Introducing Vyrmag

A forum for all topics related to constructed languages
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

Aktum! Hello!

First of all let me state that I am very new to the CBB. I have spent most of my time on the /r/conlangs reddit. I apologize in advance if the standards of this post does not fit the community standard (I actually have no idea what the community standard is). For now, I will simple post with the same expectations that would be met over in /r/conlangs.

What is Vyrmag?
Vyrmag is an oligosynthetic language. what differs it from other oligosynthetic languages is that you will be able to use the language to a near-full extent with knowledge of only the root words and merging techniques. I won't go too in-depth with this post, but you can always check out http://www.reddit.com/r/Vyrmag/ for more information.


I'm just going to talk about the highlights of the language.

- It's been around for 6 months, and has accumulated around 17 proficient speakers.
- I actually never made proper grammar for Vyrmag, but instead, I let the community use the language and then I later logged down certain aspects of grammar. In short, I created a crude language with many missing features, which were later polished off by the community.
- Vyrmag is fully functional with 85 words and 5 affixes.
- Vyrmag is actually my first conlang. I never really bothered to work on other conlangs, and I put all of my effort into Vyrmag and its community.

Edit: Sample Text
Spoiler:
Sorry, unable to provide IPA because I'm on a tablet right now. Also, I suck at glossing (It's one of the things I still have to learn).

belg an'nya en nov "orlins"
ye'kyop yug tara'iya'kyo on
ag kyop art il'kyub iya syu daig'syu
ag vyuk, ae krana e ae vyum

Building neg.-notexist in new Orleans
gen.-it name (copula) air-direction-move sun
and it create intensifier-destruction towards many people-plural.
and true, I know one I be.
Can anyone guess the song?
This post was quite hastily made, so please comment if you feel that anything is missing.

Agmyorn!


Edit: Phonology and other things can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q-r ... edit?pli=1
Last edited by tigfa on 17 Apr 2015 07:49, edited 1 time in total.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
User avatar
Xing
MVP
MVP
Posts: 4153
Joined: 22 Aug 2010 18:46

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Xing »

There is the classical criticism of oligosynthetic languages: how can you get along with such a limited number of words, without either (1) having lots of ambiguities, which makes the language difficult to use in other than some very restricted contexts, or (2) cheating by having lots of non-transparent compounds that have be memorised one by one?

For instance, if the word for 'fish' literally translates as 'water-living-thing', how would you say something like 'fishes are not the only things that live in the water? Lots of creatures live in the water, that are not fishes?'

There is also quite a lot I'd like to ask about the grammar – the document I found is very sketchy (I count 17 pages, including the ToC - which can hardly be a complete documentation of a language's grammar...)

How do you express, for instance:
–Secondary predication? ('I consider her beautiful', 'She left him confused', 'She hammered it flat', 'He painted the house yellow', etc.)
-Relative and other dependent clauses?
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

In Vyrmag, most of the time, things are simple classified by what they do. For example, a pet cat and a pet dog are both really pets. We don't really care about the kind of species of the dog or cat, we just care about what it does. Vyrmag is a different style of thinking in that respect. On your second point, I have tried to balance true oligosynthesis with convenience. This means that the root words being used are a mix of both true root words (such as dimension, energy, etc.) and root words that can be made with other rootwords (such as wood, building, etc). Simply put, because of this balance, many compounds do not have to be memorized one by one (although some compounds may be difficult to understand at first, this is unavoidable).


Regarding your fish point: a) we don't differentiate fish from sharks, whales, or anything that somewhat resembles a fish (we can just say really big fish or something), b) an'nya et ira'kyop et zog atu'ira'kyop - there are other animals other than the main water-living-thing. I can make this a lot more detailed but this is how I would say it in casual speech.


The Grammar: Most of the grammar is yet to be documented. The thing is certain grammatical features change over time as they are being used. I simply document the features that have become static. I can't document something that is prone to change within a month or so.


Expressing things:

- I think she possesses good visuals.
- she made him unable to think clearly
- she made it like two-dimensional
- he made the building sun-color
etc.

I can make a gloss translation for the above if desired. This is how it would be said, of course with Vyrmag grammar. Since you're not really after that for this part, I will just make it a close English equivalent.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
User avatar
Xing
MVP
MVP
Posts: 4153
Joined: 22 Aug 2010 18:46

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Xing »

tigfa wrote:In Vyrmag, most of the time, things are simple classified by what they do. For example, a pet cat and a pet dog are both really pets. We don't really care about the kind of species of the dog or cat, we just care about what it does.
Regarding your fish point: a) we don't differentiate fish from sharks, whales, or anything that somewhat resembles a fish (we can just say really big fish or something), b) an'nya et ira'kyop et zog atu'ira'kyop - there are other animals other than the main water-living-thing.
I'd say this contradicts the claim that the language is 'fully functional'. At least as I spontaneously understand 'fully functional'. (Which is, roughly, that it allows one to talk about the same range of topics as natural languages do - but maybe you are are using 'fully functional' in another sense?)

How would you say, for instance: 'Many dogs - and a few cats - should not be kept as pets?'
I can make this a lot more detailed
Please make it a lot more detailed! (As many things aren't obvious to me after reading the grammar...)
but this is how I would say it in casual speech.
(emphasis mine) So that's how you would say it? Would the other 16 or so 'proficient' speakers express it the same way? To me, this was not apparent after reading the grammar – is this really an established way of expressing something in Vyrmag, and not something you make up on the fly?? (The same questions apply to the other examples you have given...)
Mugitus
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 26
Joined: 26 Apr 2014 21:53
Location: Ohio

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Mugitus »

Do you currently have anything on phonotactics, phonology, etc? Also I'm curious to see how complex words or concepts would be translated into Vyrmag.
Nimitzitta!
Darvince
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 82
Joined: 08 Feb 2015 01:51

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Darvince »

To bounce off of what cntrational said, it has no fixed grammatical rules and all its speakers are American as far as I am aware, and he has repeatedly stated in r/conlangs, "the only grammatical rule is that you can understand each other" which makes no sense. It's as much of a language as ROT13 done to English.
CBB forum is of Polandball
My minicity

:usa: Fluent
:esp: C1
:con: Himalian, A1
Prinsessa
runic
runic
Posts: 2647
Joined: 07 Nov 2011 14:42

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Prinsessa »

No need to be rude to the newcomer, tho.

More info would indeed be necessary to really determine anything. As for standard practice of presentation, most people start with the phonology. Then grammar rules step by step.

No matter what people think of the actual language, tho, I think we can all get one piece of interesting information out of this, about something which almost no conlang(er) succeeds in doing; acquiring a community. How did you do this, OP?
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

I'm a guy from r/conlangs; specifically the Skype group, and let me summarize Vyrmag:
It's a shitty English relex.
This is why I like posting a lot about my lang and getting speakers. I'm sure you must feel great that my "shitty English relex" has a growing speaker population and is one of the most popular conlangs on the reddit.
To bounce off of what cntrational said, it has no fixed grammatical rules and all its speakers are American as far as I am aware, and he has repeatedly stated in r/conlangs, "the only grammatical rule is that you can understand each other" which makes no sense. It's as much of a language as ROT13 done to English.
I left it up to the community to build the grammar (similar to viossa). Also, not all of the speakers are American. I have speakers from the Philippines, Singapore, Germany, New Zealand, etc.
Do you currently have anything on phonotactics, phonology, etc? Also I'm curious to see how complex words or concepts would be translated into Vyrmag.
Vyrmag was built in a very unorganized manner, so very little was put into phonotactics and phonology. The documentation can be found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Vyrmag/.
So let's translate some words and concepts:
A machine that can change the outcome of events occurring on the 5th dimension - nov'ye'tyg'kin'fas'yut - [Renew]-[gen.-[dimension 5]]-[events]-[tool]
A gas planet - tyg'tryg'tara'oto [dimension-3]-[gas-circle]
Fighter plane - ak'dyag'en'tara - [agent.-fighter]-[location]-[air]
conlanger - ak'art'spyeg - agent.-create-language/speech

I can post more if you like, but these are some uncommon words and concepts I just thought of.
Last edited by tigfa on 16 Apr 2015 17:47, edited 1 time in total.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
User avatar
J_from_Holland
sinic
sinic
Posts: 217
Joined: 19 Mar 2015 17:19
Location: On this forum

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by J_from_Holland »

tigfa wrote:
- It's been around for 6 months, and has accumulated around 17 proficient speakers.
- I actually never made proper grammar for Vyrmag, but instead, I let the community use the language and then I later logged down certain aspects of grammar. In short, I created a crude language with many missing features, which were later polished off by the community.
- Vyrmag is fully functional with 85 words and 5 affixes.
- Vyrmag is actually my first conlang. I never really bothered to work on other conlangs, and I put all of my effort into Vyrmag and its community.
6 months and 17 proficient speakers?
How did you get such a big community? I mean, 17 speakers is pretty big for a relatively young conlang. It's 17 times bigger than my community :roll:
And indeed, you need more information, such as a phoneme inventory.
A few years, I posted about Bløjhvåtterskyll. That's Barmish nowadays, and it's quite different from back then.
:nld: :mrgreen: | :eng: [:D] | :deu: [:D] | :fra: [:P] | :ell: [:$] | :nor: [:$]
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

No matter what people think of the actual language, tho, I think we can all get one piece of interesting information out of this, about something which almost no conlang(er) succeeds in doing; acquiring a community. How did you do this, OP?
Thanks for sticking up for me. I'm new to the CBB, but I've been on the subreddit for conlanging for a while. Anyways, I see different values for conlanging. I respect that most of you prefer to experiment with linguistics and cases and stuff, and you put a lot of work into that, but you never seem to put effort into making a community. I'm the other way around. I see all the value of a conlang in the community that speaks it, as they evolve the language by speaking it, and you can actually put the language to use.

So how did I get a community? I advertised Vyrmag well. I told people you could learn it overnight (which you can). A few conlangers learnt it to grasp the idea of oligosynthesis. I posted about it often. I focused all of the effort that a normal conlanger would put into the conlang and instead focused it on building a community. 6 months, around 17 speakers. I'm happy, and as you can see, a lot of people are not.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

6 months and 17 proficient speakers?
How did you get such a big community? I mean, 17 speakers is pretty big for a relatively young conlang. It's 17 times bigger than my community :roll:
And indeed, you need more information, such as a phoneme inventory.
I mentioned the speakers part in my last comment. Anyways, one of the reasons the documentation is vague is because the language is changing as more people learn it. Everyone speaks their own kind of dialect, and each person changes the grammar a bit. It's hard to document a language that has many subtle changes every month or so, so I simply documented the static features.


Phonology tends to differ per speaker, so it's quite difficult to log. Some people say /æ/ while others say /a/, some say /ɹ/ while others say /r/ or /ɾ/. You get what I mean. And it doesn't just exist in phonology, grammar, syntax, etc. is all a bit different.
Last edited by tigfa on 16 Apr 2015 17:45, edited 1 time in total.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
justonium
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 1
Joined: 16 Apr 2015 17:30

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by justonium »

Darvince wrote:To bounce off of what cntrational said, it has no fixed grammatical rules and all its speakers are American as far as I am aware, and he has repeatedly stated in r/conlangs, "the only grammatical rule is that you can understand each other" which makes no sense. It's as much of a language as ROT13 done to English.
I can see this user's point. I agree to some extent with everything that they say. However, I don't agree with their opinions (mainly that Vyrmag is shitty (implied by agreement with the comment that they have quoted)). Vyrmag is not a relex. It is relexical in that it's grammar and vocabulary come from English, but it is not a relex because the vocabulary has been factored down into an oligosynthetic system, and because the grammar has drifted away somewhat from that of English; because there are no explicit rules about grammar, we have experimented with grammar that difers from that of English, and some of it has stuck.
User avatar
Xing
MVP
MVP
Posts: 4153
Joined: 22 Aug 2010 18:46

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Xing »

justonium wrote:
I can see this user's point. I agree to some extent with everything that they say. However, I don't agree with their opinions (mainly that Vyrmag is shitty (implied by agreement with the comment that they have quoted)). Vyrmag is not a relex. It is relexical in that it's grammar and vocabulary come from English, but it is not a relex because the vocabulary has been factored down into an oligosynthetic system, and because the grammar has drifted away somewhat from that of English; because there are no explicit rules about grammar, we have experimented with grammar that difers from that of English, and some of it has stuck.
It might not be an obvious relax. It can still be a 'relax' in more subtle ways. If the creator gives very little guidance when it comes to grammar, but rather let the grammar evolve spontaneously within the speaker community, we might expect that speakers will tend to copy various features of English grammar (since that is the language that is common to them, and I suppose that English is the languages used when they try to 'explain' various features of the language). For instance, a question about the use of the reflexive pronoun revealed that it just 'happened' to be use in the same way as in English. A coincidence?
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

For instance, a question about the use of the reflexive pronoun revealed that it just 'happened' to be use in the same way as in English. A coincidence?
I'd actually say it works similar to how the reflexive pronoun works in Chinese, although originally it worked like it did in English.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
masako
mayan
mayan
Posts: 1813
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 16:42

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by masako »

tigfa wrote:
For instance, a question about the use of the reflexive pronoun revealed that it just 'happened' to be use in the same way as in English. A coincidence?
I'd actually say it works similar to how the reflexive pronoun works in Chinese, although originally it worked like it did in English.
So it works like Mandarin?

So how would this sentence translate in Vyrmag:

"I gave him my own book."
g

o

n

e
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

I gave him my own book.
ae kyo ye'gata krana'lens iya daig.
I move gen.-self knowledge-container to him/her.


Also, the reflexive pronoun cannot be used for intensive purposes like in English.

Jim bought himself a book (reflexive) - dyym yut kapa za ye krana'lens iya gata - Jim use money in-exchange-for possessing knowledge-container towards self
Jim himself bought a book (intensive) - il'dyym yut kapa za krana'lens - Intensifier.-Jim use money in-exchange-for knowledge-container
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

To be honest, I'm personally biased, since tigfa here has harassed and bullied other members of r/conlangs that he knows in real life, and has behaved absolutely disgracefully when confronted about it.
I pulled 2 horrible pranks on one friend and he lost his shit. That was many months ago and we're actually talking again.
One friend. I did not do this to any other member of the group.

Get over it.
Vyrmag only has a community because it's trivial to learn -- it's an English relex, so you don't need to learn anything new.
Vyrmag was a relex before I actually went on /r/conlangs. Since then it has adopted many features and lost many features that made it a relex. Just because you don't have to learn much new means that the language is a relex. It just means that the language is very simple. Also, you do need to learn new features.
Tense markers, the counting system, the dimension system, merging, etc. These are just very simple features.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
User avatar
Thrice Xandvii
runic
runic
Posts: 2698
Joined: 25 Nov 2012 10:13
Location: Carnassus

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

First, welcome to the board! I'm sorry to see that we have folks poking at you already when you only just arrived.

Secondly, your best bet is to just ignore the trolling comments, hopefully someone's alerted the mods about the above comments... It may also behoove you to not sound like you're trying to accuse others of conlang-jealousy or try to hard to pat yourself on the back, it really won't help the situation.

As for the language, until I see a phoneme inventory and some more glossed examples (you really should learn to gloss if you are going to post about your language), I don't have much to say. However, I will say that I think implying that your method is superior is certainly less than ingratiating. I don't care if anyone ever learns a word of my languages, I do it mostly for my own edification and entertainment. If you prefer to try to get people interested and let the details slide, that's your prerogative, but neither way is inherently better.

Maybe I should be following my own advice here.... But:
cntrational wrote:He's not a newcomer to me.
That's immaterial. A new poster here is still new and all posters should be treated with respect regardless of what you think.
To be honest, I'm personally biased, [...]
Then perhaps it's best not to comment at all? Also, since many of us aren't about to troll through Reddit just to see if you're right, maybe you oughtn't impugn someone's character before the rest of us get to know him?
Image
tigfa
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 15 Apr 2015 15:34
Contact:

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by tigfa »

As for the language, until I see a phoneme inventory and some more glossed examples
I updated the original post, and linked the documentation to it. You can find the phonology there.

As for glossed examples, I'm gonna post some text from the Skype group where Vyrmag is spoken.
This will allow you to see not just my style of Vyrmag, but how everyone generally speaks it. Remember, no-one speaks the same style of Vyrmag.
yevyrm akspyeg, ileg daicu!
masako
mayan
mayan
Posts: 1813
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 16:42

Re: Introducing Vyrmag

Post by masako »

tigfa wrote:
I gave him my own book.
ae kyo ye'gata krana'lens iya daig.
I move gen.-self knowledge-container to him/her.


Also, the reflexive pronoun cannot be used for intensive purposes like in English.

Jim bought himself a book (reflexive) - dyym yut kapa za ye krana'lens iya gata - Jim use money in-exchange-for possessing knowledge-container towards self
Jim himself bought a book (intensive) - il'dyym yut kapa za krana'lens - Intensifier.-Jim use money in-exchange-for knowledge-container
Because you seem to not know how to gloss very well at all, I still don't know how your reflexive pronoun works. Have you read this thread?
g

o

n

e
Post Reply