Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

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.
dfiller
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Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by dfiller »

Please post the strangest and most non-human conlang ideas possible for a wild and crazy alien conlang that can be made by everyone in the zompist bboard!
Feel free to put the strangest ideas for this group conlang. :-D
Last edited by dfiller on Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:41 am, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Written Language

Post by Qwynegold »

What??
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Re: Written Language

Post by dfiller »

Could I transliter the name of someone or something in a language that has only a written counterpart from a spoken language?

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Re: Written Language

Post by maıráí »

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Re: Written Language

Post by clawgrip »

Can you name even one language that is written and only written? SQL?

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Re: Written Language

Post by Click »

dfiller wrote:Could I transliter the name of someone or something in a language that has only a written counterpart from a spoken language?
By writing the damn name.

*foes dfiller*

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Re: Written Language

Post by Hallow XIII »

Here is a short guide to forum etiquette:

1. If all your post contains is a short question, don't open a new goddamn thread for it.
2. If all your post contains is something hopelessly retarded, consider not posting.
3. If all your post contains is BOTH OF THE ABOVE, consider going and shooting yourself.

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Re: Written Language

Post by linguoboy »

Sir Gwalchafad wrote:1. If all your post contains is a short question, don't open a new goddamn thread for it.
2. If all your post contains is something hopelessly retarded, consider not posting.
3. If all your post contains is BOTH OF THE ABOVE, consider going and shooting yourself.
4. And for fuck's sake, if your goddamn retarded post doesn't get the kind of response you were inexplicably hoping for, DO NOT spam the ENTIRE FUCKING MEMBERSHIP via PM with the same half-baked request.

(Yeah, this probably qualifies as "eating the newbies". But am I bovvered?)

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Radius Solis »

5. The little red exclamation icon on the bottom of your post is for reporting people who break the rules. It is NOT a way for you to announce your post or make it look more exciting. Only moderators will even see the fact you clicked it.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Kereb »

6 through infinity: LURK MOAR for a little while, and then these things won't even have to be pointed out
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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Sacemd »

- The language has the following phonological inventory: /ʙ ʟ̝ ɢ̆ ᴙ ɴ/. There are no vowels.
- The language has interjections only: no nouns, verbs or adjectives
- The language has 7 cases: intrative, egressive, prosecutive, pegative, aversative, exessive and translative. These are marked by tonality.
Sacemd wrote:I'm merely starting this thread so I can have a funny quote in my signature.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

May I propose to add a voiced nasal glottal lateral ejective affricate to the phonology? :P

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Sacemd »

I was thinking of throwing four of the sounds away and limiting the phonological inventory to /ʙ/...

Or are you okay with a glottal nasal implosive affricative?
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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

I'm fine with that too.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Sacemd »

What will the orthography be like?

My proposal:
/ʙ ʟ̝ ɢ̆ ᴙ ɴ [glottal nasal implosive affricate]/
<b'r gll rgr hrq nqg 'nh>
or
<ȣ ƪ ȝ ṙ ƣ ƕ>

A few words:
b'rgll (intj): expresses disgust or discontent
gll'nh (intj): help I am choking on a piece of cake please apply the Heimlich maneuver
rgr'nh (intj): expresses fear or lamentation

Or we could extend the phonological inventory to allow a word /ǀħ/ which translates to "puh-lease, stop being so stupid"
Sacemd wrote:I'm merely starting this thread so I can have a funny quote in my signature.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by clawgrip »

sacemd wrote:What will the orthography be like?

My proposal:
/ʙ ʟ̝ ɢ̆ ᴙ ɴ [glottal nasal implosive affricate]/
<b'r gll rgr hrq nqg 'nh>
or
<ȣ ƪ ȝ ṙ ƣ ƕ>

A few words:
b'rgll (intj): expresses disgust or discontent
gll'nh (intj): help I am choking on a piece of cake please apply the Heimlich maneuver
rgr'nh (intj): expresses fear or lamentation

Or we could extend the phonological inventory to allow a word /ǀħ/ which translates to "puh-lease, stop being so stupid"
It's supposed to be an alien conlang! I propose a colour-based orthography:
ʙ blue
ʟ̝ indigo
ɢ̆ violet
ᴙ ultraviolet
ɴ infrared

Sentences are written as fractals.

Here is Hamlet, translated into this language:
Image

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by rr »

Maybe the orthography could be based on senses other than sight. What of the people who spoke this language wrote using utensils that have a specific smell to them (kind of like smelly markers). Then the paper or other parchment would capture the smell permanently. The orthography could also be touch-based, like Braille.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Dē Graut Bʉr »

clawgrip wrote: ʙ blue
ʟ̝ indigo
ɢ̆ violet
ᴙ ultraviolet
ɴ infrared
You didn't include the (at least for humans) impossible glottal consonant(s)! :(

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by clawgrip »

Tarannar wrote:Maybe the orthography could be based on senses other than sight. What of the people who spoke this language wrote using utensils that have a specific smell to them (kind of like smelly markers). Then the paper or other parchment would capture the smell permanently. The orthography could also be touch-based, like Braille.
Of course. Colour just indicates the consonant. The tone is indicated by smell.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Burke »

clawgrip wrote:
Tarannar wrote:Maybe the orthography could be based on senses other than sight. What of the people who spoke this language wrote using utensils that have a specific smell to them (kind of like smelly markers). Then the paper or other parchment would capture the smell permanently. The orthography could also be touch-based, like Braille.
Of course. Colour just indicates the consonant. The tone is indicated by smell.
Time to upgrade my nintendo 3DS. I need the new smell addon for this madness.
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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Drydic »

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:
clawgrip wrote: ʙ blue
ʟ̝ indigo
ɢ̆ violet
ᴙ ultraviolet
ɴ infrared
You didn't include the (at least for humans) impossible glottal consonant(s)! :(
That's indicated by, like, the writing medium's vibe, man.
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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by rr »

Irregular stress could be identified through touch or taste.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Mr. Eldritch »

I once saw a conlang for aliens with two larynges and ingressive-only vocal systems, resulting in a language with no pauses for breath and crazy composite vowels , consonants, and tones that flowed smoothly instead of being broken up by syllables. For instance, you could plausibly have, as a phoneme, someone making a creaky-voiced epiglottal affricate(!) at the same time as a rising-tone vowel.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by DePaw »

Insect trolls they were called if my memory is correct.

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Re: Wierdest and Most Alien Conlang

Post by Melteor »

The typographical language of the scribes of Hmon Pxet was composed entirely of meaningful strings without counterparts in the spoken dialect. All terms pertained to the nature of various hands, and later, typefaces, e.g. a string with the meaning of 'ascender' would be written with an arrow-pointing to an example of a letter or word. Of course, these strings were themselves often autological in that they contained letters with the features they were to distinguish and this was a source of much humor about recursion as well as the philosophical merger of use & mention. This form of crypto-literary trainspotting was nearly squashed when the ruling class got tired of seeing graffiti all over various signs and beheaded most of the religious order; even so it persisted, in the writing of margins of the sacred scrolls which the elites were never allowed to read anyway. The village is to this day renowned for the plurality of extant typefaces and pride in really lovely handwriting everywhere.

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