Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

Originally the idea was to add Category:Articles only to "finished" articles, in order to have a quick way to access what's canon. Since most of the wiki content has become fairly stable by now, and Special:AllPages can now visually distinguish between redirects and full pages, it's probably true that the need for such a category has diminished a bit...

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Frislander »

Is anyone doing work on Xšali right now? It seems like a part of the world which needs a lot of work on it, and we haven't even begun to think about what it'll be like farther south, or in between Xšali and Mrisaŋfa.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

AFAIK the only people who have ever seriously done anything in the Xšali sphere are Radius (Xšali itself, never fully published), Arzena (Shtåså), Vortex/Tiamat (Gaadràmarneš), and Zhen Lin (Vylessa), although the latter two languages are spoken closer to Mrisaŋfa than to Xšalad proper. As for further south, Legion once worked on a sketch for a language spoken in the savannah, supposed to be distantly related to Proto-Western, but he never published it. And there was once a reconstruction relay set in the far southwestern corner of Peilaš too, but not much came of this. Ask the Pole for more information about that one.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Pole, the »

I've made a small revision of Wihəs, most notably adding a tone contrast for word-initial vowels.

Regarding the Peilash relay, I've added some info about the two daughter sketches I've published: the snow language and Kpijah.
And there was once a reconstruction relay set in the far southwestern corner of Peilaš too, but not much came of this. Ask the Pole for more information about that one.
It looks like Niunsic, the proto-B of that relay, has gone offline.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Writing the next few hundred years of Fáralo history to try to bridge it to the new stuff about the Union of Huyfárah and Kasca. Does anyone have zompist's original blurb about the emergence of Wippwo? Is that in this thread somewhere?

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

dunomapuka wrote:Does anyone have zompist's original blurb about the emergence of Wippwo? Is that in this thread somewhere?
viewtopic.php?p=564069#p564069

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Cedh wrote:
dunomapuka wrote:Does anyone have zompist's original blurb about the emergence of Wippwo? Is that in this thread somewhere?
viewtopic.php?p=564069#p564069
Damn... this was written a decade ago. Anyhow, some of the details will differ but I think the general shape of the story fits with what we've got.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

@Dunomapuka:

I'm currently working on my new Lukpanic dialect (which has just gained some information about numerals btw), for which I plan to actually write a basic sketch grammar, and I've encountered a question regarding Proto-Lukpanic. The short syntax section there says that gerunds and locative adjectives follow the noun in early PL already, and in later stages of the language other modifiers also move to a postnominal position. My question is, how do nominal "suffixes" (in particular quantifiers, the demonstrative -ŋu and the accusative -li, but also the locatives) behave when there's a modifier after the noun? Are they true suffixes which always appear on the noun itself? If so, are they also copied to the modifier as agreement? Or are they clitics which appear on the last word of the noun phrase, i.e. only on the modifier if one is present?

Here's an example sentence: "The mother holds the sleeping baby." Which of the three versions below is correct Proto-Lukpanic?

1. (clitic)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal kpaənu-i=li
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby sleep-GER=ACC

2. (suffix)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal-li kpaənu-i
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby-ACC sleep-GER

3. (suffix with agreement)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal-li kpaənu-i-li
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby-ACC sleep-GER-ACC

And how would the object NP look if it's "all these sleeping babies (ACC)", i.e. with -mea-ŋu-li?

(My own preference would be clitics fwiw...)

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Pole, the »

Continuing the revision of Wihəs, I've added a section dedicated to derivation.

(Don't know if it's relevant, but maybe there's somebody who still follows that relay.

Also, probably a ton of the vocabulary is anachronistic in one way or another, but whatever…)

I'm currently working on my new Lukpanic dialect (which has just gained some information about numerals btw), for which I plan to actually write a basic sketch grammar
I've been lurking a while and I have to say this dialect looks really cool. Unfortunately, I can't answer your question. (The option 2 looks the most sensible, but the other two might yield more interesting results in the daughter.)
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Cedh wrote:@Dunomapuka:

I'm currently working on my new Lukpanic dialect (which has just gained some information about numerals btw), for which I plan to actually write a basic sketch grammar, and I've encountered a question regarding Proto-Lukpanic. The short syntax section there says that gerunds and locative adjectives follow the noun in early PL already, and in later stages of the language other modifiers also move to a postnominal position. My question is, how do nominal "suffixes" (in particular quantifiers, the demonstrative -ŋu and the accusative -li, but also the locatives) behave when there's a modifier after the noun? Are they true suffixes which always appear on the noun itself? If so, are they also copied to the modifier as agreement? Or are they clitics which appear on the last word of the noun phrase, i.e. only on the modifier if one is present?

Here's an example sentence: "The mother holds the sleeping baby." Which of the three versions below is correct Proto-Lukpanic?

1. (clitic)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal kpaənu-i=li
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby sleep-GER=ACC

2. (suffix)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal-li kpaənu-i
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby-ACC sleep-GER

3. (suffix with agreement)
ni-iŋi mu naəpal-li kpaənu-i-li
hold.tightly-HAB mother baby-ACC sleep-GER-ACC

And how would the object NP look if it's "all these sleeping babies (ACC)", i.e. with -mea-ŋu-li?

(My own preference would be clitics fwiw...)
Conlanging on the fly...

The accusative -li gets copied onto the modifier, so naəpaəli kpaənuili.

The demonstrative -ŋu optionally gets copied, so naəpaəŋuli kpaənuili is permissible but another option is naəpaəŋuli kpaənuiŋuli which gives more emphasis to the "sleeping" part, with the sense of "this baby sleeping here."

The locative suffixes work more like clitics and want to live at the end of the noun phrase, but they don't copy onto the modifier, but instead (only if the NP has a modifier) are moved onto a terminal dummy pronoun su "she": naəpaəli kpaənuili sutuili "near the sleeping baby."

The quantifiers (including the number suffixes) by default just live on the head noun (naəpaəlimea kpaənuili) but can also use the dummy strategy, naəpaəli kpaənuili sumeali.

So you've got a few options for "all these sleeping babies": naəpalimeaŋuli kpaənuili or naəpalimeaŋuli kpaənuiŋuli or naəpaəŋuli kpaənui[ŋu]li sumeali.

I hope this confusing picture gives you a good basis to do some analogical leveling. Please forgive any mistakes.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

dunomapuka wrote:Conlanging on the fly...
Thanks for the input! It looks like a delicious mess that wants a good portion of analogy, to be applied differently in each dialect. Only... it turns out I'm not all that happy with your scenario, because:

- My original idea for O Ayōndui noun phrase syntax is by far the easiest to accomplish if all the suffixes are phrase-level clitics in PL, and not at all compatible with the agreement version as far as I can see. It's typologically much more plausible to grammaticalise a clitic into a true suffix with or without agreement than it is to degrammaticalise a suffix into a clitic, especially when there's agreement involved.

- The locatives as clitics seem to work well (except that the phrase "near the sleeping baby" probably won't ever appear in the accusative except when there's an additional -ab involved - "the one near the sleeping baby" -, in which situation agreement on "sleeping" and "baby" feels quite clumsy to me, but that's an aside). I also like the dummy pronoun; it might grammaticalise as an alternative to the demonstrative -ŋu in some way. However, having the innermost suffixes behave like clitics when the outer ones are true affixes is quite weird. Usually it's the other way around. If the locatives behave as clitics, I would expect all markers following them in the template to only ever appear following them in the phrase.

- The optional -ŋu-doubling makes sense in the context of an agreement scenario, but not so much with the locatives being clitics, and also not so much with the quantifiers appearing either on the noun or on the dummy but not doubled.

- Disregarding the locatives and the accusative for a while, your scenario theoretically allows the following orders of noun, adjective/gerund, quantifier and demonstrative, if all are present:
Adj N-Qu-Dem
N-Qu-Dem Adj*
N-Qu-Dem Adj-Dem*
N-Dem Adj Qu*
N-Dem Adj-Dem Qu*
However, apparently there's a linguistic universal that states that post-nominal modifiers can only ever appear in the orders N Dem Qu Adj or else N Adj Qu Dem, so all of your options with post-nominal adjectives (those with a star *) violate that universal. (Also note that N Adj Qu Dem, which is typologically common, is the exact order that would result if all Proto-Lukpanic noun suffixes were phrase-level clitics.) ((This exact universal is already broken in Akana, albeit in a different manner, by Fáralo's Qu Dem-N Adj order.))


So my suggestion would be to rethink that scenario a bit. Maybe a good alternative (which is more in line with what I know about possible grammaticalisation paths) could be something like the following:


1. All suffixes normally act as clitics. When the noun itself is the last word of the noun phrase, they attach to it directly: naəpaə=mea=ŋu=li "all these babies (ACC)". When there's a post-nominal gerund or locative adjective, they instead attach to a dummy pronoun: naəpal kpaənui su=mea=ŋu=li "all these sleeping babies (ACC)", lit. "the sleeping babies, all these ones"

2. When there's only one non-locative modifier, the dummy pronoun is not necessary: naəpal kpaənui={mea/ŋu/li}

2a. In some but not all Lukpanic dialects, dropping the dummy pronoun becomes permissible even with locatives, even with more than one enclitic, or both. (O Ayōndui would be part of this group.)

2b. A dummy pronoun would always be necessary one syntactic level further out when there's a locative clitic that refers to a complex noun phrase as a whole: naəpal kpaənui (su)=mea=ŋu su=tui "near all these sleeping babies"

3. The demonstrative may optionally be copied to the head noun for emphasis: naəpaə-ŋu kpaənui su=mea=ŋu=li "all these sleeping babies"

3a. In some but not all Lukpanic dialects, the demonstrative may also be copied to a modifier word to place emphasis there, beginning to grammaticalise into an inflectional focus marker: naəpal kpaənui-ŋu su=mea=ŋu=li "all these sleeping babies". (This may or may not happen in O Ayōndui, not sure yet.)

3b. In some but not all Lukpanic dialects, clitic doubling also becomes permissible with the accusative marker and possibly with quantifiers too, and may later evolve into true case/number agreement. (O Ayōndui would not be part of this group.)


What do you think?

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Sounds good to me. I can't syntax, so I think it is wise to go with your suggestion.

One note on morphophonology: the locatives, and also the quantifiers, do not cause a terminal /l/ to be "swallowed," unlike the accusative and demonstrative suffixes. So the correct surface form for "all these sleeping babies" is naəpalimeaŋuli, with epenthetic /i/.

Obviously, this looks like a good candidate for analogical leveling, so O Ayōndui, if you prefer, could use a reflex of **naəpaəmeaŋuli instead.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

http://akana.conlang.org/wiki/Huyf%C3%A1rah#History

Two new sections on Fáralo history. I've advanced it now into the early 1000s. There's some time to fill before Wippwo emerges from the muck, and I think this would be a good juncture for a major barbarian invasion to shake things up. Somebody outside the usual cast of characters maybe?

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

dunomapuka wrote:Sounds good to me. I can't syntax, so I think it is wise to go with your suggestion.
Great, that enables me to follow through with my plans for O Ayōndui. I'll add the information above to the Proto-Lukpanic article soon.
dunomapuka wrote:http://akana.conlang.org/wiki/Huyf%C3%A1rah#History
Two new sections on Fáralo history. I've advanced it now into the early 1000s.
I like this!
dunomapuka wrote:There's some time to fill before Wippwo emerges from the muck, and I think this would be a good juncture for a major barbarian invasion to shake things up. Somebody outside the usual cast of characters maybe?
Hmm. Where could barbarians come from at that point in time? The Xōron? Probably not; it has been civilised quite a bit by the Dāiadak, and any invaders from there would have to pass through Lasomo which appears fairly strong at this moment. The upper Bwimbai? Possible, I guess, but not really a place to develop great military strength. Would most likely only affect the inland areas of Lewsfarah, and both Lasomo and Woldulaš would be prone to jump on the wagon to get a share for themselves. The north? We know hardly anything about those peoples, but why not? It's not easy logistics to cross the Šišin mountains though. The south? Not "barbarians" in the strict sense, but maybe a Peninsular nation has learned enough from the Edasteans (and the Xšali) to be able to push out the Fáralo colonists and launch an attack on Kasca. Sounds quite good to me actually, and it's interesting because the Peninsulars should play a more central role somehow. The Ttiruku arc? This region (especially the eastern part of the archipelago) is supposed to become a major naval player at some point, and the timing seems about right. So this is a good option too, although it would fit in equally well a couple of centuries later, as a rival to Wippwo and Múþ.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Cedh wrote: Hmm. Where could barbarians come from at that point in time? The Xōron? Probably not; it has been civilised quite a bit by the Dāiadak, and any invaders from there would have to pass through Lasomo which appears fairly strong at this moment.
I was thinking of the Damak, a pencilled-in people we know nothing about, but I agree that "another invasion from the steppes" seems both boring and anachronistic.
Cedh wrote:The south? Not "barbarians" in the strict sense, but maybe a Peninsular nation has learned enough from the Edasteans (and the Xšali) to be able to push out the Fáralo colonists and launch an attack on Kasca. Sounds quite good to me actually, and it's interesting because the Peninsulars should play a more central role somehow. The Ttiruku arc? This region (especially the eastern part of the archipelago) is supposed to become a major naval player at some point, and the timing seems about right. So this is a good option too, although it would fit in equally well a couple of centuries later, as a rival to Wippwo and Múþ.
Both good ideas. Maybe an Isles people from the Ppãrwak branch of the family.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Frislander »

dunomapuka wrote:I was thinking of the Damak, a pencilled-in people we know nothing about
I have some ideas for that, I might be interested in doing some work for it once my exams are over (which is on the 29th).
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Arzena »

I, too, second the idea of Isles peoples invading Kasca from the east. Well, maybe not invade but constitute a persistent and annoying pirating nuisance.
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

1. Cedh: I found an old thread where you were discussing the descendant of Fáralo spoken in Sertek. Did you finalize the sound changes on that? I want to have the correct form for a name I used in the Huyfárah article. It would be the reflex of baoteka-laš "governorate."

2. A while ago, somebody (I forget who) did some work on Doroh, including a phonology. Where is that? I can't find it.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

dunomapuka wrote:1. Cedh: I found an old thread where you were discussing the descendant of Fáralo spoken in Sertek. Did you finalize the sound changes on that? I want to have the correct form for a name I used in the Huyfárah article. It would be the reflex of baoteka-laš "governorate."
I never finalized the sound changes because they had become quite complicated and still didn't quite give the aesthetic I had envisioned. Which is probably due to Fáralo not having the right type of wordforms, but anyway: The reflex of baoteka-laš with the latest Sertek sound changes (one day after the last post in that thread) is bōskəlaš, which sounds quite nice IMO.
2. A while ago, somebody (I forget who) did some work on Doroh, including a phonology. Where is that? I can't find it.
I'm the one who originally started doing sound changes for Doroh, and the latest version of my own changes (from 2008) is still on the Proto-Isthmus talk page. I never really worked on it any further though, except for writing up a small language profile on the forum (probably dating to roughly 0 YP) when asked about it by thedukeofnuke a year later. At some point after that, Corumayas also started to do something with Doroh (cf. here), but he never published anything about it AFAIK. Unless he has any objections, I'd say you're free to do with Doroh what you seem fit, with the only restriction being that the "Early Doroh" changes on the PI talk page should not be changed much because they are coordinated with what Radius did with Kennan (not that we're likely to ever see more of that...)

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Cedh wrote:
dunomapuka wrote:1. Cedh: I found an old thread where you were discussing the descendant of Fáralo spoken in Sertek. Did you finalize the sound changes on that? I want to have the correct form for a name I used in the Huyfárah article. It would be the reflex of baoteka-laš "governorate."
I never finalized the sound changes because they had become quite complicated and still didn't quite give the aesthetic I had envisioned. Which is probably due to Fáralo not having the right type of wordforms, but anyway: The reflex of baoteka-laš with the latest Sertek sound changes (one day after the last post in that thread) is bōskəlaš, which sounds quite nice IMO.
Nice.
I'm the one who originally started doing sound changes for Doroh, and the latest version of my own changes (from 2008) is still on the Proto-Isthmus talk page. I never really worked on it any further though, except for writing up a small language profile on the forum (probably dating to roughly 0 YP) when asked about it by thedukeofnuke a year later. At some point after that, Corumayas also started to do something with Doroh (cf. here), but he never published anything about it AFAIK. Unless he has any objections, I'd say you're free to do with Doroh what you seem fit, with the only restriction being that the "Early Doroh" changes on the PI talk page should not be changed much because they are coordinated with what Radius did with Kennan (not that we're likely to ever see more of that...)
OK. I'm mainly interested in wikifying what already exists. Might develop it a little further but not a full language description.

My Fáralo history identifies one later Doroh language, known as Dəiṭomai.

EDIT: Perhaps "Early Doroh" can be treated as Proto-Doroh, and "Late Doroh" as Dəiṭomai, one of maybe three major descendants.

I wish dukeofnuke was still hanging around here, but then again I haven't been around here much either.

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

OK. I'm mainly interested in wikifying what already exists. Might develop it a little further but not a full language description.
I was wrong. I find that I am extremely interested in the Doroh language I'm working on. I'm deriving it independently from Proto-Doroh (AKA Early Doroh), and I'm provisionally referring to it as "Eastern Doroh," intended to be located directly north of Affalinnei. The existing "Late Doroh" sound changes should stay too, but describing a different dialect -- "Western" Doroh. A third branch could be "Upland" Doroh. Here is a very rough map of the dialect boundaries:

Image

The word **Dəiṭomai is out because I no longer have an /əi/ diphthong. Also, I should double check this but the word Kojroh "league, alliance" that I used in the Huyfárah article belongs to the Western dialect instead; the Eastern form appears to be Kørjah, from Proto-Isthmus kudat.

I really like way the words look placed alongside their Faraghin cognates. It's like Western vs. Northern Germanic:
daradan : daurja
druman : drømja
sempan : čampja
gadin : goṭṛu
mašt : mott
nagho : nauṣun

I will have a lot of questions going forward. Am I to understand that the final -n of the cited Faraghin verbs is the third-person suffix from -njo?

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

dunomapuka wrote:I was wrong. I find that I am extremely interested in the Doroh language I'm working on.
Fantastic!
I will have a lot of questions going forward. Am I to understand that the final -n of the cited Faraghin verbs is the third-person suffix from -njo?
Yep, that's it exactly. I'll try to help as I can; I've been meaning to come back to Akana for a while. For what it's worth, several years ago I posted some thoughts on the Akana Forum about what Doroh case morphology might look like (near the end of this post) and about retroflexes (here); maybe you'll find some inspiration there.

Roughly what date does your map represent?
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by dunomapuka »

Corumayas wrote:For what it's worth, several years ago I posted some thoughts on the Akana Forum about what Doroh case morphology might look like (near the end of this post) and about retroflexes (here); maybe you'll find some inspiration there.
Nice. I might run with the idea of as- forming the basis of the oblique cases. I want Doroh (this dialect at least) to have about as many cases as Lotoka, with multiple spatial cases (though not as many as Affanonic). The problem is a lack of postpositions to start with - I guess I'll just have to start making roots up, right? The existing ones that I can see are -um "of," -nak "outside," -its "on."

Another nice idea would be if there is another prefixing element, one that originally ended with a vowel -- if this were used as a case prefix it would give a nice three-way consonant alternation. Supposing this prefix is i-, and the word is køṛys "goat," you get
køṛys
akkøṛys (akkøṛyzum, etc)
igøṛys (igøṛydžis, etc)
Corumayas wrote:Roughly what date does your map represent?
It should be 0 YP because I based the language boundaries on this map.

I changed it a little, because I wanted the (eastern) dialect I'm describing to be spoken on that big island in the middle:

Image

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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Corumayas »

I was actually going to suggest an Affanonic-sized case system; but perhaps that could be another dialect.

Doroh should preserve some reflexes of the PIsth. 'dative' prefix dza-, though it's not productive anymore: it's supposed to have locative adverbs that historically derive from dza-prefixed nouns. Something like zogøṛys 'by the goats', I guess (though maybe that's not the most likely concept to get lexicalized).

Another prefix that would produce this kind of alternation is the reduplicated grade in verbs. (And of course you can make up new prefixes, but I'd rather you use them for something other than case.)

Feel free to make up lots of postpositions. You don't have to use the same ones that Faraghin has; or you could use them, but with slightly different meanings.

(Comparing Latin and English prepositions is interesting in this regard. According to Wiktionary, these are cognates:
ad = at
in = in
infra = under
per = for
super = over
trans = through

but so are these:
ab ‘from, away from, out of’ = of
dē ‘from, away from, down from, out of’ = to! – though with a different vowel grade in PIE I guess?)



Looking at your map closely, it seems slightly weird to me the way the eastern dialect extends on both sides of the mountains there. Something like this would look more logical to me:
Image

Or maybe this:
Image

[Edit: or this, keeping the upland/lowland division...
Image
Okay, maybe that's a little too much. I'm just tinkering with maps now.]

[Edit again: okay, one more.
Image
This is your map plus my two vertical lines, giving a total of 7 dialects. Is that too many? I kinda like it though.]

Of course, if you really prefer your map you should keep it!
Hüwryaasûr, priestess of the four hegemons, wrote:Ryunshurshuroshan, the floating lizard

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Cedh
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Re: Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Post by Cedh »

I think Corumayas' second map makes the most sense (the one with four dialects).

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