Your Favorite Almea Language

[Rory]

Hands down, though, Elkar?l is Mark's best work yet.

I was about to use almost exactly the same words until you did first.

[Nikura]

I like Xurnash...
This is my first (short) post here on #Almea

[Delthayre]

I prefer Flaidish the most. It's somewhere between familiar and alien in wonderful way. However I do really like Old Skourene, which satisfied my anticipation handily.

[Salmoneus]

I've not really studied any of them. I liked all the syntax in the Axunasin description, though.

[Shm Churmey]

Hard to pick one... I really like Elkar?l and Old Skourene for the grammar.
But Xurnash just sounds great, and is pretty promising.

[Trebor]

Hmm..........

Hard to say.

Kebreni probably comes first, then Old Skourene, then Elkar?l, and finally Axunashin.

Or maybe the other way around.

:shrug:

[vec]

I've never been able to decide on this. Kebreni has a nice sound but I don't like the apostrophes. I also like Isma?n but I don't like the underlines. I find Flaidish very nice and Old Skourene is very interesting.

[zompist]

Kebreni has a nice sound but I don't like the apostrophes.

It doesn't actually have apostrophes... now that I can use Unicode I'll have to update the Kebreni pages. And heck, Isma?n, too.

[vec]

Yay! That's great! I really look forward to it. That'll really increase my liking in those languages.

[Peacekeeper]

I can't say I am an expert on the languages of Almea or anything - in fact this is my very first post in this forum - but I always had a thing for inflecting languages, so I would have to say that I think Cu?zi looks quite interesting.

[Drydic]

Dearest to me would be Obenzayet, of the langs with a semblance of a web prescence. I do belive that I've based one branch of one of my families quite heavily on the Naviu system, as I understand it.

[Legros]

Verdurian. When I discovered it, I understood why some people fall in love with the French language!

Everytime I hear people speaking in Portuguese, I think that Verdurian must sound half Portuguese, half French.

Close second: Barakhinei.

[Rory]

Kebreni has a nice sound but I don't like the apostrophes.

It doesn't actually have apostrophes... now that I can use Unicode I'll have to update the Kebreni pages. And heck, Isma?n, too.

Mark, when you're designing your langs, do you work on the computer or on paper? Or a mixture of both?

[zompist]

Mark, when you're designing your langs, do you work on the computer or on paper? Or a mixture of both?

Verdurian was created on paper; the rest were all done on the computer.

[Raphael]

Verdurian. I simply like the way it sound (at least if my reading-out-loudly of it is anything like how it's supposed to sound). (Allthough when it's about cultures, I'm more into the modern Flaids and the Xurnese).

[aanimo]

I personally prefer Elkaril, possibly just because of the writing system (which is absolutely awesome). Verdurian is next though, as it is the only one I know anything of.

[Mornche Geddick]

I'm going to try and learn Flaidish, when I've finished the Verdurian Practical Course. That's if Zomp doesn't get the Axunashin course done first.

[Gremlins]

Cadhinor has got to be Zomp's best. It reminds of Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and Persian all in glorious package.

Cad'inor liubai!

[Tuli]

To put in my two cents, I'd say my favorite is Kebreni, followed closely by Old Skourene, both probably because they're so different from English, and they have awesome verbal systems. Kebreni reminds me of Japanese, with the grammar and vocabulary. Źe, h'em kine eh'c nuitsu kebren nizgu śaida.

[kodé]

Wede:i just feels right to me... I like the agglutination of morpheme (and donuts).

Elkarîl is a tour de force of linguistic creativity, what with the anaphora, the colors, the locatives, the syntax (I never thought I'd be so amazed by fixed word order) and the phonology, which is my favorite of all the languages (altho' I still can't really get those implosives right).

Kebreni and Old Skourene are also very enjoyable, tho' less intuitive for me than Wede:i.

Individually, the Eastern languages aren't quite as fun, but taken as a whole, I believe they make up for their IE-ness (which unfortunately is a minus in my book, just because I'm most familiar with the IE family)

[Gond]

I love them all, though I don't know much of them all. I am in love with Verdurian, Cadhinor and Cuêzi because they remind me of all Romance languages, Latin and Ancient Greek. Not just because of their structure but because of their history. Lübao soa Sfaha!

Everytime I hear people speaking in Portuguese, I think that Verdurian must sound half Portuguese, half French.

Portuguese, in spelling? European or Brazilian one?

[kuroda]

As cool as conscripts are, I have to say that the Latin transcription of Flaidish is possibly my favorite -- it's just so... I dunno, neat. Nifty.

Linguistically, I'd have to say Wede:i; it seems aesthetically pleasing in a couple domains simultaneously. I get a big kick out of Verdurian for the "spot the Earthly cognate/source" fun it offers, too.

To be honest, though, it's not the linguistics per se of the Almean languages that make them the conlanging gold standard to my mind; it's their presentation and depth.

[BGMan]

Everytime I hear people speaking in Portuguese, I think that Verdurian must sound half Portuguese, half French.

Personally, Verdurian reminds me of Romanian more than anything.

I would have to say Elkaril, as most of the others were too European.

I would say that the Cadhinorian languages are definitely European-like, but I personally think Wede:i looks rather like Indonesian. There also appears to be a Quechua influence in some of them... although nothing like in Huttese.

BG

[dunomapuka]

A year ago I said Ismain and Flaidish; now I'm thinking Kebreni and Old Skourene.

But I like them all...

[Chengjiang]

Personally, Verdurian reminds me of Romanian more than anything.

I got that vibe too! (As long as we're talking solely about the sound.) It also kind of reminds me of a mixture of ancient and modern Greek, what with the syllable structure and the general sound of the articles and case endings.

I personally think Wede:i looks rather like Indonesian.

Again, I agree. Primarily because of the syllable structure, I would think. Syllable structure goes a long way in determining the "flavor" of a language, or at least so it seems to me.

Having said that, it also sounds a bit like a blend of Japanese and some strangely polysyllabic Chinese dialect. To a lesser extent its descendants and the Axunaic family also sound a bit like that.

I would have to say Elkaril, as most of the others were too European.

Eddy: I could understand your calling Cadhinor and its descendants "too European", since they are deliberately designed to resemble European languages, but it's that word "most" that puzzles me. Do Kebreni, Old Skourene, Wedei, Flaidish, and Axunašin really seem that way to you? I realize Axunašin does have some IE-ish elements, due to its relation to the Central langs, but in truth it also has a lot in common with other language families; for example, the shift of the nominative-accusative distinction into a new variety of grammatical gender is decidedly un-IE-like, and the phonology seems to me to more closely resemble that of a sort of Turkic-Japonic hybrid. Flaidish has a vowel shift in its history similar to the English Great Vowel Shift, but that's about all it has in common with English. Cuêzi has a rather IE-ish grammar overall, but its roots bear little resemblance to IE roots, in contrast to the Central langs. So I guess your remark strikes me as a bit odd. I'm not attacking you; I'm just kind of surprised that you said what you did.

That said, Elkarîl is pretty sweet. However, my favorite among Mark's creations has to be Old Skourene. There's just no contest. The verbiness, the ergativity, the sound system, the twisted semantics, and last but not least the ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE WRITING SYSTEM -- what's not to love?