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In the last month, I made a conlang called roto'rala. It was designed with no more than a hundred words (though I hope to revisit it soon) ideally used by hunters and warriors. Small words and a simple grammar allow precise meanings to be transmitted to others.

Here is the original roto'rala dictionary:

roto'rala

SOUNDS

P, L, K, S, T, G, N, M, R, W, H, V, Sh, Ch, A, E, I, O, U, Ei, Ai, '

PRONUNCIATION

R is slightly trilled
A is always long
Ei is spoken as “ay” as in “say”
Ai is spoken as “eye”
' is a glottal stop

LEXICON

a/an = sha-
above = oran
across = elep
after = kachan
among = she'a
and = esh
around = ke'e
at = pash
attack = kalan
battle = chala
behind = pak'a
below = she'elo
beneath = jela
between = kai
black = neshela
bloody = a'al
blue = che'ela
bridge = korok
brown = nelash
but = skan
chaotic = chasha
damned = hara
desert = geshan
die = fei
during = kolo
enemy = kalei
escape = weres
field = garan
fight = palawei
fire = chana
follow = masha
for = sheis
forest = aipash
from = sho'e
future tense = por-
greatly = ro'osh
green = narech
haste = pele
he(subj.) = roso
help = kaha
her(obj.) = rase
hide = chawa
him(obj.) = rose
I(fem.) = ra
I(male) = ro
ice = kele
in = sash
in front of = sa'iol
inside = che'e
into = pakach
kill = chalak
make = kurak
many = po'ashe
me(fem.) = ra'e
me(male) = ro'e
mountain = matreia
on = pol
onto = polot
on top of = pola'ek
orange = sorash
out of = ka'an
over = nora
past = che'e
past tense = -che
pluralizer = -po'ash
prey = kalai
red = ralash
retreat = gerash
rock = soto
run = maras
say = rala
she(subj.) = raso
shoot = kash
so = cho
swift = porosh
them(obj.) = roa'e
they(subj.) = roa
through = chano
to = ulash
toward = skan
under = tekol
up = pasha'a
upon = chek
us(obj.) = rot'e
valley = daka
we(subj.) = roto
white = bachako
with = tesha
without = shur
yellow = sorshe
you(p.)(obj.) = ret'e
you(p.)(subj.) = reto
you(s.)(fem.)(obj.) = rea'e
you(s.)(fem.)(subj.) = rea
you(s.)(male)(obj.) = reo'e
you(s.)(male)(subj.) = reo
you(s.)(obj.) = re'e
you(s.)(subj.) = re

GRAMMAR

The usual structure of an English sentence is:
subject-verb-object-prepositional phrase
However the structure of roto'rala is:
prepositional phrase-object-subject-verb
Words in roto'rala are separated by apostrophes creating a long sentence word. Pluralizers are added onto nouns while tense modifiers are added to verbs. All nouns are definite unless beginning with an indefinite article. Adjectives describing a nouns come before the article:
a'al'shachala as opposed to shaa'al'chala





I find that the few words make roto'rala easier to learn than other seemingly endless languages.

Hope you like it,
The Conlanger

This is how you say, "I will follow them into the forest" in my conlang, roto'rala.

pakach'aipash'roa'e'ro'pormasha

Literal:

pakach aipash roa'e ro por---masha
into forest them(obj.) I(male) (future tense) follow

Hope you like it,
The Conlanger

The Conlanger wrote:SOUNDS

P, L, K, S, T, G, N, M, R, W, H, V, Sh, Ch, A, E, I, O, U, Ei, Ai, '

PRONUNCIATION

R is slightly trilled
A is always long
Ei is spoken as “ay” as in “say”
Ai is spoken as “eye”
' is a glottal stop

IPA or the highway.

Matrix wrote:

The Conlanger wrote:SOUNDS

P, L, K, S, T, G, N, M, R, W, H, V, Sh, Ch, A, E, I, O, U, Ei, Ai, '

PRONUNCIATION

R is slightly trilled
A is always long
Ei is spoken as “ay” as in “say”
Ai is spoken as “eye”
' is a glottal stop

IPA or the highway.

X-SAMPA isn't too bad (even though I'm only familiar with a few of non-IPA identical characters...)

But, yeah, the International Phonetic Alphabet is the best way to universally describe the phonology or phonetics of any language. Native orthographies and romanizations (or such) are great, as long as IPA is around somewhere.

Also, using an apostrophe to connect words and represent a glottal stop is certainly confusing without a good rational behind it.

Anyway, I like the idea of a language used for hunters/warriors. Although, would there be a writing system for this?

I feel like your pronouns are very similar and might be added onto to dissimilate them, and why is there an ungendered form of you?

Anyway, criticisms and comments should be taken in stride, we wouldn't bother if you didn't have something worth commenting on. I do like the general sound of the language.

So, I started looking up roto'rala's phonology in X-Sampa, and I got a whole lot of nonsense, so I'm going to assume that the OP was using something like English orthography. As far as I can tell, the phonology in IPA would be more or less this:

Nasals /m n/
Stops /p t k g ʔ/
Affricate /tʃ/
Fricatives /v s ʃ h/
Sonorants /l ɾ~r w/
Monophthongs /i u e o a/
Diphthongs /aɪ̯ aʊ̯/

Which looks pretty solid to me. It's a bit odd to have /g/ as the only voiced stop, but presumably /v/ is derived from historical *b. The lack of /d/ is odd, but it could have turned into /r/ or /l/ in much the same manner. It seems likely that /g/ would tend to weaken as well, and maybe eventually become /j/, since the lack of a palatal approximant is a conspicuous phonological gap, and neighboring languages are extremely likely to use the sound.

That said, there are real languages out there with much more typologically unusual phonologies, so I wouldn't sorry about it.

The vocabulary looks interesting; strikes me as fairly Oceanic-y. Looks like the syllables are mostly CV, though I can see where consonant clusters might form as a result of applying suffixes. I would guess that the few words in the lexicon that have consonant clusters are the result of compounding, though that does leave skan, "across" and skan, "but" as conspicuous outliers, since they seem to be the only words with initial clusters. The fact that they're homophones with fairly unrelated meanings only deepens the mystery...

use the database
Rotokas is listed as having /p b t d k g/ but /b d/ are more like [v r] (and /b d g/ are written <v r g>) so that could also count

I didn't say it was impossible, only typologically unusual. Incidentally, it looks like only a few languages on the list have phonemic /l/ and a rhotic but no /j/, and all but one of them are Austronesian. One, Matae, which is evidently spoken on Espiritu Santo island in Vanuatu, looks like it could be turned into roto'rala with only a few tweaks.

CatDoom wrote:So, I started looking up roto'rala's phonology in X-Sampa, and I got a whole lot of nonsense,

I am just completely baffled as to how you even thought it was a legitimate representation of phonology at all. I mean, if it was X-Sampa, don't you think it wouldn't be almost all capital letters? That they'd've used proper bracketing?

EDIT: Oh wait, I just noticed that the post I quoted was actually by a different poster than the one above it. Goddamn avatarless people all look the same to me, especially at 3 AM.

Troll

Just know that this was the first decent conlang I ever actually built.

CaesarVincens wrote: Anyway, criticisms and comments should be taken in stride, we wouldn't bother if you didn't have something worth commenting on. I do like the general sound of the language.

Thanks! When I finish the new version I'll post it here, so look out for it.

CatDoom wrote:So, I started looking up roto'rala's phonology in X-Sampa, and I got a whole lot of nonsense

Challenge: make a language out of /ʋ ʎ ɬ ʃ θ ɣ ŋ ɯ ʁ ʍ ɥ ʌ ʃh çh ɑ ɛ ɪ ɔ ʊ ɛi ɑi ʲ/.

Matrix wrote:

CatDoom wrote:So, I started looking up roto'rala's phonology in X-Sampa, and I got a whole lot of nonsense,

I am just completely baffled as to how you even thought it was a legitimate representation of phonology at all. I mean, if it was X-Sampa, don't you think it wouldn't be almost all capital letters? That they'd've used proper bracketing?

EDIT: Oh wait, I just noticed that the post I quoted was actually by a different poster than the one above it. Goddamn avatarless people all look the same to me, especially at 3 AM.

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply the OP was using X-SAMPA, but that X-SAMPA is an acceptable alternative to IPA.