwynegold wrote:Is it a future Swedish or something?
Not really. It's meant to be a rather generic Germanic language.

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Nortaneous
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Nortaneous »

Image
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Chuma
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

Image

tezcatlip0ca
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by tezcatlip0ca »

What do the photos even mean?
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Nortaneous »

read the filenames
Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Qwynegold
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Qwynegold »

Chuma wrote:
Qwynegold wrote:Is it a future Swedish or something?
Not really. It's meant to be a rather generic Germanic language.
Huh, it's easier for me to understand than, say Icelandic or Dutch.
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Chuma
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

Well, they're not exactly difficult texts. But take a look at the first text. It has 14 words - according to my count, whether you know Swedish, German, English or Dutch, half of them are obvious.

On a closer count, I find:
- all but two ("openbarung" and "wet") are cognate with the English equivalent
- all but one ("beglefi") are cognate with the Swedish equivalent
- all but two ("existi" and "so") are cognate with the Dutch equivalent (but I don't speak Dutch, so there may well be alternative words that are cognate)
- every single word is cognate with the German equivalent

So as far as I can tell, it seems pretty even.

I think it might be that it's easier to understand an average of a language family. It's kind of what makes a lot of auxlangs easier. But it's hard to test with such a small sample.

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finlay
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by finlay »

I only know 'openbarun' because of the title of a Sigur Rós song. :oops:

(this one: "Syndir Guðs (opinberun frelsarans)" which means like "Sins of God (Revelation of the Saviour)")

(And as I alluded before, I know "weet" from Dutch, but I mistranslated it as 'think' rather than 'know' because I'm a stupid dick)

By the way, is it 'ban' or 'man'? Is this discrepancy because of a lack of <m> in your alphabet? (while i'm on that subject, I just want to stick my nose in and say how much I dislike featural scripts and alphabets, and most of all featural alphabets, but you don't need to listen to me :P It's mainly because I can think of exactly 1 real world example (Korean) and 1 conexample (Tengwar), if you don't count the many other conexamples that come through this board.)

Bedelato
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Bedelato »

I wanna do more of these sometime. :D
At, casteda dus des ometh coisen at tusta o diédem thum čisbugan. Ai, thiosa če sane búem mos sil, ne?
Also, I broke all your metal ropes and used them to feed the cheeseburgers. Yes, today just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

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Chuma
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Re: A conlang interpretation challenge

Post by Chuma »

Finlay: It's "ban", because there is no /m/; [m] is an allophone of [n], but "nan" would be confusing.

I'm not a big fan of featural scripts myself, but I think it made it easier to guess. I'm not planning to continue working on this lang.

Actually I've been thinking of making some sort of Germanic thing, but I wouldn't use this script for it.

Bedelato: I'm glad you liked it. I shall try to make it more difficult next time. Maybe someone else wants to try too.

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