Search found 568 matches

by Pabappa
27 Mar 2024 23:58
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth
Replies: 660
Views: 168447

Re: Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth

Right, but the list that you get when you go to the download page is a list of the individual words that have pages, not a list of the definitions on those pages. Searching for "doughnut" gives me S: (n) ring, halo, annulus, doughnut, anchor ring (a toroidal shape) "a ring of ships in...
by Pabappa
27 Mar 2024 18:51
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Play scratchpad
Replies: 2
Views: 96

Re: Play scratchpad

Like many other Lava Bed languages, Play not only uses person marking on nouns, but these markers can be transitive, meaning that nouns are marked for the donor and the recipient. These in turn can couple to mood markers, so one can say šappem hiking boots Šappiŋup. I have my hiking boots. (Note tha...
by Pabappa
27 Mar 2024 17:11
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Play scratchpad
Replies: 2
Views: 96

Play scratchpad

I'd like to return to posting here, perhaps not as frequently as I was during 2017-19 when I had mobile-only Internet and not much else to do. I'm mostly on Discord nowadays, but it seems lately I fill up the conlangs channel with notes that are mostly for myself, so I thought I could put those here...
by Pabappa
27 Mar 2024 02:04
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth
Replies: 660
Views: 168447

Re: Lexicon milestones and discussion of lexicon growth

To be fair, Classical Yiklamu is just a cipher of English with its definitions taken from WordNet, which at the time had about 90,000 words. I dont consider it a full language because it's strictly tied to English ... even to the point of having the word for "bat" mean both an animal and a...
by Pabappa
25 Mar 2024 15:17
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Field/Lexical Affixes in Your Polysynthetic Conlangs?
Replies: 13
Views: 592

Re: Field/Lexical Affixes in Your Polysynthetic Conlangs?

* Because there is no lexical noun-verb distinction, as with virtually all of my conlangs, saying that it has both noun-incorporation and verb-serialisation is a bit misleading as they're the same thing. Bases can be modified by other bases, introduced by one of three modifier interfixes: | interfi...
by Pabappa
22 Mar 2024 12:51
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?
Replies: 53
Views: 12932

Re: Does anyone else try and actually speak or pronounce their conlang or is it all on paper?

Admittedly, my insistence on distinguishing between long vowels and a sequence of two short vowels make Play a difficult language for me to pronounce, despite its relatively simple phonology (11 consonants plus /a i u ə ā ī ū/). There is no limit to how many vowels can occur in a row, so even sequen...
by Pabappa
18 Mar 2024 13:39
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Field/Lexical Affixes in Your Polysynthetic Conlangs?
Replies: 13
Views: 592

Re: Field/Lexical Affixes in Your Polysynthetic Conlangs?

My Lava Bed languages (the clade that enwraps Play) might qualify as polysynthetic, but for a long time I've focused on building the language for its own sake rather than seeking labels. I don't think Play has any fixed slots that serve as field or lexical affixes, so maybe it's not polysynthetic, b...
by Pabappa
18 Mar 2024 11:42
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: What did you accomplish today?
Replies: 734
Views: 207152

Re: What did you accomplish today?

okay hear me out. this is an idea that's been bouncing around in my mind for many years, though in slumber for a long time, only waking up recently as Ive come to work on Dreamlandic, which is a hatelang I've designed to be purposedly inefficient. Dreamlandic split from Play about 4,500 years ago, b...
by Pabappa
18 Mar 2024 10:09
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: What did you accomplish today?
Replies: 734
Views: 207152

Re: What did you accomplish today?

Some new sentences in Play, where I'm working on areas of syntax that are difficult for a language of its type. Kāsuap pīppiba samam, nāmmi pipe šāpām šapaa. I bathed the pig outside while the rain soaked both of us. Taā pāptupip taminas, tatap kīppibu, ne pipe papišibi. The boy licking pine sap ran...
by Pabappa
13 Mar 2024 23:30
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: What did you accomplish today?
Replies: 734
Views: 207152

Re: What did you accomplish today?

Lately I've liked how Play translates words that are simple in English by compounds of words that are simple in Play but often complex in English. For example, the word for species is žapapišaa , made up of že "marry" papi "kiss" šaa "lilypad; social network" Although t...
by Pabappa
05 Mar 2024 19:47
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: How unbalanced is your lexicon?
Replies: 85
Views: 15115

Re: How unbalanced is your lexicon?

At the opposite extreme, Play struggles with concepts that are in English basic vocabulary. For example, corresponding to the English words buy/sell/pay/charge, Play needs three-part compounds, denoting the 1) medium of transaction (if it involves money or not) 2) whether the person is buying or sel...
by Pabappa
04 Mar 2024 21:33
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Non-decimal number systems in conlangs
Replies: 18
Views: 857

Re: Non-decimal number systems in conlangs

All of my languages use base 10. Glyphs for the numbers are taken from the first ten glyphs of the Late Andanese syllabary, a language with only thirty syllables. But there is a strong secondary base-30 system that uses the full syllabary: these are used like we use our letters A-Z. The two systems ...
by Pabappa
02 Mar 2024 14:59
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: How unbalanced is your lexicon?
Replies: 85
Views: 15115

Re: How unbalanced is your lexicon?

Pretty much. I work mostly on whole sets of words, or even types of words (grammar, etc) so I find myself in the same situation. Play's lexicon is also unbalanced, relative to English, in a different sense .... it has short words for concepts we consider complex, but requires compounds for many, man...
by Pabappa
31 Dec 2023 11:15
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

Play peu , to cooperate, be united, bring parts into a whole. This is from MRCA puli and is a regular sound change. It can change to /pau/ to obey a vowel harmony rule that is triggered when another /a/ follows. And I've answered the question I posed myself a few posts upthread, where I was wonderin...
by Pabappa
30 Dec 2023 14:20
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

I've run out of time to get the full list of school-related words I was hoping for, and indeed, I still don't have a word that simply means "school", only words for types of schools. I will continue working on this after Lexember but I also want to post a few words that I've come up with t...
by Pabappa
29 Dec 2023 15:15
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

Plum yabi , a school. The oblique stem of this is řai- ... for the past few days instead of working on Play I've been working on regularizing the chaotic stem alternations inherited by its neighbor spoken just to the east (and eventually ending up within Play territory). Play and Plum are only dista...
by Pabappa
28 Dec 2023 10:17
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

Play tamem , a shoe. From MRCA ndan min , which evolves to Play /tami/, plus the clothing classifier suffix which causes mutation of /i/ > /em/. min in MRCA meant "leg; river; worm" and I haven't decided yet whether the common theme is things that move or things that are long and narrow. n...
by Pabappa
27 Dec 2023 10:25
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

The fourth major economic system in my writing is slavery. Unlike with piracy , there is no transnational moral code governing what is and is not acceptable in slavery; each slaveowning operation is separate and can only be restricted by the laws of the nations they dwell in. In general, humans in m...
by Pabappa
26 Dec 2023 11:12
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

Thanks, I like the right/left story. ------------------------------------------- While we may think of capitalism and communism as two distant poles, to the Play speakers and others in their world they are very similar. This is because nations in their world also use economic systems that are far ou...
by Pabappa
25 Dec 2023 12:03
Forum: Conlangs
Topic: Lexember 2023
Replies: 319
Views: 13817

Re: Lexember 2023

Im going to focus on politics for the rest of this month since that's what I've been working on all along. Play ŋupa , an economic system, from MRCA ŋup ga , something to do with natural resources, but whose meaning I havent defined yet. It's likely that it will refer to some very specific tangible ...