Rangyayo - an East Asian language of the elixir of life

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by Astraios »

Well, if it wasn't it'd be impossible to write in Korean script...

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by jmcd »

Yeah but like way too similar.

And they manage to write Cia-Cia in Hangeul so it can't be that hard.

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Really that similar to Korean pronunciation?

I thought Rangyayo would be somehow between Japanese and Korean overall (leaning towards Japanese as the phonotactics of native Rangyan words are usually CVCV) with a taste of Cantonese for Sino-Rangyan words (CVC-CVC).

This is an audio sample of Rangyayo on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayVrS-Wkizo
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by jmcd »

Uh I thought so anyway. I mean the phonemes are all Korean and the phonotactics is very similar too, and the final allophones. The differences: it's missing the [ɦ] allophone of /h/, the phoneme /ʌ/, it doesn't distinguish /e/ and /ɛ/ and the voicing series aren't quite the same. And it has falling diphthongs. And the syllabic nasals. It seems the diphthongs are something different but really you're expressing them in a different way from which Korean phonology would normally be expressed. Your /ui/ must be the parallel to /ɰi/ though.

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

The very first learning card presented by the Ministry of Language, Education, Science and Technology of the Kingdom of Rangya.

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[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

The 2nd learning card presented by the Ministry of Language, Education, Science and Technology of the Kingdom of Rangya (Rangya Wangkok Mun-ko-khwa-gi Bu).

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[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with an audio sample on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

The second audio sample of Rangyayo: http://youtu.be/NUDRQ9uO-6c

Image

This audio sample is a Chinese poem Qing Yu An (青玉案) read aloud in Sino-Rangyan pronunciations, which is written by Xin Qi Ji (辛棄疾) in Song dynasty.
The poem shown in the video should be read from top to bottom, right to left (the traditional oriental writing direction).
The Yenmun (or Korean Hangul) on the right side of the Hanji (or Chinese characters) mark the Sino-Rangyan pronunciation of each Hanji.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Here is the Romaji (Romanization) of the poem:
And the English translation of the poem is in brackets:

Cheng-yok-an Wen-zek Shin Khi-jit

Tung-pung Ya-pang Hwa-chen-zyu, Kang-chui-rak, Seng-yo-yu
------ (night lights a thousand trees in bloom; a shower of stars blown; by the east wind)

Po-ma-tyo-kyo Hang-man-ru
------ (ornate carriages drawn by gallant horses; filled the boulevards with a sweet fragrance)

Bung-syo-seng-dung, Yok-hu-kwang-tsen, It-ya-yo-rong-myu
------ (voice of the magic flute flowing; luster of the jade white urn turning; all night the fishes and the dragons danced)

A-i-set-ryu Hwang-kim-ryu, Syo-yo-yeng-yeng am-hang-khyo
------ (butterflies, willows, charms of gold gone -- that angelic laughter, that subtle perfume)

Tsung-ri-zim-tha Chen-pak-du
------ (in the crowds for her I'd searched a thousand times)

Mak-yen hwai-syu, na-in-khak-jai, tüng-hwa-ran-san-chyo
------ (perchance I turned; and there she was; where lights were few and dim)
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re:

Post by suelior »

This is very interesting and very cool. This is the first conlang I've seen that uses hangeul for their script. (I never thought someone would want to do that.)
desmond wrote:guess it might be fun to assign native readings to Chinese characters that also bear their own middle Chinese readings (Rangyanised of course). I think the Korean language has not put this into practice before. (Someone please corrects me if I'm wrong)
Koreans have our own way of reading chinese characters. For example, 食 means 먹다, but we'll read it 식. Such way of reading gives us a great way to form compound words that can contain complex meanings in few syllables. I wanted to implant this method of compound word making into my conlang, but since I didn't use chinese character roots it meant me having to make up a lot of roots... So I gave up :( .

I was just wondering... since you are using suffixes for both modality and the negative marker, is there any way to negate modality and the verb itself apart?
1) I want to 'not do it'.
2) I don't want to do it.
Is there another way to make this difference or does Rangyayo not distinguish them?

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Re: Re:

Post by desmond »

suelior wrote:This is very interesting and very cool. This is the first conlang I've seen that uses hangeul for their script. (I never thought someone would want to do that.)
desmond wrote:guess it might be fun to assign native readings to Chinese characters that also bear their own middle Chinese readings (Rangyanised of course). I think the Korean language has not put this into practice before. (Someone please corrects me if I'm wrong)
Koreans have our own way of reading chinese characters. For example, 食 means 먹다, but we'll read it 식. Such way of reading gives us a great way to form compound words that can contain complex meanings in few syllables. I wanted to implant this method of compound word making into my conlang, but since I didn't use chinese character roots it meant me having to make up a lot of roots... So I gave up :( .

I was just wondering... since you are using suffixes for both modality and the negative marker, is there any way to negate modality and the verb itself apart?
1) I want to 'not do it'.
2) I don't want to do it.
Is there another way to make this difference or does Rangyayo not distinguish them?
It's a very good question! I've never thought about that. Rangyayo is not able to distinguish these two subtle differences in meanings at this stage. Does the Korean language distinguish them?

For forming compound words, perhaps you may borrow root words from other natural languages? The word "food" can be made by combining "eat" and "stuff" > "eatstuff" > "ittaf"?

Btw, how does Rangyayo sound like to you? Does it sound Korean to you?
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Re:

Post by suelior »

desmond wrote: It's a very good question! I've never thought about that. Rangyayo is not able to distinguish these two subtle differences in meanings at this stage. Does the Korean language distinguish them?

For forming compound words, perhaps you may borrow root words from other natural languages? The word "food" can be made by combining "eat" and "stuff" > "eatstuff" > "ittaf"?

Btw, how does Rangyayo sound like to you? Does it sound Korean to you?
Well, 'I don't want to' and 'I want not to do' are pretty much the same, so I should have used the example "I can 'not do it'" and "I can't do" which meanings are quite different.
In such cases where what the negator negates has influence on the meaning, Korean language do distinguish them.
For example, "안 할 수 있다." means "able to not do (it)", and "할 수 없다." means "cannot do(it)."
But we don't ditinguish "I don't want to" and "I want not to do" as they are basically the same. I was confused for a moment there because my conlang does that. Sorry :wink:
I think you should think of some way to do this because with current system you won't be able to express something like "I cannot not do it." It's basically "I have to do it", but you see the difference...

Korean word for food is 음식. 음 means "to drink", 식 means "to eat" so 음식 means something to drink or to eat. Stuff to eat would be 먹을 것. This is not a compound word, but a bound noun being modified by an adjectivized verb.
More examples of such compound words would be 노인, (an) old man, 노 for old and 인 for human, or 역화, back fire, 역 for reverse and 화 for fire.
Such compound words can be replaced with pure Korean word, but using these kind of compound words sounds more sophisticated, and more to the point, is convenient.
We don't borrow other languages to form compound words but chinese characters only. It has to do with our history of using chinese characters for our writing system for some time.

Rangyayo resembles Korean phonetics I guess. I don't know, I mean it's not like Ranyayo has many words that resemble Korean words. But if you ask me if it sounds like a language which was influenced by Korean or other east-Asian countries nearby, I'd say it definately does.

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Rangyan Body Parts: Face
琅野語두体두部份・顔

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[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Rangyan Body Parts: Body
琅野語두体두部份・身

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[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by Bristel »

Why so many words that start with <b>?
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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by Left »

This is an awesome language :D The sound is the best part of Rangyayo!
By the way, is the kingdom a constitutional or absolute monarchy?

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Re: Re:

Post by desmond »

suelior wrote: Well, 'I don't want to' and 'I want not to do' are pretty much the same, so I should have used the example "I can 'not do it'" and "I can't do" which meanings are quite different.
In such cases where what the negator negates has influence on the meaning, Korean language do distinguish them.
For example, "안 할 수 있다." means "able to not do (it)", and "할 수 없다." means "cannot do(it)."
But we don't ditinguish "I don't want to" and "I want not to do" as they are basically the same. I was confused for a moment there because my conlang does that. Sorry :wink:
I think you should think of some way to do this because with current system you won't be able to express something like "I cannot not do it." It's basically "I have to do it", but you see the difference...

Korean word for food is 음식. 음 means "to drink", 식 means "to eat" so 음식 means something to drink or to eat. Stuff to eat would be 먹을 것. This is not a compound word, but a bound noun being modified by an adjectivized verb.
More examples of such compound words would be 노인, (an) old man, 노 for old and 인 for human, or 역화, back fire, 역 for reverse and 화 for fire.
Such compound words can be replaced with pure Korean word, but using these kind of compound words sounds more sophisticated, and more to the point, is convenient.
We don't borrow other languages to form compound words but chinese characters only. It has to do with our history of using chinese characters for our writing system for some time.

Rangyayo resembles Korean phonetics I guess. I don't know, I mean it's not like Ranyayo has many words that resemble Korean words. But if you ask me if it sounds like a language which was influenced by Korean or other east-Asian countries nearby, I'd say it definately does.
Yup I think I should think of a way to express the two different meanings. Thank you for spotting this out. :)

About native words vs Sino-derived words, Rangyan is very similar to Korean and Japanese in this. I'll give you an example.

Code: Select all

airplane    (native) 飛든機   hontündobi    /   (Sino) 飛行機   puihangki
Many basic words in Rangyan are two syllable long, therefore compound words in native Rangyan are usually four or more syllable long (2 x 2). Here we have hontündobi = hontü (fly) n (verb to noun suffix) dobi (machine). And the Sino-derived word is puihangki = puihang (fly) ki (machine). Therefore Sino-Rangyan words are usually shorter than their native Rangyan counterparts, and for scientific / technical words, using Sino-Rangyan words can give the readers / listeners a more bookish and professional feel, more or less like Greek and Latin-derived words used in the English language.

I'm glad that Rangyan gives you an East Asian taste, which matches with the setting of the Kingdom of Rangya, where Rangyan is spoken in. :)
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Bristel wrote:Why so many words that start with <b>?
For creating a priori native words for Rangyan, I have given meanings to each of the phonemes. For example, b = generic body parts; r = mouth; d = woody plants; t = herbs... Therefore you can see many words for body parts start with <b>. I think this way of word building is "simple" and "systematic"? It's just that it looks a bit "silly" when I put them down together on the image under the same category...

It's worth knowing that native Rangyan words also loosely practise vowel harmony. "Bright vowels" /a/ /o/ vs "Dark" vowels /e/ /o/ and /i/ is "Neutral".
wako = man vs bebi = woman
abi = bright vs ugi = dark
...
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Asahi wrote:This is an awesome language :D The sound is the best part of Rangyayo!
By the way, is the kingdom a constitutional or absolute monarchy?
Thank you :) My goal is to make Rangyan as pleasing as possible to my ears (can be quite subjective lol)
The Kingdom of Rangya is fortunately an unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. I personally dislike any non-democratic governments :) Therefore I'm making Rangya as what I wish her to be.

King Thenbong Kijang (天奉紀奘) is the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Rangya and the current Prime Minister is Tsimuk Munzeng (枝木文誠).
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by finlay »

desmond wrote:
Bristel wrote:Why so many words that start with <b>?
For creating a priori native words for Rangyan, I have given meanings to each of the phonemes. For example, b = generic body parts; r = mouth; d = woody plants; t = herbs... Therefore you can see many words for body parts start with <b>. I think this way of word building is "simple" and "systematic"? It's just that it looks a bit "silly" when I put them down together on the image under the same category...

It's worth knowing that native Rangyan words also loosely practise vowel harmony. "Bright vowels" /a/ /o/ vs "Dark" vowels /e/ /o/ and /i/ is "Neutral".
wako = man vs bebi = woman
abi = bright vs ugi = dark
...
It's worth noting that assigning meanings to phonemes is really the realm of auxlangs, rather than "realistic" conlangs or natlangs, because RL languages really aren't simple or systematic. You're likely instead to find a syllable if you find any morpheme in common at all. But don't let me stop you, I do like your language, and I know that Korean at least reportedly or consciously (or historically) assigns vowels a yin/yang value...

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by Ollock »

finlay wrote:
desmond wrote:
Bristel wrote:Why so many words that start with <b>?
For creating a priori native words for Rangyan, I have given meanings to each of the phonemes. For example, b = generic body parts; r = mouth; d = woody plants; t = herbs... Therefore you can see many words for body parts start with <b>. I think this way of word building is "simple" and "systematic"? It's just that it looks a bit "silly" when I put them down together on the image under the same category...

It's worth knowing that native Rangyan words also loosely practise vowel harmony. "Bright vowels" /a/ /o/ vs "Dark" vowels /e/ /o/ and /i/ is "Neutral".
wako = man vs bebi = woman
abi = bright vs ugi = dark
...
It's worth noting that assigning meanings to phonemes is really the realm of auxlangs, rather than "realistic" conlangs or natlangs, because RL languages really aren't simple or systematic. You're likely instead to find a syllable if you find any morpheme in common at all. But don't let me stop you, I do like your language, and I know that Korean at least reportedly or consciously (or historically) assigns vowels a yin/yang value...
More engelangs or philosophical languages, actually, but yeah.
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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

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[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by desmond »

Google Rangya

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(I made the screenshot smaller)
Last edited by desmond on Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:47 pm, edited 2 times in total.
[b]Desmond[/b] - [url=http://conlang.wikia.com/Rangyayo][b]Rangyayo[/b][/url], spoken on the islands of elixir of life

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by finlay »

So much white space... does it really need to be that big? (the image is as big as my screen!)

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by Bristel »

I like it! :)

It looks like Google Korea had a lovechild with Google Japan.
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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by finlay »

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.

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Re: Rangyayo (now with 2 audio samples on Youtube!)

Post by Lyhoko Leaci »

finlay wrote: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?
Here's a Korean War era document with mixed Hangul/Hanja: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:8239t ... t_2508.png

So that at least would be a yes. I don't know how common it is now, though.

Now I have the desire to do a Google page in Ancaron or something...
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You can't read that, right? Yes, it says that.
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