My first conlang: Proto-vidar

[misora]

So, below is my first attempt at making a con-language. It is for my con-world which is still being developed at the moment. This language developed in an area surrounded by 5 major rivers and in a relatively forested area surrounded by mountains to the north and steppes to the south, east, and west.
The basic Vowels of the language are /i/a/u/o/e/I/ɛ
The language doesn't nasalize vowels even before a nasal consonant.

The consonants are
Plosives: p/b/t/d/k/g
Fricatives: f/v/s/z/ʃ
Liquids:ll(ɭ)/ ɹ/l
Nasals: m/n/ŋ
approximate: j

The language is agglutinating when it comes to verbs and adjectives, but nouns are kept distinct, except for the fact that they combine with their adjective ie kristayamo(Tall/large mountain)

It currently has post-positions instead of prepositions and some of them can be unintuitive ie nuran(with, with which, and for)
The basic sentence structure is SOV, and questions are just formed using a tone that reaches it peak at the end of the sentence.
Verbs come in two forms r and l
I currently have a list of 76 words/affixes
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm1z864ok8jdj ... ionary.rtf

[misora]

(Sorry for the double post)
I forgot a few things in my initial post for Proto-vidar
Adverbs, numbers, how to tell the different types of words from each other, Diphthongs, and a few cultural things.
Adverbs are fairly easy in Proto-vidar. They follow the word that they modify, except for a few odd ones that come before the word, such as zyn(Quickly) and brovyn(Bravely)

Numbers are based on 5 in Proto-vidar coming from the fact that the average human has five fingers on each hand. When you combine the numbers you drop the last vowels of the word leaving only a consonant, and all numbers end in ai in their base form. There are special numbers for 100, 1,000, 1,000,000. The number 9 is also irregular, because ai + o is hard to pronounce. You simply drop the o. When you make numbers like 20 you add the corresponding number +10, but you drop the ai + the consonant it is attached to.
1 = Kistai
2 = Luvai
3 = Yuai
4 = Orunai
5 = Sunai
6 = Sunaikist
7 = Sunailuv
8 = Sunaiyu
9 = Sunairu
10 = Sunaisun
20 = Lusunaisun
100 = Kivai
105 = Kivaisun
1,000 = Rolai
2,050 = Lurolai sunaisun

As for telling the types of words apart
nouns end in i, o, e, u, m
Adjectives end in ai, a, y
verbs end in l, r
adverbs end in ŋ, n

The diphthongs are fairly straight-forward in my opinion, they are said exactly the same as the ones in japanese.
ai
oi
au/ao

Now for the cultural things that I missed
The Vidar river basin encompasses a zone of around 30 Square miles where 4 separate city-states can be found each with their own slight variations of the language.
Monaiyue(Long river) is the biggest city of the basin with about 15,000 inhabitants. It is also the most militaristic of the cities, and is ruled by an upper class of priests/shamans
Kristayamo(tall/large hill) is the smallest of them and has around 5,678 inhabitants. This is the most agriculturally based of the cities, and the one with the dialect farthest from the one presented by me

[CaesarVincens]

Welcome to the board, Misora.

I some questions about your numbers and some comments on formatting. (Of course, you are free to disregard anything I say.)
First, it seems you have a mixed base-5 and base-10 system (mixed bases are cool though, and I like the 'number-ending' -ai). In a "pure" base-5 system using your conventions, 10 should be lu(vai)sun and 20 would be orun(ai)sun. Right now you have sunaisun for both 10 and 50 (and they might be homophones by accident or on purpose as well).
Likewise, in a base-5 system, it is more likely to have roots for powers of 5 (25, 125, 625, etc.) than for powers of 10 (100, 1000, etc.). In a mixed base, you might have both. (for examples of mixed bases, see French (10 and 20) and Sumerian (6 and 10) among others).

Now for formatting, for your phonemic inventory, I'd suggest looking at an IPA chart (that's International Phonetic Alphabet). The sounds are ordered in a certain way for where and how they are pronounced (really articulated). You seem to have some familiarity with the IPA already, but it helps to present phonemes in a similar way.

Also, I love this:

some [post-positions] can be unintuitive

That's how I feel about all ad-positions in any language that isn't one's native language.

[misora]

Caesar, I thank you for replying.
As for the Sunaisun being 10 and 50, it's actually because 50 would be like sunsunaisun, which is normally shortened when they talk to sunaisun, but it is always written as sunsunaisun. Also, I was trying to mimic something close to the chinese/japanese way of counting numbers, but not rip it off.

I also thank you for the IPA chart as it will certainly be useful.

[KathTheDragon]

As for telling the types of words apart
nouns end in i, o, e, u, m
Adjectives end in ai, a, y
verbs end in l, r
adverbs end in ŋ, n

I would strongly recommend against this. It's very (and I stress, very) artificial, and my impression is that you're after a naturalistic feel.

[CaesarVincens]

As for telling the types of words apart
nouns end in i, o, e, u, m
Adjectives end in ai, a, y
verbs end in l, r
adverbs end in ŋ, n

I would strongly recommend against this. It's very (and I stress, very) artificial, and my impression is that you're after a naturalistic feel.

It can be artificial, but it could also be chance or old inflections (Spanish nouns all seem to end in -o, -a, -e, -d, -n, or -s (with a few exceptions); Latin nouns are more restricted unless you consider roots).
But Kath is right that that is very artificial if done arbitrarily.

A fuller description and more examples of parts of speech would be wonderful.

You are welcome for the chart. I see about sunaisun, that's neat. I think it's not uncommon for certain compositional numbers to become (near) homophonous if the mechanism for composing them is similar (thus fifteen and fifty are very close being both from five-ten worn down).

[misora]

So, I guess I can explain how a few more things work currently as everything is still undergoing development and likely will be for a very long time.

Conjunctions
These are relatively straightforward in Proto-vidar.
Koshi is and, but only when connecting clauses.
Konai is and, but only when connecting nouns
Kishi is but, it is only used for contrasting never to express impossibility
Kaoshi is but, it is used for expressing impossibility
Kaina is then, it's used exactly like the English then

Articles
Proto-vidar doesn't have articles.

Post-positions
Nuran is weird, in that it encompasses several different meanings because of post-position merging over the years. nuran normally equates to for, but can also be used like with, with which in english.
Ki is equal to on, in, and at in english.
Aun is of in Proto-vidar.
Kise is a lative case marker.

Now I have the dinner prayer that the average Monaiyue city-dweller says at his/her dinner meal
Rokuno trivarinkango, koshi Rokuno aravallkonia.
Rokuno(God) trivarinkango(pray 1st person, present, indicative), koshi(and) Rokuno(god) aravallkonia(thank 1st person, present, indicative)
(english)I pray to the god, and I thank god.
Rokuno aravallkonia koshia nuran velarinkango.
Rokuno(God) aravallkonia(thank 1st person, present, indicative) koshia(Everything/anything) nuran(for)
velarinkango(to own first person, present, indicative)
(english)I thank the god for everything I own.
Fempe pilvonia, koshi pilavarranigo kristavai.
Fempe(pig/swine) pilvanonia(eat, volitional, negative, first person), koshi(and) pilavarkananigo(drink, volitional, negative, first person) kristavai(Excessively)
(english) I will not pig and I will not drink excessively.
Rokuno aravallkonia.
Rokuno(God) aravallkonia(thank 1st person, present, indicative)
I thank the god.

[Ketumak]

Welcome to the board misora.

You've made a good start and you obviously know what your about. Eg putting stative verbs like "brovor" to be brave in your first conlang. You're also right to start with the proto-language, this will save so much time later if you want a daughter language or languages. (I've tried it the other way round, backwards deriving and given up - not a good idea).

Can I tempt you to some more exotic phonemes? Nothing too odd, I'm thinking of sounds found in English as allophones (variants). How about a glottal stop or three aspirate voiceless stops? Other languages have them as phonemes in their own right.

You say a noun always compounds with its adjective. What happens if there's more than one? Say:

The tall, white mountain

And what if there's an adverb in there too, qualifying one of the adjectives? Say:

The very tall, white mountain

[misora]

Sorry it took me so long to respond as I was making and introducing a few changes to the conlang in adjectives/adverbs and some sound changes.

Sound changes:
So I looked over what I have of my conlang and what Ketumak suggested and decided that pʰ/bʰ/tʰ/dʰ exist, but only when they are found in the last syllable of word, and that word doesn't close with a nasal.

Adjectives:
Adjectives and verbs are to me the bread and butter of language, they make it sound cool and allow you to describe things with some amount of accuracy.
Adjective order tends to be color; beauty; size; goodness; and number with qualifying adverbs coming after the word they modify.
In order to make a stative verb you chop of the ending of the adjective and add or to it as in brovor coming from brovy(brave), or monor coming from monai(long).
When you make an adverb from an adjective you have two ways of doing it depending on how the adjective ends, if the adjective ends in a single vowel you add an n to it, but if it ends in a diphthong you add a ŋ to it(this is sometimes simplified to m instead)

[misora]

Ok, I have returned from a hiatus caused by school finals and other foolishness.

Verb order
When conjugating a verb the order is past tense, verb, mood, present/future, person
Here's a list of updated verb endings which have changed some since my last update, because I derped and lost the documentation in a bsod(also the fact that I can't seem to make up my mind in some of my notes >.<).
-an volitional marker for r verbs
-di he/she/it/they marker for all verbs.
-go first person marker for r verbs
-kan present tense marker for r verbs
-in indicative marker for r verbs
-l indicative marker for l verbs
-kon present tense marker for l verbs
-non volitional marker for l verbs(cut off the l for this one)
-i Subjunctive mood indicator for r verbs
-ia first person indicator for l verbs
-il turns verbs into nouns for r verbs
ira- past tense for l verbs.
-ka Subjunctive mood indicator for l verbs
o- past tense marker for r verbs.
-oni Imperative mood indicator for r verbs
-vor imperative mood indicator for l verbs
-to future tense indicator for all verbs

Examples:
zer = to go
zeritogo = I may/might go
toval = to trip
iratovallia = I tripped.
Any questions you have I will try to answer at the earliest time possible now that I am free for the summer.

[Kilanie]

You should group your affixes by category; it's way easier to look at what's going on when in some kind of ordered fashion as opposed to your big list there. If there's any organizational scheme to it, I can figure it out.
Something like this:

past
bla
blah

mood
blah
boop
bleep

etc.

Also, you seem to have completely unrelated forms for your two verb declensions. This isn't very naturalistic. While it's certainly possible that they might be different, one would expect to see visible relations between forms meaning the same thing.

[CaesarVincens]

Glad you got your finals done. I hope they went well.
Adding on to Kilanie, since this is a proto-language, it's easy enough to go either way. Have two different systems that collapse into one or more (cross-overs of affixes for example). The other way is to have mostly the same set of endings that are changed phonologically based on the root type which then becomes set when sound changes obscure the original rules.

Anyway, I'd like to see a full conjugation in one tense and mood right now (more later perhaps).
A good schema for that is some thing like

Singular (dual) Plural (other number)
1person
2person
3person
(other)

[misora]

(giant wall of text incoming)
A list of the verb prefixes and endings
Moods
-an volitional marker for r verbs
-non volitional marker for l verbs(cut off the l for this one)
-in indicative marker for r verbs
-l indicative marker for l verbs
-i Subjunctive mood indicator for r verbs
-ka Subjunctive mood indicator for l verbs
-oni Imperative mood indicator for r verbs
-vor imperative mood indicator for l verbs
Tenses
-kan present tense marker for r verbs
-kon present tense marker for l verbs
-to future tense indicator for all verbs
o- past tense marker for r verbs.
ira- past tense for l verbs.

People
-go first person marker for r verbs
-ia first person indicator for l verbs
-gosu 1st person plural(inclusive) for r verbs
-goshi 1st person plural(exclusive) for r verbs
-ian 1st person plural(inclusive) for l verbs
-io 1st person plural(exclusive) for l verbs
-ni second person marker for all verbs
-di he/she/it/they marker for all verbs.

Being polite, being casual, and being rude.
While this is fresh in my mind I might as well right it down.
In Vidarese cities it is important to know who you are talking, and why you are talking to them. It's relatively easy to now where you stand on the social ladder in a Vidarese city. The pantheon of rank goes, house guests, mages, priests, nobility, merchants, soldiers, free people, slaves, foreigner.
In real life, consider everyone to be your equal except, a house guest or a military veteran.
In proto-vidar being polite is somewhat off, but with less emphasis on watering down questions.
In order to be polite, when asking someone to do something, use the subjunctive mood for people above you, and volitional for people at your social level. Slaves anyone may give a harsh imperative command to.
When asking if someone wants something you use volitional and future tense for everyone, including slaves.
House guests
When someone visits your house in Vidarese city, you are expected to give them every ounce of hospitality you are able to give them. It is incredibly impolite to insult a house guest to the point that some people have been exiled for doing it to the wrong person.
When you're the house guest, you are expected to be polite and treat your host respectfully. If the host offers you food, you are expected to eat as much of it as you can and then thank the host for the food(the same applies for drinks).
Being casual is very simple, in a casual conversation you are expected to greet the person, ask how they are doing, and then let the other person come up with the next topic. When the conversation is done you can say goodbye, or you can shake the person's hand and bow before leaving.
Being rude in a Vidarese city is likely to get you into some amount of trouble, but being rude to someone behind their back is nigh unforgivable in a city, but is for more accepted outside the city walls.

[Imralu]

approximate approximant: j

Sorry this is my only feedback right now.

[misora]

I kinda thought I would update you guys with what I am currently working on right now.

Verbs
The question of intransitive or transitive for verb is really hard to tell for English, Nihongo(Japanese), and Français, but in Proto-Vidar it's easy, a verb can be either transitive or intransitive(there is no distinction a verb in Proto-Vidar is both, unless otherwise specified), but some can take three arguments such as trivar(to give).

A question for CaesarVincens
Could you elaborate on full conjugation, it isn't quite clear to me.

[CaesarVincens]

Sure, what I mean by full conjugation is just running a single verb through all of its forms (or all of a set, say active voice or present tense).

So for example, in English. I might have the following table for English.

Code: Select all

    sg       pl
1st I jump   we jump
2nd you jump you jump
3rd he jumps they jump

    sg         pl
1st I jumped   we jumped
2nd you jumped you jumped
3rd he jumped  they jumped

I would continue with other forms like "I am jumping", "I have jump", "I am jumped" (if passive voice is applicable for the verb), "I may jump".

English is sort of silly for this since the conjugations are usually compositional rather than inflectional, but I hope that gives you an idea.

[Pogostick Man]

For non-compositional conjugation, let's look at Arabic. Since I have forgotten most of the conjugations, let's rip it from Wikipedia—same verb stem and all. Note that this is a bit more…formal or archaic, I guess?…than what you'd usually encounter. This perhaps isn't the best example either because you can make the case for Arabic having what is called "templatic" morphology, but to a first approximation (and the fact that I have experience with Arabic)…well, in the words of that Easter Island head guy from Legends of the Hidden Temple—"close enough for the rock".

Code: Select all

PRESENT
   singular      dual       plural
1  'aktubu       ----     naktubu
2M taktubu    taktubaani  taktubuuna
2F taktubiin  taktubaani  taktubna
3M yaktubu    yaktubaani  yaktubuuna
3F taktubu    taktubaani  yaktubna

PAST
   singular    dual       plural
1  katabtu     ----     katabnaa
2M katabta  katabtumaa  katabtum
2F katabti  katabtumaa  katabtunna
3M kataba   katabaa     katabuu
3F katabat  katabataa   katabna

[misora]

Ohh, I see, I can do that very easily

Present for zer(to go)
Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Volitional
1 zerinkango zerikango N/A zerankango
2 zerinkanni zerikanni zeronikanni zerankanni
3 zerinkandi zerikandi zeronikandi zerankandi

Past
1 ozeringo ozerigo N/A ozerango
2 ozerinni ozerini ozeronini ozeranni
3 ozerindi ozeridi ozeronidi ozerandi

Future
1 zerintogo zeritogo N/A zerantogo
2 zerintoni zeritoni zeronitoni zerantoni
3 zerintodi zeritodi zeronitodi zerantodi

[misora]

(sorry about the necro)
I'm happy I can finally return to this project, and I have begun construction of the world that Proto-Vidar inhabits, or the continent that Proto-Vidar inhabits.

The year in the world is currently 12 according to the vidar, whose calendar counts 0 as their starting date. The reason it's set like that is the defeat of the Timorian Tribes at the battle of Estri Mountain just at the border of Vidar and the plains that the Timorian Tribes inhabit. It also marks the date of the centralization of Vidar from city-states to an actual country with a semi-republic, more akin to Rome or Greece than America. The map isn't finished yet, but it soon will be and it come along with a relatively detailed history of the world of Vidar, or Epasansol as the Vidar call it.

(ps: I will updating this far more often now that my life has calmed down, hopefully for a while now.)
(if the image tag doesn't work this is the link to the pic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pvbimzgiykb2w ... r.png?dl=0 )