The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
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Zumir
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The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Zumir »

Just because I'm bored, I'm starting a craziest language competition. The idea is for each poster to post their candidate for craziest natlang, and the winner will be the one with the most votes by the 50th vote. I'll start things off by casting my ballot in favour of Nuxalk. So...
Ready
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Go!

(Also, it would be a good idea to number your posts. )

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Last edited by Zumir on Fri Jul 01, 2011 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by cromulant »

Walloon.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by makvas »

I'll vote Georgian. Its grammar is nearly kitchen-sink.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by din »

More interesting than listing the languages would be explaining why you think so, and providing examples of said insanity.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Lyhoko Leaci »

4: Ubykh

Because the phonology looks like someone barfed over the consonant list after nibbling on the vowels.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Qwynegold »

Hmm, there are many options. Could someone give me more suggestions?
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by vec »

Icelandic because it's Germanic and has /tɬ/, it has a lot of quirky case marking (with verbs, adjectives and prepositions), an insanely irregular substantive morphology system, some really rare things like long-distance reflexives and other fun stuff.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by alice »

English, because nothing in the orthography or grammar means what it looks like it's supposed to.

How about the converse too: the least batshit natlang?
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Arzena »

Spanish, it has a nice, regular orthography, and its verbal system isn't that hard.

As for insane natlangs, Moroccan Arabic--what if you just deleted most of the vowels from the triconsonantal roots and bought loanwords on the cheap from Berber and French?
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by sirred »

Somali if only for that consonant inventory. It's like they got drunk, spun around five times and threw darts at the IPA chart.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Acid Badger »

Ingush for its phonology, its near-to-kitchen sinky grammar and the 385646 irregular forms of everything

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Zumir »

Note: so as not to get confusing, it would be a good idea to number your votes.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Aurora Rossa »

I would have to say !Xóõ, for having the most phonemes, although Nuxalk and Georgian rank pretty high for their consonant clusters. Ubykh probably ranks high as well for its strange yet vast phoneme inventory (dozens and dozens of consonants but only two vowels) and I think it has some pretty tough consonant clusters as well.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Nortaneous »

NWC langs aren't that bad with consonant clusters, I think the maximum in Ubykh is medial CCC.

Anyway, least batshit would probably be Quechua, the classic example of a very regular language, although I'd be personally biased toward German. Most batshit... if we restrict it to phonology, I'd have to say Dahalo, but Archi has both a batshit phonology (among other things, four prevelar lateral affricates, as opposed to Dahalo's one) and, from what little I know about it, an equally insane grammar.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Zumir »

Archi has a labialized lenis ejective velar lateral affricate. No more needs to be said.
Last edited by Zumir on Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by finlay »

Zumir wrote:lenis voiceless ejectice
No it doesn't. Ejectives are not voiceless, they have no phonation.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Zumir »

Voiceless ejective? What voiceless ejective? Edits post.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Risla »

I'll second Somali for batshit phonology.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Nortaneous »

I have to wonder how much of the perceived batshittery of Somali is just due to bad analysis on the Wikipedia page. It could easily be cleaned up into something more sensible, although I'm not sure how accurate this would be:

Code: Select all

  m   n      
  b t d ʧ ɖ k g ʡ   ʔ
  f s   ʃ   x   ħ ʕ h
      r     
      l   j   w
So the only things that are weird then are the retroflex plosive and the vowels.

The Wikipedia page also mentions some phonemes elsewhere, like /ɢ/, which aren't in the chart, so it's probably not all that reliable.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Soap »

From the Somali phonology article on Wikipedia:
* The voiced stops (/b/, /d/, /ɡ/ and /ɢ/) are devoiced in word-initial and word-final position. Between two vowels they become fricatives.
* The voiceless stops /t/ and /k/ are realised as [d] and [ɡ] in syllable-final position.
So basically at the end of a word /t k/ become [d g] and /d g/ become [t k].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_pho ... Allophones
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Nortaneous »

found a grammar on archive.org that says there's actually no voicing distinction, though obviously its reliability is questionable

hitting uztr now (edit: the Notes on the Somali Language pdf doesn't display at all for me; can anyone get it to work?)
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by brandrinn »

Anyone ever tried to count in Navajo? I'd rather try to cast a soccer game entirely in binary.
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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by richard1631978 »

I've often heard that Finnish is very hard to learn, with living in Finland being a must to fully master it. Not sure how true that is.

I presume Estonians & Hungarians would find it easier to master.

Gaelic has a similar reputation for being tricky, but I don't know how much that is compaired to other languages.

Has anyone mentioned any tonal languages? I tried to learn some basic Manderin a few years ago & was told I was getting all the tones wrong.

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Astraios »

richard1631978 wrote:Has anyone mentioned any tonal languages? I tried to learn some basic Manderin a few years ago & was told I was getting all the tones wrong.
Pfft, tone doesn't make a language crazy. :P

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Re: The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

Post by Aurora Rossa »

Astraios wrote:Pfft, tone doesn't make a language crazy.
Quite. I have actually heard Mandarin has one of the more reasonable tonal systems out there.
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