Hey, it's Jack Eisenmann here. Just stepping in to say hi. ;-) Yes, I admit my languages are awkward, unnatural, and have shortcomings. You have every right to be critical.
This is an unpopular opinion but I actually really like your languages. Obviously there is need improvement but we cant be perfect. I wil be learning zese very soon.
@@hecko-yes How about 50 "carefully" selected words, but you wrap them inside (), [], {}, ⟨⟩ to change their grammatical feature. That makes it 250 words. So you have the word "megu" being the conjunction "and", and then "(megu)" for "addition", "[megu]" for "adding", "{megu}" for "good", and "⟨megu⟩" for "38".
5:36 As a programmer I can say that trying to be logical and producing unintuitive nonsense is what most (if not all) programming languages and programs end up doing
You know what I’ve realised after watching this a couple times? Check out the sentence at 4:31. Does that structure remind you of anything? Square brackets denoting actions, nested together, separated by spaces? That’s right. Zese is actually Objective-C.
@@slugintub “To lose it” is an expression (a reduction of “to lose one's mind”) meaning “to go mad”, used figuratively as “to laugh a lot; to be highly amused”. I hope that this answers your question sufficiently!
@@veloboy god, don't *ever* refer to a living human being as an "it" unless that's the person's preferred pronouns. that's such a disgusting and objectifying way to refer to a person the same way you do an inanimate object
@@veloboy the issue is a cultural one. "It" is used for inanimate objects or for animals with which you have an impersonal relationship. "They/them/theirs" are rising in popularity as the common singular gender-neutral personal pronouns, and are definitely far more respectful than "it" when referring to a person.
"instead of being objectively bad, it's just subjectively bad" I will remember this and will be my primary counterpoint going forward. You know what Zese!
Having the word for "it" be the same as the word for "thing" actually seems like a good idea. Also, I like the conscript. Making vowels interchangeable with consonants is very cool and creative in the context. Other than that... Yep. This is Vötgil's evil child.
"It's like you're a programming language that murdered a spoken language and is wearing it's skin" Holy fuck the amount of quotable statements in these videos is immense.
As a Slavic (polish) Interslavic is LOVE. I asked friends from Russia, Bulgaria, Czechia and Serbia and we all could unserstand the same text with like 90% of understanding.
Another language I would like to see you critique. /ŋ/ is a conlang by Sarky Canadian. He calls it a kitchen sink conlang but I think it is just awesome. I hope you add the floppy disk language to the end of your big list!
So here's what I've learned from Conlang Critic. You can't have voiced stop consonants, because some languages don't have those. And you can't have /p/, because that's not in Arabic. You must only have the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/. The only sibilant that you can have is /s/. You can't have v, because it's not in Chinese. For that matter, not all languages have f, either. You can't have /r/ because many languages pronounce that differently, and you can't have /l/ because Japanese might think that it's an r. You can't have /j/ or /w/, because people might confuse those for /i/ and /u/. There shouldn't be any phonemic distinction between nasals, so /n/ should be allophonic with /m/. So your consonant inventory is basically /m, t, s, k/, and the vowels are [i, a, u]. Furthermore, you can't have anything more complicated than a CV syllable structure, there shouldn't be any stress, vowel length, or tones, and since no two words can sound too similar in order to avoid confusion, this ideal conlang will have only around 50 words. I did some quick math using CVCVN and CVN word combinations, and figured that 3x3x3x3 is 90 word combinations, in order to avoid similar-sounding words, we could reduce that to around 45 words. There might be a few more single-vowel grammar-related words that can be thrown in-between the ending nasals and the starting consonants of the following word in order to give the root vocabulary consistent meaning, so one can distinguish when a word is being used an an adjective and when one is being used as a verb.
three vowels? what about speakers of two vowel languages? the moral of the story is that you shouldn't ever try to make an international language because it's impossible to make it good
By the Primes that is the ultimate conlang burn! "It's like you're a programming language that murdered a natural language and is wearing its skin" Sorry I just laughed at that one too much XD
It made me smile, too. :P Though you can't really use programming language for reasonable conversations. Just can't. Not in the least because lowerCamelCase and snake_case are not designed to be pronounced. But primarily because those are usually quite mathematical in nature and developed to easily describe relations, sets, operations over set. Human concepts like "tower" or "house" or "dog" as lexical units usually do not concern designers of those languages. But programming languages are usually useful and readable. Zese? It's not for programming. No. No.
@@chalcedonycoral1943 Speaking as a programmer with a passing interest in conlanging, the main issue with trying to use most programming languages "naturally" is that they only have imperative grammar for simple statements, but can also have arbitrarily complex dependent clauses, and the entire concept of flow control just doesn't map to natural languages. That issue is a real important one. Programming languages express multiple possible information paths in parallel. Obviously the text lists out the options sequentially, but the concept is that they're all in the same position. A natural language is more likely to express the 'happy path', what we expect to happen, linearly and then express alternatives and exceptions that might occur along the way afterwards. Repetition with modified context is even weirder.
@@timh.6872 Do you know if anyone has tried making a conlang with functional programming -- rather than imperative -- as a base? It might be counterintuitive to speak, but it should be able to convey a full range of ideas.
Literally everything you said about Zese made sense to me, so from my perspective this is neat little conlang. I really like the the brackets and parentheses actually being a part of the grammar and with some time a practice I do believe one could speak and understand it with virtually no problems. HOWEVER: I do believe what could make this conlang better in an oral sense would be to add so sound difference when speaking to indicate word isolations in a spoken sense, since reading is different from writing.
Really guys? It's because of the -ese suffix that denotes a language in English, and the fact that I'm still reeling from bad languages (often anglocentric as well) in this series. So yeah, it seems possible that some idiot would come up with (/zi:z/ or /zɛ.'di:z/) as a language name. Maybe I deserve it for my own cynicism, but lay off you antagonizing fucks!
I noticed that Lojban, which also has potential for complicated nested bracketing is considerably higher on the list. I'm curious if the way Lojban did it is more intuitive to learners. For example, I believe that Lojban has various types of bracket particles-perhaps this makes it easier for the listener to find their way back to the right clause? Also, I think that some brackets are optional and that there are simpler, non-bracketing alternatives-does this simplify the sentence structure or complicates it? I'd love to hear the public opinion on this. And please correct any of my misconceptions, if there are any Lojbanists reading.
I have the book on Lojban. It definitely isn't that complicated, due to the way that bridi are structured. There's already a ton of lexical meaning attached to word order, and I interpret the "bracketing" as a form of preposition. It sounds natural enough.
Lojban is way, way, way more intuitive. It suffers as a conlang from some poor reference grammars that fail at explaining the rules intuitively but once you look at examples, it's not hard.
Honestly if i tried to make a language I'd probably end up with one slightly inspired by programming languages too (i mean programming is literally what inspired me to put expanded thoughts in brackets like this)
/b/, /d/ /g/ and /z/ still common/easy. What made me comment was, mainly, Zese's words, that's not simple at all. It's like make a alphabet like this: ɭ, ʃ, ɫ, ʄ, ʅ, ɿ, ʆ, ʈ, ʇ.
i'm really sorry about all this but to be perfectly honest with you i'm not entirely sure of the situation. hbm isnt available right now but i'll try to get you in touch with all the mods and stuff
hi tom! you were banned from my discord server because you kept being mean to xavo, one of our mods. you were told to stop and you didn't, so you were banned.
So it's like a nonsensical Lojban mixed with the dumbassery of Vötgil? How exactly did this not get ranked lower than Vötgil? I guess the writing system since it actually looks aesthetically pleasing.
Alex Hayes I think the writing system is the type that you get used to quickly and read with an ease. I do think it's a plus, although I'm personally not sure if I like it. El. Psy. Congroo.
In a conlang trying to adopt a minimalistic sense, why include G and K as two of the very few consonants? In Korean there is a sound that's between them and in German I've heard people mix them up when talking about names or a new word. I certainly have. Then again, I'm not sure I'd be any better in composing the sound inventory.
@@NathanTAK Now that _would_ be interesting... I mean, not literal 4 letter words, but a language where the entire vocabulary can be regarded as insults... You cannot talk to another person in that language without insulting them, yourself, or someone else...
Regarding the "programming language wearing a natural language's skin" thing, What do you think about the idea of languages that are meant to express the same things as natural languages, except that they are designed to be only used using a computer, and e.g. don't have a specified pronunciation, or a representation other than as a sequence of bytes? An idea in my head that I haven't worked out details of, is, starting with semantics primes, and a grammar, and then having things be reduced to sha2 hashes. So, to coin a "word", you would just define it, and then take the hash of the definition in a recursive way, with the subtrees in the definition being hashed first.
I mean, you could take off the 3rd person prouns if you had some wierd kind off determinants (this, those, that, etc.), just as in basque, but still, i get your point
There is a reason why "mama" or something like that is the most common word for mother: it is literally the first sound most babies make. That or "papa" or "baba", or some other labial consonant. Since mothers were the first person babies are likely to be with when they start speaking. Anyway, if it is easy for even babies to say /m/, it is strange that a language would stopping using it all together.
It would useful for us to see how each language that you review tries to explain an event/situation/action. The new sounds and visuals are interesting because of the novelty but I am more interested in how the conlang construction actually change the reality of the user.
Tbf, the english words are converted Into japanese format, where consonant is followed by a vowel and other consonant is either replaced (or modified with 2 moras)
Hey, conlang critic, I just found your Chanel and I've been watching all your videos, and I have two requests: 1) Can you make a video on what you believe would help make a language able to be a interlang. I've been thinking about creating a new language, similar to lojban in some concepts, but also borrowing from other conlangs (only the best concepts) and then going through and personally working them out. I've been thinking about maybe something like a coding language in the concept simple elements, and no conjugations, etc. (I would also need to work on modal verbs and auxillary verbs quite a bit,) but I also like the lojban attitudinals, ambiguity, etc. Other ideas I have is just one element for the sentence that tells what noun/article is plural, so you don't need to change any sentence structure or word to show it, as well as gender neutral. I love the sapir-whorf hypothesis, and would love to language to be partly a philosophical language as well, to explain concepts that other languages just may not have. I would love if you could create a video to explain what you believe would be options/techniques to create a language that a majority of people would learn, without having to learn a new sound or two for most people, as well as grammar, vocab, and general concepts. As well as challenges a native speaker or someone raised in any language (and/or/vs a constructed language) would face on general matters discussed. Idk, maybe even throw in something like the learning time of lojban or other conlangs with natural languages, make the CER, common European reference, or something like that. 2) any idea on when your other other future videos will come out? I'm really looking forward to them now! I am learning both French and Spanish, and hope you someday travel as a business and learn many more languages. Thanks in advance, -a new subscriber-
hi julian! 1) maybe some day I'll do a series just giving general conlang advice. until then, I recommend The Art Of Language Invention by David Peterson (both the book and the youtube series) and the Sapaa Show. 2) the full plan for future episodes is available on the Big List, which is available to anyone who donates to patreon.com/hbmmaster
The whole spoken punctuation thing can sort of happen in natural languages as their word order changes, for example the negation particle 'ne' in French
You need to go over the language known as ng (but written with the eng symbol). It was created by Sarky Canadian and his friends, initially as a language for automata. However, there's also a human version! It's really interesting! Nebiz-- navit Nebogekupuk.
Pigu meaning arm and neck in Zese is slightly funny to me because 屁股 (pìgu) means butt in Mandarin. I'm sure this type of thing isn't avoidable - you can't avoid every combination that means something rude in any language - it's just slightly unfortunate.
1:09 As a Chinese, I don't understand why you said that there is no distinction between z and s in Mandarin. To me we have the distinction, so if you could explain the source?
@@HBMmaster aah, relating to the fact that there are no voiced consonants, only unaspirated unvoiced consonants in Mandarin Chinese right? Sorry for asking such a trivial question. And thank you for explaining it!
Third person pronouns aren't necessary, many languages are perfectly happy to just use the demonstratives (including for instance Hindi) - lacking both of these would make you start to wonder what was going on.
No. Spanish /ð/ is spelled ⟨d⟩. You’re probably thinking of Leonese, which is a different language altogether. That said, [ð] is an possible allophone of /θ/ before voiced consonants, so it may occur in words like _juzgar_ , _diezmo_ and _jazmín_ . It’s not really thought of as a ⟨d⟩ sound by Spanish speakers, however.
Hey Misali Have you considered doing the Languages from the Stargate franchise? If so Then lookup "Alteran" and "Goa'uld". I personally think the show is pretty good and the orthographys look decent but I would like to see what criticisms you can bestow upon them.
-"Did you know that [insert name here] doesn't find thing's phone?" -"Oh, yeah, I think it's on thing's house, in the dining room, thing visited yesterday" -"Oh damn, thank you, I'ma tell thing"
I just found out about this channel and I love it. I'd like you to do a show on ilaksh, the first conlang I fell in love with, and also No, the language created in the comments of this video, because we need a new bottom rung. You mentioned in one of the videos about a language that explicitly states that it is open source that languages can't be copyrighted. This is not common knowledge, and the fact that John Quijada has a copyright symbol at the bottom of his page made me stop studying ilaksh after he took it down, and put me off of conlangs for quite a while afterwards. I still have the glyphs and cartuche info hand copied in a notebook somewhere. I loved the crazy, but visually appealing writing system, and invented a fix for the cursive versions glaring flaw.
I mean, I've already done a video about Ithkuil, which is more or less the same language. (at least, the two languages share a wikipedia article) also No isn't really a full language
Ithkuil is about as different from Ilaksh as lojban is from loglan... so you might have a point there, unless you count the writing systems. Ilaksh has one of the coolest looking native systems I've seen. One of the least intuitive to use as well. Yeah, and I was mostly joking about No... mostly.
Here's an interesting conlang I found, it's based on pidgin language and is very simple. It's called neo patwa. So far as I find it, it's very intuitive compared to Esperanto and Toki Pona
As someone who speak Bengali myself (well, a dialect of it anyway), we do have Z and S as 2 distinct sounds. Although I couldnt name a word with both. Its J and Z that are more commonly swapped, not S and Z.
1:10 Spanish DOES differenciate between Z and S, it's just two phenomenons called seseo and ceceo, seseo is when both Z and S are pronounced like S and ceceo the same thing bith with Z, but rule Spanish differenciates between them.
Hey, it's Jack Eisenmann here. Just stepping in to say hi. ;-) Yes, I admit my languages are awkward, unnatural, and have shortcomings. You have every right to be critical.
Being able to recognize the weaknesses in your work is the first step to become better. Good luck for your next projects!
Please explain the lack of third-person pronouns!
Esperantanaso why you and the guy from xidnaf speak so fucking fast?
I still believe in ya,Jack!
This is an unpopular opinion but I actually really like your languages. Obviously there is need improvement but we cant be perfect. I wil be learning zese very soon.
Vötgil: All words are 3 letters long.
Zese: All words are 4 letters long.
Eisenmann's next language: All words are 5 letters long.
based on the way this is progressing the next language Jack Eisenmann will make will combine the worst parts of Lojban and Toki Pona
@@Cloiss_ yes hi the language i'm procrastinating on is literally called toki vöjban
@@hecko-yes bruh
oh and also sese (the precursor to zese) defines verbs/adjectives as predicates with parameters and also has 100-ish words so yeah that's a thing
@@hecko-yes How about 50 "carefully" selected words, but you wrap them inside (), [], {}, ⟨⟩ to change their grammatical feature. That makes it 250 words. So you have the word "megu" being the conjunction "and", and then "(megu)" for "addition", "[megu]" for "adding", "{megu}" for "good", and "⟨megu⟩" for "38".
5:36
As a programmer I can say that trying to be logical and producing unintuitive nonsense is what most (if not all) programming languages and programs end up doing
a = “php”
php = “isnt”
isnt = “that”
that = “bad”
bad = “okay then”
echo $$$$$a
Probably, they produce unintuitive sense, which is okay, if they shouldn't be used as an auxlang.
You know what I’ve realised after watching this a couple times? Check out the sentence at 4:31. Does that structure remind you of anything? Square brackets denoting actions, nested together, separated by spaces?
That’s right. Zese is actually Objective-C.
@@gormster so we can expect the next Eisenmann language to be Zwift?
“It's like you're a programming language that murdered a spoken language and is wearing its skin.”
I FUCKING LOST IT.
Me too!
It's so vivid.
what did you lose?
@@slugintub “To lose it” is an expression (a reduction of “to lose one's mind”) meaning “to go mad”, used figuratively as “to laugh a lot; to be highly amused”. I hope that this answers your question sufficiently!
Hmmm... good idea!
"It's called a heckin' pronoun, you goofus!"
jan Misali is pure and perfect no one harm them.
@@wish-keeper "they" is universal - so also for when one isn't sure or talks generally.
@@veloboy they use he/they pronouns, so both are correct
@@veloboy god, don't *ever* refer to a living human being as an "it" unless that's the person's preferred pronouns. that's such a disgusting and objectifying way to refer to a person the same way you do an inanimate object
@@veloboy the issue is a cultural one. "It" is used for inanimate objects or for animals with which you have an impersonal relationship. "They/them/theirs" are rising in popularity as the common singular gender-neutral personal pronouns, and are definitely far more respectful than "it" when referring to a person.
@@wish-keeper Mitch uses he/they pronouns
"within a rounding error, literally everyone can pronounce it" choked on my coffee laughing. You're amazing.
"instead of being objectively bad, it's just subjectively bad"
I will remember this and will be my primary counterpoint going forward.
You know what Zese!
Having the word for "it" be the same as the word for "thing" actually seems like a good idea. Also, I like the conscript. Making vowels interchangeable with consonants is very cool and creative in the context. Other than that... Yep. This is Vötgil's evil child.
"Bag and container are separate words, but arm and neck are the same" I'm dying 🤣
Zese that your puns are terrible.
A Grotesque Old Woman like your profile pic. And nice pun
A Grotesque Old Woman where did you get the image from
But... I don't know what zese...
You know what zese...
The more the merrier!
All tœsters tœs tœst
You know what zese about the Acropolis where the Parthenon is...
Misali should make a conlang, who else agrees?
He probably won't, but someone should make one along the lines that John Hooyer suggests in his post, and call it "Misalish".
Matthew McVeagh retconlang ig
we only need toki pona
"Minecraft optimized writing system"
That made my day
"It's like you're a programming language that murdered a spoken language and is wearing it's skin"
Holy fuck the amount of quotable statements in these videos is immense.
As a Slavic (polish) Interslavic is LOVE. I asked friends from Russia, Bulgaria, Czechia and Serbia and we all could unserstand the same text with like 90% of understanding.
Jakub Szwedo As a Bulgarian I need to try that out. :D Bulgarians and Poles can understand eachother somewhat, but certainly not 90% I think.
byti ili ne byti? to je pytanje
Another language I would like to see you critique. /ŋ/ is a conlang by Sarky Canadian. He calls it a kitchen sink conlang but I think it is just awesome. I hope you add the floppy disk language to the end of your big list!
just updated the Big List
@@HBMmaster I know you retired the big list, but check out the Refugium languages.
So here's what I've learned from Conlang Critic. You can't have voiced stop consonants, because some languages don't have those. And you can't have /p/, because that's not in Arabic. You must only have the vowels /i/, /a/, and /u/. The only sibilant that you can have is /s/. You can't have v, because it's not in Chinese. For that matter, not all languages have f, either. You can't have /r/ because many languages pronounce that differently, and you can't have /l/ because Japanese might think that it's an r. You can't have /j/ or /w/, because people might confuse those for /i/ and /u/. There shouldn't be any phonemic distinction between nasals, so /n/ should be allophonic with /m/. So your consonant inventory is basically /m, t, s, k/, and the vowels are [i, a, u]. Furthermore, you can't have anything more complicated than a CV syllable structure, there shouldn't be any stress, vowel length, or tones, and since no two words can sound too similar in order to avoid confusion, this ideal conlang will have only around 50 words. I did some quick math using CVCVN and CVN word combinations, and figured that 3x3x3x3 is 90 word combinations, in order to avoid similar-sounding words, we could reduce that to around 45 words. There might be a few more single-vowel grammar-related words that can be thrown in-between the ending nasals and the starting consonants of the following word in order to give the root vocabulary consistent meaning, so one can distinguish when a word is being used an an adjective and when one is being used as a verb.
three vowels? what about speakers of two vowel languages?
the moral of the story is that you shouldn't ever try to make an international language because it's impossible to make it good
Conlang Critic I would like to see your attempt. But I'm happy just watching your videos!
No, it has to be toki pona! if it is, then it's flawless in every way! If not, IT'S FUCKING TRASH.
Or we could make one and people just have to deal with any features that aren't a part of their language
I disagree, jan Misali. One day it will be possible when we invent direct digital transfer of thought and experience.
For some reason the "Jack 'Glotal Approximant' Eisenmann" part always gets me
"Literally Everyone can pronounce it" *Makah and Mohawk laughing in the background*
You do realise the irony in what you commented though?
@@TheAngryPheonix yeah i know both of them have m in their names but that’s not important
I know, I suppose it’s more morbidly funny in a way that their exonyms are unpronounceable for them
I don't get it.
@@thebiggestcauldron There is no m in these languages.
"instead of being objectively bad, it's just SUBjectively bad"
Marry me
By the Primes that is the ultimate conlang burn! "It's like you're a programming language that murdered a natural language and is wearing its skin" Sorry I just laughed at that one too much XD
It made me smile, too. :P Though you can't really use programming language for reasonable conversations. Just can't. Not in the least because lowerCamelCase and snake_case are not designed to be pronounced. But primarily because those are usually quite mathematical in nature and developed to easily describe relations, sets, operations over set. Human concepts like "tower" or "house" or "dog" as lexical units usually do not concern designers of those languages. But programming languages are usually useful and readable. Zese? It's not for programming. No. No.
@@chalcedonycoral1943 Speaking as a programmer with a passing interest in conlanging, the main issue with trying to use most programming languages "naturally" is that they only have imperative grammar for simple statements, but can also have arbitrarily complex dependent clauses, and the entire concept of flow control just doesn't map to natural languages. That issue is a real important one. Programming languages express multiple possible information paths in parallel. Obviously the text lists out the options sequentially, but the concept is that they're all in the same position. A natural language is more likely to express the 'happy path', what we expect to happen, linearly and then express alternatives and exceptions that might occur along the way afterwards. Repetition with modified context is even weirder.
@@timh.6872 Do you know if anyone has tried making a conlang with functional programming -- rather than imperative -- as a base?
It might be counterintuitive to speak, but it should be able to convey a full range of ideas.
3:51
The fact that a third person pronoun in Zese means "milk" in my native language make me wheeze
You speak Malay?
@@spalsh6501 Indonesian
I would ssay susu is piss (not kiddiŋ fr fr no cap [Hindi])
@@Indian_Gamer_PSS Just imagine being referred to with "piss" as your pronouns.
Certainly awkward.
3:31 ALSO COMPLETELY ABSENT! THERE JUST ARENT ANY!
While no language completely lacks third person pronouns, there are some that combine them with demonstratives.
i kinda love the energy jack brings to his stuff
a secret gramatical feature that's just "and" but less efficient is such a concept
Literally everything you said about Zese made sense to me, so from my perspective this is neat little conlang. I really like the the brackets and parentheses actually being a part of the grammar and with some time a practice I do believe one could speak and understand it with virtually no problems. HOWEVER: I do believe what could make this conlang better in an oral sense would be to add so sound difference when speaking to indicate word isolations in a spoken sense, since reading is different from writing.
Oh. I thought it was pronounced /zi:z/
Holy shit this language is bad I was not prepared for this
Mark Mayonnaise Same, I'm trapped in the mindset of an Englishman 😃
Good. That's how it is pronounced by English phonetic rules.
Really guys? It's because of the -ese suffix that denotes a language in English, and the fact that I'm still reeling from bad languages (often anglocentric as well) in this series. So yeah, it seems possible that some idiot would come up with (/zi:z/ or /zɛ.'di:z/) as a language name. Maybe I deserve it for my own cynicism, but lay off you antagonizing fucks!
/zi:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::z/
@@parthiancapitalist2733 what's wrong about english? seems kinda discriminatory to me.
Please review the language lincos. The one by a scientist, made to talk with hypothetical aliens we may encounter.
just updated the Big List
Ah another conlang critic episode, i cant wait for my favorite part! I love the /m/ sound! This is so exciting!
Literally just discovered your channel - 's great! It's nice to find someone else out there I can agree with about conlangs. :Þ
This is the first video of yours I've seen. I love it, and I think I just gained a new hobby.
I noticed that Lojban, which also has potential for complicated nested bracketing is considerably higher on the list. I'm curious if the way Lojban did it is more intuitive to learners. For example, I believe that Lojban has various types of bracket particles-perhaps this makes it easier for the listener to find their way back to the right clause? Also, I think that some brackets are optional and that there are simpler, non-bracketing alternatives-does this simplify the sentence structure or complicates it?
I'd love to hear the public opinion on this. And please correct any of my misconceptions, if there are any Lojbanists reading.
I have the book on Lojban. It definitely isn't that complicated, due to the way that bridi are structured. There's already a ton of lexical meaning attached to word order, and I interpret the "bracketing" as a form of preposition. It sounds natural enough.
Lojban is way, way, way more intuitive. It suffers as a conlang from some poor reference grammars that fail at explaining the rules intuitively but once you look at examples, it's not hard.
I hate overused memes, but that "never clicked off of porn" one applies really well here.
…At least there was progress since Vötgil?
Goodness you panned it lmao I was not ready for the searing sass of this video but it was great! :D
I think this is one of the best episodes yet
Ö a new Conlang Critic video mnyih
Honestly if i tried to make a language I'd probably end up with one slightly inspired by programming languages too (i mean programming is literally what inspired me to put expanded thoughts in brackets like this)
i love that i can hear you trying not to laugh in the beginning
Wow that was unexpectedly harsh. Only having seen a few conlang critic videos before, this caught me by surprise.
He always try to simplify and always ends up making it harder lol
/b/, /d/ /g/ and /z/ still common/easy. What made me comment was, mainly, Zese's words, that's not simple at all. It's like make a alphabet like this: ɭ, ʃ, ɫ, ʄ, ʅ, ɿ, ʆ, ʈ, ʇ.
It's All right lol I didn't thought that much when I writed the comment, it's my fault you misunderstood, I expressed myself poorly :s
@@nej3157 "ch" is nowhere to be seen
awesome vid hbm - keep up the good work!
i'm really sorry about all this but to be perfectly honest with you i'm not entirely sure of the situation. hbm isnt available right now but i'll try to get you in touch with all the mods and stuff
hi tom! you were banned from my discord server because you kept being mean to xavo, one of our mods. you were told to stop and you didn't, so you were banned.
Is this loss?
Yea
Oh my freaking goodness how did I miss that
So it's like a nonsensical Lojban mixed with the dumbassery of Vötgil? How exactly did this not get ranked lower than Vötgil? I guess the writing system since it actually looks aesthetically pleasing.
Pretty much, but the writing system, kida I personally found discomforting kuda, isn't that pleasing
Alex Hayes I think the writing system is the type that you get used to quickly and read with an ease. I do think it's a plus, although I'm personally not sure if I like it.
El. Psy. Congroo.
I do like how it looks, but it seems quite easy for it all to just blur together and lose coherency.
El... Psy... Kangaroo?
Conger.
Conger eel.
Connie the Contortionist Conlanging Conger Eel.
At least it doesn't spell the velar nasal consonant as "q" for some goddamn reason. For that alone it's better than Vötgil.
1:32 They are in between slashes, so it's a broad transcription, maybe even a phonemic one.
In a conlang trying to adopt a minimalistic sense, why include G and K as two of the very few consonants? In Korean there is a sound that's between them and in German I've heard people mix them up when talking about names or a new word. I certainly have. Then again, I'm not sure I'd be any better in composing the sound inventory.
0:09 ...All toasters toast toast?
Jack Eisenmann is officially the nickelback of conlangers XD
What's with Jack Eisenman needing some sort of gimmick for word-structure? VötGil has 3 letter words and Zese has 4 letter words. What's the point!?
He wants to eradicate any chances of the language being good.
I want a language composed entirely of 4-letter words in the _other_ sense...
@@NathanTAK conlang made of swear words XD
@@NathanTAK Now that _would_ be interesting...
I mean, not literal 4 letter words, but a language where the entire vocabulary can be regarded as insults...
You cannot talk to another person in that language without insulting them, yourself, or someone else...
@@NathanTAK : There's an esoteric programming language called Fuckfuck that does that.
Regarding the "programming language wearing a natural language's skin" thing,
What do you think about the idea of languages that are meant to express the same things as natural languages, except that they are designed to be only used using a computer, and e.g. don't have a specified pronunciation, or a representation other than as a sequence of bytes?
An idea in my head that I haven't worked out details of, is, starting with semantics primes, and a grammar, and then having things be reduced to sha2 hashes.
So, to coin a "word", you would just define it, and then take the hash of the definition in a recursive way, with the subtrees in the definition being hashed first.
I mean, you could take off the 3rd person prouns if you had some wierd kind off determinants (this, those, that, etc.), just as in basque, but still, i get your point
2:48 I SEE DUDU AND PIPI!! *laughs hysterically*--
Confirmed; I have the mind of an 8-year old
There is a reason why "mama" or something like that is the most common word for mother: it is literally the first sound most babies make. That or "papa" or "baba", or some other labial consonant. Since mothers were the first person babies are likely to be with when they start speaking.
Anyway, if it is easy for even babies to say /m/, it is strange that a language would stopping using it all together.
zese is probably an inspiration for the orthography of my new conlang.
It would useful for us to see how each language that you review tries to explain an event/situation/action. The new sounds and visuals are interesting because of the novelty but I am more interested in how the conlang construction actually change the reality of the user.
"... you're a programming language that murdered a spoken language and is wearing its skin."
I lost it.
2:48 - me when I'm learning Japanese
Tbf, the english words are converted Into japanese format, where consonant is followed by a vowel and other consonant is either replaced (or modified with 2 moras)
Damn now I wanna steal that writing system for my own conlang
Hey, conlang critic, I just found your Chanel and I've been watching all your videos, and I have two requests:
1) Can you make a video on what you believe would help make a language able to be a interlang. I've been thinking about creating a new language, similar to lojban in some concepts, but also borrowing from other conlangs (only the best concepts) and then going through and personally working them out. I've been thinking about maybe something like a coding language in the concept simple elements, and no conjugations, etc. (I would also need to work on modal verbs and auxillary verbs quite a bit,) but I also like the lojban attitudinals, ambiguity, etc. Other ideas I have is just one element for the sentence that tells what noun/article is plural, so you don't need to change any sentence structure or word to show it, as well as gender neutral. I love the sapir-whorf hypothesis, and would love to language to be partly a philosophical language as well, to explain concepts that other languages just may not have. I would love if you could create a video to explain what you believe would be options/techniques to create a language that a majority of people would learn, without having to learn a new sound or two for most people, as well as grammar, vocab, and general concepts. As well as challenges a native speaker or someone raised in any language (and/or/vs a constructed language) would face on general matters discussed. Idk, maybe even throw in something like the learning time of lojban or other conlangs with natural languages, make the CER, common European reference, or something like that.
2) any idea on when your other other future videos will come out? I'm really looking forward to them now!
I am learning both French and Spanish, and hope you someday travel as a business and learn many more languages. Thanks in advance,
-a new subscriber-
hi julian!
1) maybe some day I'll do a series just giving general conlang advice. until then, I recommend The Art Of Language Invention by David Peterson (both the book and the youtube series) and the Sapaa Show.
2) the full plan for future episodes is available on the Big List, which is available to anyone who donates to patreon.com/hbmmaster
Thank you
I come back to ðis vid every once in a wile just to eksperience ðe absolute dig ðat iz "Jack 'Glottal Approximate' Eisenmann"
Toki pona still on top!
The whole spoken punctuation thing can sort of happen in natural languages as their word order changes, for example the negation particle 'ne' in French
"Well, you know what Zese..."
I fucking died.
ZESE FIRE, STARTING IN MY HEART!!
Zese
Jack Eisenman’s yielding his power and stepping away
Could youe do all of Pegakibo, Sese, and Zarafura?
You need to go over the language known as ng (but written with the eng symbol). It was created by Sarky Canadian and his friends, initially as a language for automata. However, there's also a human version! It's really interesting!
Nebiz-- navit Nebogekupuk.
How do you make an online guide to a conlang?
Pigu meaning arm and neck in Zese is slightly funny to me because 屁股 (pìgu) means butt in Mandarin. I'm sure this type of thing isn't avoidable - you can't avoid every combination that means something rude in any language - it's just slightly unfortunate.
1:09
As a Chinese, I don't understand why you said that there is no distinction between z and s in Mandarin. To me we have the distinction, so if you could explain the source?
the consonant transcribed with in Pinyin is pronounced /ts/, as opposed to /z/
@@HBMmaster aah, relating to the fact that there are no voiced consonants, only unaspirated unvoiced consonants in Mandarin Chinese right? Sorry for asking such a trivial question. And thank you for explaining it!
Third person pronouns aren't necessary, many languages are perfectly happy to just use the demonstratives (including for instance Hindi) - lacking both of these would make you start to wonder what was going on.
Some dialects of Spanish do distinguish between s and z (and c). In Castillian Spanish, "s" is pronounced like "s", "c" like "θ", and "z" like "ð"
No. Spanish /ð/ is spelled ⟨d⟩. You’re probably thinking of Leonese, which is a different language altogether.
That said, [ð] is an possible allophone of /θ/ before voiced consonants, so it may occur in words like _juzgar_ , _diezmo_ and _jazmín_ . It’s not really thought of as a ⟨d⟩ sound by Spanish speakers, however.
Are you going to critique any of the Tolkien conlangs in the future?
Hey Misali Have you considered doing the Languages from the Stargate franchise? If so Then lookup "Alteran" and "Goa'uld". I personally think the show is pretty good and the orthographys look decent but I would like to see what criticisms you can bestow upon them.
just updated the Big List
You should review Pandunia. From the little bit I've seen, it seems like the step in between Toki Pona, and Esperanto.
just updated the Big List
the script is actually cool I think
"Within a rounding error, LITERALLY EVERYONE CAN PRONOUNCE IT!"
I wanna see for how much longer will Vötgil be at the bottom
-"Did you know that [insert name here] doesn't find thing's phone?"
-"Oh, yeah, I think it's on thing's house, in the dining room, thing visited yesterday"
-"Oh damn, thank you, I'ma tell thing"
I just found out about this channel and I love it. I'd like you to do a show on ilaksh, the first conlang I fell in love with, and also No, the language created in the comments of this video, because we need a new bottom rung.
You mentioned in one of the videos about a language that explicitly states that it is open source that languages can't be copyrighted. This is not common knowledge, and the fact that John Quijada has a copyright symbol at the bottom of his page made me stop studying ilaksh after he took it down, and put me off of conlangs for quite a while afterwards.
I still have the glyphs and cartuche info hand copied in a notebook somewhere. I loved the crazy, but visually appealing writing system, and invented a fix for the cursive versions glaring flaw.
I mean, I've already done a video about Ithkuil, which is more or less the same language. (at least, the two languages share a wikipedia article)
also No isn't really a full language
Ithkuil is about as different from Ilaksh as lojban is from loglan... so you might have a point there, unless you count the writing systems. Ilaksh has one of the coolest looking native systems I've seen. One of the least intuitive to use as well.
Yeah, and I was mostly joking about No... mostly.
ok, well if they really are different enough I guess it's ok. just updated the Big List.
Here's an interesting conlang I found, it's based on pidgin language and is very simple. It's called neo patwa. So far as I find it, it's very intuitive compared to Esperanto and Toki Pona
I actually kinda like how awkward Jack's conlangs are. It works well as an engelang.
In my native language susu literally means urine.
Imagine calling everyone urine
A fellow Oriya person ?
@@saswatmishra6917 Bengali, close enough🙂
@@1lazuligaming58 I looked up what urine is in Bangla and Google translate said it was Pasraba but I guess that's not accurate
@@saswatmishra6917 Well, I wouldn't say it's wrong. Bout terms are correct, though the former is more informal, I guess?
@@1lazuligaming58 Yeah that makes sense. Kinda like how pee is informal while urine is formal
5:00 I'm fairly sure this is done in another conlang which happens to be very dear to your heart
Just as a suggestion try Ælis once you run out of languages. You can also try IS. It is one of my favorite writing systems and grammar in a conlang
just updated the Big List
I can’t wait till folkspraak for the new big list.
2:43 Goku
Thank you for the video. I'd like to see an episode about Pandunia and Arwelo :-)
just updated the Big List
As someone who speak Bengali myself (well, a dialect of it anyway), we do have Z and S as 2 distinct sounds. Although I couldnt name a word with both. Its J and Z that are more commonly swapped, not S and Z.
1:10 Spanish DOES differenciate between Z and S, it's just two phenomenons called seseo and ceceo, seseo is when both Z and S are pronounced like S and ceceo the same thing bith with Z, but rule Spanish differenciates between them.
Do Elvish/Sindarin next
Could you review actual languages too?
Hey guys so we’re just supposed to ignore the fact that this is the number one video result when you search “best conlang”?
zese look's like "빠"
I love that
Literally the 1st anniversary of Vötgil
Could you do Ta'agra?
this was made on my bday
Only 200 words and one of them is one of the most well-known american racial epithets
"Instead of being objectively bad it's just subjectively bad"
I kinda like the language, a bit, a tiny bit. It needs some cleaning up to do. But I think it has potential.