We're autists and we love worldbuilding. So how about we take on one of the most incredible feats of autistic worldbuilding there are: inventing a language!
>>44214925
>Gronk nak fiblibbink
Fet er rod yo wis buppy
>>44214949
/libueak
>>44214925
Piqued my interested. Where do we start?
>>44215017
Start naming things with nonsense words
We've pretty much got half the nonsense done just from being on 4chan.
>>44215017
That depends. We can just brainstorm morphemes, start coming up with root words which we can then put into a grammar system, or we can come up with the grammar system first and the words later.
One pitfall to avoid is making the assumption that everything has to be different from English. Just because Romance languages tend to put the adjective after the noun and English doesn't meant that the language will automatically feel more foreign if we put the adjective after the word.
>>44215061
Yeah, that makes sense.
>>44214981
This is /thread, right?
Let's break that down
>discussion thread
>lib ueak
>libu eak
>libue ak
Or maybe it's a contraction of some kind, or the form of the first syllable is different when combined with the second one. Personally, I like "libu eak" as "discussion thread". "Libu" is "speak, discuss" and "eak" is "string" or "thread".
>>44215104
"Ward" - Enemy/Destroyer
>>44214925
Regurhais frum wis buppy!
Paelidinus uigret rumpires ent er woflesvar!
>>44215139
>"Libu"
Shorten to "Lib" as the root, "u" is used to transform a verb (to speak/discuss) into the noun form.
>"string" or "thread"
That seems a bit outdated and unique to english.
What about "topic" or "forum"? Something more modern-focused?
Ah yes, an anonymous image board. The perfect place to undergo a linguistic feat that few experts can manage.
Just make a lojban/klingon mixed language like all the other autists.
>>44215241
Other way around: "lib" is "speak, discuss" and "libu" is "speech, discussion".
And yeah, using "thread" to refer to an internet discussion is pretty unique to English, but since the first message boards were developed in the English-speaking world, a lot of other languages followed suit. Many of them chose to borrow the word straight from English rather than to calque it into a native one, though.
>>44215256
Half the reason why this is going to be so much fun is because we all know it's headed for disaster if it's headed anywhere at all.
I say we choose something easily contributed to. So we create a super flexible grammar system, and allow cognates sheet initial creation. Also no contractions. Allow compound words. Someone had libueak, and breaking it up. Finnish does that, so does German, etc. Also probably want to pick a root language.
>>44215943
Picking a root language will take a lot of the fun out of it, I think.
I think it would be easiest if the grammar system was one very loosely connected to the words themselves -- no complex conjugations or declensions. That way we don't have to keep track of all the different possible forms of a word.
>>44215146
I love this
"matt" = game, fluff, fun
"ward" = enemy, destroyer, hater
"matt ward" = enemy of game, destroyer of fluff, hater of fun
>>44215835
That's exactly what I meant, anon, but cool.
>>44214949
Wawabik nikblibli
Wus wis buppy wapuppy, fet va
>>44214949
>>44215161
>>44217389
I vote that "buppy" means "faggot".
>>44217389
Vra du ka?
>>44218120
Giliat bren ter tekkop
>>44218696
Porta woozherba
while i may not want to go to the lengths of an entire LANGUAGE for my world just yet, the science and history behind languages is something i'd like to at least pry into a bit.
like, how do i best avoid things like using words that haven't been invented yet throughout history or probably wouldn't have if it wasn't in our world? i believe LotR confronted this once with potatoes being "taters" but i find it very hard to think of other examples in literature or anything else for that matter
>>44220754
The people in your world are not going to be speaking the same language as your readers. While they're speaking a language which has no linguistic relation to English whatsoever, that language is translated to English for the sake of your English-speaking readers, and French for the sake of your French speaking readers, etc. Introducing words from a made-up language which you, the author, will have to translate just makes things difficult on your readers. Even if your setting never made the connection between hardened tree sap and the static force it generates by rubbing on stuff(Electricity) you should still call it electricity for your readers' sake.
One exception to this is alternate history and other works where there IS a relationship between the language the characters are speaking and English. For example, in The Golden Compass, Electric power is referred to as "Anabaric power" whilst amber is called "electrum." This is done because, in the real world, Electrum and Amber were once interchangable terms, and the author swapped the meanings as a way of conveying to the readers that the world is different, and that it linguistically diverged around the time electricity was named.
>>44220883
i really appreciate the answer it put a lot of things into perspective for what i've got going
>>44221194
One way to accomplish this, especially if you're writing in English, is to make the language your characters speak a hodgepodge constructed out of many different languages. Then, as your characters encounter these different languages, you simply use French, German, Anglo-Saxon, or the like to convey the linguistic origin. This technique is recommended for advanced worldbuilders who've at least partially studied the origins of the English language. Also, keep in mind that it makes translating your work into other languages a fucking nightmare.
>>44218120
Wit ba er fudat.
>>44220478
Et erdu ked wis wawabik. Rod yo ke bren woozherba. Kedda kin der ud fra stillerat bren ked furgimstadt def du buppy wo ked utterstrun kiliwik wis rundib. Erik, didf erdu med wis finna tekkop.
Step 1: Use something other than an alphabet.
A collaborative conlang would first need some ground rules so that it doesn't become a total mess. First, we'd need to establish some grammatical rules and a procedure for establishing more rules and exceptions. Then we'd need to get cracking on vocabulary.
>>44221439
We'd probably have to decide on phonemes before doing vocabulary, too.
Lets just use Esperanto and call it common.
>>44221549
But Esperanto is such an ugly language.
>>44221549
I was in that thread
Was alright at first before the ningyo hime fucker messed it up
>>44221467
Let's keep it relatively simple to begin with /É‘/, /i/, /ÊŠ/, /e/, /o/. Any two may be combined in any order to form a dipthong. For consonants, let's just use all the ones in English and maybe add or something simple like a uvular trill or an alveolar tap, possibly replacing one of our consonants with it.
>>44221615
What do you have against /ɜ/ and /u/? They're incredibly widely used too. And /J/ is also handy.
>>44221631
>/J/
Testing: /ı/
That was meant to be a dotless i.
>>44221615
>>44221631
We're definitely going to want a /É™/ in there too.
>talk about phonemes
>suddenly vowel bloat
WHY
>>44221727
We've got nine so far, which is perfectly reasonable even if we keep them all.
So, vowels:
"Long" in English: /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/ (e, a, o, u)
"Short" in English: /ɑ/, /ɜ/, /ı/ (o, e, i)
Other: /ÊŠ/ is oo as in book, /É™/ can be made by any vowel in English and can be just about any unaccented syllable depending on dialect.
Between these and diphthongs, we can now make any vowel sound in English besides /æ/ which is the a in apple. Do we want that one? Or is this good?
>>44221822
We don't really need all of those either since /e/ can easily be a diphthong of /Éœi/.
Honestly vowels aren't even that important. The real thing we need is consonants. And there's a ton of them.
p b t d k g f v ϕ β h ʒ þ θ ʃ s ç x l r ɾ m n ŋ
seem good to me.
>>44221631
Did I say ʊ and e? I meant u and ɜ. Sorry!
>>44221692
>>44221727
>>44221750
5 vowel sounds is plenty for now. One for each vowel of our own beloved roman alphabet. Schwas are generic enough that they just complicate things.
ah, ee, oo, eh, oh are prefect because they are all very distinct and roll of the tongue easily. No better batter without bitter butter here.
>>44221969
>vowels aren't even that important
Exactly, that's why I'm trying to say that for now, we only need about 5, so things don't get crazy out of control.
Also, what about a /j/? Or will a dipthong with /i/ cover that?
>>44221969
>ç
What is this nonsense
ʃ is all we need
>>44222171
Five vowels is very limited.
What if:
e: /ɜ/
é: /e/
i: /ı/
Ã: /i/
a: /É‘/
á: /æ/
o: /ʌ/
ó: /o/
u: /ÊŠ/
ú: /u/
Then we can easily transcribe a ten-character alphabet and still have every sound available. Alternately instead of accented characters it could be capitals, this is really a placeholder since we don't have a script yet anyway.
>>44222198
If we're cutting out the unnecessary stuff then f = ϕ and v = β too.
>>44222198
Are you kidding? I'd rather give up /s/ or /x/ than a good and common sound like /ç/.
>>44221969
We can scrap /ʒ/ /þ/ /θ/ and /r/ if we want a small alphabet, they're lame sounds anyway.
>>44222171
/j/ and /w/ too. If we want to get the most milage out of a small alphabet, hard stops and only a few very distinct fricatives are the way to do.
>>44222400
The typical Anglo can't distinguish between /ç/ and /ʃ/, and can't make /x/ at all.
>>44215835
Finnish uses lanka, meaning thread or yarn. It's unique to English, but other languages import terms from English.
>>44214925
Protip: if you don't start by determining which phonemes your language will use, you're going to crash and burn
>>44222361
Moonspeak gets by fine with only 5 vowels. Of course, any moon vowel can be single-mora or double-mora, but that's much easier to deal with than having 10 different vowel sounds.
>>44222746
That's what we're trying to do right now.
I doubt it will be of any use to you, but I wrote a fantasy language for a campaign setting in highschool.
>"Poalo". Spoken by hunter-gatherer tribes in a primitive setting, poalo is a really simple language. It is written or burned into flat wooden tablets.
>Poalo contains four vowels (Ay, Ah, Oo, Ee), and five consonants (P, M, N, L, K), and has a "Ch" or "Sh" sound reserved for cases of expletives, emotional times, anger, sadness, or overwhelming joy. The language also uses a minute pause between repeating vowel sounds in some cases, but this is (usually) reserved for proper nouns and is represented with a apostrophe when written in english.
>This language is constructed only of nouns. For instance, if you want to say "The ruby is stolen", you'd say "Mahlaykah nahkay Kayloo Reekoo" (Rock Red High-cost theft). If a question is asked, or there is a special quality to a sentence that you are about to say, a brief sentence is usually given before your enquirey. "Question statement. Man Stranger Rock Red High-Cost theft." ("Did the stranger steal the ruby?")
>The language has five words representing tenses (Past, present, Future, distant or hypothetical future, and distant or hypothetical past), and seven ways to answer a yes or no question. (Yes, No, Maybe, Uncertainty, Not applicable, Correct, Incorrect.)
I don't know how applicable this language would have been in real life, but I can certainly imagine a primitive tribal society using it.
>>44222793
>10 different vowel sounds
>hard
My advice fa/tg/uys, stick to these seven steps.
1. Decide on the sounds you would like to use.
2. Begin methodically developing a lexicon
3. Develope a gramatical logic
4. Create a writeable analogue for english
5. design an alphabet, keeping in mind how it is written
6. Start using the language, but be willing to make changes if you come across any problems.
7. Repeat this process, slowly refining the language over time.
>>44223129
>lexicon before grammar
But then how do you understand about inflections?
>>44223141
I kind've meant that during the development of grammar you also discuss inflections of words you've already developed.
Come up with the conceptual nouns of all of your words, then start developing the inflections afterwards.
>not making inflections tonal
This is beyond the usual level of pointless nerd shit.
honestly surprised a bunch of linguistics nerds havnt sat down at some point and made an artificial language without all the bullshit that naturally evolving languages have, and just generally being superior to everything in most ways
could someone tell me why?
>>44214925
Caaz? Os colz mas haasuzh oshmol!
I am already severely au/tg/istic, you see.
>>44224198
They have. Many times.
>>44214949
bah weep granah neep nini bong
>>44224198
Are you real? There are dozens of artificial fake languages.
>>44224198
>all the bullshit that naturally evolving languages have
You mean all the shit that makes a language beautiful?
I may well sperg out harder than I should over a neat, ordered system, but I like my languages messy. If it's all neatly defined and packaged, two things happen.
One, you lack artistic merit because you have autistic merit.
Two, your nice neat conlang without bullshit will slowly develop bullshit anyway, ruining your autistic merit.
>>44215835
>And yeah, using "thread" to refer to an internet discussion is pretty unique to English
In Swedish a common expression "tappat tråden" (literally "lost/dropped the thread") and means that one has lost track of their own or someone else's line of thought.
>>44221969
>>44222171
Anglos please.
Origo est nada grossand gagfot
"Op is a gigantic faggot"
>>44224575
We have that kind of expression too.
>>44224575
In Finnish I've heard of "losing the red thread" meaning the point of the whole conversation has been lost to them.
>>44223094
Remember, this is a rough draft we're working on here, and we want to keep that rough draft as simple as possible.
>>44214925
What about we develop a caveman Ugh language for the primitives in our games?
It's supposed to be made of bits that sound like the stereotypical caveman/monkey grunts. Maybe something like Ugh, Ook, Hrunk, Gug, etc.
>>44224630
I think I might like this more than "buppy" in terms of how it sounds, although it might look like we're just turning things into bananagrams.
>>44224198
Because then they gotta convince people to learn it. Plus changing signwork isn't exactly cheap en masse.
>>44224198
What do you think Esperanto is?
>>44224600
A lot of Anglos can't even make like 25% of the sounds in >>44221969
Een zelf-verzonnen taal? Best lastig. Zeker als je bedenkt dat iedereen moet accepteren en begrijpen welke concepten er bedoeld en aangeduid worden.
Ik denk niet dat het veel wordt, autistisch of niet.
>>44227699
It was more in reference to how they claimed that vowels don't matter. Every language has several vowels, not all of them have many consonants, and English is rather unique in the word in how poorly most of the vowels are pronounced and in how little it matter.
That said, that list of consonants is atrocious. There are so many sounds on it that are so similar to one another that they by all rights should form allophones, not separate morphemes.
>>44224198
This is why you shouldn't let engineers near language matters.
>>44224198
It's been done many times and it sucked Each time.
I have always wanted to make a conlang but I've never got started because I haven't come up with a back story. Who speaks it? what are the values of their culture? etc
I think this info informs a lot about the language and specifically the sounds that comprise it.
>>44220883
Good post. Thanks for the info.
>>44220754
>i believe LotR confronted this once with potatoes being "taters"
That's just rural slang. Tolkien didn't invent words willy nilly, especially not when the character's spoke Westron which was translated into English.
>>44227875
Vowels are important; that's why I think we should start things simple when it comes to them. See >>44222793 for an example of a real-life language that has only five vowel sounds, but still gets a lot of mileage out of them with dipthongs and moraic shenanigans.
>>44229109
>I think we should start things simple
Which vowels you have should mainly be determined by how you want the language to sound, not by how simple you want to make it on yourself, and it will doubtlessly fail in that regard as well in a later stage as you will surely experience.
>>44230403
What would we want a /tg/ language to sound like?
>>44224198
It's much more interesting to try and make an artificial language to sound pleasant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oGdjaLmLqw
>>44225156
That's not how rough drafts work. A rough draft is what you have before simplifying and paring down.
>>44234555
No, a rough draft is a prototype.
>>44238162
No, a prototype is a prototype.
>>44238491
Alright, then, pretend I said prototype.
>>44238532
Why would you have a prototype already?
>>44240651
We don't. That is why we are working on one.
I triple dog dare some one to use Ithkuil in their campaign.
>>44240818
In what sort of situation would you slip in words in a language your players can't understand into a campaign?
>>44241568
Write it on a macguffin. Let the players decode it after doing some research. Maybe speak in it to represent foreigners.
>>44241568
As part of a mystery. Give them a note or a poem written in an ancient language that no one speaks anymore that when translated will explain something important to them.
>>44241655
How do you insert it, though? Do you hand the text to your players on a slip of paper? Do you read it aloud?
>>44241757
Given that the character's don't know how to read it themselves there's not much sense it reading it aloud to them until they've found someone who knows how to actually make sense of the signs.
>>44224198
engineered languages exist
>>44241784
That's assuming it's not in a script they can read.
Is there a linguist in the house?
What would be your view of the most perfect constructed language to use as a universal one?
bump for interest
