If natlangs were conlangs...

[KathTheDragon]

I knew it was <i> because of this thread.

[Nortaneous]

Hmm, still not kitchen-sinky enough. Let's give it three varieties of /i/, one of which is actually fricated, but not include any /e/.

To be fair, /æ/ is [æ~ɛ], and the paper itself writes it as /ɛ/ IIRC. The vowel system is essentially T7L, but with an additional fricated vowel, and nasalization on the low vowel for whatever reason.

Are there any natlangs with >8 tones? Though there are three tone clusters that can occur on roots, and I don't know why they aren't counted as separate tones in Iau... Dananshan Hmong also has eight, but I can't think of any with nine or more.

[leanancailin]

Berber would certainly draw some fire.

"This is just a phoneme inventory, you forgot to put syllable constraints."
"Oh...um...a syllable is any two or three sounds nearby each other. Look, I made this nifty sonority hierarchy to decide on nuclei. 'k' sounds like a good vowel if it's next to 't', right?"

[vec]

Besides the fact that the script totally looks like something someone on the internet made.

[----]

Berber would certainly draw some fire.

"This is just a phoneme inventory, you forgot to put syllable constraints."
"Oh...um...a syllable is any two or three sounds nearby each other. Look, I made this nifty sonority hierarchy to decide on nuclei. 'k' sounds like a good vowel if it's next to 't', right?"

To be fair, schwas are obligatory in a whole lot of contexts. They're just not written in the script.

[Drydic]

All of that is balanced out by the fact that it's the only language family in the world to out-Semitic Semitic.

[CatDoom]

Kashaya looks like somebody trying too hard to come up with weird grammatical categories and markers.

Verbs can take upwards of 17 affixes and other grammatical markers simultaneously, including:

• One of 20 "instrumental" prefixes describing the object or motion with which an action is performed
• A plural agent marker that consists of shifting all instances of glottalized /n'/ to ejective /ts'/
• A marker indicating that the action specifically takes place on or off the ground
• One of three distinct markers indicating that an action is beginning
• A "plural act" marker with 13 different allomorphs that may or may not trigger loss of aspiration and/or debuccalization elsewhere in the verb
• One (or, in some cases, more) of 15 different directional suffixes
• Several suffixes that may be reduplicated for emphasis
• A "distributive" suffix indicating that "the action takes place in different places or moves in a haphazard manner"
• A "defunctive" suffix indicating an action performed by someone who is now dead
• One of 7 evidentials, 5 irrealis moods, 4 kinds of imperative, or 6 kinds of "future" maker
• A "responsive" suffix indicating that one is answering a question or specifically responding to a statement

And don't get me started on all the elaborate allophonic processes; somebody had way too much time on their hands.

[Rhetorica]

Tangut. Just... holy... wow, no. (As noted by Nort and others.)

[Nortaneous]

And you didn't even mention the 95 vowels.

[CatDoom]

To be fair, it appears that Tangut essentially is a conscript. I do not envy those printers.

Also, iõʳ. Retroflex nasal diphthong. That's awesome.

[cromulant]

In conclusion, if natlangs were conlangs, they would be the most incredible conlangs ever. They would have a caliber of realism that no one here could come close to matching. Some of them would be mind-boggling complex, and make most of the langs presented here look like the work of toddlers.

That is what would happen if natlangs were conlangs.

[ObsequiousNewt]

In conclusion

Just what do you think you are doing?

[cromulant]

I am...concluding. I think.

[Thry]

You were, but your saying it rendered it invalid. Heh.

[ObsequiousNewt]

One does not simply... conclude a thread.

[Thry]

Unless you say sth so bad it's locked.

It has happened.

Recently.

And it will soon.

Mwahahaha.

[cromulant]

One does not simply... conclude a thread.

Do you deny that at the time of posting, it was the last post in the thread?

[Drydic]

One does not simply... conclude a thread.

What if we used a catapult?

[ObsequiousNewt]

One does not simply... conclude a thread.

What if we used a catapult?

That would be a catastrophe.

[Drydic]

One does not simply... conclude a thread.

What if we used a catapult?

That would be a catastrophe.

Oh?

[Legion]

This thread was never good.

[ObsequiousNewt]

Here are the sound changes from PIE to my conlang, Armenian:

• *dw > erk

That is not how sound changes work.

[Copperknickers]

An interesting point I will make here is that highland, herding populations resist language assimilation very well.

Interesting, I'll mention that to some Gaelic speakers... oh wait.

What's your point? Gaelic was still spoken in most highland areas in Scotland up until the 18th century, 300 years after it had cleared out of the lowlands. Then the remaining ones all went to Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Canada, leaving only the most remote highland, herding populations in the NorthWest.

[Qwynegold]

Mandarin

Oh wow Anguipes, you've outdone yourself again. Where do you get the energy from to do that many characters? And that syllable structure is interesting, but I don't really understand it.

[Nortaneous]

To be fair, it appears that Tangut essentially is a conscript. I do not envy those printers.

Also, iõʳ. Retroflex nasal diphthong. That's awesome.

I have that in Jedlug*... at least under an analysis that, while plausible, I don't use.

* [cɛ̰ɾɯ̃], register letters B)