My old project, dating back from my childhood, is the Tybydymic language. It never got a permanent script, mostly using Latin letters. Here's a very recognizable text translated into this language.
Hij bryllseod. Cuz mintuz tofz
Jureod a gymblod ny waber
A tenod alm cuz borogovz
Oczue cuz muemziz ugnnygraber.
O, taimo Dzhabbrkraekod, fisiz!
Ri bys tog murfis a kadimo,
A ny bumbli dagos cuc briz,
Cuc Brandershnascsius frumimo!
Ri zaeks shvoertczow a ficutow
Slo kynder niimo a vagano,
Ni bumbliow gos trak riow
Mi Tumtum butoow gigano.
Ri sytsode ug butoet,
Ri dijsod, ryba roc groaksod.
Taimlo Dzhabbrkraek fols himied
A gaget fyrios ugaksed!
Mo-ksi! Mo-ksi! Gaglos hysi!
Cuc vorbo shvoertcz tus shniker-shnaker!
Uzi! Uzi! A kowusi
Barabardos ug plydzer naker!
O, lumikslo u iw issiz!
Bi wunisod ny ancsel mucsel!
O, gerogomlo gyldiiz!
Iw muzo u bi ugon huecsel!
Hij bryllseod. Cuz mintuz tofz
Jureod a gymblod ny waber
A tenod alm cuz borogovz
Oczue cuz muemziz ugnnygraber.
edited 9th Jan '13 3:31:15 AM by aurora369
My language ('lang1' for the lack of a better name) has a phonetic mix of japanese and aztec and a grammar similar to esperanto. here are some words:
- vekuis => adj: expert
- vekui => noun: expert
- thika => noun: love
- thikal => verb: to love
- Thikasho => proper noun: Town of love
- juna => noun: soul
edited 9th Jan '13 8:02:08 AM by mbartelsm
Worldbuilding addict. Not on rehab..gif_100.jpeg){kind=avatar}
YEEEEAH— no.
So, I've made some progress. My alphabet now has 24 consonant letters, each representing a different sound. They're sorted into 3 columns: a "neutral" column (m, n, ŋ, l, r, w, y, h), and two columns for "major" and "minor" pairs
(p, t, k, tʃ, f, θ, s, ʃ) and (b, d, g, dʒ, v, ð, z, ʒ). (A guide to English phonology, in case you were wondering what some of those symbols mean.) The major/minor pairs are essentially the same symbol, flipped vertically. Adjacent consonants are connected. I'm also concocting various rules for formal/informal writing and little quirks like that, but it's not a priority.
I also have basic punctuation worked out. The base is a vertical line. Aside note;. A line with a triangle in the middle (|>) is a period, a triangle at the top is a question mark, and a triangle at the bottom is an exclamation point. Then there are less common ones; A comma is just a triangle (▻), a semicolon is a reversed period (▻|), a colon has lines on both sides (|>|) and an ellipsis is an extended period (|>>>). (Note that the triangles are always pointing to the right. There are leftward symbols, but those are for mathematical notation, which I'll talk about some other time.)
edited 4th Feb '13 1:02:37 PM by Blueeyedrat
"I've come to the conclusion that this is a very stupid idea."
My language is very loosely based on a combination of Japanese and Arabic.
There are five vowel sounds: a (ah) e (eh) o (oh) i (ee) u (ooh)
As well as ten consonant sounds: b s t g l r k th sh n
Most words begin with a root adjective such as "aba" (white) A noun ends with "-n", as in "aban" (snow, cloud) A verb begins with past tense "sh-", future tense "th-", negative "kr-", or present tense "rl-" - "rlaba" means "to snow or cloud"
This is the core concept for Fair-Tongue, which is supposed to be confusing to Common-speakers. There is no way to clearly distinguish snow from clouds in this language, allowing a statement or question to have several interpretations.
I have no real understanding of linguistics, so I can't say anything about tones and things like that - I just couldn't have my fair folk speaking Common.
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.
still working on it. based on filipino.
Phonemes:
- Consonants:
- Unvoiced Plosives: p,t,k
- Voiced Plosives: b,d,g
- Nasals: m,n,ng
- Fricatives: f/v,s/z,h
- Affricates: ps,ts(c),ks,bz,dz(j),gz
- Approximants: l,r
- Semivowels: w,y
- Vowels:
- i(gin/lean)
- u(loon/gun)
- e(rest)
- o(lost)
- a(last)
- Diphthongs:
- (ii,ie,ia,io,iu)<easier to make into y+vowel
- ei,eu
- ai,aa,au
- oi,ou
- (ui,ue,ua,uo,uu)<easier to make into w+vowel
Syntax:
- Word order: V-S-O.
Morphology:
- Isolating.
edited 15th Feb '13 2:11:41 AM by Passerby
so much to do, and yet... here, it feels like one cannot do anything but lie here and sleep forever.
The Harbinger of Strange
-Comes in with hat between hands-
Hi, everyone. Hope this isn't too much of a necro.
I have been making my first tentative steps into conlanging with a little thing I like to call Xironek.
It's an alien language, spoken by a race that has vastly different vocal and respiratory systems than humans. They are humanoid in form and thought, though, so their language is not completely indecipherable—it would just be kind of hard for a human to speak.
I don't really know what plosives and fricatives are, but I feel I have a talent with languages, otherwise I would never have dared to touch conlangs with a ten-foot pole, much less an alien conlang not intended to be spoken by humans.
I have some basic rules laid out—parts of an alphabet, the beginnings of a script, etc. Not much in the way of grammar or syntax, but I'm going to keep that fairly simple, I think. The language is meant to be utilitarian and not needlessly complicated, except for spelling/pronunciation, which is a simple affair for its intended speakers. I'm trying my best to avoid Indo-European Alien Language and Fictionary and other half-assed conlang tropes.
Here are some examples of the words:
zïthrüšth — "Shock trooper". Pronounced "zeeth-rooshth". Vowels with umlauts are long sounds: "ee", "aah", "ooh", etc. The inverted circumflex "S" is a "sh" sound.
ākämaìHd — "All, every, each". Pronounced, roughly, "aaah-kah-ma-yee-hid". The capitalization of certain letters in a word indicates a double articulation—two letters pronounced at once. Macrons are extremely long vowel sounds, longer than umlauts. You hold it for like a full second. Just really drag that shit out.
ävedʔBm'äškz — "Epic poem". Pronounced, roughly, "aah-vedʔBuhm-aashkz". Apostrophes don't have their own sound but are sometimes used to single out certain syllables. In this case, it's not "maash", it's "mm-aash".
So, as you can see, it might look like a lot of nonsense... But I've tried my best to make it make some sort of sense. I'm working on a little dictionary, so I can post some more words if anyone's curious.
You need an adult.
Aussie Tolkien freak
how do you create plausible languages anyway? When I try to do it it just sounds like LOTR Elvish... [groans and bangs her head on a virtual wall] Any tips?
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
State of Mind
Plosives and fricatives types of sounds. Don't quite me on this but I think plosives are hard consonant sounds like b, g, t and k while fricatives are more steady sounds like sh, s, th, and f.
Have you completed a Swadish List? It's a handy tool for getting down and clarifying your basic vocabulary.
The Harbinger of Strange
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I had a feeling that was what those words meant. Would you say a really solid understanding of the guts of linguistics are necessary for creating a conlang? Or an actual education in linguistics, even? The Na'vi language from the Avatar movie was created by a professor of linguistics but in practice it just sounded like Swahili or some other African language. (It's a really nice language, though, and one of the conlangs I was looking at in creating my own.) Not to say I think I can do better than someone who has actually been educated on the subject, but I think there's room for improvement in realistic alien conlangs.
The Swadesh list looks useful, I'll definitely make one. Xironek is agglutinative and I've been making new vocab words by smushing morphemes together. For example:
Water: othäšu
Earth: Fgxälhrä
Mud: gxoälthäš
edited 1st Jul '13 4:52:15 PM by Alma
You need an adult.
Aussie Tolkien freak
Thanks, Parable. Even coming up with words is a struggle.
@Alma: I think so (that's partly why I want to do linguistics at uni next year.)
edited 1st Jul '13 4:58:41 PM by MorwenEdhelwen
The road goes ever on. -Tolkien
State of Mind
Think of it this way, did English require a language professor to make it what it is today? Or French or Japanese? Granted, knowledge of how languages work is something that'll definitely help, but if natural languages are just the product of thousands of years of people experimenting with sounds then a deliberately made one with a planned structure and handy examples from real life shouldn't be too hard for anyone trying hard enough.
I can't answer if you can create a realistic alien language because that's a silly question. I have no alien languages to compare yours to. Now won't you feel awkward when it turns out the first aliens we meet communicate through hand signs?
Starting with the basics can be the best help, which is why I linked the list, as most everything else derives from those. But in the end, its up to you to make a language that you are satisfied with.
"What a century this week has been." - Seung Min Kim
The Harbinger of Strange
There are multiple alien languages in my verse. One is indeed gestural. 
But I'm not going to make a conlang for every alien race I've thought up. Ain't nobody got time fo dat. When I said "realistic, I meant for a somewhat more human alien, the culture of which we can expect to have developed along similar lines to ours.
Perpetually Disappointed
I was directed here by Scholable. Nice to see one of these threads revived.
My first attempt at a Conlang.
My second attempt at a Conlang.
The former has two unique scripts [which I have in font form] while the latter has one sort of in development. Most writing in both is in latin script though.
Also,here is the longest/prettiest text I've written in a conlang.
@Morwen: My first advice would be making up a Phonology based off of the Internation Phonetic Alphabet [IPA], draw on some real world languages [readily available on Wikipedia] then mix and match to create a general feel.
For making up words, check out this site. It's a bit hard to figure out, but I can PM you instructions. It'll basically give you a list of potential roots that "look right" and mirror the feel of the language. It's pretty handy.
The above will get you on the right track but I do recommend trying to find etymologies for words in real languages though and creating words in your language based off them.
Edit:
Morwen: For longer term stuff, I'd recommend looking at the conlanging website there and real world languages and looking for patterns; for instance "Have" is a relatively recent invention in European languages [Celtic languages don't even have a term for it] while some have two different terms for being; Permenant and Transient, Ser v. Estar in Spanish. Once you get a feel for all the different ways something can be expressed, then your language will begin to take shape on its own.
@Alma: The above is pretty much the essential of what I've done. If you want to write conlangs for a major production, a linguistic degree is a plus but even then it's not necessary. I'd recommend picking up little bits of as many languages as you can [bilingualism is a huge plus too], interesting factoids and being creative with them but outside, you just have to be creative and be willing to put in a bit of effort and googling to get a solid one.
I'd recommend checking some of the communities, actual linguistic majors are a minority though many have glanced at it and many have a couple languages under their belt. Talk, ask questions and be friendly. If you stick to it for just a little, the confusing terms will clear up and you should be teaching the next batch [I started a couple years ago doing proper conlang-y stuff but I feel pretty comfortable with it now].
Cheers!
edited 2nd Jul '13 9:46:40 AM by Fauxlosophe
Mé féin ag daṁsa faoin ngealaċ seanrince gan ċeol leis ach ceol cuisle. DS FC: 4141-3472-4041, feel free to add me.
State of Mind
Here is a perfect example of someone who does conlangs just for fun. As you can see, no formal education is required. Just time, dedication, and some imagination.
Crazy Kiwi
I don't go as far as coming up with words per se but I love playing around coming up with structures of language - do they have differentiated formal and informal modes of speech? Does the adjective come before or after the relevant noun? How do plurals work? How many tenses? How are they formed (conjugating the verb or adding a word etc)? What sentence structures are possible/prevalent? Can they split infinitives? Do nouns have gender? How many?
For inspiration, I look at real world languages: Latin, French, English, German, Māori and Chinese, mainly. I'm by no means fluent in any of those except English, but I have enough knowledge of them and others - and how they differ from one another - to come up with some fun ideas.
Add to them the possibility for non-audible components for races that are totally unlike humans (you can tell he's using the imperative by the set of his fore-gills...) and the scope for "alien" languages is limitless.
My starting point is less the sound and more the culture that formed the language, along with any relevant physiology that may have a bearing on it.
For example, H. Neanderthalensis cannot make the range of vowel sounds that H. Sapiens is capable of and while that would suggest limitations on the number of sounds they could make, it doesn't automatically follow that their language was less sophisticated than ours. Given an intelligent mind (which they possessed) and a need to express nuances and more than a handful of words, there are a multitude of ways to modify those sounds to create different meanings including tonal variation (such as in the Chinese dialects) context (as with English homophones), physical gestures, other sounds that can be made independently of the vocal cords (clicks, whistles etc) and so on.
An alien race may well have abilities we don't that may be incorporated into their languages (use of plural is deliberate as an aversion of Planet-of-Hats-style aliens that only have one language across their entire planet or vast Interstellar Empire while humans seem to speak a different language in neighbouring parts of New York).
"No, you can't learn N'till, you don't have enough limbs and you can't change your skin colour at will..."
From there I can work out what difficulties they would have in communicating in other languages (just can't get my head around your tenses) and if I do have to come up with any actual words, I at least know how "one sheep" and "three sheep" might be rendered in their language.
edited 2nd Jul '13 2:35:03 AM by Wolf1066
An other thing to think about is how straight/direct translation of words should be. For example does the word darkroom and ladybug directly translate to [word for dark][word for room] and [word for lady][word for bug], or are they called filmprocessingshelter and keymaid?
edited 2nd Jul '13 4:39:55 AM by m8e
Perpetually Disappointed
Sketch-langing is fun. A good place to see potential differences, if you're willing to wade through Lingo-babble, is CALS [the Conlang Atlas of Language Structures]. It lists a significant number of potential grammatical rules and you tick off which grammatical rules are present ie. does the language distinguish between b and p, is there gender, how are numbers represented? etc. etc.
For Xeno-languages, I'd recommend peaking here; http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html#sounds since it shows how sounds work in human languages with a [brief] afterword as to how it might be adapted for more alien tongues.
Usually, you'll want the etymology to be pretty different. My preference is [assuming I can't come up with one myself] to look through other languages and try using their constructions or even variations/additions that you can think of. So, if pressed for ideas, I might use the Italian "camera ottica" and derive it from "Optic Room" or make one up myself and derive it as "Filmroom". For ladybug, one might use "[Spotted] Orange Beetle" like the Navajo and Scots or if you could take the more distinctive "God's Cow" from Slavic/Baltic langages. Or even try something borrowed from English [I'd rather focus on the bird aspect of ladybird though, so "Bird-like Bug" or "Faerie Bird" might work], though you'll want to read into that as well; the lady part relates very specifically to the Virgin Mary and so it would be unlikely to pop-up independantly in another lanugage.
edited 2nd Jul '13 6:06:34 AM by Fauxlosophe
Mé féin ag daṁsa faoin ngealaċ seanrince gan ċeol leis ach ceol cuisle. DS FC: 4141-3472-4041, feel free to add me.
The Harbinger of Strange
Yeah. If I hadn't been thinking of this, I probably wouldn't have tried. Xironek is actually a conlang in the context of the story. The aliens who speak it, the Cel, were indoctrinated/abducted en masse by a race of Starfish Aliens called the Bennassu to serve as a manual labour and military force. About a thousand were chosen, while the rest were exterminated, and the Bennassu have been breeding them for subservience ever since. In order to make the Cel more pliant and reshape them into their personal slave race, the Bennassu eradicated all traces of culture from them, including their languages (the Ancient Cel were racially and culturally diverse) and their very name. The Bennassu then created a new language, based on old Cel languages, called Xironek for them to speak, since their own language was based on echolocation. That's why the Cel only speak one language. The rest of the alien races have diverse races and cultures, but I'm not planning to really develop proper conlangs for them.
It was my intention that Xironek would be a universal language, but I quickly realized that wouldn't be possible because the aliens who speak Starfish Languages outnumber the ones who have humanlike vocal organs and languages. The Urden speak with smells (though they have vocal translators), and the Starclaws speak with subtle metaphysical vibrations, or chemical changes in their own bodies if they feel like making it easy for you. The Madine have a gestural language because they don't have mouths. The Eileth are vocal, but their language sounds like birdsong and they don't have the equipment for speaking a "humanlike" language. I had the idea that each race would be able to adapt Xironek for their own use, but by then it wouldn't be a universal language anymore. So Xironek became sort of a symbol for the Cel which all other aliens could at least recognize and understand, as well as a form of encryption: the language has three dialects, two of which are specifically intended for the kind of vocal organs the Cel have. Common Xironek is what they speak on a regular basis. Basic Xironek is kind of like a pidgin language based on Xironek which is more accessible to aliens—humans, for example, would be able to speak this language easily (relative to other dialects, anyway). Complicated words like "äved?Bm'äškz" pare down to words like "avemash". Then there's High Xironek, which is an extremely complicated form of Common Xironek deliberately meant to confound aliens. Words are retardedly long ("äved?Bm'äškz" would become something like "äouGXQ'vraebd?Bm'älašKZT"), requiring a Cel's entire lung capacity to speak, with far more consonants.
All dialects would reflect the utilitarian and military-oriented nature of the indoctrinated Cel. There are no gendered nouns, but inflection changes based on whether it is a subordinate speaking to a superior, or vice versa. Particles (the, at, from, etc.) are represented by diacritics, and the words "yes" and "no" are tools for creating positive and negative emphasis and have diacritics of their own. For example, the word gnyaì means good, while 'gnyaì (with an apostrophe, meaning "yes") means very good and ,gnyaì (with a comma, meaning "no") means not good. High Xironek is even more nuanced. The words are very literal in meaning, as I described earlier: the word for "mud" literally means "earth-water". There's usually more than one way to say the same thing by combining morphemes differently, for example:
Vaohdei — Fire
Othaash — Water
Vaohthaash — Lava (Literally "fire water")
Vothaa?uushei — Lava
There's also a different word for "magma", which would probably be something like vfaalaa (Fgxaalhraa "earth" + vaohdei "fire").
Synonyms are only sort of a thing. A speaker can make up any number of new words for the same thing by recombining the morphemes. You would do this to make sentences flow more nicely, for example.
edited 2nd Jul '13 7:59:46 AM by Alma
You need an adult.
Perpetually Disappointed
Just skimming over and I have a few questions/a couple thoughts on it, if you're interested;
"metaphysical vibrations": How do you mean metaphysical?
High Xironek: Was this inspired by Avoidance speech? I haven't done much more than peak at it, but it might be worth your skimming over it since it seems like a similar case.
There are no gendered nouns: Genderless is totally a valid option, but if you have another go at language you might consider sexless genders; some natlangs use Animate, Non-Animate and sometimes Animal or even Edible. Others have a wierd Gendered v. Neutral thing [though that's usually from having Male and Female Genders fuse as opposed to Male/Female and Neut]. Someone has tried a three gender system for Eldar from WH 40 K which was something like Aggressive v. Defensive v. Passive, which seems like it could work analogously to the "military" feel you are going for with genders like "Superior" v. "Inferior" or even "Ally/Friend" v. "Neut" v. "Hostile/Stranger".
Diacritics: How are the comma and apostrophy represented in speech? If it's a pause or tick, then wouldn't it be at least a little difficult for a positive and negative to sound so alike?
Combining morphemes differently; This is sort of rare in natural languages since we tend to identify things with particular words so any group of people talking together long enough will use te same term even if they could understand different ways of saying it, it's sort of how dialects develop. I'd recommend having a unique meaning for every combination since otherwise it's redundant and would probably look odd to a hypothetical native speaker [for a good example of a language treated like Xironek would be Esperanto, where the language in theory has only a handful of rules and numerous ways it could be said but speakers have certain combinations that "sound right" even if others are theoretically just as valid].
Vocab: Are [D]ei and Aa[sh] noun forms? Otherwise, couldn't you drop a few syllables from them to save time?
edited 2nd Jul '13 10:05:03 AM by Fauxlosophe
Mé féin ag daṁsa faoin ngealaċ seanrince gan ċeol leis ach ceol cuisle. DS FC: 4141-3472-4041, feel free to add me.
YEEEEAH— no.
Oh hey, this thread is alive. Status update!
I sort of split the writing system into "Old" script and a "New" script. The O-script is the one I talked about in the original post (consonant symbols underlined by vowels), while the N-script has everything on a single line. The O-script has 22 consonants and 24 vowels.
- 8 "mid" consonants (m, n, ŋ, l, r, j, w, h) [man, name, hang, light, road, yoke, wide, height]
- 7 "high" consonants (p, t, k, f, θ, s, ʃ) [pipe, taint, kite, fall, think, side, shave]
- 7 "low" consonants (b, d, g, v, ð, z, ʒ) [binge, death, goat, veal, they, zoom, measure]
- 9 monophthongs (i, ɪ, ɛ, æ) (u, ʊ, ʌ, ɔ) (ə) [bee, fish, pet, trap, dune, cook, what, box, about]
- 8 diphthongs (ɛ, æ, ɔ, ʌ)+ɪ/j (ɛ, æ, ɔ, ʌ)+ʊ/w [way, tie, boy, ¤, ¤, cow, ¤, toe] The consonant ending is used if it ties into another vowel sound, like in power; otherwise, the vowel.
- 7 "r" semivowels (ɪ, ɛ, æ, ɔ, ʌ, ʊ, ə)+r [fear, care, star, floor, bird, tour, river]
¤ - no English equivalent.
The N-script does away with specific characters for the diphthongs and the semivowels, since they can be written as a combination of two letters. Affricatives in either script can also be written as a two-letter combo* Certain letters are designed to match ("m" can lead into "p" or "b", "n" can lead into "t" or "d", "ŋ" can lead into "k" or "g").
As mentioned before, I have punctuation worked out, but no syntax or... well, actual words yet. I've also developed a rudimentary mathematical notation and number system to go with it.*
edited 4th Jul '13 8:53:54 PM by Blueeyedrat
"I've come to the conclusion that this is a very stupid idea."
Has not anyone tried to translate some recognizable text into your language (like I did with Jabberwocky)?
YEEEEAH— no.
Okay, so I've finally ironed out phonology in my conlang, for both alphabets: Sanim and (Adapted) Arcane, the former based on the stuff I started the thread with. Now I can actually move on to grammar and syntax and whatever.
Having noticed this thread's return from the grave, I think I'll join the party.
Sketching out several languages for a fantasy setting- does anyone know about linguistic patterns in migrations? I've worked out a fairly realistic migration (I think) involving three ethnic groups arriving at a certain set of islands, but I have no idea how their three almost entirely unrelated languages will interact.
"Suddenly, as he was listening, the ceiling fell in on his head."
YEEEEAH— no.
Not entirely sure how languages would interact; but I guess you could start by playing around with this thing (browser version, but the first link has the how-to) for a while— take a word from one language and apply phonology/restrictions from another, create loanwords, whatever.
In the meantime, I have some basic Arcane (Ɑrkein) morphology worked out:
Nouns and titles have five cases, with appropriate declension for each:
- Direct: subject or direct object.
- Indirect: indirect object (to [x], from [x], because of [x], etc), with a special variant for time/place (in [x], at [x], etc). Accompanied by a preposition (or postposition, I haven't settled that yet).
- Genitive: possession (of [x], [x]'s).
- Vocative: addressee. ("Hello, [x].")
Definite pronouns mostly follow the same rules, with four singulars (I/me, you, he/she/him/her, it) and five plurals (same as above, with first-person split into exclusive and inclusive we). Direct, indirect, genitive, reflexive* and reciprocal* of each.
I've arranged verbs, even if I haven't worked out the exact conjugation yet:
- Tense: past, present, future
- Person: first, second, third; singular, plural
- Aspect: simple (I [x]), perfect (I have [x]ed), progressive (I am [x]ing), both (I have been [x]ing)
- Mood: indicative (is), deontic (should), epistemic (could), conditional (would)
Then the infinitive (to [x]), past/present/future participle ([x]ing as an adjective), possibly gerund ([x]ing as a noun), possibly agent noun ([x]er). Then negatives, then interrogatives where applicable.
No separate class for adjectives; genitive/indirect cases or participles are used.
edited 30th Mar '14 10:48:54 PM by Blueeyedrat
"I've come to the conclusion that this is a very stupid idea."
Just a thread for sharing ideas for languages, writing systems, that sort of thing. I'll start with mine.
I've been developing a fantasy language in my spare time— it's just a phonetic script for now; I might make a proper language or two written in it at some point. I've been ironing out vowel notation before I move on to consonants. The way it will be written, each sound will be depicted as a consonant symbol underlined by a vowel (or multiple consonants underlined by the same vowel). There are also "null" letters that act as placeholders, for sounds that begin with a vowel or end with a consonant. (Any language written with the script probably won't use the nulls often, but for phonetic translation they do come in handy.)
Vowels are written as two symbols connected by a line. The system currently has 15 of them:
- 4 'outward' symbols for front vowels (i, ɪ, e, æ).
- 4 'inward' symbols for back vowels (u, ʊ, ʌ, ɑ), which are inverted versions of the above.
- A 'neutral' symbol for ə.
- 5 diphthongs (e+ɪ, æ+ɪ, ɑ+ɪ, æ+ʊ, ɑ+ʊ).
- The aforementioned 'null' symbol.
The 9 monophthongs use the same symbol mirrored on each side— for instance, the letter for i looks like >——<, while its counterpart u letter is <——>. The other three out/in pairs are square brackets (ɪ/ʊ), a pair of curves (e/ʌ), and a dotted semicircle (æ/ɑ). The ə letter is |——|, which can't be inverted. Aside note;
The diphthongs each use the front of their first sound and the back of their second sound; for instance, the ɑ+ɪ letter would be something like (——[. Another aside note;
I also have a number system that I've held onto for quite a while, but that's a whole 'nother story.
So, does anyone want to share a script or a language they've been developing? Feedback on each others' work is also encouraged.
edited 8th Jan '13 10:47:11 PM by Blueeyedrat
"I've come to the conclusion that this is a very stupid idea."