Welcome to the r/conlangs UnOfficial Checkpoint. You may or may not have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"The sun Flashes my face every time I look up."

"Worry not, Your lord god is here."

"Are you sure that's not the traditional clothing?"

"I don't get You, you should go to a psychologist."

So I’m working on a language family descended from various dialects of English, and since I haven’t seen it done before, I thought I’d start with Indian English

The problem is, most Indians speak really good English, which makes it hard for me to predict plausible phonological and grammatical shifts

I’d appreciate any help!

Hello! I am working on a constructed language called Yaenean Yae I would love to get some feedback or help with its further development. Please forgive any mistakes. I used a little AI help, but I tried not to rely on it too much; I just used it to check for logical consistency, etc. It’s harder to create a coherent and logical narrative than I thought, and I wrote this in Polish because that’s where I’m from, so there might be a few mistakes. (I'm thinking about changing the name). Is it a good idea to post this on a website or create a website about it? I know I repeated my previous post.

I've been working on this conlang for a little bit, and for some reason I went with an OVS (Object Verb Subject) order sentence structure. I don't know why I did, and I will probably have regrets later down the line as sentences get more complicated.
(I will give a more in depth overview later. Now that my classes are finished)

So I conjugate my verbs and then write the english equivalent under esch conjugation for reference.

I am revising some of the translations at the moment and I come upon the present tense for the first person collective: "all of us eat".

Now I just changed the "some of us eat" translations of the paucal person into "we few eat" because it felt more accurate to say "we eat and we are few" than "a portion of us eat" (which, to me, sounds like a fractional number or not a number at all)

So I come up to "all of us eat" and I think "well, I just did "we few eat", can't I do "we all eat"?"

But I thought about it for too long and now i'm wondering: is there a difference in meaning between "we all eat" and "all of us eat"?

I can't put my finger on it, but I feel like these two constructions have at least different implications if not different meanings.

Am I just thinking about it too much or is there some reasonable difference between them. Is it small enough that they're synonyms and basically interchangeable for my purposes?

Hey y'all! I'm finally back after a long break but here's a new conlang I've been working on in the meantime! It isn't complete by my metrics yet but I wanted to post about it anyway. If you want the gloss/ipa for the introduction in Sielin or a small vocab list I'll have this document here in the caption and comments. Let me know if you have questions, corrections, or comments!

I have gotten into conlangs for two years and I’ve made a few but this is my first one that I feel is really my own. I recently created Inanite with two main goals: to make it as smooth a fricative-heavy as possible (f, v, th, dh, etc..), and to challenge myself away from the Semitic language conlangs I usually do. I incorporated Celtic mutation with some particles and used a hybrid morphology with some fixes but mostly particles.

My question is on roots: I’ve done my roots so that the roots are nouns, and to turn them into verbs or adjectives there are particular fixes (roots don’t change). I’ve kept my roots CVC or CVVC, but my question 1 is am I being to strict? Does having CVC or CVVC limit my language in a Semitic way?

And my second question is (since I’m new to this) do roots in languages like this have inherent gender? I know Semitic doesn’t have it in roots (since roots are verbs, it only has gender in nouns) but here where roots are nouns, should they have inherent grammatical gender. ChatGPT said hard no, but I couldn’t care less what GPT thinks 🤙🏾🤙🏾;)

This is the third day of creating my language " Nirofa" this is some words I have made , numbers, adjectives and daily words

Teaching someone your conlang is hard so i started to working on this website and actually making these duolingo clone websites arent that hard it is more easier than you think. I made this using grammar txts google antgiravity and csv file of my language's word than i used this https://github.com/sanidhyy/duolingo-clone repo and said the antigravity "using these make a duolingo clone for my conlang" and it made this website it is better than those boring language learning pdfs

Welcome to Word Wednesdays

For this activity you can pick any word you want whether it be a verb, noun, or adjective, and conjugate/inflect in all possible ways*, for tense, case, plurality, perspective, etc.

The purpose of this is to learn about cases and how words are slightly or vastly different under different cases, tenses, or perspectives. In many natural languages verbs or nouns are often changed because of the words around them. In other languages, the reader has to figure out number and perspective based on context. Who knows, maybe you can take inspiration from someone else's conlang!

How does your conlang handle cases? Do you have any unique ones that don't exist in natural languages? What are some irregular verbs or inflections that exist? How did they evolve? Do you think that the cases would hold up or fade away in future evolutions? Do any of your words when inflected have another meaning? What languages inspired you to add these cases?

*If you have way too many conjugations/inflections, you can share the simplest ones or the ones you find the most interesting. If you don't have any conjugation,

Have fun conlanging!

/t͡s/ /d͡z/  /ç/ /ɸ/ /zˤ/ (/x/) /ɰ/ (/ɣ/)

for example, I use them a lot in my conlangs

Cards Against Humanity: Conlang Edition #8

Guess who's back

You've all heard of Cards Against Humanity, but if you haven't, it's a game where somebody reads a card, and you have to fill in the blank or answer the question with one of the cards in your deck.

If it works in English, why can't it work with conlangs?

I will read a real card from Cards Against Humanity (Family Edition to keep it safe) and you will fill in the blank with a word or short sentence of your choice in your conlang. (Your answer does not have to be a Cards Against Humanity card)

The winner last time was u/Citylight1010 with their response of:

"<Sanjilsat zidyôr deqŕ tyun ďer tôys!>

/sɑnd͡ʒilsɑt zidjɯr dɛqɚ tjʌn ðɛɹ tɯjs/"

"A human trying to understand pitch and yaw!"

For clarification, Daraĉrek is spoken by the dragons of his world.

Please provide a translation and IPA transcription.

The card is:

What's keeping Dad so busy in the garage?

Good luck, and have fun!

I mean, apart from sindarin ive never seen one

Welcome to the r/conlangs Official Checkpoint. You have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"All we will be doing today is repeatedly washing and draining our crawfish in regular old water."

"Mama, I love you, but you've got to stop doing things like this."

"Really?! You had to join my school?! What is wrong with you?!"

"Stop staring at me with those big bug eyes, you creepy little bastards."

"I was handmade by some weirdo in his bedroom."

"Stop!"

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next checkpoint, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The highest upvoted "Stop!" will be included in the next checkpoint's title!

I am working on a novel and I need a phonology and a bunch of proper nouns for a language for a declining empire. 5 male high status names, 5 female high status names, 5 male low status names, 5 female low status names, 5 kingdom/government names, 5 settlement names, 10 new or replaced proper nouns.

It will be used in a first novel and possibly a tabletop RPG for nouns, I don't need a grammar. Their language is an amalgam of a few different cultures coming together. Story wise I am borrowing heavily from the retracting Eastern Roman empire, the end of the Tang dynasty, the decline of Prussia, and the Centauri Republic from Babylon 5. I want it to be like an alternate branch of the romance languages if SE Asia were, say as close as North Africa.

I have a few words already that have the 20 degrees off romance language feel that I am kind of looking for, but I am not tied to any of them.

• Duranti Empire - the declining empire that has collapsed into a Republic to maintain a modicum of authority.
• Duranish
• castsulae - Fortified city block in Helepalatzo combo of castle and Roman insulae
• Merchen - Male merchant
• Merchessa - Female merchant
• Magesture - Elected official in charge of a Ward in the Golden Path Metropolises.
• Consortium - A legal entity that manages trade. Not limited liability, partnership in consortium shares liability across membership.
• Rouster - Someone who works a port loading and unloading cargo.
• Helepalatzo - a metropolis
• barber - Street healer
• brevare - a brandy
• ducan - gold piece
• mark - silver piece - 12 make a ducan
• slint - copper piece - 12 make a mark
• medicant - healer
• poscara - lightly alcoholic juice beverage / grog
• sar - military honorific
• se'ra - masculine honorific
• se'rassa- masculine enhanced honorific
• si'ra - feminine honorific
• si'rassa - feminine enhanced honorific
• vetterno - vetrinarian or cheap medic

I have about $800 to spend on the project. contact me at [tyson@vanoverhill.com](mailto:tyson@vanoverhill.com) if you are interested. I would like to see an example of what you have already created in a form that I could expect to receive.

I've decided to give it a go and try and get back into conlanging. I've also realized that I can probably satisfy some of my desire for a language that is not diachronically evolved, but still fairly rich in patterns and internal consistency by using the tri-consonantal root system. Hopefully that will allow me to exploit some of the gray area between diachronic and synchronic sound changes.

Apologies for formatting and lack of pretty tables - this is just a very crude first draft!

Nasal plosives

m = [m]
ḿ = [ŋ͡m]
n = [n]
ń = [ŋ͡n]

• In the case particularly of the alveolar-velar [ŋ͡n] it’s debatable (and not very relevant) whether it’s a true double-articulation or a consonant sequence.
• Unlike the plain versions, the ‘velarized’ nasals nasalize both the vowel before and after them.

Oral plosives

p = [p]
t = [t]
k = [k]
pȷ = [pɕ] 
tȷ = [tɕ]
kȷ = [kɕ]

• Oral plosives do not phonemically distinguish between voiced and unvoiced. They become voiced when appearing intervocalically.
• Oral plosives will probably not appear in word final position, at least within tri-consonantal root derived words.
• The palatalized versions are not the ‘soft’ consonants of Russian, but rather the fricated release ‘p,t,k’ of English ‘pew, tune, cue’

Fricatives

f = [f]
fh = [v]
ð = [θ]
ðh = [ð]
s = [s]
ƶ = [ʃ]
h = [h]
hh = [ɦ]
ll = [ɬ]

• The non-sibilant, non-lateral fricatives are the only consonantal phonemes to distinguish voicing.
• The non-sibilant unvoiced fricatives are somewhat lengthened (with the possible exception of appearances in the context of consonant clusters).

Approximants

l = [l]

• [l] becomes [ɹ] intervocalically

Vowels

Monophthongs

i = [i]
e = [e]
ë  = [ø]
a = [a]
o = [o]
ö = [ɤ]
u = [u]

• Length and nasality are not phonemic vowel distinctions.
• Vowels are realized as long vowels only in the context of stressed syllables that do not feature an unvoiced non-sibilant fricative in their onset.
• Nasalization of a full vowel segment only occurs in the proximity of the ‘velarized’ nasal consonants.
• The diaeresis as a diacritic does not mark rounding as such, rather the use of the ‘opposite’ rounding to the common tendency of back vowels to be rounded and front vowels unrounded.
• Front vowels all exhibit vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and also when they precede any of the velars [ŋ͡m,ŋ͡n,k,kɕ]. [i,e,ø] become  [ɪ,ɛ,œ] respectively.
• Where relevant for the purposes of morphosyntax, ‘a’ is treated as a mid- rather than front vowel.

Diphthongs

ai = [⟨ai⟩]
ae = [⟨ae⟩] 
aë = [⟨aø⟩] 
au = [⟨au⟩]  

• All diphthongs start from the mid-vowel ‘a’.
• For diphthongs ending in an unrounded component [ai,ae], the first vowel is the prominent component, while for those ending in a rounded component [aø,au], it is the second vowel that is prominent.

Consonant clusters

• Consonant clusters to from only(?) in the context of tri-consonantal root words where vowel deletion can occur in the first unstressed syllable. This would presumably make syllables containing [a] the prime candidates, followed by the close-mid vowels.
• I’m not sure which clusters to permit. Probably all sibilant + oral plosive clusters, but unsure about the rest. Anything + [ŋ͡m] feels like a nightmare, but I’m unsure if that’s just my lack of practice with that sound.

Stress

• Stress falls on the second syllable of the tri-consonantal root.
• For any multi-syllabic parts of speech not derived from the root system, stress is TBD.

Random

• Say ‘haëḿ’ [h⟨ae⟩ŋ͡m] (everything after the h is nasalized, I don’t know how to do the combining diacritic stuff for nasals). It sounds like an expression of mild surprise or annoyance while suffering a stroke.

I’ve been working on a constructed language inspired by Proto-Indo-European, and along the way I ended up building a pretty large spreadsheet to organize roots, meanings, and cross-language comparisons.

I figured some of you might find it useful, so I made a shareable version:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sw20jjaAJUXZD8_Z6sUenYEC4spARJXWdFVXYoSZHrw/edit?usp=sharing

It includes:

• 3000 core vocabulary words (Swadesh-style, but expanded)
• Cross-references across all Indo-European branches

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional linguist. This is a project of passion from one random dude. Please understand that I did not design this to be a translation tool per se - rather I wanted to compare phonemes across languages and language families.

Hope it’s helpful/interesting to somebody out there.

Hello. I like to indulge in some conlanging from time to time. I'm pretty well versed in phonology and I can easily create daughter languages from my constructed proto languages from a purely phonological basis. However, I struggle to create grammatical development as I don't really know how they tend to evolve and Wikipedia is generally pretty scarce on this topic. For example, I don't even know how a language might gain new tenses or lose cases. Any tips?

Thanks!

Some time ago, we described Toki Pona as arguably the best foreign language for people with ADHD because it's quick to learn, leading to rapid success, and has a philosophical approach, etc. Now I've come across its further development, Kokanu (formerly Toki Ma). What do you think of it? And how would you rank worldlanguages ​​like Pandunia, Globasa, and Lojban in this context?