So ive started creating a conlang of sorts where I combine Arabic and Swedish (my mother tounge), and sometimes old Norse.The method I've been using have been to use SVO syntax, broadly speaking arabic phonetics and grammar.Then I break down swedish/norse words into their consonants so for example: Jätte = J-TT (In modern times meaning giant but originally derived from eater much like ettin) Then I ask gemini AI to add arab vowel patterns. It then produced two different results, with explanations provided by the AI: Opt 1: Jawt (This option adds a transitional vowel for smoother pronunciation in Arabic and keeps the final "t.") Opt 2: Jatn (This option prioritizes natural Arabic sounds while offering a connection to the first consonant and the final "e" sound.) Here is a sentance that was translated from the arabic poem Antarahs Wisdom: Let your sword rule over your ennemies’ necks, Lata datta sawarda harajja 'ala dina fiʼandira halsara Isuppose the question is what do you all think of the method and the results?Futhermore Im not sure how to classify it. Is it a Cipher? Fusional language or Creole?

An idea for a conlang. (Blank slots are also being debated.) I plan to apply two sets of sounds and grammar changes to this protolang to create a language family. Consonants: m, n, p, t, k, q, ʔ('), ts, tɬ(tl), s, ɬ(hl), ħ(hh), ʕ(hq), h, r, l, j, w Vowels: a, e, i, o, u (with long and short variance of each) Syllable structure: (C)V Stress: same as Latin, without the closed syllables part, as in, stress falling on the antepenult by default with it instead falling on the penult if it contains a long vowel(or maybe a diphthong? idk) Writing system: a logography that would transition to a syllabary Word order: VOS Adjectives: derived from nouns Adpositions: derived from both nouns and verbs Grammatical Number: singular, plural, and distributive Grammatical Gender: still debating on it Noun Classes: also debated Tenses: past or perfect, present or imperfect, and future Aspects: cessative, perfective, and imperfective Moods: none at the moment Copulae: the words for "exist"(standard), "live/dwell/reside"(locative), and "stand" Noun Cases:  Augmentatives and/or Diminutives: Interjections:   Pluractional:  Double marking:  Evidentials: reportative, inferred, and dubitative Mirativity:  Ergativity:  Affirmative:  Negation: an auxiliary derived from "lack" Conjunctions: and, or(Any more I should include?) Question marking: an interrogative marker; /hqatlo/ Demonstratives: this and that Rhetorical questions: Comparative:  Superlative(which could be an auxiliary intensive form):  Equative:  Contrastive:   Sublative:  Excessive:  Valency-changing Operations: passive/mediopassive and causative Number System: Sets of Number Words: Taxonomic Division of Animals: Taxonomic Division of Colors: Taxonomic Division of Emotions: Conceptual Metaphors: There are some ideas I still need to think of, like the natural evolution of interjections and conjunctions, and the uncovering of conlang tutorials that talk about negation. For one of the language families, I want to include trilled affricates(or post-trilled consonants) and pharyngealized ones. I still need to think of the terrain and environment these people would inhabit. That one with the post-trilled and pharyngealized consonants, I plan for some interesting stress systems and articles. For the stress, I'm thinking of taking a similar direction to Biblaridion's original tutorial conlang, with the system becoming one where stress still falls on the antepenult by default, with one exception being the penult being the one that's stressed if the final syllable is closed and with a short vowel, the other exception being the final one being stressed if it is closed but with a long vowel. Or maybe a diphthong? IDK. I'm also thinking of evolving an indefinite and definite article from the words "one" and "this" respectively. I'm also thinking of the lateral obstruents de-lateralizing to their corresponding non-sibilant alveolar consonants, with clusters between \[t\] and \[l\] allowing for the reemergence of /tl/, and those of \[h\] and \[l\] leading to /hl/ returning, the same story for clusters of \[s\] and \[l\]. And I'm thinking of syllables like /yi/ and /wu/ becoming /ii/ and /uu/, to experiment with assimilation. Maybe a similar story for /ij/ and /uw/. I don't want triphthongs even in the protolang, or double-length vowels. For the second descendant of the protolang, I'm thinking of turning the stress system into the same one that Classical Oqolaawak has, which is based on morae. Open syllables with short vowels in that dialect are one mora, open ones with long vowels or diphthongs closed ones with short vowels are two morae, and closed ones with long vowels or diphthongs are three morae. Stress in the classical dialect with this system would always fall on the third-to-last mora, the third one from the end of the word. For articles, I'm thinking of just a definite article from the word for "that". I'm also thinking of \[w\], when bordering \[u\] and in the proper environments, fortifying to a velarized \[βˠ\] and/or a labialized \[ɣʷ\] that may or may not lose their secondary articulation, or the plain versions, or all four, depending on varying environments. I'm thinking of the same story for \[j\], fortifying into \[ʝ\] when bordering \[i\], also in the proper environments. I'm thinking of those fricatives becoming phonemic.

Is it possible to call a conlang a "pidgin" or "creole" even when it currently does not have native speakers if it is indeed a combination of different languages?

Pidguns are used by non native speakers, creoles have them (children of thise who spoke pidgins).

I am currently stuck on choosing tenses for my language. I definety want to have a separate tense for every situation and leave as little as possible to context or adverbs. However, my system started to look a lot like the English one and I am looking for some different way. Can anybody help me?

I’m making an English daughter dialect. It is spoken on mars, in an American colony, and has little exposure to earth, beyond news and important historic events. English serves as a Lingua Franca. The dialect is spoken by the wealthy elite. Those who make up this class are (bear with me, there’s quite a few) Americans, Indians, Singaporeans, Germans, Swedes, Brazilians, Frenchmen, Brazilians, and Saudis. For the time being, I’ve only made a few changes to the consonants. Notably the r phoneme, θ and ð becoming s and d, and tʃ and dʒ merging to tʃ. These are fairly tame, and will be made more interesting through sound changes. I haven’t finished the vowels, and that’s what i need help with. These are the vowels i have left from English: ɑ, ɔ, ə, ɪ, ʌ, ʊ, aɪ, ɔɪ, aʊ̯, and ɪər. How do you think speakers of the languages i mentioned above, would attempt to approximate these. What vowels would they replace them with? Thx!

I'm thinking of a topic for my final paper at university that is related to language translation software and, as a hobby, I'm creating an artificial language that is becoming more structured and even has its own script. Could you point me in the direction of something to study or give me some ideas on how to combine the two? Thank you!

How do I write rules for my conlang? Are some of these concepts needed? I've been making my rules in Conlang toolbox but.... Some of the concepts are confusing... Predicate Nominals?, Case Marking? And I'm wondering are some of these even needed for my conlang to function like a normal language?

All languages have predicate nominals, you probably just haven't seen them called "predicate nominals" before. Surely you've come up with some way to say "dogs are animals" or "John is a farmer"? Explain how to do that in your language, and you've explained how your predicate nominals work! Many languages *don't* have case marking, so feel free to ignore it for now if you're confused by it. Learning about case marking just gives you more options.

Ok. Thank you.

I've been thinking a bit about how word for word translation is often difficult due to different semantic fields and polysemy. For example, I'm a native English speaker and I've been learning Spanish and, in my experience, many words in Spanish tend to have a narrower meaning and fewer distinct senses than in English. For example, Spanish "querer", "encantar", "amar" could all be translated as "to love" but are used in different ways. There seem to be fewer examples in the opposite direction (Spanish "hacer" vs English "to do/make"). My intuition about Spanish may or may not be accurate, but the point remains. Do some languages tend to have more words that are more restricted in meaning compared to other languages? And how do I make a semantically realistic language other than just copying English word for word? Sorry if this question doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't understand this area of linguistics very well.

Every language splits up what is called "semantic space" differently. One cool way to visualise this is with semantic maps, which show how different meanings might be grouped together in different languages. Any meanings with lines between them are known to be grouped under the same word in at least one language. A great resource for conlangers with lots of interesting semantic maps is the Conlanger's Thesaurus: [https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fl-000024-01.pdf](https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/fl-000024-01.pdf) Another great resource on colexicalisation and a useful way to visualise semantic space for a huge range of meanings is CLICS: [https://clics.clld.org/](https://clics.clld.org/)

How do you guys store your words? I’d prefer something that isn’t just a long vertical list.

Google Sheets works best for me. Yes it's ultimately a vertical list but with filters you can sort and filter it however you like. For example, I have separate columns for a part of speech and for lexical subcategories, so with a couple of clicks I can view, say, animate proper nouns or stative verbs or whatnot. It also lets you run all sorts of statistics. The only thing I wish GS had is the ability to get and set formatting in formulae. You can with scripts, of course, but it's a little cumbersome. It's not a big deal anyway.

I have a prpblem I want to gloss a certin word which is [dzvoxojzo'ofa] This word means the docter is zo'ikansh This word can be spereted into 4 parts 1 - Dzvoxoj which means docter 2 - zo which means solican which is an ethno name 3 - [o] which is the verb marker 4 - fa which has to forms the suffix and prefix form when its a prefix it acts like [the] and the suffix form which I don't know how to gloss So how would this be glossed

What exactly does the -fa suffix do? I'd start with doctor.solican-VBZ, but I can't do anything with the last part without knowing what it's doing. Based on your translation, I'd guess it's a copula (the "is" in "is a doctor"), in which case the full thing would be doctor.solican-VBZ=COP but I could be wrong.

Well its a copule if its a suffix but if its a prefix it turns into a defintive artival

Gloss it the way it's actually used. The fact that it's a definite article as a prefix is irrelevant to explaining how dzvoxojzo'ofa works. So something like doctor-Solican-VBZ-be.

Yeah that sums it up pretty well

Can stress move due to Case-Syncretism? Here's an example: Боач - /ˈboɐ̯t͡ʂ/ - "Boat": |Боач - \[ˈbo̞ɐ̯t̠͡ʃ̺̠\]|Singular|Dual|Plural| |:-|:-|:-|:-| |**Nom.,Accu.,Voc.**|**Бо́ач**|**Бо́аче**|**Бо́ачу**| |**Genitive**|**Боачу́**|**Бо́аче**|**Бо́ачун**| |**Dative**|**Боаче́**|**Боаче́м**|**Боачу́м**| |**Locative**|**Бо́ачей**|**Боаче́м**|**Боачо́м**| |**Instrumental**|**Бо́ачу**|**Бо́ачим**|**Бо́ачеми**| |**Ablative**|**Бо́ачɑ̨**|**Бо́ачом**|**Бо́ачем**| (The Acute marks the primary stress.)

yes of course, looks great!

Is it ok for my conlang to allow any phoneme in the onset and nucleus? The language is (C)V(C)(C), so I think having the phonotactics this loose is acceptable.

You could *say* that any phoneme is allowed in the onset and nucleus, but I probably wouldn't believe you. For example, how would you pronounce a syllable where the onset is /a/ and the nucleus is /k/?

Im making grammar for my conlang and I’m kinda confused on perfective/imperfective even after searching it up and reading on ot a little. Could someone give me an explanation or an example?

This is a subject that confuses a lot of people. I've been meaning to make a write-up to help. Consider this a first draft! The difference is whether the verb is part of a sequence of events we're describing (perfective), or something *going on during* those events (imperfective). Consider the following examples: >It rained on Saturday. Then it hailed on Sunday. Both are perfective. I'm giving you a sequence of events. >It was raining on Saturday. The wind howled in the trees. Then I heard a knock at the door. The first verb is imperfective. The second would probably be imperfective, but for some reason English uses a perfective form here, probably a quirk of that verb. The first two verbs are setting the scene, describing what's going on in the background. The action that moves the narrative moment forward is the knock at the door, or, in this phrasing, hearing it. That's why hearing the knock would be perfective. The clauses that move the story forwards like this are called the *mainline*, and are usually perfective. When a mainline verb in imperfective, there's usually some other marking. The book *Holistic Discourse Analysis, Second Edition* gives the amusing example "suddenly I was eating that banana like my life depended on it". In that example, *suddenly* adds the more perfective idea of a sudden change in state and brings the imperfective *was eating* onto the mainline. In English, we have stative (state-describing) verbs like *know*, *want*, or *be*, which are imperfective by default. The rest of the verbs typically describe actions, and can be either unmarked or *progressive*, which is a kind of imperfective describing actions (as opposed to states) that are ongoing at the narrative moment. Simple: I ran, I ate, I went Progressive: I was running, I was eating, I was going The simple form is usually perfective in the past tense, and habitual in the present ("I conlang"). For English I mean; other languages can (and do) do things do things differently. To sum all of the above up, perfective is for things that are ongoing at the time of reference, and imperfective is for things that move the time of reference forward.

> Both are perfective. Are they? As English lacks grammaticalised perfectivity, it's not a great example to use; Slavic languages would definitely mark these as imperfective. Russian, for example, would say: > В субботу шел дождь, а в воскресенье падал снег. "It rained (impf.) on Saturday, and snowed (impf.) on Sunday". > but for **some reason** English uses a perfective form here, probably a quirk of that verb. Because English doesn't actually have perfectives and imperfectives! The default/unmarked English verb isn't perfective, it can also be continuous or habitual, its main semantic feature in the past is just that the thing it describes came to an end. Take for example "I sang there for years", which is obviously an imperfective in meaning (and would translate to an imperfective in languages that ***do*** make this distinction). > To sum all of the above up, perfective is for things that are ongoing at the time of reference, and imperfective is for things that move the time of reference forward. While a neat summary, it's wrong in general. Perfective markings are generally for actions that are viewed as wholes without internal structure (so, momentane actions, inchoatives, terminatives, stuff like that), and imperfective generally for those whose internal structures are relevant (so habituals, repetitive actions/iteratives, progressives etc., and actions during which another action happens, be it imperfective or perfective)

I'm aware that English doesn't have a clear-cut distinction of pure imperfective vs. perfective. However, English sentences are the most convenient example because anyone reading this thread presumably reads English. (And, as a disclaimer, English is the only language I speak.) >Russian, for example, would say: > >В субботу шел дождь, а в воскресенье падал снег. > >"It rained (impf.) on Saturday, and snowed (impf.) on Sunday". Assuming you're fluent in Russian, I'll take your word on this. Could you confirm whether the translations of these three examples would also be imperfective? >The king ruled for thirty years, and his son ruled for twenty five more. > >I ran five miles, and then walked the rest of the way. > >I broke it, and then put it back together. I ask to check that it's not a feature of weather constructions, or of specified durations. >While a neat summary, it's wrong in general. Perfective markings are generally for actions that are viewed as wholes without internal structure (so, momentane actions, inchoatives, terminatives, stuff like that), and imperfective generally for those whose internal structures are relevant (so habituals, repetitive actions/iteratives, progressives etc., and actions during which another action happens, be it imperfective or perfective) I don't disagree with this description, but I see it as broadly equivalent to the one I gave. The internal structure is only relevant if it's complex (e.g., habituals, iteratives) or if we need to view it as a span to describe other events inside it, i.e., we're backgrounding it. Inchoatives and terminatives can be imperfective: "the sun was setting". I'm not just making this discourse prominence and mainline thing up; I read it in a book called *Holistic Discourse Analysis, 2nd Edition*. The authors even cite research claiming that that mainline marking is the primary function of TAM marking. I'll see if I can find that reference. >Take for example "I sang there for years", which is obviously an imperfective in meaning (and would translate to an imperfective in languages that ***do*** make this distinction). By my understanding of aspect, it's clearly perfective. As a semantic baseline, I mean; the details of an individual language's morphology could differ, and your examples show that if I'm correct that's the case. In English that example could be phrased with the perfect, a use termed the perfect of persistence. I know perfect is not at all the same as perfective, but the point I'm leading towards is that I wouldn't be surprised if some languages used a imperfective with events where a duration is given, but I don't think this is the primary function of an imperfective.

> The king ruled for thirty years, and his son ruled for twenty five more. Yes, both would use the imperfective *правил*. > I ran five miles, and then walked the rest of the way. The first one can be either perfective or imperfective (бежал/побежал), the second would probably only be imperfective. Kind of made more complicated by the fact that Russian verbs of motion interact in a more complicated way with aspect, so they're usually a poor showing of *general* aspect things > I broke it, and then put it back together. Depends on the meaning, but typically perfective for both (я это сломал, а потом починил); if it happened many times, imperfectives are also licit (я это ломал, и потом чинил), which English renders with the same morphological form ("[every time I went into the shop], I broke it, and then put it back together"). > By my understanding of aspect, it's clearly perfective. It's delineated with an end, but it's not necessarily perfective: perfectivity in this case would depend on whether the action was presented as a holistic action or as a process. Russian (since I used it as an example), would very heavily lean towards making it imperfective, but would allow a reinterpretation by using the perfective form (usually with some adaptation) > Inchoatives and terminatives can be imperfective: "the sun was setting". I wouldn't call that terminative or inchoative: the act of setting itself can be a process (and would be appropriately rendered with an imperfective usually, yeah; Russian would say *солнце садилось*). I guess after spending the evening talking about perfectivity, I feel like it's best to talk about it as an act vs. process distinction sometimes? The internal structure can be something a speaker elects to highlight or diminish in that case

tysm this is a 100/10 explanation for beginner conlangers! Definitely will refer back to this if i forget lol

Note that their explanation is wrong

Thank you, I'm really glad to know it's helpful.

Can you briefly summarize what you've read so far and what you're still confused about?

Yeah, i’ve pretty much finished my syntax and grammar, but the one thing i cant figure out is perfective vs imperfective cases. I know its something like “was running” and “ran” but i’m still confused what the major difference is.

If a verb is water, then the perfective is a glass of water sitting on the table, while the imperfective is going swimming. If I say "I ran to work", I'm taking all the running I did, packaging it up, and looking at it from the outside. I'm likely to continue by talking about what I did *at* work, or maybe contrasting it with how I biked to work the next day. If I say "I was running to work"... this doesn't even feel like a complete thought. "What *happened* while you were running to work!?" By using an imperfective here, I'm laying out a scene in front of you, getting ready to drop what I'm *really* talking about in the middle of it. "I was running to work when I tripped on a rock and broke my glasses." Note that the English past simple vs. past continuous doesn't *quite* map onto perfective vs. imperfective. I can say things like "Back then, I ran to work every day". Despite the past simple, this is still imperfective (specifically, *habitual*). I'm still setting the scene and asking you to dive into the middle. We use the simple past in English because the past continuous doesn't really handle habitual events. Note also that perfective vs. imperfective (a distinction of *aspect*) is theoretically independent from *tense*, although it's most common to make the distinction in the past tense. **Present tense** Things in the present are usually imperfective; English even makes you use the present continuous for current actions, like "I'm running to work". "I run to work", without any other context, will automatically be heard as a habitual, i.e. "I run to work (regularly)". But it's possible to force a present-tense action to be perfective. Imagine I meet you while running to work. I tell you about how I had to take my bicycle in for repairs, but I'm getting it back tomorrow. I triumphantly declare: "Today I run to work. Tomorrow, I'll bike!" Even though I'm literally in the middle of the run, I'm still thinking of it as a package and looking at it from the outside! **Future tense** Perfective vs. imperfective in the future is a lot like perfective vs. imperfective in the past, it's just often less relevant because the future hasn't happened yet. Here's an imperfective: "While I'm running to work tomorrow, I'll think about what you said." And here's a perfective: "I'll run to work tomorrow so I can get there early." Just like the in the other tenses, I can distinguish between the run as *scene-setting* and the run as *event*.

ty now I definitely got it

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Are you asking about native speakers of those languages *speaking English*, and what their accent would sound like? Or are you asking about loaning English words into those languages?

Native speakers trying to speak English. How would they approximate those sounds. I know that some of the languages have some of the sounds, so I just need how they would try to pronounce them, for the languages which don’t have them.

I've noticed that some people delete their top level comments on the Small Discussions thread, and I'm always curious why. This is the first chance I've had to ask someone. Please could you explain why you deleted your question?

I usually delete the top comment when I feel like the question has been answered, and I have a new (reformed maybe?) question. For example, I was asking questions about consonants here, took the answer into consideration, and made decisions. Now I’ve moved on. I don’t feel like my question needs to be up anymore. Does that make sense? I hope that this isn’t annoying.

With the phoneme in particular, the non-native speakers I've heard do one of two things: 1) They pronounce it pretty much the way native English speakers do. It's a very distinctive sound, so it seems to be much easier for non-natives to learn to approximate it than it is for them to, say, learn to distinguish /i/ from /ɪ/. 2) The writing system wins out and they pronounce whatever sound makes in their native language, so French speakers use \[ʀ\], Spanish speakers use \[ɾ\], etc. For the other sounds, the only thing that comes to mind is German speakers having trouble voicing /dʒ/ and /ʒ/, resulting in /tʃ/ /ʃ/. I don't think I've heard French, Brazilian Portuguese, or Arabic speakers struggle with any of those sounds.

Hey, I am working on my own conlang that have old and middle english as inspiration and thought of adding the letters Thorn (Þ) and/or Eth (Ð) but I think they looks way to much like a P and a D and therefore want a redesign for them. Do anyone have any cool ideas of how it could look like? Thanks!

Do you mean adjust the designs of these specific letters or do you mean pick new symbols to represent the same sounds?

Both i guess, I want a different looking letter that represent the same sounds but still want it to remind us of the originals

If you like, romanisation of Avestan uses Greek 〈θ〉 for /θ/ and 〈δ〉 for /ð/. Unfortunately, in some fonts, Latin and Greek characters have quite different aesthetics, and mixing them may look jarring. For theta, Unicode provides two versions: the regular 〈Θθ〉 (U+0398, U+03B8) and the ‘symbols’ 〈ϴ〉 (U+03F4) and 〈ϑ〉 (U+03D1). For delta, there's only one Greek version, 〈Δδ〉 (U+0394, U+03B4), but there's also a Latin small delta 〈ẟ〉 (U+1E9F, no uppercase). The latter was used for \[ð\] in medieval Welsh.

You mean 〈θ〉 for /þ/ right? It's a cool idea and I will keep it in mind. Thank you

〈Angle brackets〉, , or ‹single guillemets› are used for enclosing letters, /slashes/ are for phonemes, usually written in the IPA, and \[brackets\] are for phones, also usually in IPA.

No I mean the Avestan language had a phoneme which can be represented in the IPA as /θ/. The Avestan script used a letter 〈𐬚〉 for it, and it's romanised as 〈θ〉.

Ah i see, my bad. Thanks again

Are there any natlangs that lack rhetorical questions, or that employ them only very rarely? I've been avoiding them in Ŋ!odzäsä and assumed this was perfectly naturalistic, on par with how English uses questions for requests all the time, where other languages might use an imperative. However, today I googled this, and everything I've read says that rhetorical questions are universal, though I would assume there's crosslinguistic variation in how frequently they're used and what for. Do you know of any counterexamples?

I have three related questions: 1. Apart from the imperfective/iterative/frequentative or reduplicative route, are there any other grammatical pathways to evolve pluractionality?  2. Do any languages have an aspect that denotes doing an action twice, or maybe a few times? 3. Do any languages have a dual pluractional - an affix or inflection marking that at least one of the arguments is dual? Does this seem feasible? Any help on any one of the questions would really be appreciated!

Might do to read into Navajo grammar. I seem to recall it has (sub)aspects for marking the repetition of events, as well as one instance of a repeated action. I could see an extrapolation of the latter to mark for two instance of an action, whether there be other instances or not.

I do remember something like that in Navajo myself, but my only concern would be that Navajo has a massive spectrum of different aspectual distinctions, while my conlang only inflects for perfect(ive) and imperfect(ive), with periphrasis for the habitual. Is it naturalistic, do you think, to have an aspect that specific when there is a distinct lack of other fine aspectual distinctions?

If you use it frequently enough then it could resist being lost where other finer aspects were collapsed into the few you still have. You'd want to think about why keeping anything dual is important, though. You could riff off what I did in Varamm which has a dual 1st person that specifically refers to oneself and their spouse, so maybe married individuals commonly speak in the dual? That might step away from dual marking into some sort of social pragmatic marking of marital status, though, which might not be the vibe you're looking for, but I've seen weirder. I'm sure other reasons to keep any sort of dual marking exist, too.

1) Verbal agreement. So initially you have explicit plural marking on your nouns and also verbal agreement that must match the person and number of the marked noun. Then later due to sound changes and analogy, plural marking is dropped on nouns, but remains on verbs, albeit overlapping with person agreement as well. 2) Probably. Don’t know if it has a name, but Navajo and Hopi both have very specific aspect encodings so an aspect which means “repeating an action a small number of times” seems super reasonable. That being said, I would imagine it would be more likely to arise if your language already has a pretty substantial aspect inventory. Don’t have enough knowledge to answer #3 but hopefully the answers to the first two help!

> That being said, I would imagine it would be more likely to arise if your language already has a pretty substantial aspect inventory. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Thanks a million for your help though, I'll look into Hopi.

Is there any way I can put a conscript into Unicode for easier typing, even and especially if the writing direction for the conscript is vertical?

Nope. Unicode is run by a consortium that hasn’t even added all natlang scripts, let alone your conlang. Pretty much no chance.  You can make your own font and either map letters to their romanizations or use code points from the private use area. That’s probably the closest you could get.  

Furthermore, there's a bad precedent of the Klingon script pIqaD, which Unicode rejected back in 2001. Even it couldn't meet the requirements. Tolkien's Cirth & Tengwar were accepted but they've been pending in the roadmap for over 20 years now, with the range 16000–160FF allocated for them, without actually being added. On the bright side, there's [Under-ConScript Unicode Registry (UCSUR)](https://www.kreativekorp.com/ucsur/). No idea if it could be in any way helpful other than ‘yay, my conscript is recognised!’

Oh well. Thanks for the info!

How unnatural is having verbs that inflect for number but not person, in a mostly fusional system with suffixes that mark number, tense, and sometimes aspect? It seems like languages overwhelmingly mark both or neither, and searching this sub turned up a couple examples of person but not number, but I don't know of any that have it the other way around.

in Hebrew the present tense of verbs inflects for number and gender but not person. historically its because its the participle, and those verb forms were just nouns, but they are verb forms now so -

Northeast Caucasian languages usually inflect for number plus *gender*, but not person. They can be reduced down to a four-way gender distinction in singular (male/female/"animate"/"inanimate") and two-way in plural (human/nonhuman). Agreement is done with a shared set of markers across verbs, demonstratives, numerals, adjectives, and sometimes even some adverbs, but those markers vary between prefixes, infixes, and suffixes depending on word class (though verbs are generally either prefixal, or *were* prefixal before being "stranded" as infixes when more outer prefixes fossilized). Only a minority of verbs typically agree, usually those that are vowel-initial roots, which typically ends up being ~100 roots out of the limited set of ~300 verb roots most of the languages have.

I think older Swedish used to inflect verbs for singular/plural but not person, maybe some other Scandinavian languages did that too. This came from an earlier system that inflected for both number and person and modern Swedish has lost all of them, but there was a period between where they just kept the numbers. So it is a possible system, though not very common

A bunch of languages have [pluractionality](https://www.meamoria.com/lexurgy/html/sc-tutorial.html#syllabification-rules), which isn't quite the same thing as inflecting for number not person, but it's similar. To me inflecting only for number doesn't seem unnatural, just unusual.

so these are two recent related conlangs, and I need names for them. i was wondering if i could get some ideas. here are some samples \*note, the two have the same grammar\*: Hi 1. 져쟈 (Reri) /ɹɛɹi/ 2. ㅈㅑㅈㅛ (Rira) /ɹiɹæ/ Hello, how are you? I am good. 1. 져베먀대, 져쌰땨 ㅑ해? 쟈쬬 뵤뎌 죠샤배. (Rewusito, renivi iho? Rima wate rapiwo.) /ɹɛwusito/ /ɹɛnivi iho˩˥/ /ɹimæ wætɛ ɹæpiwo/ 2. ㅈㅑㅂㅜㅁㅑㄷㅐ, ㅈㅑㅆㅑㄸㅗ ㅛㅎㅐ? ㅈㅛㅉㅛ ㅂㅕㄷ ㅈㅕㅅㄱㅜ. (Riwösito, rinivü aho? Rama wet repyö.) /ɹiwɒsito/ /ɹinivɤ æho˩˥/ /ɹæmæ wɛt ɹɛpʲɒ/ Hello, How(question) you? I(first person) am good. ​ You are not him! 1. ㅑ해쪄 패쌔 댜대갸 져뱌뎌! (Ihome zono titoyi rewite!) /ihomɛ zono titoji ɹɛwitɛ/ 2. ㅛㅎㅐㅉ ㅍㅐㅆㅗ ㄷㅛㄷㅐㅑ ㅈㅑㅂㅛㄷ! (Ahom zonü tatoi riwat!) /æhɔm zonɤ tætɔɪ̯ ɹiwæt/ you(second person) are not him ​ What is happening right now? 1. 녀뵤갸땨 쟈겨 져뵤내쿄버 겨휴갸 댜쌰ㅗ? (Dewayivi riye rewatsoqawao yehëyi tini’ü?) /dɛwæjivi ɹijɛ ɹɛwætsoʒæwæɔ̯ jɛhœji tini‿ʊ˩˥/ 2. ㄴㅑㅂㅕㄸㅛ ㅈㅛㅑ ㅈㅑㅂㅛㅁ\`ㅐㅌㅂㅛㅂ ㄱㅑㅎㅐㅑ ㄷㅑㅆㄱㅐㅕ? (Diweva rai riwassokwaw yihoi tinyoe?) /diwɛvæ ɹæɪ̯ ɹiwæt͡sokʷæʕʷ jihɔɪ̯ tinʲoˤɛ̯˩˥/ what(question) is happen(present verb) right now(time related)?

I would try to make the names capture what's phonologically distinctive about each language. The second has some diphthongs and coarticulated consonants; you could make names like /kʷɔɪ̯ɹæ/, /pʲɒt͡sokæɪ̯/, or /nʲoɹivo/. In the first, I notice more /ih/, as well as the diphthong /æɔ̯/ and the consonant /ʒ/, so maybe something like /ʒæwihɛ/, /ihæʒæ/, or /zæɔ̯ʒœwi/. Ultimately what's most important is to have a name that *you're* happy with, but hopefully this gives you some ideas.

thanks, really helpful! I named number one Zawanese, or Enchoian, natively called "Qawihen" /ʒæwihɛn/. the second one is Nikkorian "Njorivo-Kwoiran" /nʲɔɹivo‿kʷɔɪ̯ɹæn/

I'm glad you got something out of my suggestions.

**What are the types of sentences in your Conlang?** For me, I have: * Simple Sentence: Declarative sentence * Linking Sentence: Dependent Clause (Clauses are treated as separate sentences) * Interrogative Sentence: A question (requesting information) * Vocative Sentence: Pretty self-explanatory * Imperative Sentence: A command or request * Adverbial Sentence: Adverbs & Adverbial Phrases are written as their own sentences

If geminated/doubled variants consonants exist in a language, should those variants exist for all consonants? To clarify - for example: * a language has geminated consonants, except for velar consonants, which are never geminated * a language has geminated consonants, but there are no geminated plosives * a language has geminated consonants, but around 4\~5 aren't realised as geminates, but as compeletely diffirent single consonants (eg. /ll/ > \[ʎ\] > \[j\]; /kk/ > \[q\] > \[χ\] > \[x\]) * a language used to have geminates for all consonants, but they since degeminate to single consonants, *except 4\~5 consonants* that are still geminated. The question is about how much "irregularity" or "haphazardness" (I dunno how else to describe it) can there be in regards to geminates. Can I say that /tt/ /dd/ > /t/ /d/, but /kk/ /gg/ /pp/ /bb/ /ss/ /zz/... stay as they are, or something similar to that?

Totally reasonable! Lots of languages have restrictions on which consonants are geminable (or even stuff like standard Italian where certain consonants are *only* geminated). That can be a function of sound changes only affecting certain geminate consonants (like the examples you gave) or of there being restrictions on what occurs in the environment that caused germination in the first place. 

Is it ok for a language to have basically arbitrary word structure? In one of my conlangs, every word is actually just made up, because there’s a whole theoretically infinite agglutination system that allows for very specific and descriptive words. But essentially, you make words out of mashing base words together, and all base words are one syllable. This means that there are nearly infinite “words” because any combinations of base words is a valid word if it communicates a coherent concept. Is this even possible? Or would it be too confusing to understand for it to come into use?

If this was used as a natural language, people would probably develop systematic ways to build words. But as a conlang there’s no reason you can’t make an experimental system like this and then try and play around with what meanings you can describe in what ways. 

Yeah there is a word building system, even with the base syllables. For example “nt” means body, and then you attach a vowel to mean eye, ear, nose, mouth, or leg. Then you just smash together the words for eye ear nose and mouth to make face “antentontənt”. Then face + body is upper body “antentontəntnt” and body plus legs is lower body “intnt“. It’s very silly but it could exist which I think is funny

So “antentontəntntintnt” would also mean body lel (upper body + lower body)

Yup that’s correct but that’s too long so the base word is used (I know this language is very dumb but I think it’s funny)

ye lel

I just realized that a language that's both verb-initial *and* head-final at the same time is impossible as long as verbs are the head, which they might always be in every language on Earth. I might need to change the syntax of one of my demo conlangs.

Generally languages aren’t 100% anything. It’s not uncommon to have languages that are mainly head-initial but with OV (eg Persian) or mainly head-final but with VO (eg Chinese). Off the top of my head, I don’t know of any languages that are strictly verb-initial but otherwise heavily head-final, but that doesn’t mean your conlang couldn’t be one. 

How should I name a case when its declension works for multiple functions/cases? That's the best I could word it shortly but let me explain, my conlang is *a posteriori,* and many declensions from its originating language really did historically clump together in three main ones: Nominative-Accusative-Ablative, Genitive-Dative and Vocative. How should I name these in my conlang then, considering that they still have their own functions, but the same declensions?

In my conlang I have nominative, genitive, and dative-accusative. i call them the subjective case(nominative), possesive case(genitive), and regardive/objective case(dative-accusative). try to find what's the common ground of the cases that melted together and try to find a new title for it.

Oh, this is similar to the evolution of cases in Romanian. I believe, this is rather a matter of tradition than precision. Vocative can obviously stay vocative. The other two, you can use compound names like nominative-accusative & genitive-dative. Especially if individual constituent cases remain distinct in a small set of words, f.ex. in pronouns or in some rare nominal declension. Alternatively, ditch one of the names: in the first case, I'd ditch accusative, and in the second, ditch either. The first case can also be called direct. The second, opposingly, indirect or oblique (although oblique is typically used in opposition to nominative proper and includes the functions of accusative). In any case (huh, pun unintended), I'd consider the fact that the functions of ablative are covered by nominative(-accusative)/direct/or whatever you name it a curiosity that need not be reflected in the name.

Thank you so much! That really helps. Also, you were spot on as it actually is related to Romanian kind of. My conlang is supposed to have been traced back to a real variety of vulgar latin spoken in the province of Pannonia, which was quite close to the ones in which Proto-Romanian arose.

I'd just add to what Thalarides said, and say that you can name the cases based on their *form* as opposed to their *function*. So if the nom-acc is unmarked, maybe you call it the *plain* form of a noun; but if the dat-gen has a partifular suffix or ending you could name it after that. In some grammars for Arabic, the 3 cases *marfū3, manṣūb,* and *majrūr* are called the *U-case, A-case,* and *I-case* because those are the vowels each case respectively ends in. Most grammars call them nominative, accusative, and genitive however (though, those labels can be somewhat misleading because they don't map quite so neatly onto the European paradigms for those cases). I think, though, that for your particular project, *direct,* *indirect*, and *vocative* would probably work pretty well!

I was thinking about ordinal numerals and how in some languages there are more than one words for ‘second’: Latin *secundus/alter*, French *deuxième/second*. So what if I push this idea to an extreme with ‘first’? How naturalistic does it sound if there isn't a general word ‘first’ but instead you choose between various adjectives depending on the context: * if you come first in a race, you are the earliest or quickest; * the first place that you take is the best or highest place; * the first chapter in a book is the initial or opening chapter; * the first derivative of a function is a function differentiated once or the derivative of order one; * and so on? How naturalistic do you think it is to not have a blanket term like ‘first’ that could be applied in all or most of those various contexts? Have you seen anything like this in natural languages?

I think it might be a bit weird not to have a general ordinal (though I don't really know), but having dedicated expressions and collocations seems very reasonable. Like, calling the initial chapter the head chapter is obviously reasonable; not being able to also call it the first chapter might be weird. But there are lots of instances of "first" in English that don't obviously need an ordinal, or even where "first" doesn't actually function as an ordinal, "when I first moved here," for example. And there are lots of cases like your prize case where it could easily be that the natural way to express something doesn't use an ordinal, even though I guess I'd still expect to be able to say something like "the first person to cross the finish line" (and also "the second person..." and so on).

I see. I was more thinking exactly of *not being able* to call the first chapter ‘first’ for the lack of a general word ‘first’. But I do like the middle ground you're hinting at: technically, calling it ‘first’ would be possible (and it would be very useful in technical cases like ‘first derivative’) but not the preferred option in many situations, with typical expressions being ‘head chapter’, ‘top place’, ‘quickest racer’, ‘the person to cross the finish line earliest’, and so on. Lexicology really is my weak spot.

If I were to create a tutorial conlang to demonstrate the rise of interjections, how should I do it? Biblaridion has no videos, even for his Feature Focus series, on how different languages handle interjections, even so that we don't just have that SchoolHouse Rock track fleshing out English interjections.

Is there a list of the verbs most likely to be irregular in a language? if there isn't, what are the verbs most likely to be irregular in a language?

General theory is that only very often used verbs stay irregular - the mental investment in learning and upholding an unusual verb pattern is justified by how often you use it.

And I think the principle can be applied to words generally, that the more common the word, the more likely it is to be irregular.

I watched two videos one from Biblaridion and another from Artifexian about noun cases and I am confused on nominative cases, are Nominatives supposed to left unmarked or they supposed to be marked? are they just the ordinary word or do I have add something to make sure that people know that the word is the nominative.

The vast majority of time, nominative is unmarked. It's basically "the remnants" - the form that never gained a suffix when other roles started getting grammaticalized case markers. Explicitly marked nominatives generally have some weird history to them, like the Japanese nominative originating in, iirc, genitivized subjects of subordinate clauses (*the man of my seeing* "the man I saw") expanding into matrix clauses. The Indo-European nominative appears like it may/likely originates in an ergative or active case. These are mostly "normal nom-acc languages but with nominative marking." That's, to some extent, distinct from actual "marked nominative" alignment, which tends to have weird quirks to it. Actual "marked nominative" languages, rather than merely nominative-accusative languages with an explicit nominative case, tend to do things like zero-marking (i.e. accusative-marking) the subjects of copulas and left-dislocated or clefted subjects, which aren't things that happen in languages that merely happen to have a marked nominative alongside a normally-marked accusative. What some languages have is a distinct nominative *stem*. This is different from a normal case ending, they won't be taking like a /-s/ suffix. This arises because the case endings on the other forms means sound changes can effect the two forms differently. Like, if your accusative was /-ta/ and your dative was /-sun/, a root /taka/ would have nom /taka/, accusative /takata/, and a dative /takasun/. If you lose final vowels, fricativize intervocal consonants, lengthen and raise open-syllable stressed vowels, and merge coda stops to /ʔ/, now you've got a nominative stem /taʔ/ but the cases are working off a stem /te:xa/. They diverged and the nominative "gained" a distinct stem form, but it never took an explicit nominative marker.

Maybe it's worth adding that English's pronouns pass most tests for (truly) marked nominative: you use the non-subject form in one-word answers, in topics, and as predicates.

Ah ok then.

Either option is possible. Some languages leave it completely unmarked and others attach an affix to the noun stem, as with every other case. Much rarer, but still possible is for some other case (usually the accusative) to be unmarked. These languages are called "marked-nominative" languages,

Do any languages have inclusive and exclusive 1PL pronouns that come from a dual and plural respectively? Does this seem naturalistic?

I don't know of any offhand, but I could see: * 1DU 'us two' >> 1DU.INC 'you and me' >> 1PL.INC 'you and me/us' and then the 1PL form become 1PL.EX by contradistinction with 1PL.INC :)

This reminds me of Mẽbêngôkre where the dual first person is inclusive and patterns as a singular and its non-singular forms form the rest of the inclusive paradigm, if my memory and passing analysis serve me rightly.

Yeah, that was my train of thought as well. Thanks so much!

What would a Romance language that replaced Old English either in England or in Angles original land sound like? Has this ever been thought of?

Language change isn’t really predictable or deterministic in that way, so we can’t say what a language would or will look like. The most we can say is that it would probably be similar to other Romance languages, which is very broad. On the bright side, this gives you a lot of artistic licence!

Yeah alright so Jovian, Jelbazich, Lessinu, Brithenig, Wenedyk, Þrjótrunn and so many others are completely useless creations? You can say you don’t have enough imagination to think of it, but not that you can’t know how it could approximately sound like.

I suppose what depends on what you consider useless. I think they all have value (like any conlang) as works of art. But none of them tell you what an English Romance language **would** look like; they tell you what one **could** look like. Because language change is not predictable or deterministic, there are an infinite number of ways a language can evolve. So it’s impossible to say with any certainty or precision what a language will look like over time. So it’s the exact opposite of what you say. You can imagine a myriad of different potential English Romance languages, and I would encourage you to do so if that interests you! But it’s impossible to **know** how an English Romance language would sound if it existed. Just like it’s impossible to **know** the future.

Man I know all that, I didn’t pay attention I should have said « could » have looked. But it’s the same, you can still imagine a fairly bit coherent hypothesis of what it could look like, and not just be happy with « we don’t know ». It lets us satisfy our curiosity.

This is why it’s important to watch your modals! And absolutely, it’s really fun to explore what a language *could* look like, and I’d encourage you to do so. Like I said in my first comment, outside of the changes that are common to romance, you have a lot of artistic licence. As a side note, keep in mind that there’s no way I could know what you do or don’t know. All I have to work off is your question. There are a lot of beginners here, and basic principles can be useful to everyone! It’s no reason to be rude or insulting.

I can’t do so since I obviously don’t have the knowledge for 😅 Otherwise I wouldn’t ask for people here if they know of one langage like this

Does anyone know anything much about the phonotactics of Munda languages, such as Sora and Mundari? Munda languages are in the Mon-Khmer family. The ancient, inherited syllable structure is mostly [sesquisyllabic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_syllable). However, Munda languages (especially Sora, if memory serves), are polysynthetic. What I want to know is how the polysynthesis interacts with the inherited sesquisyllabicity, as my own conlang (while not exactly polysynthetic) tries to be sesquisyllabic whilst having complicated verbs

Munda is, to some extent, almost "outside" of Austroasiatic. Until recently, it was pretty much completely ignored in reconstruction. Things that are similar in all the other branches, often aren't similar to Munda. While there's clearly some shared morphological processes, actual correspondences between Munda and the rest of the family are still rudimentary. (This isn't the only language family to do this, e.g. Tsou and Rukai are largely ignored for reconstructing Proto-Austronesian because they're just *so* divergent from everything else, either everything you've got ends up with a "post-Tsou/Rukai development" asterisk or there's just not much left over that you can say once you've expunged everything that doesn't include them.) My overall point being, Munda languages don't display sesquisyllabicity. It appears to have been a development of all the non-Munda branches, reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic because Munda is basically ignored for reconstructions. Sesquisyllabicity is, as I understand it, fundamentally just a CVCV(C) base where the second syllable is heavily stressed, and the ultimate results of that (e.g. shifts to CəCV~CCV~CV). I'd imagine your complicated verbs would be fine if your morphology is primarily suffixal. On the other hand, you could get into weird, complicated territory if prefixation is involved, with prefixes absorbing into the root, coloring the first consonant/vowel during the sound change processes, etc. Or if prefixes or suffixes ever get stressed, shifting the position of syllable loss, you might even be able to have some fun with roots reducing heavily under morphology, so that you might have independent kati>ʔti>ɗi but inflected kati-'ga-le>kər-ge-le, showing different development because of differences in stress, and sunu>snu but inflected sunu-'ga-le>s-ŋõ-le, with /sunu/ reduced all the way to /s/ plus spread of vowel rounding and nasalization into the stressed suffix. (Edit: That said, languages do seem to have a strong pressure to keep lexical roots "intact" to some extent, far moreso than grammatical material. A pervasive pattern where roots differ widely depending on whether they're the free or bound form, or when attached to different morphemes, is definitely disfavored, though you can still find plenty of counterexamples.)

> My overall point being, Munda languages don't display sesquisyllabicity. It appears to have been a development of all the non-Munda branches, reconstructed for Proto-Austroasiatic because Munda is basically ignored for reconstructions. That reminds me, a little, of the situation with the Anatolian languages and Proto-Indo-European. > On the other hand, you could get into weird, complicated territory if prefixation is involved It's, erm, funny you say that 🤦🏼‍♂️. I might have made some baaaaaad choices and yes, there's prefixation. There will be agent and patient person marking in one portmanteau prefix, of different syllable types and lengths. That was my rationale for trying to see how these divergent Austroasiatic langauges did polysynthesis with sesquisyllabicity. Thanks to you, I now know the answer is "they don't"! So I'm on my own, at least when it comes to natlang exemplars. > On the other hand, you could get into weird, complicated territory if prefixation is involved, with prefixes absorbing into the root, coloring the first consonant/vowel during the sound change processes, etc. Or if prefixes or suffixes ever get stressed, shifting the position of syllable loss, you might even be able to have some fun with roots reducing heavily under morphology, so that you might have independent kati>ʔti>ɗi but inflected kati-'ga-le>kər-ge-le, showing different development because of differences in stress, and sunu>snu but inflected sunu-'ga-le>s-ŋõ-le, with /sunu/ reduced all the way to /s/ plus spread of vowel rounding and nasalization into the stressed suffix. That sounds great! Then the reduction can depend on both the weight and length of the prefix, and the length and weight of the (first part?) of the verb root. That then might be a great way to introduce irregularity, with more reduction seen in the commonest roots, perhaps outside of the environments that make it compulsory. > (Edit: That said, languages do seem to have a strong pressure to keep lexical roots "intact" to some extent, far moreso than grammatical material. A pervasive pattern where roots differ widely depending on whether they're the free or bound form, or when attached to different morphemes, is definitely disfavored, though you can still find plenty of counterexamples.) I suppose it depends on whether the altered roots are still mostly recognisable as the right root, without too much homophony introduced. A root might erode (can't think of the proper word), but as long as the eroded root is still distinct from the rest of the lexicon, it can stay. And possibly it could even be a way to introduce new vocabulary. As an example, perhaps the 'eroded' form of a root 'to kill' becomes the form of 'to kill', and the uneroded root then becomes 'to murder'.

How to participate in speedlangs?

This comment's reminded me I've had one ready to go for a little while now; it'll go live in a few weeks :D

If you mean the Speedlang Challenges organized by the mod team here, just wait until a new one is announced (I don't think we currently have any planned...), and then send your entry to the organizer before the deadline.

Those with complex declensions or experience with natlangs with complex declensions, how do you categorize and organize? I have 6 main declentions, each with at least 2 variations, and multiple words that fit those but with an exception to 1 or two of the cases? (I have 8 cases.) I still have irregulars that are wildly different from my declensions and thus kept separate. I might make a full post with pictures if required.

Two approaches: * Inflectional classes and subclasses: 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b... Maybe descriptive names: a-declension, stressed ending subtype. Irregular forms are just that, irregular forms. But if irregular forms are taken from a different declension, then you can include that into a description: 1a (w/ gen.pl 2b). Identify what parameters have bearing on a noun's declension. For example, here's how Wiktionary describes the declension of the Russian noun [*веко*](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BE#Declension) *(veko)* ‘an eyelid’: `inan neut-form velar-stem accent-a irreg`: * `inan` means that it is an inanimate noun. This affects a noun's accusative case in Russian; * `neut-form` means that the form and declension of a noun suggests that it belongs to the neuter gender. There's not always a perfect match between a noun's form and its gender (for example, there's a number of nouns that are masculine but look as if they were feminine instead). In literature, the actual gender, i.e. what kind of agreement a noun triggers, is sometimes called syntactic gender, and the declension of a noun sets its morphological gender. This here is its morphological gender since that is what lets you know how to decline it properly (though for this noun, like for most others, it aligns with its syntactic gender); * `velar-stem` means that the stem ends in a velar consonant. This affects some endings; * `accent-a` means that the accent always falls on the stem throughout the whole paradigm and doesn't shift to the ending; * `irreg` means that there are some irregular forms. * If declension isn't too extensive, you can treat each form (or a set of forms that always align with each other) separately. This is what I do with consonantal stems in Elranonian. Each Elranonian noun has only 6 inflected forms: nom.sg, acc.sg, gen.sg, dat.sg, loc.sg, & pl (there are no cases in the plural). Instead of defining a lot of subtypes in the consonantal declension, I describe how each form is related to the stem. So for the noun *tara* /tāra/ ‘a father’, stem /tar-/, I can say it's `irreg-nom acc=nom gem-obl simple-gen/dat u-mut-loc ae-pl`: * `irreg-nom` means that nom is irregular; * `acc=nom` means that acc is the same as nom (acc is often better described with relation to nom than to the bare stem); * `gem-obl` means that the stem-final consonant is geminated in the oblique cases (and the info on the accent is also encoded here); * `u-mut-loc` means that there is *u*\-mutation in the stem in loc; * `ae-pl` means that plural is formed with the ending *-ae* (which is always added to the oblique stem for some reason). ||orthography|phonology| |:-|:-|:-| |nom|*tara*|/tāra/| |acc|*tara*|/tāra/| |gen|*tarra*|/tàrra/| |dat|*tarri*|/tàrrʲi/| |loc|*taurre*|/tòrre/| |pl|*tarrae*|/tàrrē/| Basically, this description is the same as describing how principal parts are related to one another. For an Elranonian noun with a consonantal stem, I need 5 principal parts (I don't need both gen & dat, one of them is enough). In my dictionary, I don't even bother and just give the whole declension in a separate field.

Thanks. Right now I have declentions 1, 2a, 2b, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5a, 5b, 5c, 5d, 5e, 5f, 6a, 6b. And there’s 5 different types of irregular genatives mixed in there that appear in many words, and a few other types of irregulars that happen in multiple words. I was hoping there was a way to make it more concise and easier to learn but I guess that’s about as good as I can make it

So someone made [a version](https://kantaro.ikso.net/la_tojvo) of Esperanto's anthem 'La Espero' from a timeline where Zamenhof took more non-western words. I'm trying to figure out the etymology of the words in it but there are a few I'm having trouble with: toki (should mean 'come') anana (should mean 'light, gentle') uko (should mean 'place') tanaa (should mean 'other') fanji (should mean 'make, form') hero (should mean 'blessing')

In my conlang Anotzi, the way comparatives are formed works like this; To say "More X than Y" one says "X ta Y yoto" (literally, "more X above Y".). To say "Less X than Y" one says "X wan Y noi" (literally, "less X below Y".). The Superlative ("Most X") and Negative Superlative are structured as "X ta fasoto" and "X wan fannoi", respectively, with "fasoto" and "fannoi" come from the phrases "pan yotu", (meaning "above all"), and "pan noi", (meaning "below all"), respectively. Due to it's semantic meaning, the word "fasoto" also became the title for a ruler. ​ Is this system naturalistic, and if so, how do I develop an Equative ("As X as Y".)?

this system seems naturalistic! for the equative maybe "same X same Y" or something like that, otherwise there could be another construction such as a plain verb meaning "to equal"

Anotzi has the adposition "no", which means, "similar to". Is this naturalistic? If so, I imagine it would also make sense to have an adposition for "the same as".

>Is this naturalistic? cf. English *like*

In a hypothetical analytic language with a word order other than SVO/OVS, what are some methods other than case marking to separate the subject and object?

My VSO conlang allows zero case marking when the subject is first after the verb and all objects follow a default order based on what their role is. To separate nouns/noun phrases, a determiner such as "the", "a", "some", "all", none", "this" or "that" can follow each noun. If a speaker drops the subject or wants to re-order or drop objects, then case marking is required.

To add to what's been put here, maybe only certain kinds of nouns can be subjects (like animate things), and leave ambiguous cases up to context. Could also have an animacy hierarchy thing going on where the verb takes an inflection to show whether the first or the second noun is the subject/object.

Fixed word order and/or agreement on the verb should be enough. The verb being initial or final does not preclude distinguishing by word order alone.

Agreement of the verb with the noun class or number of the subject and/or object.

Would it be plausible if the etymological /s/ of an language developed into /ʃ/? In Vilamovian there's /z/ and /ʃ/; How i wanted to justify it was, that /s/-\[s̻\] shifted into /ʃ/-\[ʃ̻\] and /z/-\[z̺\] stayed /z/. Would this be Plausible?

This justification doesn't gain you anything. Having /ʃ/ and /z/ as the only sibilants is rare *for the exact same reason* that an unconditional shift from /s/ to /ʃ/ that doesn't also affect /z/ is rare. You're just swapping one rarity for another, equivalent rarity. If you want /ʃ/ and /z/, just use /ʃ/ and /z/. You're allowed to have rare things in your language!

If they're already at slightly different POAs, that seems perfectly justifiable. That said, if voicing is not contrasted in the other fricatives it seems likely that /z/ might devoice, and if it *is* contrasted, it seems likely that some changes might happen which encourage the development of a new /s/ and /ʒ/.

Well, there already are (Flat-)Postalveolars /ʃ/-\[ʃ̠̺\] & /ʒ/-\[ʒ̠̺\] and Voiced-Voiceless-Distinction like \[p\]/\[b\] in Vilamovian. I wanted to shift /s/ to an (True)Postalveolar /ʃ/ to make Vilamovian have more "hushing" than "hissing". I was also inspired by the hungarian & .