Tvtropes Conlang

I think that's actually a past participle in "planned". ;) Also, let's set some rules for what sort of words are allowable (otherwise, your punishment is "zdnajkipxla" ).

edited 19th Sep '10 8:27:43 PM by Zizoz

@Ziz: Right, I'll fix that.

Also, I wanted to have some cultural modifications in there.

"Zana" or plan comes from Xanatos's name. I also figured that the words for "Writer" and "god" should either be the same or similar.

edited 19th Sep '10 8:30:04 PM by lockonlockon

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Hmm. Are you saying that they should be related to "zana"? Because that kind of makes sense. I think "plan" deriving from "write" is more likely than vice versa, so we just have to figure that out...

I'm not really sure how you create related words; perhaps someone knows? Though I feel like we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.

Our syllables could be (C)(C)V at the simplest, with some rules necessary for which consonants can cluster. We could also allow more; this is just the most complex syllable we have (cve).

Also, what about stress? (And what type of stress?)

edited 19th Sep '10 8:38:45 PM by Zizoz

Okay guys, clearly I'm going to have to study quite a bit in order to keep up with discussion. The thing is though, even Wikipedia's article on the IPA went waaay over my head.

I don't understand most of this jargon, I suppose a lot of that is due to may having had to drop out of school when I was 14 or 15. (Honestly, I can't remember which it was. Trauma-Induced Amnesia gives me a lot of trouble trying to recall that period.) Anyway....

Could you guys help me with some basics? Like what do you guys mean when you say Art Language?

@ziz: Remember we're kinda going for artlang here. And I'm not extensively familiar with phonetics. I'm saying "write" is unrelated to "plan", "plan" comes from Xanatos' name, cut up and transliterated.

Now what does it mean for something to be (C)(C)V? nevermind figured it out. That works.

edited 19th Sep '10 8:43:47 PM by lockonlockon

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artistic_language

Basically, a language created as a work of art, rather than to test a hypothesis about language, or as an intended lingua franca like Esperanto.

So the idea here is to create a new language, that is still fully functional and can be learned and spoken but is based on the principle of Form over Function? Sounding nice is more important than how easy it is to use?

@Capt: Actually, if you go for form over writing up one billion and two rules of grammar, you actually get a much easier to use language.

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To me, the goal is basically to have a language that can be used while seeming natural and not like a cipher of English.

There's an amazing feeling to being able to say things in your own language.

edited 19th Sep '10 8:52:54 PM by Zizoz

@ziz: I agree.

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Okay. Gotcha. So then am I right in assuming that the current discussion is thus: Since this is a Trope/Troping based language, we're trying to decide if words and concepts that relate to writing and language should carry an inherent implication of divinity? The words like God and Author would be very similar or outright identical?

edited 19th Sep '10 8:55:12 PM by Capt.Fargle

@Fargle: Zebaxi. (Exactly)

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Hold on now. We really should finalize what phonemes we will have in the language and the phonological constrictions they will have before even thinking of making words.

Oh, and if you've not clicked on the link to the Language Creation Kit earlier in the thread, you should read that.

The last time I worked on a conlang was a "verb-based" language.  ^*

The grammar went well enough (not much risk of recreating English there), but we got kind of bored once we started just making up vocabulary; I suspect keeping the kit's advice in mind would have helped.

edited 19th Sep '10 9:00:39 PM by Zizoz

Okay. Before we go any further, can someone please explain to me in very simple English what a Phoneme is? Is it like a syllable?

Right.

I'll look through that.

By-the-by, I speak English and Japanese, so my suggestions will probably result in an agglutinative language.

edited 19th Sep '10 9:04:15 PM by lockonlockon

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Fargle, frankly, we shouldn't have to constantly be explaining everything to you. That's a waste of time. If you can't look up the terminology and such yourself, you should just sit on the sidelines and watch.

A consonant or vowel sound that's distinguished by the language (for instance, [p], [z], [ə] are examples of English phonemes, while [pʰ] not a phoneme but is an allophone of [p]; that is, we pronounce [p] as [pʰ] in certain circumstances, but we still hear it as [p])

Sorry if that didn't make sense, I'm not the best at explaining things...

Okay, if I'm understanding it right a Phoneme is a language's determining factor in what basic sounds have the same meaning and thus can be used when pronouncing a written word. It's the rules for pronouncing each individual letter rather than each syllable, which are usually combinations of two or three letters?

Wait a minute.

Matrix, didn't we just give the entire character list back there?

Or am I misunderstanding what a phoneme is?

Edit: On stress: When I read my sample sentences, I'm stressing the last syllable in each multisyllabic word. What are your thought on this?

edited 19th Sep '10 9:20:13 PM by lockonlockon

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We have a character list (well, sort of), but we haven't exactly decided that that's what we're going with. And it was just me and you; other people might have some good ideas that would be worth revising it for.

We also have no real consensus on what syllables are allowed.

@Ziz: this is true, and I'm willing to have all my ideas thrown out.

I think that "th" and "sh" should be pronounced the same as in English, with "X" replacing the English "ch". Plosives can proceed "v".

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Well we know for the sake of simplicity that we're using Roman character sets for ease of use. Presumably we're going to use similar, but not necessarily identical sounds for each letter as well. So that should make things a lot easier. It's just a matter of working out how we want to pronounce each letter. Right?

EDIT: WRONG! What Matrix is saying, I think, is that we need to work out what slight differences in sounds we can make and still have them recognised as being the same letter when written down. Is that right Matrix?

edited 19th Sep '10 9:27:15 PM by Capt.Fargle

Alright, expanding on the idea I got from Longfellow's (probably joking) suggestion:
Consonants:

	Labial	Labiodental	Alveolar
Nasal	m	ɱ	n
Stop	p b	p̪ b̪	t d
Fricative	ɸ β	f v	s z
Approximant			ɹ
Trill	ʙ
Tap			ɾ
Lateral Fric.			ɬ ɮ
Lateral Approx.			l

Vowels:

Front: [i], [ɛ], [a]
Back: [u], [ɔ], [ɒ]

edited 19th Sep '10 9:28:24 PM by Matrix

It's better to choose what sounds you want first before applying letters to them. This is an artlang, not esperanto.