I have joined this community because I'm a n00b conlanger, but eager to learn. I've been working by a couple of months in two naturalistic artlangs, and I'll greatly appreciate any feedback. I have one, Bremsic, which is almost ready to publish... at least for a fast revision of some ideas.
The main idea is to produce a fantasy conworld, on which I already have some details. Those details are entwined on the language, so there are some of those details, the ones that I belive are important to keep in mind:
The origin of Man: Humans started their footsteps on this world being a lower class of spirit-gods, more like fae, nymphs and similar creatures. After an "Original Sin", Humanity is demoted, getting material body and being subject to earth-bond illness and death.
The time frame: The world is kind of new. There was world only for a few hundred years. Humanity thrive thanks it's divine past, and thanks to that past, Human science, culture and tecnology can evolve quickly. There will be irregularities in the language, remainders of archaic rules. Also, some characteristics will give clues of how this language will evolve in the future.
The main characteristics of Bremsic are as follow:
- Alphabetical scripture, I'm currently working on the font.
- Three Genders (Human, Neutral, Honorific). Honorific is reserved to gods and important social roles, such as kings, priests, militarymen...
- Three Numbers (Singular, Dual, Plural).
- Seven declension cases (Nominative, Acusative, Dative, Ablative, Genitive, Instrumental, Abessive).
- Articles, adjectives and verbs must follow the noun in gender, but not in number.
- Noun inflection "loses" his gender in dual and plural forms. They become neutral. The primitive gender of the word can be retrieved from the gender on the associated articles and adjectives, since they keep their original gender.Also, if we're talking about the subject, the verb can be useful for retrieve this information. Some irregular nouns will dig up archaic plural cases for human and honoric genders.
- S-V-O, with Dative Construction for static verbs.
- Verb tenses and modes are determined by a system of prefixes, instead of the more common suffixes, which derive from archaic auxiliary verbs. Interrogative sentences are made with one of those prefixes on the verb you're asking for.
BRE - Neu senen eroai zenamen porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.hum smart-hum young.individual-nt.nom.pl vb.prog-hum-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - Smart kids eat oranges.
BRE - Me senil eroai zelinam porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.nt smart-nt young.individual-nt.nom.pl vb.prog-nt-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - Smart young animals eat oranges.
BRE - Neu senen ero zenenam porgulairi.
GLOSS - art.hum smart-hum young.individual-hum.nom.sin vb.prog-hum-to.eat orange-nt.acu.pl
ENG - The smart child eats oranges
I'm particulary worried about the gender dropping in plural forms. I think it's a cool feature that feels unique, but maybe is too weird. The idea is that Bremsic is evolving to a genderless language.
I'm also worried about the phonetics. I have not an impaired audition, but for some reason, I'm almost deaf in subtelties like little sound differences, even in my native language. I'm posting IPA charts with a few notes here:
- Starting F (Fricative, Voiceless, labial) is pronounced bilabial. Otherwise, is pronounced labiodental
- Z (Fricative, Voiced, Alveolar) is pronounced TH (Voiceless Dental Fricative) at the end of the word.
- In central bremsama dialect, Center vowel is read where "A" is atone. Other dialects may lose this vocalic sound.
- U is pronounced like japanese, without rounding the lips.
Thanks a lot.