Astorí!

Welcome to the fourth no longer-weekly c/conlangs post!

As you might be able to tell, as the initial hype for the community has slowed down, we've also started getting behind on the weekly posts. Sorry for that. We'll hope to be able to maintain a somewhat less ambitious bi-weekly schedule. But please keep posting your conlang things here - every post matters (to us)!

Conlangs of the Week

The conlangs of the week are the Ancient Language and Dwarvish from Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle (aka Eragon and the following books). Both these languages feature frequently in Paolini's setting and are essential to the worldbuilding and story of the setting. On the other hand, they have often been criticised for their lack of originality and lack of real rules or vocabulary. Instead, there are just lists of translated words or phrases, not even with an explanation on how to pronounce them. (Though it seems that Paolini has actually done some more leg-work to establish the languages more broadly since the books were released.)

What do you think about this method of conlanging? Would you consider relexes of English (or other irl languages) "proper" conlangs? Are relexes okay as naming languages? Or do you think that the concept of relexes are just gatekeeping?

Linguistic feature of the week

Less of a linguistic feature and more of a conlang sub-category, our subject of discussion this week are naming languages. Naming languages are conlangs made with only limited grammar and a limited vocabulary, usually just about enough to fill in a map or generate some names - often for a literary setting.

Do you use naming languages? At what point do you consider a conlang having passed the stage of "naming language"?

Post of the week

No posts this week, so no post of the week ;p

Happy conlanging everyone and thank you for joining us on c/conlangs!

Esterní!

toki!

Welcome to the third weekly c/conlangs post!

First of all sorry for the delay between the last post and this one, I have been pretty busy last week so I kind of just… forgot. Sorry!

Also, if you have suggestions for a conlang and linguistic feature of the week, please send them to me! I only know so many, so I’m always happy to learn about more, so I can include them in these posts!

Conlang of the week

This week's conlang of the week is: toki pona! This language was made by linguist Sonja Lang, at first to see how having an extremely small vocabulary would influence the way speakers view things. But the language has quickly grown to have a large community, and even lots of speakers (for a conlang) due to it’s cute nature and ease of learning.

What do you think of toki pona? Do you speak it? Do you think it changes the way speakers will look at things? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!

Linguistic feature of the week

This week’s linguistic feature is more of a linguistic curiosity. Keeping with the theme of toki pona, we are looking at how your conlangs might influence the way its speakers think and act!

When German and French speakers were asked to imagine a key and describe its characteristics, they had vastly different answers. People speculate this is because of the grammatical gender that both languages have, one having a key be masculine, the other feminine.

And in toki pona, because you only have very little words to describe things it often forces speakers to break things down to the core of what they want to say, which might actually help them get their point across better too!

In what way might the features of your conlang influence its speakers? Or what things within a language do you think would influence the way people think the most? Please share it with us in the comments!

Post of the week

This week the post of the week is this great post by @[email protected] about how people seperate words in speech! Go check it out! https://hexbear.net/post/3003566

Happy conlanging everyone and thanks for being apart of the c/conlangs community!

o musi a!

Sellamat! Kam leitte yu?

Welcome to the second weekly c/conlangs post!

Conlang of the Week

The conlang of the week is Sambahsa. Created as an international auxilliary language (IAL) by the linguist Olivier Simon, it was first revealed to the public in 2007. As an IAL, it recognises that a universally "easy" learning experience is near impossible to achieve and therefore tries to concentrate on basing its systems on Indo-European languages, which are of course widely spread. On the other hand, a large amount of vocabulary comes from other language families.

What do you think about Sambahsa? Does it meet its goals? Have you heard of Sambahsa before? Do you think it can succeed as an IAL? Why or why not? Share your thoughts in the thread!

Linguistic feature of the week

Keeping with Sambahsa's Indo-European theme, we want to look at Indo-European features in conlangs. While some parts of the conlanging community shun unique Indo-European features because they feel it lets on too much of the conlanger's (expected) natlang background, some people have wholeheartedly embraced some Indo-European features in their conlangs or are even trying to build their own, such as the ever-popular romlangs.

Do you use Indo-European features in your conlang(s)? Did you add them on purpose or were they indeed your own background sneaking in through the backdoor? What IE features do you find easiest to omit from conlangs, or hardest to avoid? What's your favourite IE feature to use in a conlang? Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments!

Post of the week

The first post of the week here on c/conlangs goes to Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net! Congratulations! She made a great post on what she likes best about conlanging. You can check it out here: Post of the week (I'd like to also use this opportunity to shout out [email protected]'s post on their conlang, Koiwak).

Happy conlanging everyone and thank you for joining us on c/conlangs!

Chao!

I'll start myself: I've been quite interested in Esperanto recently, and I am thinking of starting to actually learn the language. Esperanto is just really interesting to me, because of its history and size, compared to other conlangs. I don't believe it will become the universal world language, like once was dreamed. And I do think esperanto has quite a few shortcomings when it comes to being an international auxilliary language. The reason I want to learn it is more just for that history and culture.