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[Solifuge]

This thread is meant as a semi-public workspace. If folks end up being interested, I'll keep posting progress here. Ideas, critique, or suggestions from interested folks, particularly anyone who knows more about language than I do, are totally welcome!

Here's the Deal:
I'm working on a Constructed Language for use in a larger project, and I'm trying to do it right. The goal is to create a basic language with simple grammar and pronunciation rules, which will have Verbal, Pictographic, and Gestural forms that mirror each other. That is to say, the grammar for the spoken, symbolic, and gestural forms should be consistent, and ideally should resemble each other in every way possible. It's not meant to be a complete language; it's generic by design, and the main focus is on objects and actions, with some focus on simple ideas, emotions, descriptions, and general conversation. Also, it's not really intended for real-world use; mostly, I'd just like for it to sound vaguely familiar to listeners, like any good Creole Language. Also Note: I'm not a trained linguist or anything, so if you are try not to be too terribly offended by my floundering!

I'm using a ConLang called Lidepla as a starting point for the structure and some grammar of the spoken component; I like it because it was designed as a sort of Worldwide Creole Language that uses sounds that overlap most commonly spoken languages in the world, and has really simple grammar with a lot of compound-words (good for pairing it with pictographs/ideographs). Also, since I don't speak most languages in the world, it's a good starting point. Shoulders of Giants, and all that.


Kicking things off with some Basic Spoken Pronouns (WIP, subject to change):

[TheBiggerFish]

PTW.

Also it's spelled gestalt, not ghestalt.

[Solifuge]

Chalk one up for the people who know how to language better than I! (Not fixing it just yet, but the embarrassment will get to me eventually)

[Teneb]

Huh, the way you chose to set the pronunciation of those vowels is pretty much exactly like (Brazilian) Portuguese.

[exdeath]

One language I would love to see is some language made in the same way we "created" math.
I dont know to explain better what I want, so if you dont understand, you know why.

[Solifuge]

exdeath, I don't know if this is what you mean, but the most explicit, formulaic, and syllable-efficient Constructed Language I've seen is called Ithkuil. One of the goals was to remove all ambiguity and implication from language, so meaning is precise and ideally isn't lost to interpretation, similarly to Math. As a trade off, it's got a far steeper learning curve than any language I've seen, contains a crap-ton of unique sounds, and the removal of ambiguity does remove the capacity for things like turns of phrase or some forms of poetry from the language. It also basically includes Citation of the Source for the information in the statement within the grammar of the language itself; when you say anything, you also say whether it's a personal feeling, an observation, a fact being repeated from elsewhere, etc.

It's basically unusable by humans, at least as a first language, but it does do some very neat things; in a nutshell, the vowel each syllable ends with describes a sort of "mode" each concept is in.

For example, in Western languages, words such as male, night, limb, sit, and happen are all autonomous words, linguistically representing what are inherently considered to be basic mental concepts or semantic primitives. However, in Ithkuil, none of these words is considered to be a semantic primitive. Instead, they are seen to be parts of greater, more holistic semantic concepts, existing in complementary relationship to another part, the two together making up the whole.

Thus, Ithkuil lexical structure recognizes that the word male has no meaning in and of itself without an implicit recognition of its complementary partner, female, the two words mutually deriving from a more basic, holistic concept, translatable into English as living being. Similarly, the word night(time) derives along with its complement day(time) from the underlying concept translatable as day (24-hour period), while limb, along with its complement trunk or torso, derives from the stem (corporeal) body.

As an example, this one-word-phrase from http://ithkuil.net/ basically contains "The Boy who Cried Wolf":


Pronounciation
Phonetic: /qhűl-lyai’svukšei’arpîptó’ks
Meaning: "...being hard to believe, after allegedly trying to go back to repeatedly inspiring fear using rag-tag groups of suspicious-looking clowns, despite resistance"

Spoiler: Linguistic Breakdown (click to show/hide)

Cv =  qh, indicating ALLEGATIVE sanction plus REPETITIVE phase
VL  =  ű, indicating RESISTIVE valence
Cs  =  l-ly, indicating REGRESSIVE aspect
Vr  =  ai’, indicating DYNAMIC function plus Pattern 1, Stem 2 for the main root
Cx  =  sv, indicating the incorporated root:  ‘fear’
Vp  =  u, indicating INFORMAL designation plus Pattern 3, Stem 1 for the incorporated root
Cr  =  kš, indicating the main root: ‘fool/clown’
Vc  =  ei’a, indicating POSTCURSIVE case
Ca  =  rp, indicating NORMAL essence, DELIMITIVE extension, UNBOUNDED perspective, AGGREGATIVE configuration, and VARIATIVE affiliation
Vx + Cs  = îpt-, the GENUINENESS/VERACITY suffix in 4th degree, indicating a suspicious-looking nature
Vf  =  o, indicating SCHEMATIC format and EXISTENTIAL context
Cb =  ’ks, indicating SKEPTICAL bias
tone  =  rising, indicating INEFFECTUAL version
stress  =  ultimate, indicating FORMAL designation for the main root

[Willfor]

I have nothing to contribute except the thing that I see when I read the title of the thread:

word nerds

werds

[Dirst]

Not directly related to your effort here, but this is what happens when a bunch of non-linguists get together to design a language

[Tawa]

One language I would love to see is some language made in the same way we "created" math.
I dont know to explain better what I want, so if you dont understand, you know why.

Lojban, maybe?

[Dansmithers]

From what I know of conlangs, one usually starts by picking the sounds that they want to use in the language, and then uses these to create words. Have you already got a set of sounds for these pronouns?

[Solifuge]

I don't have specific sounds I want to generally build words around, no. Mostly, I'm trying to make words resemble common words in other languages, in the way a Creole does. For reference, Creole Languages emerge when speakers of different languages come together and trade word-sounds by speaking to one another over a long period of time; it's like workplace use of "Spanglish" in the US, when native speakers of Spanish and English who aren't fluent in one another's languages will gradually pick up individual words of one another's language by sound, and blend them into sentences combining both. Only this is being done with a lot of world languages, thanks to the help of Lidepla and it's vocabulary.

Example Time:
1) A greeting like "Good Day" in this language would be "Hao Dei", borrowing from the sound of the Mandarin word for Good and the English word for a 24-hour period. As an added bonus, when spoken aloud it sounds like they say "Howdy", which is a phrase that can be understood by people familiar with common American English phrases

2) Lok is the pronoun suffix for a Place or Location (a "Where") and resembles the English "Location". Eni-Lok means "Any Location/Anywhere".

3) Yu is the pronoun for the person you're speaking to, Oli is the word for All; the compound Yu-Oli acts as the plural form of You (You-and-They) and resembles "You All" as in the American English regional word "Y'all".

[Orange Wizard]

Neato. PTW.

[Alev]

So you say it is a creole Conlang developed from Lidepla, I'm assuming the other languages involved in the creation of this creole would be widely spoken ones? Any in particular other than in English? A relatively simple phonology would probably be necessary, which excludes English (in X-SAMPA) /T D/. Lidepla appears to have /dz x/ which may be hard for English speakers. Grammar, how do you want it? What may seem easy or simple to you might not seem that way to speakers of diverse languages. How will this be distinguished from any generic international auxlang?