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So, one of these is very related to conlangs, and the other, not so much.

Firstly, what unique/unusual languages would you recommend to take inspiration from? I've already made languages that are based off of Romance languages like Spanish, French etc, and the Gaelic languages like Gaeilge and Welsh. But I'm looking to make a conlang with some really atypical sounds and syntax. Does anybody have any suggestions?

My second question is more of a linguistics one. I know that the suffix -nomicon means something like "book of/image of names," and then one can add prefixes to that as desired. I'd like to make a word that means, roughly, "Book of the Holy Names." So far I've come up with "hieronomicon," using the Ancient Greek prefix hieros-, or "holy." Is this grammatically correct? If not, what is?

Bagr'gatraa wrote: ↑12 Aug 2018 23:58 So, one of these is very related to conlangs, and the other, not so much.

Firstly, what unique/unusual languages would you recommend to take inspiration from? I've already made languages that are based off of Romance languages like Spanish, French etc, and the Gaelic languages like Gaeilge and Welsh. But I'm looking to make a conlang with some really atypical sounds and syntax. Does anybody have any suggestions?

Minor correction, but Welsh is Brythonic, not Gaelic.

As for where you can draw inspiration from for "atypical" sounds, I suppose you could look into ejectives and implosives, which appear in 20% and 13% of the world's languages, and of course the ever-popular click consonants. Dental fricatives are actually cross-linguistically rare, despite appearing in English and Spanish. Different phonations like creaky voice and slack voice are relatively rare in comparison to, say, voiceless and modal voice. Some of the Caucasian languages have what is known as a "vertical vowel system", where vowels are only phonemically distinguished by height (although they do appear phonetically with differences in frontness and roundness due to interactions with surrounding consonants). Honestly, looking for these terms on Wikipedia is a great start, since many of the articles link to specific languages or languages families which possess those features.

As for syntax someone else might have more of an idea of that, but on a similar note I'd look into morphosyntactic alignment to get a good idea of the ways in which different languages treat the subjects and objects of verbs.

Bagr'gatraa wrote: ↑12 Aug 2018 23:58 My second question is more of a linguistics one. I know that the suffix -nomicon means something like "book of/image of names," and then one can add prefixes to that as desired. I'd like to make a word that means, roughly, "Book of the Holy Names." So far I've come up with "hieronomicon," using the Ancient Greek prefix hieros-, or "holy." Is this grammatically correct? If not, what is?

I'd say either hieronomicon or hagionomicon. I had hoped someone else might have used those terms before, but Google shows nothing.

Thanks a lot for your advice, I'll certainly look into Wikipedia more. I don't use the internet much you see, as I tend to rely on books moreso.

Bagr'gatraa wrote: ↑13 Aug 2018 02:44 Thanks a lot for your advice, I'll certainly look into Wikipedia more. I don't use the internet much you see, as I tend to rely on books moreso.

Oh I'm sure someone will have some advice in terms of books you can read. At the very least, a fair number of linguistic articles on Wikipedia, especially regarding the more well-studied languages, do cite actual books, and a good Google search will turn up a fair few PDF's depending on the subject (ergativity, which is a sort of morphosyntactic alignment, will turn up dozens to hundreds of PDFs and books, while something like egophoricity, definitely worth checking out by the way, might turn up some good ones, but not as many).

We were taught in college here in the UK, back in the mid 00's, to actively avoid Wikipedia, but at that point it was only a few years old and particularly unreliable in parts, but over time it has become more and more a reliable "secondary" source, with many articles now having multiple sources which can be viewed and which themselves provide there own sources and so on. It's a resource that I would rely on, although of course not exclusively.

Ok, thanks a lot for your help, I do appreciate it.

Bagr'gatraa wrote: ↑13 Aug 2018 03:50 Ok, thanks a lot for your help, I do appreciate it.

No problem Hope to see more of your work on the board in the future

Bagr'gatraa wrote: ↑12 Aug 2018 23:58 So, one of these is very related to conlangs, and the other, not so much.

Firstly, what unique/unusual languages would you recommend to take inspiration from? I've already made languages that are based off of Romance languages like Spanish, French etc, and the Gaelic languages like Gaeilge and Welsh. But I'm looking to make a conlang with some really atypical sounds and syntax. Does anybody have any suggestions?

My second question is more of a linguistics one. I know that the suffix -nomicon means something like "book of/image of names," and then one can add prefixes to that as desired. I'd like to make a word that means, roughly, "Book of the Holy Names." So far I've come up with "hieronomicon," using the Ancient Greek prefix hieros-, or "holy." Is this grammatically correct? If not, what is?

Welcome!

What language... that's the kind of question where, if you get seven different respondents here you'll end up with at least 43 opinions among them! To be honest, if you're already working with French and Irish, just throw English into the mix and you've got a triple crown of unique and unusual languages right there!

Me I think Sumerian is pretty cool, and also Quechua. Well, that's five opinions right there! Let's see what else you dredge up!

For the second question, I think "hagionomicon" might also work. Kind of would depend on what you actually intend to mean by "holy". Here is a good treatise on distinguishing the two Greek words.

Hagiography?
Though that now means Book of Saints(‘ biographies).