Kuo (Placeholder name)

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Corphishy
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Location: Route 102, Route 117, Petalburg City

Kuo (Placeholder name)

Post by Corphishy »

Hello. I know I have just made a recent thread about my already existing conlang, Saipačn, but since I have, I think, thoroughly shimmied myself out of the creative hole I had dug for myself, I figured I ought to branch out so as to not get burnt out on any one project.

Today I present to you a language which I intend to use for artistic purposes as the language of a group of fantastical humanoids I have been knocking around in my noggin for the past couple of days. Aesthetically, I don’t have any language in mind but rather I just wish to make one o’ them “pretty sounds” languages. I’ll do my usual bit of including a phonology and basic phonotactics, but for now I just want to discuss some of the goals of this language and some ideas I have about its general structure.

Even though word order is marked in this language, and thus can theoretically have any word order it wants, very rarely is the subject before the object, and never is the verb before the object; therefore, if you can do some simple deduction it appears that the most common word orders are OSV and OVS (with SOV farther behind than it’s probably used to). Indeed, in the same way one could consider Germanic language’s V2, these languages seem to fit comfortably in the category of “O1” or “object always goes first except sometimes it doesn’t but only sometimes.” This means that even though generally this language is head final, in the case of objects in the first position, modifiers are shoved out of the way onto the opposite side of the noun.

Now, I feel the need, because of the rare and conlangesque nature of an OSV/OVS language, to explain the thought process behind such an outlandish decision. Alright, here it goes: I wanna. Just something about an OV language has really tickled my creative ire recently. In fact, I think I want to use this language in general to play around with word order in interesting ways, or at least interesting for someone who despite participating in an activity for roughly 11 years at this point has yet to truly remove themselves from their comfort zone.

I also want to make the language fairly agglutinative. I want to have a hefty (read: hefty for me) amount of inflection on all parts of speech, as opposed to just one (à la Saipačn and verbs, or like Japanese and verbs). And the reason why I specify agglutinative is because while I enjoy my French, I feel that I let Romance languages influence my approach to verbs too much, and even just by shifting away from the mindset of “one suffix means 3M.PL.SBJ.PAST.NEG,” it will help me loosen up and open my mind to the idea of new concepts.

In fact, that’s my main goal with this language I would say: to loosen up. For too long I’ve felt like I need to do things a certain way not because I want to do it a certain way, but because I think it ought to be done that way. That’s not very fun, and for someone who only makes languages as a fun and personal hobby, it’s not very rewarding to think this way. The same applies to any art form really.
PHONEMIC INVENTORY
/m n/ m n
/t ts k ʔ/ t ś c ‘
/b d g/ b d g
/ɸ β~ʋ s θ x ɣ h/ f v s þ ç j h
/l r/ l r

/i y u ɛ ɔ a/ i y u e o a

Now, one may scoff at such an amateur and Eurocentric attempt to make a prettyful romanization. To that I say that while it may be a valid point, I currently have no issues with this orthography. Especially considering that /k x ɣ/ being rendered as <c ç j> does have a legitimate point beyond looking pretty: unlike Elvish and Gaelic languages, velars do undergo a very similar allophony to Romance languages. But more on that later.

PHONOTACTICS
Kuo’s maximum syllable structure is CVC. The coda of syllables is generally unrestricted, but the word final syllable can only end in voiceless consonants and /m n r l/. This will lead to shenanigans later, just you wait. Also, intervocalically, all consonants can be geminated, written rather uncontroversially as a double consonant. In fact, several intersyllabic clusters are allophonically realized as geminates. Again, I’ll explain in more detail in the allophony section.

STRESS
Primary stress is variable, but unchanging. By that I mean, generally a root will have a syllable which it stresses (which is “randomly” applied), and unless otherwise noted this location does not change as things are glommed onto it. Wow that wasn’t a very long section at all now was it?

ALLOPHONY
Finally this often spoke-of phenomenon known as allophony.
[k g x ɣ]/[tʃ dʒ ç ʝ~j]/_[i y ɛ]
[i y ɛ]/[ɨ ɨ~ʉ ə]/j_
[ts tʃ dʒ]/[s ʃ ʒ]/V_V
[ɛ ɔ a]/[ə o ə]/_#
[ɛ ɔ]/[ei̯ ou̯]/_σ[+stress]
S[F R]/Sː/_²⁴
FR/Fː/_
C₁C₂/C₁ː/_³

2. S=stop, F=fricative, R=resonant [m n l r j]
3. Wherein C₁ and C₂ are both of the same place of articulation
4. SR and FR clusters will only collapse into geminates if the S is voiced. So a word like acli is allowed, but a word like *agli wouldn’t (it would instead become aggi [ˈaʝːɨ])
Let me share with you a little secret: the only language I have ever made that was both not based on a gleb phonology and that has lasted more than a month before being dropped is Vuase (one of my oldest languages I have made that I have since scrapped because, among other things, it sounds ugly). Hopefully that number can reach at least two with this language.

Kuo is a placeholder name for now. It’s from a lang I tried to make out of a vulgarlang generated language. That was, however, such a train wreck to begin with that this may as well be that language if I were legitimately attempting to revise that language. I like the name, it just doesn’t really fit my vision for this language. That’s it for now. For the rest of tonight and tomorrow I will start to think a bit more about the grammar of this language, and come back to you with something more substantial than just a bunch of pretty letters. I'd love to hear your hot takes.
Last edited by Corphishy on 19 Mar 2018 03:10, edited 1 time in total.
Aszev wrote:A good conlang doesn't come from pursuing uniqueness. Uniqueness is usually an effect from creating a good conlang.
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Pabappa
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Re: Kuo (Placeholder name)

Post by Pabappa »

Yes, [y] triggers palatalization in many languages. French doesn't have it but it's likely that it didn't have [y] when the palatalization began. Mandarin [y] always palatalizes velars before it. I think German [y] selects the ç allophone of its ich-laut.
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Corphishy
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Posts: 740
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Location: Route 102, Route 117, Petalburg City

Re: Kuo (Placeholder name)

Post by Corphishy »

Pabappa wrote: 19 Mar 2018 02:29 Yes, [y] triggers palatalization in many languages. French doesn't have it but it's likely that it didn't have [y] when the palatalization began. Mandarin [y] always palatalizes velars before it. I think German [y] selects the ç allophone of its ich-laut.
Thank you! I have update the allophony accordingly.
Aszev wrote:A good conlang doesn't come from pursuing uniqueness. Uniqueness is usually an effect from creating a good conlang.
Project Garnet
(used to be Bulbichu22)
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