Altlang Ideas Discussion

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shimobaatar
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by shimobaatar »

Lots of interesting ideas here.

A little while ago, probably a few months at this point, I was inspired by something Isfendil said about an Indo-European language with a phonology reminiscent of Arabic's, but with morphosyntax more like that of a typical "Classical" Indo-European language. I've had two ideas based off of this:

1. Have the language be descended from Proto-Indo-European, and have it develop in North Africa.
2. Have the language be descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian, and have it develop in the Middle East/Southwest Asia.
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k1234567890y
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by k1234567890y »

shimobaatar wrote: 10 May 2018 02:54 Lots of interesting ideas here.

A little while ago, probably a few months at this point, I was inspired by something Isfendil said about an Indo-European language with a phonology reminiscent of Arabic's, but with morphosyntax more like that of a typical "Classical" Indo-European language. I've had two ideas based off of this:

1. Have the language be descended from Proto-Indo-European, and have it develop in North Africa.
2. Have the language be descended from Proto-Indo-Iranian, and have it develop in the Middle East/Southwest Asia.
both of them are good ideas. (: can I suggest a past language shift for the spakers? e.g. the speakers originally spoke a Semitic language, but then shifted to Indo-European languages, and then they evolved because of the continuous surrounding influences
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Birdlang »

I think you have some great ideas k1234567890y!
My ideas
A Germanic language spoken by the descendents of some Javanese people in the Netherlands who intermarried with Dutch people during their fight for their independence written in Javanese alphabet.
A Romance language spoken in a country in between Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland that has a lot of Polish and Czech loanwords and is written in either Cyrillic or Latin alphabet.
A Greek type language spoken in North Africa written in Arabic script with some additional characters.
A Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Greek language. Probably would be written in Latin/Greek and Hebrew script and have a lot of Hebrew and Arabic loanwords that would use Italian or Greek for technological terms.
Some language spoken by Mongols who invaded Hungary and interbred with the Magyars. Has a lot of Mongolian and Hungarian words and some Slavic loanwords.
Language isolate spoken in Eastern Europe that uses the letters ŋ and ƨ among others and has click consonants.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Creyeditor »

Birdlang wrote: 11 May 2018 01:57 I think you have some great ideas k1234567890y!
My ideas
A Germanic language spoken by the descendents of some Javanese people in the Netherlands who intermarried with Dutch people during their fight for their independence written in Javanese alphabet.
So basically Betawi with more Germanic influence and Javense instead of Malay/Indonesian?
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Birdlang »

Creyeditor wrote: 11 May 2018 18:23
Birdlang wrote: 11 May 2018 01:57 I think you have some great ideas k1234567890y!
My ideas
A Germanic language spoken by the descendents of some Javanese people in the Netherlands who intermarried with Dutch people during their fight for their independence written in Javanese alphabet.
So basically Betawi with more Germanic influence and Javense instead of Malay/Indonesian?
Yeah.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Shemtov »

What about an Old Hungarian dialect spoken in what's now Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast that became Slavicized? I can see /y ø/ becoming /ʲu ʲo/.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by k1234567890y »

Shemtov wrote: 07 Jun 2018 00:17 What about an Old Hungarian dialect spoken in what's now Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast that became Slavicized? I can see /y ø/ becoming /ʲu ʲo/.
good idea (:

so they have some interracial influences with the Slavic peoples?

also an idea:

A modern descendant of the Xiongnu language spoken in China, it belongs to Yeniseian under the hypothesis that Xiongnu people were Yeniseian-speaking

another idea:

A Chinese language spoken in East Europe using Roman Alphabets and with a substantial number of Greco-Latin loanwords, with the speakers being adherents of Roman Catholic.

An even more distorted idea:

Rotokas-Ubykh Creole spoken in a timeline where Rotokas people became dominant and colonized the Caucasian mountains. Its vocabulary is mostly from Rotokas, but also with vocabularies from Ubykh and Chechen, and the syntax is Caucasian but simplified
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by spanick »

I've been reading a book about the history of the Crusades and it got me thinking about two possible altlang ideas. Since the Crusader Kingdoms spoke Old French I think it would be cool to do an Old French-Arabic creole OR probably more realistically an Arabic language which borrows heavily from Old French much like the relationship between Maltese and Italian.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Shemtov »

k1234567890y wrote: 26 Jun 2018 16:15
Shemtov wrote: 07 Jun 2018 00:17 What about an Old Hungarian dialect spoken in what's now Ukraine's Zakarpattia Oblast that became Slavicized? I can see /y ø/ becoming /ʲu ʲo/.
good idea (:

so they have some interracial influences with the Slavic peoples?

Yeah. I can also see Palatal harmony, and them converting to the Eastern Church (This is probably why the language split- the religious difference "isolated" them from Catholic Hungary, so they could take more influence from the Slavs). I can also see the case system being simplified, and more Slavic-not one to one of course, but the Locative cases get trimmed down, and the non-core non-locative cases disappear. And prepositions for the Locative cases- maybe have just INT.LOC and EX.LOC with prepositions for "Into" and "out of"
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Birdlang »

What about:
A Malayo-Polynesian language spoken in East Europe written in Roman alphabets in a country colonized by Malay peoples.
A Germanic language spoken in North Africa written in a modified Maltese or Arabic alphabet. I see it having /χˁ/ as a phoneme.
Chinese dialect spoken in Xinjiang written in Arabic alphabet (different than Xiao’erjing).
A Romance language spoken in Thailand with phonemic tones and lots of Thai loanwords.
A Romance language in Indonesia using the Javanese Latin script (as in Indonesian with dh, th, é, and è).
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Ælfwine »

A Semitic language spoken in the Caucus. I definitely still want to experiment with agglutination and polysynthesis, though I no longer see a romance language as viable, but a Semitic language might be if the Semites continued north from Israel.

My other long term goal, an a priori descendant of Tolkien's ill detailed Avarin, perhaps having similarities with continental Celtic languages. I also had the idea to introduce tones in order to create a truly musical and beautiful language.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Salmoneus »

Ælfwine wrote: 02 Jul 2018 01:11 I no longer see a romance language as viable
Oh, that's a shame, given how much work you put into it. [Or do you mean specifically a different romance language in the caucasus?]
My other long term goal, an a priori descendant of Tolkien's ill detailed Avarin
Note that Avarin isn't a language, but just any Elvish language that isn't.... I can't remember the word, whichever the [Noldor+Vanyar+Teleri] group is. Tolkien suggested the names of six of their tribes/nations: Kindi, Cuind, Hwenti, Windan, Penni, and Kinn-lai.
I agree that this is an intriguing idea, which i've toyed with several times - once with the Kinn-lai and a couple of times with the Windan. My Windan generally tries to have Germanic overtones, while being heavy on the vowel harmonies and ablaut, but I never really got it how I wanted it.
to introduce tones in order to create a truly musical and beautiful language.
Presumably this is a type for "a truly ugly and cacophonous language"...
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Ælfwine »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Jul 2018 12:53 Oh, that's a shame, given how much work you put into it. [Or do you mean specifically a different romance language in the caucasus?
Nay, I think you might remember the romlang of mine was supposed to be polysynthetic out of all things, and putting it in the caucus was one of my original ideas, but I later abandoned that. I am still working on it, though.
Note that Avarin isn't a language, but just any Elvish language that isn't.... I can't remember the word, whichever the [Noldor+Vanyar+Teleri] group is. Tolkien suggested the names of six of their tribes/nations: Kindi, Cuind, Hwenti, Windan, Penni, and Kinn-lai.

I agree that this is an intriguing idea, which i've toyed with several times - once with the Kinn-lai and a couple of times with the Windan. My Windan generally tries to have Germanic overtones, while being heavy on the vowel harmonies and ablaut, but I never really got it how I wanted it.
Interesting, I'd love to see a sample.

Here's what the Tolkien wiki says: "The Avarin were called Lemberin tongues which originally intended to have a resemblance in sound to Goidelic, Baltic, and Finnic languages.[3]" and "North Avarin was very peculiar, with no initial consonant groups." Perhaps a Northern Avarin tongue with baltic style changes? :wat:
Presumably this is a type for "a truly ugly and cacophonous language"...
Truly our tastes differ then, but I'll see how it feels when I start on it.
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by WeepingElf »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Jul 2018 12:53 Note that Avarin isn't a language, but just any Elvish language that isn't.... I can't remember the word, whichever the [Noldor+Vanyar+Teleri] group is.
Eldarin.

But Avarin languages aren't really altlangs. At least not in the sense I understand this word - languages spoken in altenative histories, where languages prevailed that went extinct in the real world. The "classical" example of an altlang is Brithenig, a Romance language of Britain.

To get back to the topic: Most of my conlangs are lostlangs, i.e. altlangs spoken in an alternative history which differs from the real world only inasmuch as there are a few extra languages that represent lineages which disappeared in the real world. (The term "lostlang" comes from the League of Lost Languages, a - now defunct - collaborative project providing a framework for such languages.) My main projects are two large families of European lostlangs - Hesperic (the language famlly of the Bell Beaker people, related to IE) and Midrean (the language family of Europe's first Neolithic farmers, related to Kartvelian, only very sketchy yet). But I also have some other ideas: Vandalic, an East Germanic language spoken in Tunisia; Belgian, a branch of IE intermediate between Celtic and Germanic; Camonic (working title), a Continental Celtic language spoken in the western Alps; a yet-unnamed para-Anatolian language spoken somewhere on the Balkan Peninsula; a yet unnamed Para-Tocharian language spoken in northwestern China, converging to the Chinese isolating/monosyllabic/tonal type (with PIE ablaut transmogrified into tone ablaut).
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Salmoneus »

Which of the Tolkien wikis is that? Ardalambion don't mention any of that. Although of course the ardalambion page probably hasn't been updated in decades, so...
[anyway, Cuind is pretty clearly the goidelic version...]

My language would probably be called Weondeglamme or the like. One elf, wend, two elves, winde, group of elves windan. Of an elf, weonde, of two elves windu, of a group of elves windunge. Language/tongue glamme (pl. glammi, col. glammin; genitives glammu, glammau, glammunge). Something like that...
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Salmoneus »

Why turn ablaut into tonal ablaut? And how? Wouldn't it be more interesting to keep ablaut, but add tone the normal way?
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by WeepingElf »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Jul 2018 20:48 Why turn ablaut into tonal ablaut?
Why not?
And how? Wouldn't it be more interesting to keep ablaut, but add tone the normal way?
The idea is that PIE *e gives high tone, and PIE *o low tone. There will be further factors that contribute to tone, so there won't be a simple high/low 2-tone system, but various contour tones as in Chinese languages. Isn't this more interesting than keeping ablaut as it is and adding tone the "normal" way?
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Shemtov »

Would the Laryngeal Coloring be tone instead of quality based?
And on the topic, what abou, instead of approaching it from Tocharian, we have a Sinosphere IE lang from Proto-Indo-Iranian, that went further East, to the Daying River Valley?
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Salmoneus »

WeepingElf wrote: 02 Jul 2018 22:06
Salmoneus wrote: 02 Jul 2018 20:48 Why turn ablaut into tonal ablaut?
Why not?
Well, it seems like taking a language and removing what makes it what it is. It also seems like randomly picking two things to swap, even though they've got nothing to do with one another other than the word 'ablaut'.
And how? Wouldn't it be more interesting to keep ablaut, but add tone the normal way?
The idea is that PIE *e gives high tone, and PIE *o low tone. There will be further factors that contribute to tone, so there won't be a simple high/low 2-tone system, but various contour tones as in Chinese languages. Isn't this more interesting than keeping ablaut as it is and adding tone the "normal" way?
Well, you may think so, of course. Personally no, I don't think so. I'd rather have ablaut AND tone, rather than just tone. Besides, PIE has so many resources with which to create a whole range of tones, including tonal ablaut. You've got mobile pitch, you've got three stop series, you've got laryngeals, you've got vowel length, you've got complex syllables. Why spend the resource of vowel quality as well?

Also: has that ever happened, anywhere, that tones arise from front vs back vowels?
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Re: Altlang Ideas Discussion

Post by Shemtov »

Salmoneus wrote: 03 Jul 2018 00:50
Also: has that ever happened, anywhere, that tones arise from front vs back vowels?
Not that I know of, but IIRC, Psycholinguists say front vowels are perceived as higher tone and back as lower, but I doubt this would cause tonongenisis, even if you go to a vertical vowel system.
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