(Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here

[johndoedoe]

Hi, I'm new here

So I was thinking, is there already a constructed language, that Wookies, Groot and R2D2 could talk to each other?

I was thinking about aliens, and how different alien races would communicate without technology. (Assuming they could breath the same air.)
That got me to thinking of animals on earth, especially small prey animals that make noises outside of human (or predator) hearing range. Or orangutan that can't make the sounds for human speech. (But parrots and raven can speak human words)

And what would an multi alien species culture do. And I was thinking maybe they would use sign languages. Except even some earth animals couldn't do that. Like a Squid doesn't have fingers.
The first idea was discarded, since it was basically morse code, and that is quite impractical long for talking casually. (Or is there something better than morse code? Requirement: you have only on and off signal.)

Well, I got some requirements, to make clear what I want (to myself).
Ape-like, pig-like and chicken-like aliens should be able to communicate verbally. (assuming they can make sounds in the hearing range of the others)
And it should be able for snake tails, squid tentacle, and human hands to sign it, with basically the same words and grammar.

So what I come up with, assuming one alien could only say "a" or draw a line into air/water/on the ground:

Spoiler:

27 Letters made up by 3 independent variables, each with 3 possible values (low, medium, high), (length, pitch and volume for speech and length, start height and end height for signs)
Words are made from 2-3 "Letters", which means possible dictionary is 27*27=729 words, just little under basic English (yeah simple wiki uses ~2000 words), third letter would be 19683 words
"spoken Letters": 3 different pitches (a, a, a), 3 different volumes (a, A,A), 3 different length (a, aa, aaa)... everything relative to the alien species sound making capabilities. (like if it is an alien that could only make "u", just change the "a" to "u" or if it talks like it inhales helium, just change), so
"signed Letters": a line drawn in the air, water or on the ground, having 3 different start heights ( _*, –*, ☶* ), 3 different end heights ( *_, *–, *☶ ), and 3 different lengths ( ––, –––, ––––), so different letter would be "––_" "–_" "–––_" (not sure how to write)

So signed words example would be: 1."–– ––", 2."–– ––––" or 3. "__ –––_" and to start a new word you go back to the beginning
And the same words spoken would be: 1."A A", 2."A AA" or 3."a aaa" and different length breaks between letters and words.

Obviously writing system should be changed, cause it is not nice to write it in html and not visual clear. Also I hope I translated the words correct between signed and spoken.

A few concern I have, is for example different volumes could be impractical, but not sure if a letter can have a starting and ending pitch?
Also if every sentence would be a tongue twister. Are different length breaks enough to differentiate between spoken letters and spoken words? Any easy grammar rules that could work with that? I looked into Esperanto not sure if their combination words are possible with this.

There are changes possible. For example there would be 14 Letters if one variable has only 2 possible values, one has 4 and the other has 3.

Groots sentences would be very long, if he has to say "I am Groot" for each letter. But he could use the sign language.

Btw I would call the language Space Common and it would be used (in fiction) on trading station with many different alien species.

Thanks for reading. I hope I communicated good enough. And finished all my sentences. And formation worked like intended.

[eldin raigmore]

@JohnDoeDoe :
Your ideas look great to me!

I saw one (only one!) possible problem with humans (of the kind we have around here nowadays, anyway) being able to perfectly pronounce the spoken version(s?) of this/these language(s).
And that is: phonemic volume!
Phonemic length and phonemic pitch are attested in extant real-life natlangs; indeed, some have both phonemic differences in length and phonemic differences in pitch!
But I don’t think any have phonemic differences in volume.

I don’t think you should let that stop you, nor be an obstacle!
Instead, you’ll (eventually) need to explain how humans intent on becoming fluent in this language, manage to learn how to hear and say these phonemic differences volume.

I look forward to whatever you have to tell us next!

[Ælfwine]

is it common for /ʋ/ and /v/ to be distinguished phonemically?

[lurker]

Hi, I'm new here

So I was thinking, is there already a constructed language, that Wookies, Groot and R2D2 could talk to each other?

I was thinking about aliens, and how different alien races would communicate without technology. (Assuming they could breath the same air.)
That got me to thinking of animals on earth, especially small prey animals that make noises outside of human (or predator) hearing range. Or orangutan that can't make the sounds for human speech. (But parrots and raven can speak human words)

And what would an multi alien species culture do. And I was thinking maybe they would use sign languages. Except even some earth animals couldn't do that. Like a Squid doesn't have fingers.
The first idea was discarded, since it was basically morse code, and that is quite impractical long for talking casually. (Or is there something better than morse code? Requirement: you have only on and off signal.)

Well, I got some requirements, to make clear what I want (to myself).
Ape-like, pig-like and chicken-like aliens should be able to communicate verbally. (assuming they can make sounds in the hearing range of the others)
And it should be able for snake tails, squid tentacle, and human hands to sign it, with basically the same words and grammar.

So what I come up with, assuming one alien could only say "a" or draw a line into air/water/on the ground:

Spoiler:

27 Letters made up by 3 independent variables, each with 3 possible values (low, medium, high), (length, pitch and volume for speech and length, start height and end height for signs)
Words are made from 2-3 "Letters", which means possible dictionary is 27*27=729 words, just little under basic English (yeah simple wiki uses ~2000 words), third letter would be 19683 words
"spoken Letters": 3 different pitches (a, a, a), 3 different volumes (a, A,A), 3 different length (a, aa, aaa)... everything relative to the alien species sound making capabilities. (like if it is an alien that could only make "u", just change the "a" to "u" or if it talks like it inhales helium, just change), so
"signed Letters": a line drawn in the air, water or on the ground, having 3 different start heights ( _*, –*, ☶* ), 3 different end heights ( *_, *–, *☶ ), and 3 different lengths ( ––, –––, ––––), so different letter would be "––_" "–_" "–––_" (not sure how to write)

So signed words example would be: 1."–– ––", 2."–– ––––" or 3. "__ –––_" and to start a new word you go back to the beginning
And the same words spoken would be: 1."A A", 2."A AA" or 3."a aaa" and different length breaks between letters and words.

Obviously writing system should be changed, cause it is not nice to write it in html and not visual clear. Also I hope I translated the words correct between signed and spoken.

A few concern I have, is for example different volumes could be impractical, but not sure if a letter can have a starting and ending pitch?
Also if every sentence would be a tongue twister. Are different length breaks enough to differentiate between spoken letters and spoken words? Any easy grammar rules that could work with that? I looked into Esperanto not sure if their combination words are possible with this.

There are changes possible. For example there would be 14 Letters if one variable has only 2 possible values, one has 4 and the other has 3.

Groots sentences would be very long, if he has to say "I am Groot" for each letter. But he could use the sign language.

Btw I would call the language Space Common and it would be used (in fiction) on trading station with many different alien species.

Thanks for reading. I hope I communicated good enough. And finished all my sentences. And formation worked like intended.

I have a very similar setup for my alien language except there are only two levels of tone and volume. Thierry are also three phonation types (whining, growling, and grunting) as well as 3 consonant phonemes (a nasal aspirant, a trilled nasal aspirant, and a yip).

Humans can understand it when spoken but can’t speak it ourselves. We use a speech synthesizer to reproduce the language if the listener doesn’t know a human language.

[Arayaz]

What happens to a script when two characters "merge"? (e.g. c and e in some people's handwriting in some contexts are written the same, or a and c)
Are diacritics introduced?
Are the differences between them intentionally accented and emphasized, transforming the glyphs in the other direction?
Do they simply merge?
I've never heard of glyphs merging, but it seems to be a possibility?
Or am I being dumb?

edit: this was my 800th post

[lurker]

What happens to a script when two characters "merge"? (e.g. c and e in some people's handwriting in some contexts are written the same, or a and c)
Are diacritics introduced?
Are the differences between them intentionally accented and emphasized, transforming the glyphs in the other direction?
Do they simply merge?
I've never heard of glyphs merging, but it seems to be a possibility?
Or am I being dumb?

edit: this was my 800th post

I believe Arabic uses dots over and under letters to distinguish them. The Latin letter i has a dot to make it stand out more.

[Knox Adjacent]

Albeit impressionistic, seems older scripts just merged like Pahlavi while modern scripts go opposite, hence the proliferation of diacritics.

[Dormouse559]

What happens to a script when two characters "merge"? (e.g. c and e in some people's handwriting in some contexts are written the same, or a and c)
Are diacritics introduced?
Are the differences between them intentionally accented and emphasized, transforming the glyphs in the other direction?
Do they simply merge?
I've never heard of glyphs merging, but it seems to be a possibility?
Or am I being dumb?

All of the above in the case of Russian cursive, as I understand it. Character mergers have resulted in a degree of ambiguity that it sounds like native readers/writers just tolerate, but there are also some diacritics and other conventions for clarity.

Book Pahlavi, like Knox Adjacent mentioned, is a trip to learn about. In another thread, clawgrip cited it as a phonetic script that became something like a logography.

[Salmoneus]

What happens to a script when two characters "merge"? (e.g. c and e in some people's handwriting in some contexts are written the same, or a and c)
Are diacritics introduced?
Are the differences between them intentionally accented and emphasized, transforming the glyphs in the other direction?
Do they simply merge?
I've never heard of glyphs merging, but it seems to be a possibility?
Or am I being dumb?

edit: this was my 800th post

What makes you think there's one thing that "happens"? Each letter in each scipt in each language is its own case. There is no authority that rules what everybody must do in every instance!

All thee of your options are entirely possible. Which would happen would depend on the details of each case. How much ambiguity would be caused by a merger? How possible is it to discover/exaggerate differences between the letters? What resources are there from which to construct diacritics, or digraphs?

There's also at least two other options I think you've missed, because you're thinking of scripts as having a discrete number of 'letters', with each letter directly representing one phoneme.

In reality, there are often many different symbols that can be in some sense considered "the same letter" - they can be used in different contexts in text, or by different writers, in different texts, at different times, etc.

So another option is that if one letter-form becomes ambiguous writers can adopt a different letter form. In English, for instance, 's' used to have a letter form that ended up looking alot like 'f', so this form simply dropped out of use. Likewise, older handwriting used, and for many people still uses, letter forms of 's' that look almost identical to 'c' or 'r', but these have become less common.

And likewise, writers often use multiple letters or letter-combinations to represent a particular sound, and if one of these options becomes ambiguous they can use the others instead.

So in English, for instance, the interdental fricative was at one time widely spelled with thorn, but this letter became ambiguous with forms of 'y', and hence people instead switched to the alternative spelling of 'th'. [except in intentionally the intentioanlly archaic usage of "ye olde...", where 'y' represents the fricative]. Likewise, /w/ was regularly spelled with wynn, but wynn came to look a lot like 'p' (or thorn, or 'y', depending on writer), so has been replaced by the alternative spelling with 'w'.

[Ælfwine]

My language's character for the interdental was fita, <ѳ> but i deemed it too close to other characters at the time like barred oe <ө> so i changed it to cyrillic psi <ѱ> in analogy with the biblical gothic character <𐌸> thiuth (in turn thought to have been influenced from the runic character <þ> thorn.)

[Omzinesý]

What are the first sentences you start translating when you have a new conlang?

[eldin raigmore]

What are the first sentences you start translating when you have a new conlang?

Probably fiziwig’s conlanger-friendly subset of GSFA (Graded Sentences for Analysis).

[Keenir]

What are the first sentences you start translating when you have a new conlang?

back in the days of my Geocities sites, I'd start with "here is a turtle" and work up to "I have a turtle" and "I have a turtle and a fish"...my working idea was to always build on the previous sentences.

[Omzinesý]

What are the first sentences you start translating when you have a new conlang?

Probably fiziwig’s conlanger-friendly subset of GSFA (Graded Sentences for Analysis).

There are plenty of them.
But random selection of them could really do.

[lurker]

How do you think I could do relative clauses without relative pronouns? I think Mandarin just drops the word that links back to the main clause and leaves it to context, but not sure how that would work if the relative clause contains a prepositional phrase like "the box in which I found the book was in the garage."

[Imralu]

How do you think I could do relative clauses without relative pronouns? I think Mandarin just drops the word that links back to the main clause and leaves it to context, but not sure how that would work if the relative clause contains a prepositional phrase like "the box in which I found the book was in the garage."

You know the more natural way to say that in English is exactly what you are talking about, yeah? The box I found the book in was in the garage.

[Salmoneus]

How do you think I could do relative clauses without relative pronouns? I think Mandarin just drops the word that links back to the main clause and leaves it to context, but not sure how that would work if the relative clause contains a prepositional phrase like "the box in which I found the book was in the garage."

You know the more natural way to say that in English is exactly what you are talking about, yeah? The box I found the book in was in the garage.

Eh, not sure about 'more natural'. It's grammatical, and common in speech (because it requires less planning), but it sounds pretty clunky.

But yes, many language, including English, do just allow bare prepositions.

The bigger assumption to question here, though, is the assumption that it's even possible to relativise out of a prepositional phrase. In many languages, it just isn't. Some languages only allow relativisation on the subject, or on the object, or on either. Others also allow relativisation on case-marked but not prepositionally governed obliques. Others allow relativisation from inside prepositional phrases. Some even allow relativisation of possessors, while others do not. And there's various more complicated constructions that might not allow relativisation.

If relativisation is possible all the way up and down the continuum, it might not always take the same form. You could, for example, use relative pronouns with prepositions, but allow them to be dropped with direct arguments (or vice versa). Iirc as Germanic languages shifted over to using interrogatives as relative pronouns, there was an intermediate stage (and maybe still is in some languages?) in which they could only used for certain relativisations and not others, for instance.

[Imralu]

Eh, not sure about 'more natural'. It's grammatical, and common in speech (because it requires less planning), but it sounds pretty clunky.

I disagree. I find "the box in which I found the book" very clunky. When I say "more natural", I'm using that more or less as a synonym of "more common in spontaneous speech".

[Arayaz]

Would it be plausible to have a sound change that essentially says, "delete the final segment of a word"?

It seems like vowel loss + consonant loss, but depending on the order, that could delete two segments.

I'm looking for essentially:
*kat → ka
*katu → kat
*rand → ra(n?)
*gedʒoi → gedʒo

[WeepingElf]

It works (or at least should work) if you split one of the changes into two phases and place the other change between those.

Option 1:
1. Reduce all final consonants to something like [h] or a glottal stop.
2. Delete all final vowels.
3. Delete the reduced consonants.

Option 2:
1. Reduce all final vowels to something like schwa.
2. Delete all final consonants.
3. Delete the reduced vowels.

I think that is perfectly plausible and doable, so you can have such a change in your language. Actually, you need not really decide between the two options. I am considering having such a change in some Hesperic languages, too.