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I am currently working on a conlang for a race called Ruhd'rel/Uhd'rel/Ruhd'reliax. These are the humanoid form, dragon/child form, and plural/culture form respectively.

Their language is my first attempt at conlanging and I have several more languages to create for my world. Tips, advice, and criticism is welcome

The language so far:

Króluhd - Place of fire

Nrókdéuhd - take by fire

Nrók - take

Dé - by

Drav - change

Lerók - course

Dravlerók - aberrant

Inyók - abet

Lev - put

Yere - aside

Levyere - abeyance

Trav - bring

Travnikó - abhor

Sré - do

Srékor - do with honor

Versk - wait

Vról - burn

Nrókvróluhd - take burning fire

Ki - in

Frayes - beginning

Vré - repugnant

Trav'rénikó - to bring repugnance without honor

Au - death

Ró - will

Kor - honor

Va - am

Nu - before

Vis - presence

Kortóh - heart's honor

Nikótóh - without any heart's honor

Drel - kin land

Rel - kin

Lyr - sing

Ni - makes any word negative

Uhd - fire

Ruh - blood

Ók - from

Torók - magic

Meyr - servant

Meyrvó - slave

Vó - own

Duk - drink

Muk - food

Borek - travel/go

En - with

Tor - heart

Ian - culture

Skó - scales

Div - number

Skódiv - number scales (form of counting)

Nikó'- without honor

Nibor'kó' - travel without honor

Król - place

Korto'drely'ch - honor of my heartland

Ruhdrel - Kin of blood fire (singular)

Ruhdreliax - kin of blood fire (plural)

Ruhdrelian - culture kin of blood fire

Nikótó'ichuch - you are not my friend

Nikótó'ichuch - I am not your friend

Korto'uchich - I am your friend

Borekich - I travel

Borekuch - you travel

Mukich - I eat food

Borekach - it travels

Mukuch - you eat food

Mukach - it eats food

Myerich - I serve

Myeruch - you serve

Myerach - it serves

More to come:)

The Ruhdreliax are a race of dragon people. They have a nesting island called Korto'drely'ch which is situated between the Mythryl Sea to the west and the Selendriol Sea to the east.


The closest continent is that of Lydissa. The southern most country of Lydissa is Sentórnia and is the closest country to the east. Northwest of Korto'drely'ch is the continent Tallo'um with its southern most country Arotolys being the closest to the northwest. Directly north of Korto'drely'ch are the small islands of Symoron Synz with the closest island being Róo'in.

They are born in dragon form called Uhdrel and when they are about 30 years old, (teenagers for Ruhdreliax), they begin shifting between the humanoid form known as Ruhdrel and Uhdrel. By 33, this stabilizes and they can control when they shift from one form to the other.

Uhdrel remain with their mother on Korto'drely'ch until they reach adulthood at 33. At that point, they are permitted to live among the other races.

The Ruhdrelian is a culture based on honor. My primary source culture is Japanese and German is my source language to some extent. It is a simple language with very few words because the Ruhdreliax don't believe in wasting speech. They speak only as needed.

In the Ruhdrel form, they can't breathe fire, but in the Uhdrel form they can. This is why they don't live among the other races until they come of age.

Many Ruhdreliax work in transportation services, carrying closed boxes with windows for people or closed windowless boxes of cargo from country to country or continent to continent. They do not provide transportation for short trips, as they believe them to be a waste of energy, since other forms of transportation exist that are more efficient. They have specially built harnesses which they wear across their shoulders in the Uhdrel form which allows the box to follow behind at a safe distance.

Some Ruhdreliax are farmers who raise various types of livestock. Only the Uhdrel in transportation services and on Korto'drely'ch eat in the Uhdrel form. The remainder of the Ruhdrel eat the equivalent portions of the other races. The Ruhdreliax farmers will sell food they raise to other races, but their first fruits always go to the Uhdrel.

Some Ruhdreliax are techno wizards, because of their natural fire element, they understand energy more than most races. They live very long lives, the oldest Ruhdrel lived to be 7,589 years old. With their many years, they become very clever and use their time to make the world a better place.

Technology that they share is perfected prior to selling it or introducing it to the other races. Their technology is often mistaken for magic.

Not all Ruhdreliax are good but for most part they are a peaceful race.

In Ruhdrelian, since they don't speak more than needed, sentences are generally composed of one word which conveys everything that they want to say. Sometimes this includes multiple meanings.

To say goodbye - they would mean "goodbye my good friend and may you have good fortune until we meet again". They would actually say "Torichbor'enuch" which translates to "my heart goes with you." This is for someone who is familiar like a friend or family member. To say goodbye to someone that is older or unfamiliar to them, they would say "Kornuich" which translates to "my honor goes before you."

Their writings can be difficult to translate for someone outside of the culture because much of its meaning is implied rather than explicitly stated.

An example of this will be forthcoming as I will translate one of my constellation legends into Ruhdrelian, hopefully by the end of the week.

Do you have anything on the phonology (what sounds there are, and which combinations of those sounds are valid syllables) and the grammar? It seems your language strings together words to form one-word sentences. Could you tell more about that? For example, what order do the parts of such a one-word sentence come in?

Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, it just seems that you're rather new to conlanging and linguistics so these are a few things that you might want to think about.

Awesome questions!!! I am super new so I really appreciate the questions. I was taking a bit of a break to try to come up with the next step in the process - so answers are forthcoming

Yes, the words are strung together to create one word sentences. Ruhdreliax don't like speaking much primarily because they are accustomed to their Uhdrel form and use body language in order to communicate more than speech until they come of age. They can speak "normally" as Uhdrel but this can lead to accidental fire hazards. Ruhdreliax do not learn to speak the common tongue used by most merchants and the educated of the other races. They find it cumbersome with its large vocabulary and complicated structures so they adopt scholars to learn Ruhdrelian in order to translate it into the common tongue. I have not created the common tongue yet though I do have several language families that have been started.

The other answers will require additional work on my part, but it's mainly a matter of putting it into words because the phonology and structure already exists in my head

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Do you have anything on the phonology (what sounds there are, and which combinations of those sounds are valid syllables) and the grammar? It seems your language strings together words to form one-word sentences. Could you tell more about that? For example, what order do the parts of such a one-word sentence come in?

Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, it just seems that you're rather new to conlanging and linguistics so these are a few things that you might want to think about.

This is going to be really primitive because I am very unfamiliar with linguistics. Anyone who wants to take what I am describing and help make it more linguistically correct, I welcome the assistance and feedback

The Ruhdrelian alphabet as it stands now:

A - ah as in autumn
á - a as in gate
Au - oh as in dough
Ax - ucks as in ducks
B - buh as in boy
Ch - phlegm - German ich (which I did steal as my first person pronoun)
D - duh as in dig
E - eh as in egg
H - silent gives extra oomph to accented vowels
I - ih as in igloo
I - ee as in sweet when followed by A
Iax - makes words plural and generally follows a consonant such as L
K - kuh as in king
L - ll as in lincoln
M - mm as in man
N - en as in noise
Ni - nee as in knee - used to make statements negative
O - oh as in corps
ó - oh as in oak
R - rr as in rowdy
S - ss as in snake
T - tuh as in triangle
U - uh as in ugh when followed by Ch
U - oo as in goo
V - vv as in victory
X - icks as in sticks

Ok, I am not sure how to break down sentence structure but I will do my best to describe what I mean. Any feedback/corrections are welcome

Lycansyr, Kioboli, Yndigani borekich semmerók vorekich.

I go (Borekich) to (no word) Lycansyr, Kioboli, and Yndigani. I return (vorekich) in (dropped from spoken language/implied) seven days (semmerók)

Borekich

Borek - v. Go/travel and any derivative such as goes, going, travels, traveling etc
Ich - personal pronoun - 1st person - I, me, my, mine etc

Pronouns are always last. Pronouns will follow one another such as borekuchich (you travel with me) borekichuch (I travel with you)

Numbers proceed nouns as in semmerók (7 days or literally 7 suns)

Merók - n. Sun/day
Dunók - n. Moon/night

Vorek - v. Return

Verbs generally follow the logical order - you can't return before you go and the same rule applies in the language structure.

Proper nouns are always first. If asking questions or speaking to someone, their name will always come first but generally names are used very rarely as names are sacred to the Ruhdreliax. calling someone by their name is the equivalent of intimate relations. This rule generally only applies to places but occasionally will apply to personal names. To get someone's attention they use descriptors, clothing, hair color, eye color, etc but failing that due to multiple people in a group matching the same description, they will resort to physical means of attracting the attention of the person desired. Generally by placing themselves in direct line of sight as touch in any form is a sacred act and general reserved for close friends and family.

People will be a lot more interested in systems than in trivia. So you tell us that

Mukuch - you eat food
Mukach - it eats food

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's not in any way interesting. How does that work? what's happening under the hood? does muk mean [to eat food] and uch/ach/ich/whatever are personal suffixes or something? maybe you've got some sort of non concatenational morphology going on, such that it's the vowel that's changing the meaning, like in goose vs. geese in english? if uch-ach are personal sufixes, are those the only ones there are? does this system distinguish between you formal and you informal, like, say, french? why does this distinguish animacy in the third person just like english does? I trust you're aware that there exist other languages that have different sets of pronouns that are not english... maybe your dragons are like descendants from narnian english-speakers or something? i dunno.

Va - am

Same thing here: "am" is an idiosyncracy of english, that has this funky way to deal with the verb to be: but this doesn't have to be the case: i am, you are, we are, he is, they're all 是 in chinese, such that 我是， 您是，我们是， 她是... in spanish we throw it the other way, and have a fuckton of different forms of the verb to be: yo soy, tu eres, usted es, ellos son... And there is probably another language where the verb to be inflects to agree with not only the pronoun, but the degree of the thing that the pronoun is said to be: so you are tall and you are very tall use different forms of the verb to be. point being, you don't have to relex english, and doing so is exceedingly boring.

You mention the language's "alphabet" <which means about nothing without the underlying phonemes>. but in your words i find apostrophes. What is the meaning of this apostrophe? is it a glottal stop? is it silent and just there to look nice? is it breaking up morphemes, as in hanyu pinyin? is it just the way you write a specific morpheme, as in the english possessive < 's > ?

We generally like using the IPA or XSAMPA here: or, you know, some way to refer to sounds that's not based on some person's specific accent within the english language.

Letters are not the constituent blocks of language: rather, phonemes are. at least this is the model everyone in linguistics uses. I invite you to read up some on the concept of a phoneme
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoneme

Lycansyr, Kioboli, Yndigani borekich semmerók vorekich.

I go (Borekich) to (no word) Lycansyr, Kioboli, and Yndigani. I return (vorekich) in (dropped from spoken language/implied) seven days (semmerók)

Okay, so... *places* go-1S seven-day return-1S, assuming sem-merok is the underlying structure here.
1S means that the suffix "ich" means that the verb is being performed by the first person singular [me].

does this represent the general structure of declarative sentences? like... your place names go before the verb here, but is this because they're proper names that are sacred and go first always, or is it because they're where you're going [that is to say, would the phrase "I go to that tree" have the same structure]. More generally, is this she shape of any phrase with an object ?. [would the phrase I defecate onto the bushes have the same shape? with the bushes before defecating?]. How about phrases where the subject isn't contained in the verb inflection, as in "squirrels go to london".
___
Can I direct you to the LCK ? it's a great resource for absolute newcomers.

http://www.zompist.com/kit.html

a as in gate

wait, what? gate doesn't have anything that can be imagined as an "a" sound: it has the "a" letter, but afaik in english it's pronounced something like [gejt] or [g@jt] (all english vowels sound like schwa to me, and I've long given up on training a better ear for the sort of tiny distinctions between reduced vowels).

Also, you probably want to read this thread
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=42557

... and, also, read a grammar of a foreign language, or maybe two. That gives you a bit of a feeling for how differently different languages can work.

Sorry if I was abrasive. I'm told I can be abrasive. :V
oh, and welcome! pickles and tea!

I haven't had as much time to reply as I had hoped, but responses are forthcoming. Thank you for your feedback and I don't think it was abrasive, direct, but not abrasive.

One question that I can answer right away is about the apostrophe between certain words. This mark (diacritic?) represents a dropped letter or part of a phrase. For example, korto'drely'ch (what they call their homeland) is a combination of words that means "honor of my heartland" Kor - honor, tor - heart, drel- kinland, and ich - 1st person pronoun.

The apostrophe may be more of a grammatical mark than a phonetic one. (I am still working through this so I appreciate the feedback and patience with my current level of ignorance. I am really excited to be learning this as i go. Hopefully soon it won't be quite so messy:))

Grammatically they don't have two rhotics like Kor and tor back to back, instead they will drop the second rhotic. In Ruhdrelian, the rhotic is an uvular approximation (like the French r). After a dental sound, ich is pronounced with a IPA j (please bear with me I am trying to learn the phonetic alphabet so that I can apply the appropriate sounds). Grammatically Y replaces the I in ich in order to produce the proper sound in pronunciation - not sure if this happens in natlangs, so if it needs to change, it's totally changeable.

Torco wrote:People will be a lot more interested in systems than in trivia. So you tell us that

Mukuch - you eat food
Mukach - it eats food

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's not in any way interesting. How does that work? what's happening under the hood? does muk mean [to eat food] and uch/ach/ich/whatever are personal suffixes or something? maybe you've got some sort of non concatenational morphology going on, such that it's the vowel that's changing the meaning, like in goose vs. geese in english? if uch-ach are personal sufixes, are those the only ones there are? does this system distinguish between you formal and you informal, like, say, french? why does this distinguish animacy in the third person just like english does? I trust you're aware that there exist other languages that have different sets of pronouns that are not english... maybe your dragons are like descendants from narnian english-speakers or something? i dunno.

Muk - food

Technically to eat, eating, hungry, etc are implied by way of gesture or by context. This is merely an abstract concept which may not work in practice. This is still very much a work in progress.

Ich - first person pronoun (includes I, me, my, mine, etc)
Eich - We/us
Uch - you (familiar)
Och - you (formal)
Ach - It (neutral)
Each - they (neutral)
Ech - They (feminine)
Eoch - They (masculine)

I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by animacy. Please explain?

According to the history of Aldurturran, they created earth, though this has long since fallen into myth. Most inhabitants believe that humans have never existed except in myth much like our Atlantis legends. So eventually I will be tying the common tongue to a linguistic family from Aldurturran and an ancient language from real life but that is long after I actually know what I am doing so that it is truly believable.

Hopefully now it is at least a little more interesting than it was at the beginning. I will remember in the future that the mechanics of a language are more important than its components.

Torco wrote:

Va - am

Same thing here: "am" is an idiosyncracy of english, that has this funky way to deal with the verb to be: but this doesn't have to be the case: i am, you are, we are, he is, they're all 是 in chinese, such that 我是， 您是，我们是， 她是... in spanish we throw it the other way, and have a fuckton of different forms of the verb to be: yo soy, tu eres, usted es, ellos son... And there is probably another language where the verb to be inflects to agree with not only the pronoun, but the degree of the thing that the pronoun is said to be: so you are tall and you are very tall use different forms of the verb to be. point being, you don't have to relex english, and doing so is exceedingly boring.

I haven't honestly thought out the verb "to be". This is something that I need to work on. I have taken several courses in foreign languages but it has been over a decade since I even thought about the mechanics of them. I completely forgot about these other forms and the "behind the scenes" structure. I'm accustomed to speaking English (I'm sure you couldn't tell right?;)) and just take the language for granted. This reminder will probably change how I address the "to be" question.

Seraphinak wrote:

Dē Graut Bʉr wrote:Do you have anything on the phonology (what sounds there are, and which combinations of those sounds are valid syllables) and the grammar? It seems your language strings together words to form one-word sentences. Could you tell more about that? For example, what order do the parts of such a one-word sentence come in?

Sorry if I'm asking too many questions, it just seems that you're rather new to conlanging and linguistics so these are a few things that you might want to think about.

This is going to be really primitive because I am very unfamiliar with linguistics. Anyone who wants to take what I am describing and help make it more linguistically correct, I welcome the assistance and feedback

The Ruhdrelian alphabet as it stands now:

A - ah as in autumn
á - a as in gate
Au - oh as in dough
Ax - ucks as in ducks
B - buh as in boy
Ch - phlegm - German ich (which I did steal as my first person pronoun)
D - duh as in dig
E - eh as in egg
H - silent gives extra oomph to accented vowels
I - ih as in igloo
I - ee as in sweet when followed by A
Iax - makes words plural and generally follows a consonant such as L
K - kuh as in king
L - ll as in lincoln
M - mm as in man
N - en as in noise
Ni - nee as in knee - used to make statements negative
O - oh as in corps
ó - oh as in oak
R - rr as in rowdy
S - ss as in snake
T - tuh as in triangle
U - uh as in ugh when followed by Ch
U - oo as in goo
V - vv as in victory
X - icks as in sticks

Here is the IPA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA

Phonetic alphabet 2.0

This has been revamped using IPA:

A - ä
á - e
Au - ᵓ
Ax - äx
B - b
Ch - ç
D - d
E - ɛ
H - h
I - ɪ
I - i: when followed by ä
Iax - i:äx -makes words plural and generally follows a consonant
K - k
L - l
M - m
N - n
Ni - ni: - used to make statements negative
O - o
ó - I couldn't find the symbol for this - ᵓ with a tilde beneath
R - r
S - s
T - t
U - ʔ when followed by ç
U - y:
V - v
X - xs

I haven't honestly thought out the verb "to be". This is something that I need to work on. I have taken several courses in foreign languages but it has been over a decade since I even thought about the mechanics of them. I completely forgot about these other forms and the "behind the scenes" structure. I'm accustomed to speaking English (I'm sure you couldn't tell right?;)) and just take the language for granted. This reminder will probably change how I address the "to be" question.

Cool! that's kind of what the primary function of this board is for a newbie, I think... telling you "you, you imported assumptions from your language out of good faith linguistick lack of knowledge, think about how these things work in general, go read more about this or that feature, these are the keywords you need, you don't need to relex english or whatever your L1 is".

So yeah, you want to be reading wikipedia for copula, verb, grammatical tense, grammatical mode, grammatical aspect, morphosyntax, grammatical case, and probably a grammar of a language or two, there's resources in the resource thread in the L&L Museum thingamajig in this very board.

As for the list of phonemes, others are better equipped than me, who has never much cared for phonologies... but are you sure you mean x? in IPA x is not the consonant in axe; that's two consos, actually [ks]. Instead, it's a voiceless velar fricative!

I have begun translating a faery tale I wrote into Ná'hd (the official name of the language meaning fire tongue or fire speak) and have begun recognizing rules and grammatical structure. I have also realized that Ch is not the only sound represented by ç. k is the same sound but the Ch is primarily used before vowels or after consonants with the exception of the personal pronouns. I didn't realize that until I began translating. X is probably more accurately reflected in the ks sound.

Cool! Keep up the good work. I like to see the way your linguistic knowledge is developing. I can see you made an effort to translate the sounds you have from the English phonology. Like Torco said, definitely read the Language Construction Kit as soon as possible. Even if it doesn't make much sense the first time you read it, go over it again as many times as you need to until it makes sense, and keep it around as reference book as you are going through different parts of your language. One thing you might want to change is your /i:/. In British English, /i:/ would be the long <ee> sound, but it would be more normal to just have either just an /i/ or pairs of long (vowels with ipa / :/ after them) and short vowel (vowels not pronounced long).

I'm not sure that I understood what you meant by the /i:/ - could you please give me a few examples? Thanks:)

I know that most of my pronunciations of I is /i:/ which tends to be more common in Ná'hd than /i/. From what I have been working on double consonants and double vowels don't exist in Ná'hd.