Neo-Akkadian/Kaschdean/A-Leschān A-Labār

[Isfendil]

How on earth does an East Semitic language become a dialect of Arabic, that's like Russian becoming a dialect of english. Who on earth even bothers to say this stuff when they clearly don't know what they're talking about? Not even the surviving Aramaic dialects became "dialects of Arabic", and they're much, much closer to it on in the family. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure your consonant correspondences aren't as bad as people say they are as it's generally assumed proto-semitic (and thereby Akkadian) consonants were more strong (i.e. affricates where now there are fricatives, ejectives where now are emphatic, etc.) then our working reconstructions actually provide. Like honestly what on earth is this about.

I think it's nice that I can now no longer count the amount of extant semitic conlangs online with just one of my hands. My only complaint is with the orthography but that's aesthetic more than anything else.

Well, maybe not Russian becoming a dialect of English, but rather given how Arabic spread, the language would quickly be assimilated, becoming little more than a husk loaning down a few words. It needs a religious foundation if it were to survive like Hebrew or Aramaic.

The differences between the east and west branches are very wide, there are fundamental differences in both grammar and phonology of basic words- there are numerous swadesh words and stems that are different! The pronouns don't even have an h-shift like the entire rest of the family. What you mean to say is that it would be overrun by an Arabic dialect and become the substrate, because otherwise these claims make no sense.
What substantiates this nitpicking?

[Ahzoh]

I gave up on this language, after being worn down with rude claims on the other boards about how "this language can't exist" since, given that it's also Semitic, it would be so assimilated to Arabic it would basically be an Arabic dialect

Who ever did make this claim, they're fuckwits who lack an understanding of linguistics.

[Isfendil]

I admit I just looked at the phonology and yeah it is way too conservative but literally all of these other claims against the language are bogus, especially about grammar and lexicon.

[WeepingElf]

I gave up on this language, after being worn down with rude claims on the other boards about how "this language can't exist" since, given that it's also Semitic, it would be so assimilated to Arabic it would basically be an Arabic dialect

Who ever did make this claim, they're fuckwits who lack an understanding of linguistics.

They are, and more empathically, THEY ARE NO REASON TO GIVE UP A PROMISING CONLANG IDEA!!! Of course, you'd better think out an explanation why this language survived, but such an "excuse" can be easily found, for instance, in the mountains of northwestern Iraq - mountain ranges are often "residual zones" where languages survive longer than elsewhere.

[Isfendil]

Honestly the postulate for the language's survival is ultimately unimportant. Quirks of history happen all the time. For all that is know these people could live in Kurdistan. It's said that they live in Iran so that's enough for me to fill in the blanks.

But honestly, it becoming a shell, do these people not know anything about semitic languages?

[alynnidalar]

Y'all realize that Shemtov said a year ago that the project was abandoned, right?

[Frislander]

How on earth does an East Semitic language become a dialect of Arabic, that's like Russian becoming a dialect of english. Who on earth even bothers to say this stuff when they clearly don't know what they're talking about? Not even the surviving Aramaic dialects became "dialects of Arabic", and they're much, much closer to it on in the family. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure your consonant correspondences aren't as bad as people say they are as it's generally assumed proto-semitic (and thereby Akkadian) consonants were more strong (i.e. affricates where now there are fricatives, ejectives where now are emphatic, etc.) then our working reconstructions actually provide. Like honestly what on earth is this about.

I think it's nice that I can now no longer count the amount of extant semitic conlangs online with just one of my hands. My only complaint is with the orthography but that's aesthetic more than anything else.

Well, maybe not Russian becoming a dialect of English, but rather given how Arabic spread, the language would quickly be assimilated, becoming little more than a husk loaning down a few words. It needs a religious foundation if it were to survive like Hebrew or Aramaic.

The differences between the east and west branches are very wide, there are fundamental differences in both grammar and phonology of basic words- there are numerous swadesh words and stems that are different! The pronouns don't even have an h-shift like the entire rest of the family. What you mean to say is that it would be overrun by an Arabic dialect and become the substrate, because otherwise these claims make no sense.
What substantiates this nitpicking?

They have a half-point, in that when a language is particularly endangered it can begin to acquire features, including bits of phonology and morphology, lose their more distinctive features and acquire large amounts of vocabulary from the language it's losing speakers too, but that is not enough to turn that into a dialect of that language. The same applies the other way: when the speakers switch to the dominant language they may carry over certain features, but they didn't "turn their language into the dialect of another". Moroccan Darija is not a Berber language that's been turned into a dialect of Arabic: it's a dialect of Arabic that has seen significant influence from Berber languages in terms of phonology, grammar and vocabulary.

The main point is that you can't have a language with a completely separate history somehow turn into a dialect of another language while still staying as its own language. It either continues to be its own thing, in which case you can't call it a dialect, or it acts as a substrate to the other language before going extinct. It can't be both at the same time.

(not to mention that in this case I would say the survival of this language without obscene amounts of influence from Arabic is perfectly reasonable).

[Frislander]

Y'all realize that Shemtov said a year ago that the project was abandoned, right?

Indeed, but now this thread has been revived, we can remind people of this once again. And what's stopping Shemtov from picking this language up again if they want?

[Isfendil]

I was reading it as may 2017, what on earth am I doing here...

[Shemtov]

And what's stopping Shemtov from picking this language up again if they want?

The fact that I'm concentrating on the Languages of the World of Fuhe (which still needs a better name) and Anglesey Gaelic.

[GamerGeek]

And what's stopping Shemtov from picking this language up again if they want?

The fact that I'm concentrating on the Languages of the World of Fuhe (which still needs a better name) and Anglesey Gaelic.

Touché