i like that this video has just like fire noises in the back. it would feel empty without some noise, but music can be distracting in vids like this. that's a really creative but sick strategy to avoid both of those
Finally someone who's adventurous! A lot of conlangers keep telling me that I should 'follow the rules', but I think it's mutch more interesting play with your point 8. I've made a conlang family where most voices are marked using noun cases, and this gave rise to really interesting features, like the genitive marking causative or a fully ergative language using a hybrid passive voice. It probably doesn't make sense in a natlang, but in my languages, it does.
@@deepsolar169 Same. If you find something unusual, even unheard of, it doesn't mean it's bad. It may be a red flag that you've misunderstood, so just check for that. But you can still use that feature, as long as you have a good reason/explanation for why it exists in your language. Trust me, languages do some pretty strange things.
9 is the most underrated wisdom in conlanging. I would also add as a caveat to engaging with other conlangers, shut out the "naturalists" who come at you demanding first principles explanations for all the quirky bits of your lang or judge a lang only by how natural they perceive it to be. One: you can find an ANADEW. Two: most weirdness in language can only be hypothetically explained and only so much. Three: it is your art.
Even as a fan of naturalism I agree. Ultimately this is art-craft and what makes you happy is cool. What manages to make others happy is even cooler. I like how DJP talks about naturalism: he likes it personally, and he thinks it's a useful means to other ends, just like how art school will tell you to study nature and realistic styles of drawing it. So that's the angle from which I try to approach conlangs. "X is weird vs natlangs; I think / don't think it works if your goal is Y." If someone is using appeals to nature (or linguistic theory) as a tool for proving how much smarter they are, they really need to take a time out.
Fourth:Just because a feature isnt attested in a known natlang doesnt mean its impossible. And in the conlangs universe what is a rare feature in our universe could be common their. Like their version of euroversals.
I can't conlaŋ, because I set too hiɡh standards for myself. I Usually ɡet lost early on because I set out to do somethiŋ, which I can't, and when I try somethiŋ simpler, I don't like it. Is there any solutionʔ
It is a vague question. I suppose you are struggling with the struggle all artists face, that being that you are unable to completely and truly express their ideas with the means you have. I have a good hunch that you not a master linguistics professor, and so therefore i believe that a way you can fix this is by learning more, reading papers on certain linguistic aspects and build on your knowledge. That is the only way one can remedy this problem in my opinion. To paint better, an artist must paint more and practise their craft. To compose music better, a composer must learn the theory behind music, and compose music as well. So the advice i would offer you would be that you need to both set out and learn more, and also learn to be dissatisfied with your creations for a while. You will never get it the first try. I mean, I've barely started my conlang purely because I've not the linguistics knowledge to pull of what I want to pull of yet. I'm still building the foundations.
Make something bad on purpose, that is funny to you. That way you can't fail, but you get good practice in. I'm a perfectionist so I do this occasionally to loosen up. When I was afraid to play music, I joined a noise band. When I was afraid to write, I made parody crossover fanfiction. When I was intimidated by conlanging, I made Bubba, which is a clong designed after English nonsense words. After making sentences like "tibby gooble hatty bobble", making a more serious clong seems way easier. And nowadays, I am hippie-like in my freedom of expression and creation. So my advice is good. Be bad on purpose, have fun. It's a playground, not a medical procedure. Loosen up so you can actually get the groundwork and mindset.
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice Thanks. But I may have found a method, that allow me to make natlangs without it being too heavy. I am at the moment try to use the method.
For 10, I'm working on a project now where I recently figured out that identical long vowels can be next to each other, so words like [a.e:'e:] can exist. And I even stated clearly that those vowels *must* be pronounced separately, just like if they were short vowels next to each other (which happens a lot as well). I absolutely love the phonaesthetics that those sequences have and I love that it was an accident as well.
I'm having so much fun messing around with conlagging even though I have no idea what I'm doing :D Thanks for the awesome video! Also: Ichunama means I am swimming in my current conlag.
You mentioning accidents reminds me of the 2 separate times i accidentally made Languages ergative. The first was Chnjarah, where i collapsed a classifier system down into animate and inanimate, and so each case took that marking. The vast majority however merged their animate and inanimate form, except i believe the core role markers, and so i leaned into it and made a distinct NOM/ERG split. It was very fun. Second time was Wo:gʷədʷəħ, where the oldest tense system we planned worked in a way that you needed to make tense into a relative clause and make some kind of context in the perfective for the main clause it was a part of, and it happened that the relative clause was marked on the noun, and ended up looking very ergative. We dismantled that because one of our goals was a nominative language, as most other Ije langs were ergative and we wanted to change it up
Well, I mostly use the most unique sounds of all languages I fluently know, that being German, French and English. In German you have the more or less unusual sound for English speakers R and Ch. While in French you have the nasales, like in en, and in English the English R, or th :)), so I just take things out of somewhat related, but still distinctive languages
8:21 I would *love* to play with this program of yours, for I sometimes lack imagimation and intelligence (< inter- ligentia, tying things together) in this area.
Nice etymology. The 'program' isn't too complicated, and infinitely customisable. 4x columns, and then 4x cells somewhere for the output. Column 1 contains the 'governance' terms. Column 2 contains " =RAND() ", and is the same number of cells as Column 1. Column 3 contains the 'feature' terms. And column 4 contains " =RAND() " as well, and likewise is the same number of cells as Column 3. But Column 1 and Column 3 do not need to be the same number of cells. For the output, Cell 1 has " What if " inside it. Cell 2 is probs best explained with an example. My Cell 2 contains " =INDEX($A$14:$A$27,RANK(B14,$B$14:$B$27)) ", where cells A14-A27 is Column 1, B14-B27 is Column 2, and B14 is the top cell of Column 2. Cell 3 has " was/were governed by " inside it. Cell 4 is like Cell 2, but the ranges are for Column 3 and Column 4. By clicking into any blank cell outside the arrangement and putting in a number, the whole system should rejig and the 'output cells' spit out a sentence like " What if. valence operations. was/were governed by. reduplication. " I hope this helps!
@@victorstroganov8135 No, I just thought up a list myself. It is as follows, but is by no means exhaustive. Governance: definiteness/ salience, tense, noun role, mood, valence operations, noun role-vb agreement, noun class - vb agreement, number, aspect, volition, evidentiality, animacy, diminutive/ augmentative, clusivity. Features: word order, noun(phrase) affix/case, adposition/ particle/ article, verb affix/declension, auxiliary, analytical adjunct, (separate) lexical determination, vowel mutation, consonant mutation, vowel harmony, consonant harmony, nothing, an inherent quality, reduplication, serialisation, noun-incorporation. If you think of any others, by all means let me know!
I would reccomend learning gaeilge (irish) it's a very different language and unique and is slept on a lot. I speak it almost fluently and is just a cool language
I successfully created my own conlang for my diary book I got an inspiration from Kanji, but i only use the Pictograms which tell what the object supposed to looked like I manage to create basic things for everyday life, but still developing with more Unlike Kanji that only covered small percentage of Pictograms, i'll be using pictograms to it's fullest
These are some really helpful tips for Me to refer back to. I started on a Draconic Type conlang for a Story I made a few years ago and have only recently started making the minor changes that would fit My goals. What I plan on doing is actually structuring it in a way that has a source form, then splits depending on where the speakers are in the Story's world, just like a Natlang in the real world. I've occasionally checked back on conlang related stuff, which helps refresh My thinking process. This give Me the idea of applying a Logographic format as a way of better representing My conlang. I decided it would be a good idea to focus on it more, so I can get more of the phonetic structure built how I like, while also making sure it's easy to learn, as well as understandable. I'm still going between if I want it to be simple, or mildly challenging. The Languages I want to reference from are; German, Spanish, French, and maybe a little bit of Italian, Japanese, Korean, some Russian, and Arabic with Hebrew. Always fun just to explore other Languages to see how and why they ended up the way they are now. Definitely important to not only get an idea of the Language's Grammar, but also how it sounds. Great video! :D
this should be required viewing for anyone wanting to start a conlang, keep up the PHENOMENAL work my guy!! :) edit: the cat icon when u said lasagna absolutely sent me lmao
This really is a brilliant video that makes very important points about the process of conlanging. Thank you for making it. Also, when talking about your program that pairs a feature and a type of governance, you actually reminded me of an idea I once had that I just never considered to be "naturalistic enough" to use in a conlang, so I scrapped it and forgot about it (the one where you have particles to mark number, and, in my idea, also person). So thank you for encouraging me (and probably others) to not stress about implementing features that work exactly the way they do in a natlang, and to have more faith in one's ideas. Edit regarding the idea: Because what I described are just pronouns, I wanted to elaborate a bit. My idea was fusing (or agglutinating, if you will) these pronouns (or particles) into forms that incorporate the subject and the direct object (if the alignment is NOM-ACC) of the sentence. So no person (and possibly number) marking on anything than those pronoun fusions. They could be mandatory in any sentence that has a subject and a direct object and would probably require a strict word order (if not combined with an extensive gender/noun class system that also gets reflected in the pronoun fusions).
Could you make a video about organizing a lexicon? Maybe you could show us one of your conlangs' lexicon and explain how to categorize certain things like phonetic transcriptions of the words and the history of the sound changes for the conlang. Just an idea.
I have ambitions to create a language by reconciling astrological principles with parts of speech. I have a dictionary of 420 root words to work with so far, but I have yet to wrap my peanut around planetary interactions and thus the precise grammar. Eventually, it will be spoken by a fictional religious order in the fantasy novel I have ambitions to write, too.
"Get intimate with a natlang or two" Okay thanks for the tip, learning my 4th one (I know Norwegian and French) Not that I really use my knowledge of those languages for my conlang, because I want it to look like it's not a human Lang
Thank you for the video💕 I am working on my conlang (Sonushok) Des vidyo'isi grehet. Shekur doro des vidyo. Stayifes'era oper (The video is great. Thanks for the video, Keep it up)
Thanks for great advices! I'm a bit of a lazy conlang maker myself, and although my language is a mess(I know just a couple things about Slavic, Latin, Germanic, Georgian and Iranian languages, and am too lazy and busy to seriously get into a lot of things), I'm hopefully gonna improve something now. Speaking of phonotactics and inventories, why not combine them, so that the synonymous words would sound similarly yet be different? I found this useful because once you write enough of your language, it becomes insanely hard to study.
When I first saw translate, the first thought that comes to my mind was bee movie but that's kinda too overwhelming for a not-totally-fleshed-out-language.
My apologies. I had liked this video in the middle but given your direction at the end, I've now removed the like. Sorry for any offence this may have caused.
been evolving a conlang for the past 6 or 7 years. started when i tried to learn German, Russian and Spanish all at once when i was 14. Ended up mixing them all and it snowballed from there. The evolutions happen based on small things i think would improve communication between two hypothetical native speakers of my conlang. for example: the Old word for "strength" was "Rëijdzhijgaä" and that, over 6 or 7 years, is now "Rëijž". The "-igaä" ending is dropped and "dzh" is condensed to "ž". The writing of the word shortened drastically, thus saving time and space when writing, and it's vocally now 1 syllable rather than 3. Another more recent example is the condensing of "aä, uü, oö" to "ă, ū, ō", which may not seem like much but shortens texts drastically. It helps to create a conworld for your conlang and a confolk who speak it. Create their landscape, geology, political structures, mythology, food, etc. and then make them a language. this gives a great base for what will be important to the speakers and therefore a great base for creating root words and structure. for example, in my conlang, verbs are conjugated based on three temporal tenses: past, current, future. Nouns have no conjugation and gender doesn't factor. This is because the confolk who speak it revere a Time goddess as the highest and so prioritize time when talking about anything whatsoever.
I'm having trouble finding summary info about the (unusual to me aspects of) grammar of other languages, aside from media designed to actually teach me the entire language.
It's probably best to try and fine grammars of the language that have been written by linguisticians who are only attempting to describe what's there, as opposed to resources trying to teach you the language. Then, look in the index to see which section you'd like to read about (as these sorts of grammars tend to be very neatly organised). I hope this helps! :)
@@shannonparkhill5557 Might be worthwhile joining the r/conlangs discord server, and then ask "Does anyone have a PDF of a grammar of Mohawk?" or whatever language you're looking for, as someone usually does!
Further point regarding Point 2 : if you want to make a conlang with noun incorporation, go dabble in a natlang that uses it, for example. Learn a language that helps you do what you want to do. Also learn toki pona (see ua-cam.com/video/TejgbJzaHK0/v-deo.html for why). But if you want to create an engilang, for example, then go dabble in another engilang. Do stuff that helps you.
FYI, the example at 5:16, the sentence contains "annahu bidūni dhi'nin" ("that he [who is] without sin"-note that "sin" is "dhinb", not "dhi'n") but the gloss doesn't include it: "anna-hu bi-dūn-i dhinb-i-n" (COMP-3SG COM-lack-GEN sin-GEN-NDEF).
I can definitely confirm point 2. You learn many interesting features that make a language more expressive and you see what is good/bad/illogical in your native language, that you'd better not put into your conlang. I found an interesting link between language and culture/politics when learning Russian. In Russian you say "I have an apple" like this: "у меня есть яблоко" [U menya yest yabloko]. This literally means "At me is/(exists) an apple" This is because the communists have been against private property and injected the idea that it is morally reprehensible to use the verb "have" into the Zeitgeist of the early 20th century Russian. In a collectivist country everything is collective property. The apple is a collective good, it belongs to the collective and that's why you as an individual cannot have it, but if you hold an apple in your hands, the apple is at you. An individualist culture uses the verb "have" even to form the perfect tense, to accentuate the self-ownership of the individuals own actions.
It's wrong to think that language features should be fundamentally linked to politics and history of culture. Do better research on history of russian language. Bolsheviks weren't against using the word "иметь" in first-person verbs, russian simply has another way to say the same stuff, and it is simply considered more elegant and doesn't have a double meaning -And if instead of saying "У меня есть дочь" you will try to say "Я имею дочь", it can be understood to as "I am fucking my daughter". not kidding-
Nice video. I find myself getting lost in phonology and phonotactics. I haven't spent much time on grammar or even creating words. In fairness to myself, my language is deceptively complex phonetically, and I'm evolving it over the course of 3000 years. I also have little time to spend on it. I am worried that it "sounds Chinese" even though it doesn't have the same phonetic inventory. It is tonal and prefers monosyllables. And, when I get around to the writing, it will have phonetosemantic script.
Your reverse psychology worked on me, although I would have subscribed anyway. This video is about ten times better than others attempting the same thing by the way.
what a good video ^-^ really helpful when stuck!! i restarted and overhauled my language 8 times... if i knew all of this 3 years ago id have spared myself a lot of trouble haha
1:36 You ignore the fact that some of us don't have the luck to have the ability to do this. You might just as well tell us to run a marathon in 3 hours, or get a PhD.
Grand geniues could know each other because they were geniuses a priori, or perhaps they got the spotlight because they made connections of genius, not because of merit.
I love learning vastly different languages, like Manchu, Inuktitut, Basque, Korean, Tibetan, Xhosa (im not fluent in any but ive dabbled in them) to learn about how other languages process info. Languages too similar feel like i am learning the same language 2x, just with variation. But you do you
@@jankima8646 its because of looking like you are learning the same lenguage x2 that i dont wanna learn spanish and italian german its far enoght from english to not be understanable same with french from portuguese
@@JohnDoe-ye6sh ok so what my name mean "n"its just a quick way of saying nao it isnt formal its just used on the internet and seila mean i dont know it is used alot but isnt formal spech
My mother tongue is Punjabi.. second mother tongue is Urdu then I learnt English in School and know some arabic currently learning Turkish while creating a conlang😂
Alright, I guess I will never be a "true" conlanger, since I barely ever develop phonotactics and never understood why I should. I have my inventory, I know how the pronounciation changes depending on the circumstances, but I don't know why I should label it CV, VCV, CCV or anything like that. To me it would only make sense to think about it once I'm 'done' creating a very large vocabulary, because the syllable structure doesn't mean anything prescriptive but is descriptive to me.
phonotactics ain't just that, it's generally the rules around how you arrange your letters/phonemes. Like how in English you can't have multiple approximants à la suite (/blju/ => /blu/, /bæɹl/ => /bæɹəl/) or how you can't start a word with /kn/ (which is why kn is pronounced /n/ instead). It generally forges a "feel" for your language. [Does this specific word "sound" yourlanguage-y?] is what it answers. The (C⁴)V(C⁴) is the meaningless part of the iceberg.
This strategy is flawed, because there is such a beautiful variety in Earth's languages that you are almost certain to 'borrow' a feature whether you know it or not! :) Plus, if you learn something, then you can be conscious of things you'd like to avoid.
How do you build up your dictionaries? What groups do you divide words into? I have tried making a lot but I just find that they get too long and it takes long time to find the right group of words, do you have any tips on how to make a good one?
I'm copying this reply from an older comment asking the same thing :) [The list] is as follows, but is by no means exhaustive. Governance: definiteness/ salience, tense, noun role, mood, valence operations, noun role-vb agreement, noun class - vb agreement, number, aspect, volition, evidentiality, animacy, diminutive/ augmentative, clusivity. Features: word order, noun(phrase) affix/case, adposition/ particle/ article, verb affix/declension, auxiliary, analytical adjunct, (separate) lexical determination, vowel mutation, consonant mutation, vowel harmony, consonant harmony, nothing, an inherent quality, reduplication, serialisation, noun-incorporation. If you think of any others, by all means let me know!
@@Lichenthefictioneer Thank you very much for having taken that time ! And thanks to the almighty Algorithm for having pointed me to you, I shall thus indulge in your channel.
@@Lichenthefictioneer oh, okay. the reason most people pronounce /tr/ as [tʃɹ̠] (i’m not doing the tiebars for the affricates because they’re inconvenient to type) is because it’s postalveolar. when it’s pronounced as an alveolar approximant, /tr/ is pronounced [tsɹ]. theoretically, when it’s pronounced with a retroflex approximant, shouldn’t /tr/ be pronounced [ʈʂɻ]?
Yeah, the audio there is a bit rushed :P It's the Leipzig Glossing rules. The rules: www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php The abbreviations: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glossing_abbreviations
Day 74 of building my conlang's lexicon: I am running out of space on my goldfish.
no replies after 2 years and 371 likes? let me change that
@@dracodistortion9447why
only 74 days in?
Bro is gonna crash his pc and start over
dear god
"So unthreatening I've written it in comic sans"
>Laughs in Undertale
i like that this video has just like fire noises in the back. it would feel empty without some noise, but music can be distracting in vids like this. that's a really creative but sick strategy to avoid both of those
I find it annoying and distracting. And I thought it was just clicking. But understood as fire noises don't make them any less so.
@@metsfan1873 everyone enjoys different things
sadly agree@@metsfan1873
Finally someone who's adventurous! A lot of conlangers keep telling me that I should 'follow the rules', but I think it's mutch more interesting play with your point 8. I've made a conlang family where most voices are marked using noun cases, and this gave rise to really interesting features, like the genitive marking causative or a fully ergative language using a hybrid passive voice. It probably doesn't make sense in a natlang, but in my languages, it does.
I like the idea of, "Just because it hasn't happened, doesn't mean it won't happen."
@@deepsolar169 Same. If you find something unusual, even unheard of, it doesn't mean it's bad. It may be a red flag that you've misunderstood, so just check for that. But you can still use that feature, as long as you have a good reason/explanation for why it exists in your language. Trust me, languages do some pretty strange things.
taking a break from political youtube to watch linguistics youtube and i got another person telling me to read theory...
Are you a communist?
why are so many conlangers leftists?
@@joannasthings probably not, leftists are just more prevanlent online. - extreme left
@@joannasthings im a conlanger. im not leftist. im not rightist. i just hate politics and everyone involved with it.
@@napabilirim ah. so you’re apolitical.
9 is the most underrated wisdom in conlanging. I would also add as a caveat to engaging with other conlangers, shut out the "naturalists" who come at you demanding first principles explanations for all the quirky bits of your lang or judge a lang only by how natural they perceive it to be. One: you can find an ANADEW. Two: most weirdness in language can only be hypothetically explained and only so much. Three: it is your art.
Even as a fan of naturalism I agree.
Ultimately this is art-craft and what makes you happy is cool. What manages to make others happy is even cooler.
I like how DJP talks about naturalism: he likes it personally, and he thinks it's a useful means to other ends, just like how art school will tell you to study nature and realistic styles of drawing it.
So that's the angle from which I try to approach conlangs. "X is weird vs natlangs; I think / don't think it works if your goal is Y."
If someone is using appeals to nature (or linguistic theory) as a tool for proving how much smarter they are, they really need to take a time out.
Fourth:Just because a feature isnt attested in a known natlang doesnt mean its impossible. And in the conlangs universe what is a rare feature in our universe could be common their. Like their version of euroversals.
I can't conlaŋ, because I set too hiɡh standards for myself. I Usually ɡet lost early on because I set out to do somethiŋ, which I can't, and when I try somethiŋ simpler, I don't like it. Is there any solutionʔ
It is a vague question. I suppose you are struggling with the struggle all artists face, that being that you are unable to completely and truly express their ideas with the means you have. I have a good hunch that you not a master linguistics professor, and so therefore i believe that a way you can fix this is by learning more, reading papers on certain linguistic aspects and build on your knowledge. That is the only way one can remedy this problem in my opinion. To paint better, an artist must paint more and practise their craft. To compose music better, a composer must learn the theory behind music, and compose music as well. So the advice i would offer you would be that you need to both set out and learn more, and also learn to be dissatisfied with your creations for a while. You will never get it the first try.
I mean, I've barely started my conlang purely because I've not the linguistics knowledge to pull of what I want to pull of yet. I'm still building the foundations.
Make something bad on purpose, that is funny to you. That way you can't fail, but you get good practice in. I'm a perfectionist so I do this occasionally to loosen up. When I was afraid to play music, I joined a noise band. When I was afraid to write, I made parody crossover fanfiction. When I was intimidated by conlanging, I made Bubba, which is a clong designed after English nonsense words. After making sentences like "tibby gooble hatty bobble", making a more serious clong seems way easier.
And nowadays, I am hippie-like in my freedom of expression and creation. So my advice is good.
Be bad on purpose, have fun. It's a playground, not a medical procedure. Loosen up so you can actually get the groundwork and mindset.
@@Queer_Nerd_For_Human_Justice Thanks. But I may have found a method, that allow me to make natlangs without it being too heavy. I am at the moment try to use the method.
@@Turachkh Okay, whatever works for you is the best method :)
@@Turachkh, I'm struggliŋ with the same thiŋ, would you be williŋ to share that method?
"write a book"
"unite humanity"
"summon eldritch horrors"
"whatever it may be"
this is a high quality video. I enjoyed it.
Have faith in Jesus to be saved, turn from your old ways and live life for God who created you, God bless! Toki Pona
@@thetornadocrusader968 I have actually spoken to Jesus about this and he thinks I should continue to be jewish
Dammit, I clicked like the very moment that you said "Don't like". Hope you're not angry...
For 10, I'm working on a project now where I recently figured out that identical long vowels can be next to each other, so words like [a.e:'e:] can exist. And I even stated clearly that those vowels *must* be pronounced separately, just like if they were short vowels next to each other (which happens a lot as well). I absolutely love the phonaesthetics that those sequences have and I love that it was an accident as well.
I WILL pronounce this /aje:/ and there is NOTHING you can do about it
I'm having so much fun messing around with conlagging even though I have no idea what I'm doing :D
Thanks for the awesome video!
Also: Ichunama means I am swimming in my current conlag.
I love playing with the phonology, but I always get bored doing syntax/grammar. Still haven't finished a single conlang.
You mentioning accidents reminds me of the 2 separate times i accidentally made Languages ergative. The first was Chnjarah, where i collapsed a classifier system down into animate and inanimate, and so each case took that marking. The vast majority however merged their animate and inanimate form, except i believe the core role markers, and so i leaned into it and made a distinct NOM/ERG split. It was very fun.
Second time was Wo:gʷədʷəħ, where the oldest tense system we planned worked in a way that you needed to make tense into a relative clause and make some kind of context in the perfective for the main clause it was a part of, and it happened that the relative clause was marked on the noun, and ended up looking very ergative. We dismantled that because one of our goals was a nominative language, as most other Ije langs were ergative and we wanted to change it up
It's the happiest little accident that I've heard of
Also, don't forget to avoid every sound present in English so you don't get accused of being "too English-y".
FR
Well, I mostly use the most unique sounds of all languages I fluently know, that being German, French and English. In German you have the more or less unusual sound for English speakers R and Ch. While in French you have the nasales, like in en, and in English the English R, or th :)), so I just take things out of somewhat related, but still distinctive languages
I have a half p and half L sound in my conlang but I don’t know how to represent how to pronounce it on UA-cam
You pronounce it by putting your upper part of the tongue against your lips
so a labiodental plosive of sorts@@VeryCoolPhoenix ?
8:21 I would *love* to play with this program of yours, for I sometimes lack imagimation and intelligence (< inter- ligentia, tying things together) in this area.
Nice etymology. The 'program' isn't too complicated, and infinitely customisable. 4x columns, and then 4x cells somewhere for the output. Column 1 contains the 'governance' terms. Column 2 contains " =RAND() ", and is the same number of cells as Column 1. Column 3 contains the 'feature' terms. And column 4 contains " =RAND() " as well, and likewise is the same number of cells as Column 3. But Column 1 and Column 3 do not need to be the same number of cells.
For the output, Cell 1 has " What if " inside it. Cell 2 is probs best explained with an example. My Cell 2 contains " =INDEX($A$14:$A$27,RANK(B14,$B$14:$B$27)) ", where cells A14-A27 is Column 1, B14-B27 is Column 2, and B14 is the top cell of Column 2. Cell 3 has " was/were governed by " inside it. Cell 4 is like Cell 2, but the ranges are for Column 3 and Column 4.
By clicking into any blank cell outside the arrangement and putting in a number, the whole system should rejig and the 'output cells' spit out a sentence like " What if. valence operations. was/were governed by. reduplication. " I hope this helps!
Lichen Is there any list for different features and governances? Thanks
@@victorstroganov8135 No, I just thought up a list myself. It is as follows, but is by no means exhaustive. Governance: definiteness/ salience, tense, noun role, mood, valence operations, noun role-vb agreement, noun class - vb agreement, number, aspect, volition, evidentiality, animacy, diminutive/ augmentative, clusivity. Features: word order, noun(phrase) affix/case, adposition/ particle/ article, verb affix/declension, auxiliary, analytical adjunct, (separate) lexical determination, vowel mutation, consonant mutation, vowel harmony, consonant harmony, nothing, an inherent quality, reduplication, serialisation, noun-incorporation. If you think of any others, by all means let me know!
I would reccomend learning gaeilge (irish) it's a very different language and unique and is slept on a lot. I speak it almost fluently and is just a cool language
Tá ar ndóigh! Ní leor teanga amháin riamh
@@Lichenthefictioneer Is ea is fearr
I successfully created my own conlang for my diary book
I got an inspiration from Kanji, but i only use the Pictograms which tell what the object supposed to looked like
I manage to create basic things for everyday life, but still developing with more
Unlike Kanji that only covered small percentage of Pictograms, i'll be using pictograms to it's fullest
ooh i love the distinction between features and governance!! it's really interesting and something i've never thought of before, thank you!!
These are some really helpful tips for Me to refer back to. I started on a Draconic Type conlang for a Story I made a few years ago and have only recently started making the minor changes that would fit My goals. What I plan on doing is actually structuring it in a way that has a source form, then splits depending on where the speakers are in the Story's world, just like a Natlang in the real world.
I've occasionally checked back on conlang related stuff, which helps refresh My thinking process. This give Me the idea of applying a Logographic format as a way of better representing My conlang. I decided it would be a good idea to focus on it more, so I can get more of the phonetic structure built how I like, while also making sure it's easy to learn, as well as understandable. I'm still going between if I want it to be simple, or mildly challenging. The Languages I want to reference from are; German, Spanish, French, and maybe a little bit of Italian, Japanese, Korean, some Russian, and Arabic with Hebrew.
Always fun just to explore other Languages to see how and why they ended up the way they are now. Definitely important to not only get an idea of the Language's Grammar, but also how it sounds. Great video! :D
… This feels No Boilerplate inspired, but that might just be the accent, lol.
Very professional, and yet so very silly.
this should be required viewing for anyone wanting to start a conlang, keep up the PHENOMENAL work my guy!! :)
edit: the cat icon when u said lasagna absolutely sent me lmao
Some strawberry cat is delicious!
More like phonemonal
A Garfield reference?
This really is a brilliant video that makes very important points about the process of conlanging. Thank you for making it.
Also, when talking about your program that pairs a feature and a type of governance, you actually reminded me of an idea I once had that I just never considered to be "naturalistic enough" to use in a conlang, so I scrapped it and forgot about it (the one where you have particles to mark number, and, in my idea, also person). So thank you for encouraging me (and probably others) to not stress about implementing features that work exactly the way they do in a natlang, and to have more faith in one's ideas.
Edit regarding the idea: Because what I described are just pronouns, I wanted to elaborate a bit. My idea was fusing (or agglutinating, if you will) these pronouns (or particles) into forms that incorporate the subject and the direct object (if the alignment is NOM-ACC) of the sentence. So no person (and possibly number) marking on anything than those pronoun fusions. They could be mandatory in any sentence that has a subject and a direct object and would probably require a strict word order (if not combined with an extensive gender/noun class system that also gets reflected in the pronoun fusions).
Could you make a video about organizing a lexicon? Maybe you could show us one of your conlangs' lexicon and explain how to categorize certain things like phonetic transcriptions of the words and the history of the sound changes for the conlang. Just an idea.
The reverse Psychology at the end... I'm so glad I joined this community
I have ambitions to create a language by reconciling astrological principles with parts of speech. I have a dictionary of 420 root words to work with so far, but I have yet to wrap my peanut around planetary interactions and thus the precise grammar. Eventually, it will be spoken by a fictional religious order in the fantasy novel I have ambitions to write, too.
I'm learning Spanish and it's inspiring me to use less english-like stuff. And add a confusing as hell noun class system...
"And yes, not just Wikipedia pages."
Don't @ me!
Me VS jargon:
WHAT DO THEY MEAN???
Lichen: Don't like and don't subscribe
Me: *does the exact opposite*
"Get intimate with a natlang or two" Okay thanks for the tip, learning my 4th one (I know Norwegian and French)
Not that I really use my knowledge of those languages for my conlang, because I want it to look like it's not a human Lang
Im such a dumbass
“Da🔲chuvv’psh🔲lpalpa🔲schokh🔲vvall ☄️ “=does this language sound human
The language is Paraguenese
Thank you for the video💕
I am working on my conlang (Sonushok)
Des vidyo'isi grehet. Shekur doro des vidyo. Stayifes'era oper
(The video is great. Thanks for the video, Keep it up)
Oh hey I didn't know you did videos. Great advice. Liked and subscribed just to spite you
Thanks for great advices! I'm a bit of a lazy conlang maker myself, and although my language is a mess(I know just a couple things about Slavic, Latin, Germanic, Georgian and Iranian languages, and am too lazy and busy to seriously get into a lot of things), I'm hopefully gonna improve something now. Speaking of phonotactics and inventories, why not combine them, so that the synonymous words would sound similarly yet be different? I found this useful because once you write enough of your language, it becomes insanely hard to study.
"you can tell it's scary because of the font."
Pfft! This made me laugh :D
When I first saw translate, the first thought that comes to my mind was bee movie but that's kinda too overwhelming for a not-totally-fleshed-out-language.
My apologies. I had liked this video in the middle but given your direction at the end, I've now removed the like. Sorry for any offence this may have caused.
What's "Schwebeablaut"? I only know "Ablautverhärtung", like in dog /dòk/
been evolving a conlang for the past 6 or 7 years. started when i tried to learn German, Russian and Spanish all at once when i was 14. Ended up mixing them all and it snowballed from there. The evolutions happen based on small things i think would improve communication between two hypothetical native speakers of my conlang. for example:
the Old word for "strength" was "Rëijdzhijgaä" and that, over 6 or 7 years, is now "Rëijž". The "-igaä" ending is dropped and "dzh" is condensed to "ž". The writing of the word shortened drastically, thus saving time and space when writing, and it's vocally now 1 syllable rather than 3.
Another more recent example is the condensing of "aä, uü, oö" to "ă, ū, ō", which may not seem like much but shortens texts drastically.
It helps to create a conworld for your conlang and a confolk who speak it. Create their landscape, geology, political structures, mythology, food, etc. and then make them a language. this gives a great base for what will be important to the speakers and therefore a great base for creating root words and structure. for example, in my conlang, verbs are conjugated based on three temporal tenses: past, current, future. Nouns have no conjugation and gender doesn't factor. This is because the confolk who speak it revere a Time goddess as the highest and so prioritize time when talking about anything whatsoever.
I'm having trouble finding summary info about the (unusual to me aspects of) grammar of other languages, aside from media designed to actually teach me the entire language.
It's probably best to try and fine grammars of the language that have been written by linguisticians who are only attempting to describe what's there, as opposed to resources trying to teach you the language. Then, look in the index to see which section you'd like to read about (as these sorts of grammars tend to be very neatly organised). I hope this helps! :)
@@Lichenthefictioneer Thanks, yeah I know that's what I need I just have trouble finding it.
@@shannonparkhill5557 Might be worthwhile joining the r/conlangs discord server, and then ask "Does anyone have a PDF of a grammar of Mohawk?" or whatever language you're looking for, as someone usually does!
@@Lichenthefictioneer cheers mate!! will do
Further point regarding Point 2 : if you want to make a conlang with noun incorporation, go dabble in a natlang that uses it, for example. Learn a language that helps you do what you want to do. Also learn toki pona (see ua-cam.com/video/TejgbJzaHK0/v-deo.html for why). But if you want to create an engilang, for example, then go dabble in another engilang. Do stuff that helps you.
*says lasagne*
*shows a picture of a cat*
2:40 Which indo aryan language do you speak? tum hindí bol sakte ho?
Are there any online communities or apps for conlangs? One where I could share it, teach it and practice it?
I misread the instructions, have liked, have remained subscribed, I hope this is of no inconvenience
You act as though comic sans is less terrifying
FYI, the example at 5:16, the sentence contains "annahu bidūni dhi'nin" ("that he [who is] without sin"-note that "sin" is "dhinb", not "dhi'n") but the gloss doesn't include it: "anna-hu bi-dūn-i dhinb-i-n" (COMP-3SG COM-lack-GEN sin-GEN-NDEF).
Good catch. I thought I'd removed that bit!
I did not like and did not subscribe, as per your instructions.
Why do i need to distinct phonemes and surface realisation?
At some point you have to stop and make the damn language, but where that point is I have no idea :’)
Lol you sound like a mix of Grian and Biblaridion
Griblaridian
@@the_linguist_ll lol
I lost my conlang notebook that I was working on ;( luckily I wasn't too far into it
2:26 my picks for the non-IE languages to recommend would be the uto-aztecan, bantu, and quechuan languages
I can definitely confirm point 2. You learn many interesting features that make a language more expressive and you see what is good/bad/illogical in your native language, that you'd better not put into your conlang.
I found an interesting link between language and culture/politics when learning Russian.
In Russian you say "I have an apple" like this: "у меня есть яблоко" [U menya yest yabloko]. This literally means "At me is/(exists) an apple" This is because the communists have been against private property and injected the idea that it is morally reprehensible to use the verb "have" into the Zeitgeist of the early 20th century Russian. In a collectivist country everything is collective property. The apple is a collective good, it belongs to the collective and that's why you as an individual cannot have it, but if you hold an apple in your hands, the apple is at you.
An individualist culture uses the verb "have" even to form the perfect tense, to accentuate the self-ownership of the individuals own actions.
It's wrong to think that language features should be fundamentally linked to politics and history of culture.
Do better research on history of russian language. Bolsheviks weren't against using the word "иметь" in first-person verbs, russian simply has another way to say the same stuff, and it is simply considered more elegant and doesn't have a double meaning
-And if instead of saying "У меня есть дочь" you will try to say "Я имею дочь", it can be understood to as "I am fucking my daughter". not kidding-
I don't into Russian yet, but is there any way to shorten this? because "U menya yest yabloko" sure is long
what is PIE
Proto-Indo-European, ancestor of the Indo-European language family
Post the excel program please!!!
I know three languages, English, Norwegian and French
...Goaled fish
The ambient noise was an excellent choice. I think I knew all this stuff but it feels good to validate and remember.
Thanks for the inspiring video^^
When being a worldbuilder makes you a better, more interesting human realistically
Nice video. I find myself getting lost in phonology and phonotactics. I haven't spent much time on grammar or even creating words. In fairness to myself, my language is deceptively complex phonetically, and I'm evolving it over the course of 3000 years. I also have little time to spend on it. I am worried that it "sounds Chinese" even though it doesn't have the same phonetic inventory. It is tonal and prefers monosyllables. And, when I get around to the writing, it will have phonetosemantic script.
That weird log-fire-burning sound you've got going on here is tremendously distracting. I would seriously re-upload with it removed.
Sai shey galimana!
(This is very helpful!)
Your reverse psychology worked on me, although I would have subscribed anyway.
This video is about ten times better than others attempting the same thing by the way.
what a good video ^-^ really helpful when stuck!! i restarted and overhauled my language 8 times... if i knew all of this 3 years ago id have spared myself a lot of trouble haha
ok
This is good.
Lasagna = Cat 10:30
Okay reverse psychology... No sub nor like then...
1:36 You ignore the fact that some of us don't have the luck to have the ability to do this. You might just as well tell us to run a marathon in 3 hours, or get a PhD.
3:00
I base my semantic shifts on PIE's but I use Chinese to understand how to create hieroglyphs
Oh hey I didn't know you did videos. Great advice. Liked and subscribed just to spite you
Grand geniues could know each other because they were geniuses a priori, or perhaps they got the spotlight because they made connections of genius, not because of merit.
ngl, the Schwebeablaut bit really helped me understand PIE better lol
my main lenguage its purtuguese my second its english and i trying to learn french and german
My first language is English, in trying to learn Portuguese...then French and German. Great minds think alike lol.
I love learning vastly different languages, like Manchu, Inuktitut, Basque, Korean, Tibetan, Xhosa (im not fluent in any but ive dabbled in them) to learn about how other languages process info. Languages too similar feel like i am learning the same language 2x, just with variation. But you do you
@@jankima8646 its because of looking like you are learning the same lenguage x2 that i dont wanna learn spanish and italian german its far enoght from english to not be understanable same with french from portuguese
@@JohnDoe-ye6sh ok so what my name mean "n"its just a quick way of saying nao it isnt formal its just used on the internet and seila mean i dont know it is used alot but isnt formal spech
My mother tongue is Punjabi.. second mother tongue is Urdu then I learnt English in School and know some arabic currently learning Turkish while creating a conlang😂
This is the best place the algorithm took me to! Such an inspiring video for someone not in the community)
I like to use wals.info. It shows many language features and you can look up how they tend to correlate to each other.
really weird how in the arabic sentence first is in the accusative & stone in the genitive as though first is a thing & it's of the stone variety
In my conlang, "call me Ishmael" would be the exact same as "you call me Ishmael."
the same as "You call me Ishmael." (Indicative), or the same as "You, call me Ishmael." (Imperative) ?
@@abarette_ Indicative.
www.youtube.com/@TheBigGuyBillyBob Am i breaking out of a hospital?
Alright, I guess I will never be a "true" conlanger, since I barely ever develop phonotactics and never understood why I should. I have my inventory, I know how the pronounciation changes depending on the circumstances, but I don't know why I should label it CV, VCV, CCV or anything like that.
To me it would only make sense to think about it once I'm 'done' creating a very large vocabulary, because the syllable structure doesn't mean anything prescriptive but is descriptive to me.
phonotactics ain't just that, it's generally the rules around how you arrange your letters/phonemes.
Like how in English you can't have multiple approximants à la suite (/blju/ => /blu/, /bæɹl/ => /bæɹəl/) or how you can't start a word with /kn/ (which is why kn is pronounced /n/ instead).
It generally forges a "feel" for your language. [Does this specific word "sound" yourlanguage-y?] is what it answers.
The (C⁴)V(C⁴) is the meaningless part of the iceberg.
the white background hurts my eyes so much
What if you intentionally learn nothing, because you don't want to borrow anything from existing languages?
This strategy is flawed, because there is such a beautiful variety in Earth's languages that you are almost certain to 'borrow' a feature whether you know it or not! :) Plus, if you learn something, then you can be conscious of things you'd like to avoid.
very cozy background sounds
Really glad this was recommended to me, tis a very quality video
This video has so many helpful tips
thanks for calling it tamazight!
Very useful, I’m now making a dictionary for my conlang neogypt
How do you build up your dictionaries? What groups do you divide words into? I have tried making a lot but I just find that they get too long and it takes long time to find the right group of words, do you have any tips on how to make a good one?
@@jindefn I paused this project, I’m busy doing other things rn
It was on 666 but then i hit like.
I'd love to get my hands on your Excel you mentioned in Point 8. Do you have a file, or at least, a list of both Governances and Features ?
I'm copying this reply from an older comment asking the same thing :) [The list] is as follows, but is by no means exhaustive. Governance: definiteness/ salience, tense, noun role, mood, valence operations, noun role-vb agreement, noun class - vb agreement, number, aspect, volition, evidentiality, animacy, diminutive/ augmentative, clusivity. Features: word order, noun(phrase) affix/case, adposition/ particle/ article, verb affix/declension, auxiliary, analytical adjunct, (separate) lexical determination, vowel mutation, consonant mutation, vowel harmony, consonant harmony, nothing, an inherent quality, reduplication, serialisation, noun-incorporation. If you think of any others, by all means let me know!
@@Lichenthefictioneer Thank you very much for having taken that time ! And thanks to the almighty Algorithm for having pointed me to you, I shall thus indulge in your channel.
Zdrakha! Ersxa nrasu dokori :)
Nice work. Very enjoyable.
5:59
wait, what? english doesn’t have a retroflex approximant. english’s rhotic is a postalveolar approximant.
Depends on the dialect. Seems to be retroflex in West Country, Canadian, and Northern Irish. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_of_English_/r/
@@Lichenthefictioneer oh, okay. the reason most people pronounce /tr/ as [tʃɹ̠] (i’m not doing the tiebars for the affricates because they’re inconvenient to type) is because it’s postalveolar. when it’s pronounced as an alveolar approximant, /tr/ is pronounced [tsɹ]. theoretically, when it’s pronounced with a retroflex approximant, shouldn’t /tr/ be pronounced [ʈʂɻ]?
i personally pronounce /r/ as [ɹ̠ˠʷ].
Is this light theme jan Misali?
8:01
My time marker
schwebeablaut _and_ metathesis
This is great! Thanks for these videos
i see 22 people liked :/
6:04 Sorry, I didn't get it. What can I find online?😅
Yeah, the audio there is a bit rushed :P It's the Leipzig Glossing rules.
The rules: www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.php
The abbreviations: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glossing_abbreviations
@@Lichenthefictioneer thank a lot!