Arka: an a priori conlang with 14,000 words from Japan

[Ser]

ah, but that's forgetting one thing:
If a troll says a wrong thing, it is just one further weight dunking himself beneath the water.
If a respected expert says a wrong thing, it does not tar him, for his other accomplishments outshine the mistake; the err simply makes him more human.

Yup, this is why I've been defending Arka since, in spite of its author's trolling behaviour. Saying that we focus too much on grammar generalizations as opposed to quirky behaviour of particular words was a legitimate comment, as doing so would indeed make conlangs more naturalistic (a common goal).

I just wish Author of Arka hadn't worded it the way he did (showing OTOH a disdain towards grammar, tainting it with racism/ethnocentrism (and somehow combining both, disdaining grammar features that aren't part of Japanese), ignoring comments on how to improve his presentation following what we usually do at the ZBB (that is, post content here)).

Oh well if some podcast says it then it must be true!!!

XD I actually quoted them so people here knew why Ollock said it was going to be weird. (Yeah, I admit to never actually listen to the Conlangery Podcast. Do people here generally listen to it?) Just take it as my personal opinion that so far the conlanging community seems to have generally neglected serious Semantics and Lexicography, applying the generalizations in grammar descriptions wildly, while natlangs generally encode a hell of a ton of quirky behaviours word by word.

(E.g. can it take a passive? a reflexive pronoun? can it be in the progressive? can it take only certain nouns? does it need to be transitive or intransitive at all times? is it a mass/uncountable noun or a count/countable/individualized noun? what classifiers does it take? what are the registers or contexts it commonly appears in?...)

There's more to language than words.

But this is what we already assume.

There's more to language than a phonological inventory, allophones, inflectional morphology, syntax and pragmatically forbidden or encouraged word usages (due to some aspect of the culture) though, which are the things you generally hear people talking about over here.

[Vuvuzela]

There's more to language than a phonological inventory, allophones, inflectional morphology, syntax and pragmatically forbidden or encouraged word usages (due to some aspect of the culture) though, which are the things you generally hear people talking about over here.

How much of that is because we don't care, and how much of that is because it's more difficult to talk about one's lexicon? I mean, you could post your language's entire inflectional morphology on this site and receive critiques. But posting your language's entire lexicon, with descriptive dictionary entries, and expecting someone to criticize it? That's a little harder.
Besides, people DO sometimes talk about word usage here, if it's particularly odd. Wasn't there a thread a while back about having the same word for "start" and "stop"?

[Ser]

How much of that is because we don't care, and how much of that is because it's more difficult to talk about one's lexicon?

We could always have a section called "Lexicon/Semantics" and talk about those radical semantic differences with English, say, examples of curious metonimies and metaphors used, what kind of words swear words are (blasphemy (gadzooks!)? human physiological needs (shit!)? references to other's family members (your grandma!)?), strategies when translating from other languages (e.g. do they prefer to borrow the prefixes, or paraphrase/calque foreign words using genitive-like constructions like preposition > "word of front", or sth else), an assortment of radical differences in some semantic fields or prototypes (e.g. "to say/speak/talk", "to hear/listen/see/look", "a beautiful/pretty/hot/good-looking (woman)"... colours, tastes, kinds of furniture, glasses/cups/mugs, division of the day...)...

Then comes the Pragmatics section... In which case you'd be basically referring to all sorts examples where the world your conlang is spoken in and the culture that speaks it affect its use. What are some differences between how men and women speak? What are some important differences in how turn taking happens between people of different hierarchical status, or men and women? What are the interjections in your language and how are they used in your language? Fillers? Um, fucking vulgar language? Polite language ("would I bother you if I...")? Literary narrative language ("blah blah", he said)? Fairy tale language (Once upon a time...)? Language for saying "hi" and "bye" (What's up?, farewell my friends!)? Strategies commonly used in jokes (openings, punchlines, some common joke structures like yo mama is so X that... or yo dawg I heard you like Xs so I put Xs in your Xs so you Y while you Y)? Effects of superstitions (what is so good or bad about having "SA7 666" as your car's plate? How come buildings in Hong Kong sometimes don't have a fourth floor but jump from "Floor 3" to "Floor 5"?)? When writing a letter, do people put the date at the upper-right corner, at the upper-left corner, at the end all the way below, somewhere else?...

Yeah, there would be no way you could make all such things in the language fit in a reference book, but that's also true of phonology and morphosyntax (where words could possibly have alternative, very unique pronunciations; let alone quirky morphosyntactic behaviours and suppletions), but you'd probably do well recognizing they exist and expose some. I mean, a conlang is limited to what you've written about it and what you *know* about it. You could choose to have this all in your head, or you could get it written~

I mean, you could post your language's entire inflectional morphology on this site and receive critiques. But posting your language's entire lexicon, with descriptive dictionary entries, and expecting someone to criticize it? That's a little harder.

Actually, how would you criticize somebody's inflectional morphology?

[Vuvuzela]

I mean, you could post your language's entire inflectional morphology on this site and receive critiques. But posting your language's entire lexicon, with descriptive dictionary entries, and expecting someone to criticize it? That's a little harder.

Actually, how would you criticize somebody's inflectional morphology?

Those two moods would likely merge fairly quickly. Is there a historical reason that all of your verbal inflection is done through changing the vowels? This is a boring clone of Spanish. etc.

[Melteor]

^^Actually, grammar should be functional. If it's a kitchensink then it obviously won't work too well but there are really other things going on which are not appreciable. Why do certain forms repeat across certain languages? Does it make sense for any language to be isolating, secondarily fusional and OVS? What sound changes are suggested among the most common words? So really it should be possible to say a language is implausible or ridiculous in addition to its aesthetic appeal of how it's words come together, how harmonious is the whole. This is really hard though. I would say naturalistic languages deserve this, but freaky things like lojban get a lot of attention for a different artificial aesthetic. I think trying to find features which go together, rather than tend to go together, is a lot of the fun of conlanging.

Another is looking at grammar in unusual ways, and trying to find the function of a feature. Idioms have a lot of power, and can hide features of a language, or certain nonce grammar items not formally appreciated as being part of a language. The zbb brings up some minute things that I wouldn't otherwise think about as being grammatical, perhaps by virtue of how improper or outside of standard grammar...Such as Drydic guy's discussion on 'be'. 'Messy' languages like Creoles are great for lexicalicing nonce meanings. Lingua Franca Nova is kind of a creole, and only has three tenses but gets by with a lot of adverbs...which is actually something that English does really well and elegantly, and so we know it works well enough for a natural language, why not use it in a conlang?

[Rodlox]

The Conlangery Podcast claims it's about "95%" of your language (hence why he said it was going to be awkward).

Oh well if some podcast says it then it must be true!!!

Ray Bradbury cannot be wrong! (remember what the hallowed and knighted sage once remarked)

[Rik]

I don't buy it. Try having a discussion in a noisy environment, or over a poor telephone connection - most of the words might be misheard or mangled, but a significant portion of the conversation is still understood.

soo?
I don't follow

Lexicons are important, but not 95% important.
There's more to language than words.

I know your point, I don't know how redundancy being absolutely necesary means lexicon has as much, or more, or less, information than grammar.

Sorry. I just got annoyed by the idea that doing a good dictionary was all that mattered in conlanging.

Dictionaries can only ever be a snapshot of a language's words at a specific point in time (with added historical developments, for those conlangers into diachronics) - which is Good and Very Useful, but not 95% of the story.

I'd love to see more pragmatics stuff in conlang descriptions and examples - it's an area in which my own conlangs are seriously lacking, probably because I spend too much time on lexicon stuff.

[Torco]

Sorry. I just got annoyed by the idea that doing a good dictionary was all that mattered in conlanging.

'tsa:l.gut, bro. it's quite false, but it hides a truish feel: that lexicons are necesary and can be exceedingly fun.

maybe I want to know more about lexicons because my own lexicons are so petty, tho. no lang o' mine ever got above 600 words. Maybe I should fix that.

[Thry]

Nevertheless, their focus in words may be incomplete: it's a priori, but I don't know if they have a proto-Arka or something, I suspect they don't; if that is the case, they're missing all the language evolution, semantic drift, and sound change stuff fun and learning.

[Herr Dunkel]

But then it's aposteriori! And then it isn't pure, therefore isn't Arka, therefore isn't possible.
Arka popped into existance.

[Rin]

2: ha (up), hi (down)
3: bal (ceiling), bil (wall), bol (floor)
4: keta (spring), keti (summer), keto (autumn), kete (winter)

I'm sure glad that language is only ever spoken in quiet rooms between exactly two people facing one another and both of whom are fastidious about their pronunciation.

N-words

You can make many synonyms and antonyms by changing the last vowel in a word. The words are called n-words.

Isn't it bad enough that we have just ONE of them? So, if I say nuggers, am I referring to white people? Which one refers to Asians? Neggers, noggers, or naggers?

[clawgrip]

Regardless of what we may think of his language or his discussion techniques, I do have to say though that this guy has inspired me to write a comprehensive dictionary for Himmaswa, with word usage, etymology, and example sentences. I've only done 1 page with about 20 entries so far, but it is coming along nicely.

[shanoxilt]

Could also be that those people just don't participate in English-speaking fora as much, so we just don't notice their work.

There's a Korean conlang-forum at http://cafe.naver.com/stelo

Wow! This is great.

Does anyone have any other links for non-Western glossopoeia sites? Excluding Esperanto, I have yet to see one from Africa, the Middle East, or Asia (with the exception of Russia).

[KathTheDragon]

Why are you necroing?

[Dama Diwan]

If the words come from Japan, then it is not a priori, it is a posteriori.
A question: who knows all these 14000 words?

[2+3 clusivity]

*facepalm*

the words come from Japan

=/=

the words come from Japan[ese]

[Ser]

Could also be that those people just don't participate in English-speaking fora as much, so we just don't notice their work.

There's a Korean conlang-forum at http://cafe.naver.com/stelo

Wow! This is great.

Does anyone have any other links for non-Western glossopoeia sites? Excluding Esperanto, I have yet to see one from Africa, the Middle East, or Asia (with the exception of Russia).

Author of Arka actually linked to a Japanese conlanging forum in the style of 2-chan at some point, which might still exist, but of course he deleted all his posts in this thread... There also used to be another Japanese conlanging forum using phpBB, but it doesn't exist anymore.

I don't know how "Western" you consider Latin Americans to be, but there is a Spanish-language conlanging Facebook group where most are from Hispanic America. It's not even bad in the sense of people posting silly naïve stuff, most of it is ok. There used to be a Brazilian conlanging forum too on Orkut, but Orkut died a while ago (I don't know if they moved somewhere else).

Why are you necroing?

Nothing wrong with necroing in my view.

[Ser]

I just found a Chinese-language conlanging forum.

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=%C8%CB%D4%EC%D3%EF%D1%D4

[Pogostick Man]

Why are you necroing?

Nothing wrong with necroing in my view.

If you do it only occasionally and have something to add that's more than a one-liner I'd agree with you.

[Torco]

I just found a Chinese-language conlanging forum.

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=%C8%CB%D4%EC%D3%EF%D1%D4

Ah shit and just today I was like "i wish there was a forum about something fun in chinese so i could practice"
thanks bro

[Herr Dunkel]

It's literally been years, wow. Arka conlang best conlang conlang

[Kaenif]

I just found a Chinese-language conlanging forum.

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=%C8%CB%D4%EC%D3%EF%D1%D4

Ah shit and just today I was like "i wish there was a forum about something fun in chinese so i could practice"
thanks bro

I've lurked there a while ago, but it doesn't seem to be too active. There are QQ and WeChat groups if you're interested.

[Burke]

There's a chinese conlang group on facebook too if you like: https://www.facebook.com/groups/conlinguaphiles/

It's pretty young (like a month or two) but I think it should be decently active.

As for necroing, C programmers got to see some epic necro this past week:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/c ... WL7UN_i_AJ