Show off your conlangs!

The title's pretty self-explanatory, I think. In this thread, we show off our conlangs, give people help developing theirs, or request help with our own. I wasn't sure if this should go here or Writer's Block, but I'm sure a mod can move it if it needs to be.

Hm, I'm not sure how I'd 'share' my conlang, since it's still in development (by a longshot) and I can't post pics of the writing... But I'll explain what I do have already.

Symbols are written and read from the top down, and can be read left to right or vice versa. Each letter is a phonetic sound, and can be combined into a new symbol to create a whole syllable. This is based off the Korean writing system, so if you're familiar with that, it should make some sense.

There are 8 basic consonant sounds with 3 variations of each (from unaspirated to aspirated), plus m sound, n sound, and the special h/y sounds (only used in the beginning of middle of words as in 'ohio' or 'yemen') and ng sound (only used at the end of words as in 'hugging') . L, r, and rd (as in 'love', 'red', 'arigato') may count as a '9th' set, but is a bit different from the conventional 8.

All vowel letters are rather specific, unlike English and more like Korean, but more vowels are used than Korean in this language.

The vowel sounds thus far:

aa (mad)

ah (hot)

uh (numb)

oh (mole)

oo (tool)

eh (hen)

ih (ink)

ee (keen)

eu (??)

g (good), gk, k (call)

v (vice), vf, ff (fan)

d (done), td, t (teal)

b (bring), bp, p (pool)

j (june), jch, ch (chill)

z (zoo), zs, s (sweet)

xh (xiao), zxh, sh (shout)

thh (that), tth, th (thanks)

l (love), rd, r (red)

h- (how), y-(yawn), w- (jewel), -ng (gong)

m (man), n (now)

As few as 1 and as many as 6 letters can occupy one symbol to make one syllable. For example, ah = ah (1) . l + ah + oh + s = laos (4) . sh + r + ih + n + k + s = shrinks (6) . When there is only one letter in a symbol, the symbol is underlined to indicate it stands as one sound/letter.

Sentences are ended with a prominent dot, in the middle of the line. Empty small circles/dots are used similarly to commas. A filled dot circled again is like an exclamation or to add a note of finality. A dot trailing down into a small line, like a tadpole, is similar to an ellipsis, a skip, or an indication of continuation later. Two or three dots vertically indicate a question, sometimes going big to small. Small right triangles or right angles at the beginning/top and end/bottom of dialog are similar to quotes.

The writing is designed so that each letter can be written together in a symbol in a single line, and it is common to even connect the symbols in a single line. There is a combination of many curves and sharp angles in the writing, combined with dots and circles.

Sometimes, writing will be modified so that each word is it's own symbol, comprised of smaller syllable-symbols. So, 'flah-wer' could have the symbol for 'flah' stretched on top and the symbol for 'wer' stretched on bottom. 'Oc-to-pus' may have two on top, one stretched on bottom, or vice versa. Generally, the emphasized syllable gets to be on its own and the unemphasized are grouped together, if there's a choice. 'Kah-lih-grah-fee' would have the two symbols 'kah-lih' on top and 'grah-fee' on bottom. More than 4 syllables and it must be broken up into more than one symbol.

And OHGODS I'm tired and need sleep. I may add more later I may not. Eh, I'm not too good at this anyway.

<3 ali

edited 5th Feb '11 12:37:47 AM by almyki

Wow! That's really cool! You've obviously put a lot of work into it!

I've been working on this for a long time.

It's called Baldemoskigoe. It's spoken in the female-dominated land of Baldemosk. Its word order is SOV, head-last, and has a Nominative-Accusative alignment.

The vowels are a, e, i, o, u, ae (as in Finnish), oe, and ue (last two pronounced as in German). The consonants are p, b, t, d, k, g, s, z, sh, zh (like the s in pleasure), l, r, m, n, ng, f, w, and y.

Nouns decline according to five cases: Nominative, Accusative, Dative, Genitive, and Locative (used to denote location of objects). Pronouns decline to the same cases, except for Genitive, as a noun suffix is used in its place. Nouns can be made plural by adding -(y)ar.

Verbs are likewise complex, having the tenses of present, past, and future. At the same time, they conjugate according to voice (active or passive) and mood (indicative, negative, causative, reciprocal (done to each other), conditional, or potential), person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd), and number (singular or plural).

Adjectives are treated as if they were verbs, even though they are considered a seperate type of word. They have most of the same affixes and are conjugated like verbs. As such, words like "saeyoen", often translated to "slow", could be better thought as "to be slow". Adjectives do not change into adverbs.

The language is agglutinative and the speakers are very fond of adding many affixes to words. Words with four or more affixes are not uncommon. Common affixes include -kur (makes noun male), -mo (turns noun into adjective), and -yot (means the noun is a tool used to do the verb this affix is attached to).

This was a basic overview of my conlang. If you want me to provide examples of vocabulary or go into more detail on anything, I'd be happy to do so.

There has been more work done since I last posted in this thread

^^ Could you give some examples of vocabulary? And have you put any thought into names at all?

^ Kewl! I'm reading through the thread right now.

As for myself, I've got a couple of languages on the go, and maybe two of them are well-developed enough to use; those being Geltyrduv and Moylnian. Geltyrduv is spoken by a group of people who are to wolves what humans are to chimpanzees, but they're still pretty primitive, and their language reflects that. It's also a OVS language that makes frequent use of compound words. You can say a sentance as long as "The chains that bind the light and the darkness are once more rent by the storm" in a few words; "Zad tûniget lerd aqfal", but the vocabulary is also fairly limited: there's a single word for brother, sister, he, she, mother, they and it; "Ng", but there's also single words for expressions or concepts that require many words in English, eg. "I think something bad is about to happen" = "Kazh". The reverse is also true, though, as the closest word they have for "God" is "Huilnotunimrrhanang".

I've based Moylnian mostly off of Irish with some added quirks and more phonetic spelling. I've tried to do something unique with the sentance structure: All the verbs come at the start, in order, then all the nouns/subjects, then all the adjectives, then everything "abstract". So, "What time is it, my friend?" would be "Dá t-am kara caidh, ónan?" (lit. "Is time friend which belonging to me?") It's really hard to write in, so being the corner-cutter that I am, they have no word for "and", and usually speak in shorter sentances.

edited 15th Feb '11 4:59:14 PM by SoberIrishman

By names, do you mean words? If so, I did not put terribly much thought into them. I just put together sounds that seem good and follow the language's sound laws.

Here are some words:

I, we - man, manar

you (familiar) - sut, sutar

you (non-familiar) - sueted, suetedar

she, he, it - kes, keskur, tael

they - kesar, keskurar, taelar

sea - bal

oosau - deity, goddess

suet - white

kraf - black

ngaastat - possible

relduk - impossible

alinat - to give

kaelnat - to take

aalnat - to die

aalirnat - to commit suicide

aalashnat - to kill

aalirashnat - to cause someone to commit suicide

sau - woman

saukur - man

(Curse my inability to type umlauts and macrons. )

I've got a conlang that I've been working on here for about two year - on and off, of course. Called Sythen, it is - in my fictional multiverse at least - an artificial language much like Esperato or Ido, which gained acceptance as the de-facto inter-tribal language of the world of Cirundi (aka an excuse for Common! YAY!).

With sythen, I've decided to go the standard 'alien language' route of having the language be OVS - aka 'Yoda Speak'.

Current phonology has 7 vowels - a, ae, e, i, o, u, y; of which all but ae and y can be both short and long - as well as 28 consonants, which are as follows:

• b Voiced Bilabial Fricative [ b]
• c Voiceless Palatal Plosive [c]
• ch Voiceless Postalveolar Affricate [tS]
• d Voiced Alveolar Plosive [d]
• dh Voiced Palatal Plosive [J]
• f Voiceless Labiodental Fricative [f]
• g Voiced Uvular Plosive [G]
• gh Voiced Velar Plosive [g]
• h Voiceless Glottal Fricative [h]
• j Palatal Aproximate [j]
• k Voiceless Velar Plosive [k]
• kh Voiceless Pharyngeal Fricative [X]
• kw Voiceless Alveolar Lateral Fricative [K]
• l Alveolar Lateral Approximate [l]
• ll Palatal Lateral Approximant [L]
• m Bilabial Nasal [m]
• n Alveolar Nasal [n]
• ng Velar Nasal [N]
• p Voiceless Bilabial Plosive [p]
• q Voiceless Uvular Plosive [q]
• r Voiced Uvular Fricative [R]
• s Voiceless Alveolar Fricative [s]
• t Voiceless Alveolar Plosive [t]
• th Voiceless Dental Fricative [T]
• v Voiced Labiodental Fricative [v]
• w Voiced Labio-velar Approximant [w]
• x Voiced Postalveolar Fricative [Z]
• z Voiced Alveolar Fricative [z]

Yes, I am aware of the number of fricatives - due to the shape of the sythen face compared to the human one, I thought it was appropriate!

The language itself is rather simple - designed as an intercultural second language. Sythen is a highly agglutinating language, where many phonemes are lumped together to create single words in places where English would use several.

Verb conjugation is rather simple, having to do with mood (indicative, subjective, desiderative, generic, dubiative, hypotheical, potential, and imperative), the tense (present simple, present continuous, present perfect, future perfect, future simple, future continuous, passe compose, imperfect, conditional, past continuous, and intransitive.), person (1ps, 1pp, 2ps, 2pp, 3ps, 3pp). There are two regular forms of verbs - -eq and -iq - which conjugate the same across their entire family, along with about 20 irregular verbs, which jump around a bit. The irregular verbs are the more common verbs, ones such as kiir (to be), puqaugh (to go), undal (to do), barqurum (to say), and so on.

Nouns are composed as such: (quantity)(article)noun(adjective)

for example: vagharinyruvanikwa (much white snow)

Verbs are composed as such: (mood)(tense)verb(person/plurality)(adverb)(-auxiliary verb)

for example: kedodurizimaadaah ((self) did indeed run fast)

Like I mentioned, the language is still very much WIP, I've still got a lot of work to do to make it something more natural that one could see real people speaking, but it's coming along, however slowly! I've got a lexicon of about 1000 words at the moment, so now it's mostly grammar and structure that I'm working on!

edited 22nd Feb '11 10:12:45 PM by DasSoviet

Thoman is Latin turned up to 11: adjectives and verbs agree with their noun’s gender and number and case.

The large bitch bit an old man because both evil emperors told her to = Shluj –is ziitch-is moed-roj-is he-mraan-ik-en he-fen-ik-en shkund hleg-osh-maa duuvwee Jaal-iim-ik-ekh-ee tchaam-ik-ekh-ee. = Dog-Female big-F bite-past-F a-human- Male- accusative a-old-M-acc. because command-Common-dat two King-of-Kings-M-numeral-gen evil-M-num-gen.

The hyphens are not written in. I put them to illustrate how the particles build up.

Word order is mostly for emphasis and nuance, but putting the adjective a long way away from the noun is Yoda speak.

4 genders: -ik = Male; -is = Female; -et = Neutral; -osh = Common.

5 numbers: — = 1; -shtii = Plural; -ekh = Numeral; -iim = All

6 cases: — = nom; -en = acc; —ee = gen; -maa = dat; -uuw = loc

Adjectives are done by Newspeak: maatchik = good, tchaamik = evil: fenik = old, nefik = young; ziitchik = big, tchiizik = small.

I created Thoman when I was in my Egyptian phase, so mostly, I wrote royal proclamations, but I did manage one song: “Jempoe bajmik henefrikvik, mikhik tegaanik emikmaa” = When I was a little soldier, then the Earl did say to me.” His Father’sSword song / Jabberwocky ballad with a different tune.

The alphabet is 64 runes: each rune consists of 3 staves, either ( | , - , / , )

24 runes have 3 different staves for the consonants: /|- and its 6 permutations = P, b, f, v, m, mh; -/ is the T series; |/ is the K series; -| is the S series.

4 runes have 3 staves the same: ||| = A; —- = I; /// =U; \\ = Y.

36 runes have 2 staves the sane: 16 are vowels and semivowels, 20 have mystic significance

edited 24th Feb '11 5:32:02 PM by Dagobitus

Do non-verbal languages count?

Ouch! I thought you meant a language without verbs, which would be an interesting grammar and syntax. But you mean with no words at all. Sign language has words. Meerkat has words. I don't see how you can have a languagw without words at all. Prove me wrong.

Verbal Adjective -

3. Consisting of words only. 4. Expressly spoken or written, as opposed to implied.

Source: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/verbal

May I start proving you wrong now?

It doesn't have actually words, it has meanings when translated but no actual words in it's language.

You posted the wrong link. That one leads to the other wiki's definition of 'verbal'. You ain't got nuffing to be smug about.

No, thats the right link.

Like I said may I start now.

It doesn't have actually words, it has meanings when translated but no actual words in it's language.

Then what does it have? I'm not sure what you mean by a language without words. The concept of «word» encompasses more than one particular medium.

My lanquage is called "Detbárasaf", and it is spoken by a fictional race called "Espa bárasap", or in English, "The Esparasap". The Isparasap are widely considered by the galaxy's other inhabitants to be straight thinking and pragmatic; appropriately, their language has simple rules and useful constructions (in reality, its because this is my first conlang ).

Phonology

SH and ZH should properly be written as s and z with a caron over them (inverted circumflex).

"Y" is a schwa (cOOk, fUll); all other vowels sound like their English equivalents.

Basic word order is VSO, nominative/accusative alignment, and synthetic morphology. The script is a featural code, a type of alphabet where similar sounds have similar letters (I haven't decided what the letters will be yet).

More later...

edited 26th Aug '11 11:06:15 AM by cjpdk

"Detbárasaf"

Most nouns in the language HAVE to take one of the two articles, "Es" which is indefinite, and "Et" which is definite. The articles take a series of endings:

Paucal emphasises the low number (as in "only"); when no number is attached, it means "(a) few..." Large-scale emphasises the high number (as in "even"); when no number is attached, it means "lots".

Proper nouns, pronouns, and the correlatives (as in Esperanto) do not take articles. A special set of articles are used to express ownership; they correspond exactly to the pronouns.

The pronouns are:

Jygpa is exclusive (it doesn't include the 2nd person of the conversation), whereas jerygpa is inclusive. Ped is equivalent to the English "one", or the French "on". Zhir is used where a sentence doesn't take an explicit subject (as in "it rains").

Incidentally, Zhir isn't pronounced as "ZHEER", but rather, "ZHIH-R"; final approximants are acceptable, and like other consonants, they don't constitute an extra syllable unless a vowel is added.

These take the same endings as the articles.

PHONOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS

I probably should have mentioned this in my previous post, but I shall clarify some rules now:

• Initial and final consonant clusters are not allowed
• "Bb", "Rr", and " ' " may not be in a consonat cluster
• Otherwise, medial consonant clusters of two consonants are allowed
  • Three if the third is an approximant
• Unaccented words are stressed in their penultimate syllable; accented words in their accented syllable.
• Stops are aspirated when followed by a vowel.

edited 26th Aug '11 12:25:07 PM by cjpdk

I'm learning Chinese and teaching ESL. We might as well be Venusians learning Elvish. Fiction writers usually just jumble up the 43 ( or so?) phonems into new words with English grammatical structure.

The only conlang I worked on was a bit tongue in cheek. Fantasian is Russian/German hybrid that includes some fantastic elements. The aliens are a sci-fi analog of the ficticious "enemy force" Canadian soldiers trained against during the Cold War. In most cases I figured out what we would call it in English and then invent words in Fantasian. Not surprisingly, they use something similar to Cyrillic.

This is my basic working dictionary of Draconian:

Yes: Ce ('Keh')

No: Ve ('Veh')

Hello: Teya ('Teh-Yah')

Welcome: Teyaken ('Teh-Yah-Ken')

Goodbye: Cefye ('Keh-ff-yeh')

Good: Cef ('Keh-ff')

Bad: Dan (With a long 'a' sound 'Dahn')

Please: Cenea ('Keh-ee-ah')

Thank You/Thanks: Cekan kes/Cekane ('Keh-ahn kess'/'Keh-ahn-ee')

Problem: Leken ('Leh-Keh-enn')

Fine: Cefen ('Keh-ff-enn')

You (singular): Kes ('Kess')

You (plural): Kel ('Kell')

He: Ke ('Kee')

She: Le ('Lee')

I: Nei ('Knee')

Am: Ah

Are: Ahn

Is: Ahl ('Ah-ll')

edited 30th Apr '14 4:20:18 PM by Arcee6

In my setting, Omni-Terra, the dwarves speak a language known as Bolgdok, "Bolg's voice". Their god, Bolg, passed down the knowledge of Bolgdok to them when they were created (the dwarves in my setting are sort of clay automatons). Here is a mild explanation of Bolgdok.

In Bolgdok, there are 7 vowels. They are "a" (ah), "ai" (ay), "e" (eh), "i" (ee), "o" (uh), "ō" (oh), and "u" (oo). The letters o and ō are separate because in the Bolgdok script, they are written with different symbols. Thus, "Bolg" would actually pronounced like "Bulg". And "Bolgdok" would be "bulgduck".

There are 14 consonants. B [Ball], d [Dog], f [Fact], g [Goal], k [Kit], l [Love], m [Man], n [New], p [Pat], r [Run], rh [pronounced sort of backwards as it's spelled, sort of like "hr"], s [Say], t [Tool], and th [Thing].

Some example phrases are:

Din-farth arkthraini dokar bortaini. "Fifty swordsmiths blunt the blade".

Simir rhōl maiban falfenrhōl. "What seems like gold may be pyrite."

Isenthrōr altar din-tōr. "A keen eye saves twenty men."

Some of the most interesting things to come up with are proverbs.

edited 30th Apr '14 7:45:33 PM by AllHailThrall

A proverb from Draconian: For good to occur there must be evil. Mae cef mel seaen leka penel ha dan.

Im working on a conlang but i dont know very much about putting a language together and the resources I have tried havent made much sense to me i dont have a very scientific mind and grammar was never my best subject im afraid. So i mostly have lots of words for actively doing things and a few words for things that mostly follow a set pattern with a few diviations.

Ke or Ka indicates the speaker is referring to themselves. Having o'Ha or in some cases a'Ho at the end indicates a negative. Ending in an o indicates the speaker is referring to someone else unless the word begins with a k and words ending in re are usually doing words.

Kessa- I have

Kesso’ha- I don’t have

Ke’yase – I would like/I want

Kase’na –I don’t want

Yasero- you would like/you want

Idah- stupid/dumb/not clever

Idaro- you are stupid

Idare- was stupid

Ke’idah- I am stupid

Kuno- I know

Unaro- you know

Lunare- knowledge/knowing

Uno’ha- I don’t know

Tala – I am

Talo’ha - I am not

Talaro – you are

Laro’ha- you are not

Benah – stop/surrender/give up

Ka’bena – I surrender/give up

Beno’ha – don’t stop/surrender/give up

Palle - ill

Pallo'ha - not ill

Hasem - be quiet

Alvey - to carry/convey

Avale - to travel

Alveyo – you carry/convey

Ka’veyo- I carry/convey

Mae – here

Ke’mae – I am here

Mahi - there

Ke’mahi – I am there

Maho – you are there

Hanare - not doing anything

Ero - you are?

Avai - dead

Eyla - light

Eylare - to brighten/illuminate

Asem - to speak

Pethore - to heal/restore

Stoth - dull/stuffy/old

Dwaru - to delve/dig

Dware - delving/digging

Yavarri - spirit/demon/intagible being

Kyvorriel - corporeal

Peritus - frozen/petrified

Pferous - combustable/acidic

Thats all i have so far :)

edited 22nd May '14 7:34:27 AM by Merlanthe

Here are three writing systems from the world I've been developing, two of which are used for my actual conlang (r/neography post describing each).

edited 5th Jun '14 9:45:55 PM by Blueeyedrat

Love to show mine off, only it kind of doesn't work since its partly auditory (and that mostly in scraping or buzzing sounds that would be insanely difficult to render in phonetic English) and partly pheromonal (which leads to a lot of misconceptions early on since humans can't pick up said pheromones).

Am: Ah

Are: Ahn

Bad: Dan (With a long 'a' sound 'Dahn')

Be: Ha ('Hah')

Betray: Lacan (‘Lack-ahn’) – Derived from Lacarus, the Deserter’s name

Birth: Seo (‘See-oh’) – Derived from Seone, the Creator’s name

Cool: Skhea ('Ss-kuh-air') – Can be used to mean cold or awesome

Death: Nao (‘Nah-oh’) – Derived from Naone, the Destroyer’s name

Dust: San ('Sahn')

Evening: Estena (‘Ess-ten-ah’)

Father: Sayah ('Sae-ah') – A corruption of Cyreus, the Defender’s name

Fine: Cefen ('Keh-ff-enn')

For: Mae ('Mey')

Gold/Golden: Vayan ('Vay-ahn')

Good: Cef ('Keh-ff')

Goodbye: Cefye ('Keh-ff-yeh')

He: Ke ('Kee')

Heal: Addo (‘Add-oh’) – Derived from Addon, the Healer’s name. Homophone of Addoe (Healthy)

Healthy: Addoe (‘Ah-doh’) – Derived from Addon, the Healer’s name. Homophone of Addo (Heal)

Hello: Teya ('Teh-Yah')

I: Nei ('Knee')

Is: Ahl ('Ah-ll')

Morning: Seona (‘See-own-ah’)

Mother: Ayah ('Aye-ah') – Corruption of Yara, the Protector’s name

Must: Penel ('Pen-ell')

Night: Naona (‘Nah-own-ah’)

No: Ve ('Veh')

Occur: Seaen ('See-ahn')

Okay: Cefey ('Keh-ff-ey')

Please: Cenea ('Keh-ee-ah')

Problem: Leken ('Leh-Keh-enn')

Sand: Vayan San ('Vay-ahn Sahn') – Literally ‘Gold/Golden Dust’

See: Semi ('Suh-me') – Derived from Semia, the Observer’s name

She: Le ('Lee')

Sight: Semian ('Suh-me-ann') – Derived from Semia, the Observer’s name

Thank You/Thanks: Cekan kes/Cekane ('Keh-ahn kess'/'Keh-ahn-ee')

The: Kaen ('Kay-ne')

There: Leka ('Leh-kah')

To: Mel ('Meh-ll')

Welcome: Teyaken ('Teh-Yah-Ken')

Yes: Ce ('Keh')

You (plural): Kel ('Kell')

You (singular): Kes ('Kess')

For good to occur there must be evil: Mae cef mel seaen leka penel ha dan (‘It is not a perfect world’)