The CBB

qwed117 wrote:

OTheB wrote:

Xonen wrote:

qwed117 wrote:

Ahzoh wrote:

thaen wrote: Is this real life?

Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a vowel merger

nə əskəp frəm rəələtə

Open your /i/s

Look up to the skaes and sa:

I'm just a poor vowel, I need no allophony

MrKrov wrote:Homeschooled believes the -tte in LaFollette is silent. I slap a dictionary with explicit pronunciation in his face, get "Harvey was a dude, dude".

Lao Kou wrote: Keep on coinin', though! Your 52,500 is a soothing sparkly mobile hanging over my playpen.

OTʜᴇB wrote:

Taurenzine wrote:You know those days when you just try something different? My writing system has changed completely. It didn't feel like the characters connected enough, so why not physically connect them? I also made it top bottom. I'll soon post some more things, because things have changed quite a bit over the past couple of days.

Spoiler:

It looks great! I like the new direction you're taking things in... ... ... was the new writing direction taken from my one I showed you?

Khemehekis wrote:Definition of "conlag": The length of time between the moment a conlanger first announces she or he's created a new language and the time she or he posts anything beyond a phonology on said conlang.

Aszev wrote:

shimobaatar wrote:Oui, je suis shimobaatar.
Yeah, I'm shimobaatar.

Nōn quidem! Ego sum Simobātarus!
No! I'm shimobaatar!

Spoiler:

Creyeditor wrote:Well, some parts of language are noise, too. Especially fricatives

Lao Kou wrote:A troupe of gay glockenspiel players would be totally fabulous.

DesEsseintes wrote:You can break universals, if you really want to. However, it's generally considered preferable to have a cool story how this unusual setup came about. Do share!

Dormouse559 wrote:

GamerGeek wrote:On the topic of asking questions about the forum:
What relation does the CBB have to the ZBB?

The CBB is the ZBB with the following sound change:

z > s / #_

Thrice Xandvii wrote: And while I am under no delusions that gun control will fix the issues (it won't) it will however be a good way to limit the access of those who only think to do these things because the means to achieve it is so readily available... like when I decide to eat more pretzels since we have them in the house. When I don't buy snacks and they aren't sitting around, I tend not to go through the effort to go to the store just when I feel peckish.

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote:Maybe differences in perception like this can explain certain anomalous sound changes that would seem to violate sound laws. Maybe some day there will be a dialect of English where the word for laurel is "yonnie". That might have been unexplainable until this showed up.

KaiTheHomoSapien wrote: ↑18 May 2018 04:43 Hey, I was being serious

Xonen wrote: ↑06 Jun 2018 19:37

shimobaatar wrote: ↑05 Jun 2018 21:39

LinguoFranco wrote: ↑05 Jun 2018 18:04 If Nahuatl is a VSO head-marking language, why does it have postpositions instead of prepositions? I get that it might not be that unusual in Mesoamerica, but I think the tendency is for Verb initial languages to have prepositions.

The simplest answer here is just that tendencies are not absolute.

This. If anything, there's a universal tendency for languages to break universal tendencies.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑01 Aug 2018 13:54 Most good art encapsulates duality - it lives in a state of tension. Things in the world present themselves to us as the things they are - unitary and discrete (likewise events). A large part of the artistic response to the world is attempting to conceive of the things that would fill the gaps between objects as we encounter them - things that are part this, part that - or the moments that exist in the transition between apparently incompatible concepts.

Think of the Mona Lisa. It draws the eye because it seems on the verge between two emotions. A photograph of someone happy or of someone sad is not that memorable - but a photograph of someone almost being both at once, that can be captivating. Go through an art gallery and see how many of the great paintings seem to capture their subjects, or their arrangements, in moments of duality - strength and fear, or pain and determination, or love and sorrow; or, more abstractly, sacred and secular, humorous and profound, real and iconic.

I think conlangs are just the same. Sure, there'd be an undeniable craftsman's skill in creating a language that was unambiguously one thing - an Italian dialect, for instance, that was almost exactly like all the other Italian dialects and not particularly unusual in any respect. But most of us are drawn to languages that embody dualities, that exist in tension between two forms. Hence the classic what-if approach of "what if a Romlang looked like Germanic!?" and the like. Often, particularly for newcomers, it's that explicit - a language that's somehow, in appearance if not in ancestry, both romance and germanic, or both celtic and japanese, or both tsimshianic and sinitic. Other times, it's more abstract; sometimes we can't ourselves pin down exactly what we're aiming at. But it's usually something that exists in a state of tension between this and that.

But when we actually try to produce something, that means we need to pin it down and make it concrete. That involves making decisions, and those decisions will each invariably pull the language toward one side or the other. So when we come to it another way, we feel it's gone too far the other way, and pull it back a bit. Like someone continually trying to adjust a picture on a wall so that it hangs exactly level.

This means that we often don't end up producing anything (in this case, there's no such thing as objectively level!). But then again, does it matter? Let's be honest, unless we've got a contract with a major studio, nobody cares about what we produce anyway. And if what appeals to us is precisely exploring that point of tension, then isn't it more enjoyable to do so extensively - even if that means constantly re-writing - than prematurely coming to a conclusion and shutting off the line of enquiry to move on to something else? After all, our own enjoyment is the only real reward for most of us anyway.

Lambuzhao wrote: ↑02 Aug 2018 07:08 First, kudos to Sal. Extremely thoughtful response. I thoroughly grokked with that idea of "betweenness" encapsulated in the image of the Mona Lisa. Indeed, Sal!

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No language, natural or constructed, that has any life in it is never really free of 'developmental hell'.

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As with previous posts, I also endorse using one's conlangs to really get a feel how they run.

Maybe find a "Positive Thought for Every Day", "A Prayer for Every Day", "A Sutra for Every Day", "A Grook for Every Day", "A Hadith for Every Day" or "A Randy Limerick for Every Day" calendar, or whatever floats one's boat, and translate those. Short translation exercises that will push one to fill in some unexplored nook or cranny of grammar &/or vocab can be utterly satisfying. Plus, it's something small that one can walk away from and know that one has in fact completed it.

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I think a lot of frustration in conlanging is that we as conlangers learn so many things exponentially about language and linguistics, and even moreso thanks to fora like CBB and ZBB, that 'modern' conlangers feel this need to shoehorn so much into one loanguage. IMHO one thing a lot of people miss about language-creation in general is that there rarely exists or has existed ONE of any language. For every language, there are often prestige and non-prestige, slang/argot, rural/urban, central/outlier dialects. And I don't mean multiplying the workload to fully flesh out
entire grammars and vocabs and grimoires and chrestomathies of every mother-loving idiolect we whip up. Far from it.
Just an 'Other Mother's' world; just a few details, and the rest, like when walking away from Other Mother's house in Coraline.And just like that, when you walk far enough away, you find that you have come right back (!)

For example, I have hints and some details for what would amount to 6 dialects of my conlang Sadraas. Are they fully fleshed out - heavens no! Who's got time for that? But every now and again, if I wanted to make a comparison, or make a
comparative Swadesh of cognates for these dialects, with some time and effort, I can do so. Enough rules are there to make it a not unprofitable exercise. The language I construct and use and call Sadraas is a prestige dialect on a continuum of dozens of dialects.

Like in Ælfwine's case, I would stop breaking my last arse (sorry to phrase it that way) over whether to nudge Mannish closer to a more Conservative Norwegian, or Folkspraakish, or whatever linguistic axis is bringing such glossopoetic angst. Why not let there be 2 dialects of Mannish? Scribble up some details/incunabulae/marginal notes about
each, and choose to proceed with one or the other.

Live and let live & the more the merrier, I say!

Lambuzhao wrote: ↑02 Aug 2018 07:08 As with previous posts, I also endorse using one's conlangs to really get a feel how they run.

Maybe find a "Positive Thought for Every Day", "A Prayer for Every Day", "A Sutra for Every Day", "A Grook for Every Day", "A Hadith for Every Day" or "A Randy Limerick for Every Day" calendar, or whatever floats one's boat, and translate those. Short translation exercises that will push one to fill in some unexplored nook or cranny of grammar &/or vocab can be utterly satisfying. Plus, it's something small that one can walk away from and know that one has in fact completed it.