New CBB

What changes have you seen in conlanging between now and the time you first started participating in the online conlanging community?

One change I've noticed is the decline in a posteriori vocabulary. When I first joined the ZBB back in 2003, a lot of people "stole" words from natlangs. Someone started a thread on making languages spoken far away from Earth in which the creator borrowed many native words from Romance or Germanic languages, and mentioned that he does this. A girl who used the screenname Allie said, "I think we all do it". (Although I never did this.)

One such language was Verdurian, the hub of the ZBB. Too many words in Verdurian to be explained by coincidence were identical to their German, French, Latin, Greek or Russian equivalents. Mark Rosenfelder remarked once that words that don't conjure up a cognate give a language a "distancing" feel.

But now I seldom run across languages that evolved on the third planet circling Deneb, with no contact with Terrans, yet have "desister" as their word for stop and "koturnis" as their word for quail. (Now, if a planet didn't have quails, and the inhabitants borrowed the word for quail from some Romance language when they made contact with Earth, that'd be a different story.) Languages with "real" Earth histories like Brithenig continue to be made, but there are many fewer "pseudo-a-posteriori" languages. Creators of languages from another worlds want their lexica to be original.

That's one of many changes. What changes in conlanging have you seen over the years?

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My Kankonian-English dictionary: 36,000 entries and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!

I did not dive that deep into the matter that I could detect any changes in the typology of new conlangs, but I realized that once, there were langmaker, which I used to visit regularily, and then, it was gone.

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My neurochemistry has fucked my impulse control, now I'm diagnosed OOD = oppositional opinion disorder, one of the most deadly diseases in former soviet union, but can be cured in the free world.

I never was able to access langmaker.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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(native)
(learning)

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Języki sztuczne i lingwistyka, po polsku.

It seems like that, in the last 6 months or so, there has been an increasing number of isolating conlangs, possibly spurred on by some conlangery episodes and such.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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I have noticed that ZBB remains the central hub for assholes from back when I started to now.

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Visit the growing Conlang Wiki!

In the time I've been conlanging, the amount of papers on linguistics available for free online has grown at an incredible pace. Back in the late 1990s, very little was available. Now, you can find billions of them.

The boardlord has repeatedly said that this kind of behavior is not tolerable.

I don't see the need for this kind of post. Especially given the fact that many members here are also members over there.

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Ikasmu ati'uki nai uraiur.
Hinai nimuśim naimi nai sasamiur urukani. Śi'ama nai huhumiur na ni'amuśim nai sasamiur.
Pumaki nimuśim śima'a na ami nimuśim ara'a. Hini nihrasum i'aku tumra urukani na nihrasum sanik hraspir.

I have noticed that the ZBB has become a little more conworlding focused than the CBB.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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I have noticed that there have been less "Phonology+Phonotactics+3 sentences of morphosyntax" (even some without the last one) popping up.

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___________________ I am the Great Rabbit. Fear me, O Crabs!

Those who are on both boards are all nice people, though. It seems the jolly mentalism of the CBB has remained as a shield against those who prefer to be grumpy and rude.

In my own experience, the ZBB used to be pretty nice. I don't know if was because I was a newcomer and they decided to be nice to me for a while (which they often still seem to be to new members) and after the process of integration become increasingly more hostile for no apparent reason.

There is a reason a lot of us come here more and more and less there. I know several people here who have left ZBB entirely for this place. I don't think I'll ever leave entirely, though. There are some nice things about it and some nice people, even among those who do not come here as well.

Not mentioning any names, though, but like I said, I don't find anyone who comes to both boards to be an unbearable arse, for some reason. Everyone's nice here, and I like that.

I'm not butthurt, though. No worries. I don't get upset over these things, but when it's getting increasingly difficult to find discussion there simply because some people seem to be eating a bowl of salt for breakfast every day and spew it all over the boards, it's starting to lose some appeal.

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‹› · Ḿḿ Ńń Ĺĺ Śś Źź Ąą Ǫǫ Ųų Æ̨æ̨ Ǽǽ Œ̨œ̨ Œ́œ́ Ɣɣ Y̋y̋ Įį Şş Z̧z̧ θ
Āā Ēē Īī Ōō Ūū ↗ Ṭṭ C̣c̣ Łł Ḍḍ Ṣṣ Ẓẓ Ṇṇ Ŋŋ e˞ o˞ ʷ ʲ ʰ ə

It seemed to still be a fairly pleasant place when I left it, but I haven't gone back since. Maybe the fact that it was a larger board had something to do with the change: more exposure to Sturgeon's Law might have made some forumgoers jaded and irritable.

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Wa mnew yiHegolech.

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| | | (Nahuatl) | (Sanskrit & Pali) (Yaghan) | (Antregabua)
CrazyEttin's Lair

Yay, I'm a nice person!

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Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil!

I've made a few attempts at sparking conworlding interest around here, but it seems that the conworlding section here will remain a wasteland for the foreseeable future.

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♀♥Ø

I snickered when I read this.
It sure seems that way, since the only things that seem to pop up are the topics about conworlding opinions, cooking, and the like. Although, there has been an influx of conworld inhabitants and actual conworlds...I fear, however, that it will not last.

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___________________ I am the Great Rabbit. Fear me, O Crabs!

I think a big part of the problem is the truly dedicated, proliferate conworlders (like myself and cyberxkhan) seem to think that we need to be 100% finished with a project before we can talk about it, and we all know how THAT turns out. Building a forum culture where you aren't expected to make a 300 page writeup nobody is going to read, and it's okay to just toss out small-but-interesting ideas, is probably the best long-term solution.

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♀♥Ø

I enjoy conworlding and I definitely understand the perfectionist streak.
I've created secondary (and then tertiary...) projects intended to be 'lighter' and allow more creativity with less research. Within minutes of starting my last project, I was on Google looking up the differences between Roman and Romanesque architecture.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

You may not know (for reasons you listed) but I've got a well-developed conworld that my book takes place in. I don't wanna talk about it until it's though (or 90% through).

Lodhas: I managed to see your post before I posted, but if you ninja me one more time...

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___________________ I am the Great Rabbit. Fear me, O Crabs!