zompist bboard

how would you evaluate them?

To start with, I'd say Sanskrit was designed by someone with way, way too much free time on her hands.

I'd give that to PIE, actually. 18 ways to form present tense what the fuck

English's orthography was designed by a troll.

I think this kind of thread has been done before (and also should probably not be in L&L).

OTOH, Spanish's orthography was designed by someone with little imagination.

KathAveara wrote:English's orthography was designed by a troll.

Yeah, but only out of admiration for the masterwork of various Gaelics. (As we've discussed.)

I think French is probably the result of someone trying to fix unwieldy roots with diachronics and failing to plan ahead for homophones.

Not to mention getting the diachronics wrong sometimes.

No no no you're getting it all wrong you aren't supposed to work like that Ancient Greek what the unholy fuck are you doing wtf stop with the crack

The person who made Yup'ik had one idea, and one idea only: "suffixes"! Everything in that language is done with suffixes. Including stuff it wouldn't really occur to you would be even done morphologically. Especially stuff it wouldn't occur to you to be done morphologically. I give it two and a half stars out of five.

someday i'm gonna make a noob-looking alt and its nooblang will be ixil

Chagen wrote:I'd give that to PIE, actually. 18 ways to form present tense what the fuck

1. I'd hardly call PIE a natlang. More a "reconlang".
2. 18 ways to construct a present? I'm counting about 6: null, reduplication, n-infix and a handful of thematic suffixes (*-e/o-, *-ye/o-, *-sk'e/o- etc.). Other suffixes (stuff like *-e-ye/o- and *-neh2-) can be derived from those. The rest are derivational suffixes (factitive *-eh2-, stative *-eh1-, desiderative *-h1se/o-).

(I'm not sure I'd call Sanskrit a natlang either, at least not Pāṇini's version of it. In a way, it is (re)constructed by someone with too much time on his hands.)

It is common knowledge that Finnish is a kitchen-sinky conlang.

Thry wrote:It is common knowledge that Finnish is a kitchen-sinky conlang.

Nothing can beat Navajo in the kitchen-sinkyness department. I'm not sure if the other Athabaskan languages are like it, but nothing else even comes close.

Thry wrote:It is common knowledge that Finnish is a kitchen-sinky conlang.

How so? It doesn't have any of the hallmarks like excessively bloated phoneme inventory or fussy pronominal distinctions.

Is it in any of those hallmarks of yours a humongous lists of affixed cases or you skipped over that?

Nothing can beat Navajo in the kitchen-sinkyness department. I'm not sure if the other Athabaskan languages are like it, but nothing else even comes close.

Hah, I didn't know, what does it have?

Normally, I have little time for these special-snowflake such-and-such-a-language is like a newblang it's so whacked and unrealistic man conversations, which I tend to feel show more about the level of ignorance of what ordinary languages are like than about the specialness of whatever language is in question.

However: Iaai. If somebody posted about Iaai on the board, I probably would think it was a conlang, and not a very good one. It has interdental fricatives - indeed, while it has fricatives at five six POAs (one of which, alveolar, is used only for that fricative), voice is only distinguished on the interdental fricatives. It has front rounded vowels, and one mid back unrounded vowel. It has a labialised bilabial series. It has twelve nasals, six of which are voiceless, and seven approximants, including a glottal approximant...
...And it has at least four dozen common words for 'my', with the true number believed by some to be limitless...
Plus, you know, it's called "Iaai", which is clearly a made-up name...

>The very existence of interdental fricatives makes a conlang bad

Really, Sal?

The sheer amount of psychotic and pathological hatred /T D/ get on conlang forums is absolutely ridiculous.

Thry wrote:

Nothing can beat Navajo in the kitchen-sinkyness department. I'm not sure if the other Athabaskan languages are like it, but nothing else even comes close.

Hah, I didn't know, what does it have?

-5 laterals but no rhotic
-sibilant harmony that includes affricates and crosses multiple syllables
-distinguishes tone, length, and nasality on every vowel
-final [h]
-ablaut
-One phonological distinction only appears on verbs
-three-consonant clusters *also* only appear on verbs
-sometimes nouns voice all their consonants when they're possessed
-over 30 different verbs expressing picking up, dropping, or carrying something, depending on what kind of object it is
-7 modes, 12 aspects, and 10 'subaspects', marked by a combination of verbal prefixes and stem changes, which are almost completely indeterminate and have to be memorized for every verb
-direct-inverse marking, but only for transitive verbs where both arguments are 3rd person
-plurality is only marked on nouns that refer to humans, and all of them are suppletive
-distinguishes dual number, but it's only marked on verbs
-the verbs for sit, stand, lie down, and almost every motion verb have different stems for singular, dual, and plural arguments
-countless thematic prefixes that determine a verb's meaning just as much as the stem does. Some of them only appear on one verb, and several of them are identical to each other in most situations.
-Verbal prefixes sometimes switch places

And a whole bunch of other stuff that I may have forgotten. I like it, but it is an absolute nightmare to learn.

Cool, yea, must be nightmarish.

-sometimes nouns voice all their consonants when they're possessed

lol in Spanish possessed is the same word as haunted (poseído)... my mind involuntarily evoked images xD

Salmoneus wrote:Plus, you know, it's called "Iaai", which is clearly a made-up name...

Or the result of someone accidentally misreading the name "Laal".

Basque was made by a normal, proficient conlanger with no fucking idea about geography. i mean putting a random language isolate in northern spain? i mean why?! its like I decided to put a quechua influenced lang smack dab in the middle of laos.

Whoever came up with Australian languages lacking fricatives and all those POA were trying to be unique in a nooby way.

If we can also do conpeople, then whoever made this up was trying to be a smartass.

Torco wrote:Basque was made by a normal, proficient conlanger with no fucking idea about geography. i mean putting a random language isolate in northern spain? i mean why?! its like I decided to put a quechua influenced lang smack dab in the middle of laos.

I don't get it. Are you saying that language isolates shouldn't exist?

Of course not! He's just saying they shouldn't be different from their surrounding languages...oh, wait...

I think he rather meant that Western Europe isn't a traditional zone for language isolates, unlike say the Laotian highland or Papua New Guinea. Even some erstwhile prestigeous romance languages have disappeared or nearly disappeared in that region, but somehow this ancient tartessic or vasconic whatever managed to survive to the present?

An interesting point I will make here is that highland, herding populations resist language assimilation very well. As a boon, whenever the lowlands get depopulated the highlanders can move down and take their place! E.g., compare the Vlachs (Romanians) and Slovaks to their lowland cousins the Romano-Thracians and Great Moravians. Both of whom got assimilated and later lost land to the highlanders. Some other populations like this in Europe are the Arnauts (Albanians) and aforementioned Basques.

This is one of the many reasons I think a nomadic society is the best society.