Rangyayo - an East Asian language of the elixir of life

[Ollock]

What do the characters in the logo mean. Certainly you wouldn't transliterate Google into Chinese characters when your language has a perfectly suitable alphabet.

[Bob Johnson]

What do the characters in the logo mean. Certainly you wouldn't transliterate Google into Chinese characters when your language has a perfectly suitable alphabet.

Rangya, presumably. cf. http://www.google.co.jp/

[Ollock]

What do the characters in the logo mean. Certainly you wouldn't transliterate Google into Chinese characters when your language has a perfectly suitable alphabet.

Rangya, presumably. cf. http://www.google.co.jp/

Ah, that should have been patently obvious. I was used to seeing the transliteration 谷歌 in that position, back when http://www.google.cn/ was still around (if you visit that, the image link to google.hk bears a similar logo, but I don't think there's a live site that does that).

[desmond]

A couple of questions I don't think I've ever asked about this:
Does Korean ever do this sort of mixed-logographic style of writing with Hanja? Or is it really just an oddity limited to Japan nowadays? Did Korean ever do the mixed-logographic style, indeed, or was it always purely Hanja? In that sense, is Rangyan a sort of exploration of what that might look like, to some extent?

Do you have like an equivalent of the kunyomi and onyomi in Japanese, making your characters a nightmare to learn?

What about the name of the language/country itself? Is it [raŋjajo] or [ranɟajo] (it's just I've always read it the second way and have only just realised that it's probably not that!) As for the English translation, why is it from the same root? It's just that I might for a second draw your attention to the fact that neither China nor Korea nor Japan takes its English name from the native roots, something like Zhongguo, Hanguk and Nihon respectively; rather we take the root of an old dynasty or the name given to the place by another region. Places like Taiwan and Vietnam where we use the same name as they do are comparatively rare.

ZBB was unstable so I didn't reply until now

Korean Hangul did not come into widespread use until the late 19th and early 20th century. Thus, until that time it was necessary to be fluent in reading and writing hanja in order to be literate in Korean, as the vast majority of Korean literature and most other Korean documents were written in Hanja. Today, Hanja are not used to write native Korean words, which are always rendered in Hangul, and even words of Chinese origin are written with the Hangul alphabet most of the time. I think the the mixed-logographic writing style came into play in Korean War era? (as Lyhoko Leaci mentioned)

Therefore the differences of the mixed-logographic writing styles of the three languages, Korean, Rangyan and Japanese would be:

1. Korean: Hangul (white spaces inserted between words) + Hanja (for Chinese-derived words only; rarely used, even when used, written in brackets as a disambiguation after the corresponding Hangul)

• Rangyan: Yenmun (no word separation spaces) + Hanji (for both Chinese-derived words many native Rangyan words)

• Japanese: Kana (no word separation spaces) + Kanji (for both Chinese-derived words many native Japanese words)

As you can see, the hybrid writing system of Rangyan resembles the Japanese writing system more than the Korean one. Therefore, Rangyan Hanji does have an equivalent of the kunyomi and onyomi in Japanese. I reckon it would be twice as hard as learning Chinese Hanzi / Korean Hanja but much simpler than learning Japanese Kanji. Here is an example for the character 生 (life, birth):

1. Chinese: (onyomi) sheng

• Korean: (onyomi) saeng

• Rangyan: (onyomi) sang / (kunyomi) bo

• Japanese: (onyomi) sei, shou / (kunyomi) i, u, uma, umare, o, ha, ki, nama, na, mu

Nearly each of Rangyan Hanji has one onyomi reading and one kunyomi reading at most.

The most accurate pronunciation of Rang-ya-yo would be [ɾaŋjajɔ]. About the English name, hmmm... I haven't really thought through this very well. I've not yet drawn up the history of Rangya. And the place name Rangya 琅野 is pronounced as Lang-ye in Mandarin, Long-ye in Cantonese, Rang-ya in Korean and Rou-ya in Japanese.

[desmond]

What do the characters in the logo mean. Certainly you wouldn't transliterate Google into Chinese characters when your language has a perfectly suitable alphabet.

Rangya, presumably. cf. http://www.google.co.jp/

Ah, that should have been patently obvious. I was used to seeing the transliteration 谷歌 in that position, back when http://www.google.cn/ was still around (if you visit that, the image link to google.hk bears a similar logo, but I don't think there's a live site that does that).

Yup the characters in the logo read 琅野 Rangya, the short form of the longer country name 琅野王国 Rangya Wangkok (lit. Rangya Kingdom)
Yeah I think probably Google China was the only Google site that didn't put down the country name? And 谷歌 was the first and the only local translation of the company name around the world?

[desmond]

Facebook Rangya

[Mr. Z]

Facebook Rangya

Come on, people! How do you make webpages in your conlang?! I wanna do so too!

[treskro]

Go to the webpage that you want to edit, then enter

Code: Select all

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

in the address bar. Edit, then screenshot.

[Mr. Z]

Go to the webpage that you want to edit, then enter

Code: Select all

javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0

in the address bar. Edit, then screenshot.

It doesn't really work on Firefox or Chrome, it seems, and it's just plain weird on Explorer O:
EDIT: Okay, I think I got it. Thanks.
Wait, I can't edit google.

[desmond]

Come on, people! How do you make webpages in your conlang?! I wanna do so too!

Here is my trick

I opened Facebook login page on my Firefox browser. Right clicked to bring up a pop up menu. Clicked on "View Page Source". Copied and pasted the HTML source code to notepad and saved as a .htm file. I searched for the keywords that I wanted to replace and replaced them with Rangyan translations. I then opened the .htm file on my Firefox and the page looked like a useable Facebook login page

I'm looking forward to seeing Google / Facebook in other conlang versions hehe...

[Mr. Z]

Come on, people! How do you make webpages in your conlang?! I wanna do so too!

Here is my trick

I opened Facebook login page on my Firefox browser. Right clicked to bring up a pop up menu. Clicked on "View Page Source". Copied and pasted the HTML source code to notepad and saved as a .htm file. I searched for the keywords that I wanted to replace and replaced them with Rangyan translations. I then opened the .htm file on my Firefox and the page looked like a useable Facebook login page

I'm looking forward to seeing Google / Facebook in other conlang versions hehe...

Oh crap. I just worked on my version of Facebook for half an hour and then I accidentally went back to my homepage. And I lost it all.

[Mr. Z]

I'm looking forward to seeing Google / Facebook in other conlang versions hehe...

Mine certainly doesn't look as classy as yours, but it's definitely something

[desmond]

I'm looking forward to seeing Google / Facebook in other conlang versions hehe...

Mine certainly doesn't look as classy as yours, but it's definitely something

It needs some touch up with the text alignments, but it's still awesome.

[SHiNKiROU]

I'm looking forward to seeing Google / Facebook in other conlang versions hehe...

I found Chrome's Inspect Elements works very well.
Facebook in Rng'-Tera, I forgot vowel harmony on all of the sentences and I have no gloss.

[Left]

Going back to verbs in Rangyayo, -ü is the present marker correct? So basically every verb in present tense has a -ü at the end. Okay, I know "yab" is the stem meaning "eat" but can stems be two syllabled? Because is it possible get enough different stems which are one syllabled and mean different things? Could you spare some time to answer by any chance please?

I'm thinking of drawing some inspiration from Rangyayo for my conlang since I LOVE it so much .

[desmond]

Going back to verbs in Rangyayo, -ü is the present marker correct? So basically every verb in present tense has a -ü at the end. Okay, I know "yab" is the stem meaning "eat" but can stems be two syllabled? Because is it possible get enough different stems which are one syllabled and mean different things? Could you spare some time to answer by any chance please?

I'm thinking of drawing some inspiration from Rangyayo for my conlang since I LOVE it so much .

Yes, -ü is the present marker, which is the default form presented in a Rangyan dictionary.

Most of the basic native verb stems are one-syllabled in the form of CVC-. Theotically there are at most 18 x 10 x 18 = 3240 different CVC- combinations, but of course not every single combination is used (otherwise all verbs would look alike!) and syllables like yi, yü, wo, wu, wü... don't exist.

However, the phonotactics of Rangyan is less restrictive than that of Japanese, and allows verb stems to be CVCC-, though the CC combinations are limited, for example, -mp-, -pm-, -nd-, -tts-... This can increase the number of combinations for verbs.

So far I've slightly more than 100 basic native verb stems (word creation is hard!), the only two-syllabled verb stem is kyoter- 護ㄹ "protect". Worth noticing is that Rangyayo has borrowed many Middle Chinese words that are usually two-syllabled (CVCCVC-), for example the verb "get married" is kethonn- 結婚ㄴ which is a Chinese-dervied word kethon 結婚 "marriage" + native Rangyan verb n- ㄴ "do", so this will further increase the number.

Perhaps it's worth knowing that the Rangyan adjective is also using the same construct, dari 新ㄹ "new" from dar- where -i is an adjective suffix.

Thank you for the compliment! Look forward to see your new conlang, possibly with a bit of Rangyan flavour

[Left]

Yes, -ü is the present marker, which is the default form presented in a Rangyan dictionary.

Most of the basic native verb stems are one-syllabled in the form of CVC-.

So far I've slightly more than 100 basic native verb stems (word creation is hard!), the only two-syllabled verb stem is kyoter- 護ㄹ "protect". Worth noticing is that Rangyayo has borrowed many Middle Chinese words that are usually two-syllabled (CVCCVC-), for example the verb "get married" is kethonn- 結婚ㄴ which is a Chinese-dervied word kethon 結婚 "marriage" + native Rangyan verb n- ㄴ "do", so this will further increase the number.
Thank you for the compliment! Look forward to see your new conlang, possibly with a bit of Rangyan flavour

Yay thanks for replying! I think I'll have more two-syllabled stems cause my conlang really is not so accepting towards one-syllabled words (At least 80% of basic words are two-syllabled, not very healthy I suppose (?)). I can only threoratically produce 2800 one-syllabled words (estimated with help from awkwords). So verbs will probably be quite long when inflected. Nonetheless, I have decided to work with such a system. I think i'm addicted to inflection its so fun! Especially since my native language is sadly devoid of such wonderful complexities.

Thank you for the compliment! Look forward to see your new conlang, possibly with a bit of Rangyan flavour

You are welcome lol. I'm gonna see what else I can draw from Rangyayo, I'm not gonna use its phonology though. Its beautiful but if I did it would'nt be too nice to copy your work and it would definitely be a hassle to change every single word. Anyway, I sure hope to post my language (its my first) in the future. And one more thing, I'm really glad I've found an agglutinating language without noun cases, don't really like them for some reason.

[SHiNKiROU]

I found the Sino-Rangyan number system is somewhat broken, 1 (it) sounds like 2 (i), and 8 (pa) sounds like 100 (pak).
In Chinese, even rhyming numbers 1 (yi1) and 7 (qi1) are forced to be distinguished (yi1 -> yao1) when reading telephone numbers.

Also, the romanization is confusing:
- cha [tsʰa], chya [tɕʰa]
- tsa [tsa], tsya [tɕa]
- dza [dza], ja [dʑa]

Well, things will be simpler in Ithkuil's romanization, but that ruins the appearance.

[suelior]

I found the Sino-Rangyan number system is somewhat broken, 1 (it) sounds like 2 (i), and 8 (pa) sounds like 100 (pak).
In Chinese, even rhyming numbers 1 (yi1) and 7 (qi1) are forced to be distinguished (yi1 -> yao1) when reading telephone numbers.

Sino-Korean has [il] for 1 and for 2, and [sam] for 3 and [sa] for 4. And Koreans use Sino-Korean when reading telephone numbers (although admittedly it's sometimes confusing and thus the speaker tires to speak it with extra caution, or just use Korean names for the numbers that are likely to be confused.) So maby it wouldn't necessarily cause that much of a problem? especially when there are separate Rangyan names for the numbers, which are, unlike Sino-Rangyan, easily discernable.

[desmond]

I found the Sino-Rangyan number system is somewhat broken, 1 (it) sounds like 2 (i), and 8 (pa) sounds like 100 (pak).
In Chinese, even rhyming numbers 1 (yi1) and 7 (qi1) are forced to be distinguished (yi1 -> yao1) when reading telephone numbers.

Also, the romanization is confusing:
- cha [tsʰa], chya [tɕʰa]
- tsa [tsa], tsya [tɕa]
- dza [dza], ja [dʑa]

Well, things will be simpler in Ithkuil's romanization, but that ruins the appearance.

Yes, I guess the Rangyan have to use the native Rangyan numeral system in situation where the Sino-Rangyan one is confusing.
And for the romanization, as [tsʰ~tɕʰ], [ts~tɕ], [dz~dʑ] are allophones, perhaps it makes sense to use <ch>, <ts>, <j> for those three allophones?

[Sortsdam]

So would tsungyangkhyu be written chungyangkhyu then?

About Hanji, I was wondering how many readings there are of each? As you know, in Japanese there are the on readings and the kun readings. Are there both Sinitic and native Rangyan readings for hanji, or are native words written only with Yenmun? I would be interested to know if you have any sort of online dictionary with Rangyan words (hopefully including their Hanji if available) yet. Your conlang is very interesting; I also quite like writing some phrases in your conlang down on paper, just because the Hanji/Yenmun combination looks so nice, and we don't see this anymore in Korean.

"Product of the Kingdom of Rangya" = 琅野王国드品。 Is this correct? If so (or if not) how would the last Hanji(s) be read (after tu)?

[desmond]

So would tsungyangkhyu be written chungyangkhyu then?

About Hanji, I was wondering how many readings there are of each? As you know, in Japanese there are the on readings and the kun readings. Are there both Sinitic and native Rangyan readings for hanji, or are native words written only with Yenmun? I would be interested to know if you have any sort of online dictionary with Rangyan words (hopefully including their Hanji if available) yet. Your conlang is very interesting; I also quite like writing some phrases in your conlang down on paper, just because the Hanji/Yenmun combination looks so nice, and we don't see this anymore in Korean.

"Product of the Kingdom of Rangya" = 琅野王国드品。 Is this correct? If so (or if not) how would the last Hanji(s) be read (after tu)?

No, tsungyangkhyu can be written as cungyangkhyu but not chungyangkhyu, because 쭝 /dzʊŋ/ <jung> 중 /tsʊŋ/ <cung> or <tsung> 충 /tsʰʊŋ/ <chung>. The Mackenzie method of romanisation for Rangyan (named after a missionary in Rangya who invented this romanisation) allows some irregularities in spelling such as <ts> instead of <c>, <sh> for <s> before <i>, <f> for <h> before <u>, parallel to the Hepburn romanisation for Japanese.

For Rangyan, there are at most two readings of each Hanji so far. Most native and Sino-derived words can be written in Hanji, therefore most Hanji have one native reading and one Sinitic reading each. However, it's possible there are some Hanji with either one native reading or one Sinitic reading but not both.

I'll give you an example.

Code: Select all

airplane    (native) 飛든機   hontündobi    /   (Sino) 飛行機   puihangki

飛 hon (native) / pui (Sinitic)
機 dobi (native)/ ki (Sinitic)

Here is a simple word list of Rangyayo I just put up. As the vocabulary is still under construction, please bear with me some overlooked mistakes in the word list.
Rangyan Word List

Thank you for the compliment. I'm looking forward seeing your Hanji/Yenmun combination handwriting on paper. Please do take some photos and post them here.

"Product of the Kingdom of Rangya" would be 琅野王国두製品 "rangya wangkok tu tseiphim". As "product" is a quite "complex" concept compared to the simple native words like "tree, fish, eat"..., I would stick to the Sino-derived word 製品 tseiphim for now (you picked a suitable Hanji 品 for product, it looks like a pile of goods too!). If I make a native word for "product", probably it would be "manufactured thing" or something along the line.

[Left]

Inform us if you make any interesting changes to Rangyayo. Thanks

[Sortsdam]

Very informative Desmond, thank you! This is by far the most interesting (to me) conlang I have seen yet. Keep up the good work my friend! (I also hope to see more about the country itself on conworld wiki )

[SHiNKiROU]

After reading the word list, I found there are no words with dz.
Overall, Rangyayo made sense to me in the shortest period of time, and it's simple enough to introduce people to Japanese and Korean.