Grammar milestones

[eldin raigmore]

That and the vocabulary/lexicon numbers.

Which?
If you go for the 3,000, I encourage you. I at least know Chris D. Bates (the mathematician from Nottinghamshire)'s conlang had 2500 the last time I heard. So some have at least gotten close, and I think several have past that mark (probably Chris's is past it now).
If you go for 50,000, that's a realistic and naturalistic number for a language to have: However it might not be realistic in a different sense; a single conlanger will probably have trouble getting that far by himself/herself in a single lifetime. You could do it with collaboration from a speech community, though; but it might take more than one lifetime, and anyway few conlangs get adopted by more than one family or one neighborhood. (Most wind up with one speaker and zero fluent speakers.)
If you go past 100,000, why? Will any speaker be able to remember more than that?
If you go past 225,000, why?

Hmm, should there be a thread? Ahzoh, what do you think?

I'm not Ahzoh, but I think it would be good to have a thread for people to display the completeness of their congrammars by showing how to translate the GSfA into their conlangs.
(We already have one for showing off lexicon and vocabulary.)
Unfortunately I'm not yet in a position to start such a thread myself.

[LittleTree]

I really have no idea how many pages of grammar I have. I have individual documents for each area; for example, in my 'verbs' folder, I have files for aspect, mood, evidentiality, voice, the copulas, serial verbs, verbal morphology etc. I do plan to put it all together in one document, and I generally write the explanations with this end goal in mind.

As for words, my dictionary has just over a 1000 entries. I need to do some derivation and compounding, and then I'll probably I might get up to 10,000 without having to create any new roots (I do need to create many more roots as well).

[Khemehekis]

If you go for 50,000, that's a realistic and naturalistic number for a language to have: However it might not be realistic in a different sense; a single conlanger will probably have trouble getting that far by himself/herself in a single lifetime. You could do it with collaboration from a speech community, though; but it might take more than one lifetime, and anyway few conlangs get adopted by more than one family or one neighborhood. (Most wind up with one speaker and zero fluent speakers.)

Why not 50,000? Kankonian has over 45,000 already, and I'm still too young to become president of the United States.

[Lao Kou]

If you go for 50,000, that's a realistic and naturalistic number for a language to have: However it might not be realistic in a different sense; a single conlanger will probably have trouble getting that far by himself/herself in a single lifetime. You could do it with collaboration from a speech community, though; but it might take more than one lifetime, and anyway few conlangs get adopted by more than one family or one neighborhood. (Most wind up with one speaker and zero fluent speakers.)

Why not 50,000? Kankonian has over 45,000 already, and I'm still too young to become president of the United States.

I think the key to eldin's remark is "probably". It's doable, certainly. I'm in the youngish range as modern presidents go, but at the rate it's going, 45-50K will probably be a substantial slog -- or significant act of love and heroic conlangery -- before check-out time.

[Tuslaven Kukristo]

Ummm... I know this will sound like a dumb question, but what kind of pages are you talking about?

[Khemehekis]

Ummm... I know this will sound like a dumb question, but what kind of pages are you talking about?

I copy the webpage's text into Corel WordPerfect and see how many pages the WordPerfect document is.

[Creyeditor]

Ummm... I know this will sound like a dumb question, but what kind of pages are you talking about?

They are talking about the number of pages of their grammatical descriptions of theirs conlangs. See OP.

[k1234567890y]

The Chinese version of Lonmai Luna Grammar has more than 20 pages(you can find it here: http://zh.8thworld.wikia.com/wiki/%E5%9 ... E%E6%B3%95 ); the English version of Lonmai Luna Grammar has now about 16-17 pages and is still under construction, I try to make it more detailed...(you can find it here: http://zh.8thworld.wikia.com/wiki/User: ... ce_Grammar )

[Larryrl]

My Yerk grammar has roughly 10 grammar rules. I have 50 prefixes which include verb tenses and part of speech markers. It has 330 words that have an english translation. It shows how to change prefixes in order to change a word from one part of speech to another, provided such a transition is possible with a given word. Over all it is coming along nicely.

[Khemehekis]

After the addition of this stuff, my Kankonian grammar has reached 125 pages!

A good time to check it out:

http://khemehekis.angelfire.com/basic.htm

[Khemehekis]

If you go for 50,000, that's a realistic and naturalistic number for a language to have: However it might not be realistic in a different sense; a single conlanger will probably have trouble getting that far by himself/herself in a single lifetime. You could do it with collaboration from a speech community, though; but it might take more than one lifetime, and anyway few conlangs get adopted by more than one family or one neighborhood. (Most wind up with one speaker and zero fluent speakers.)

I've hit that milestone!

[Khemehekis]

My Kankonian grammar now comes out at 150 pages as a Corel WordPerfect document!

[Ahzoh]

Vrkhazhian figured out how to do to-infinitive clauses without an an infinitive.

[Sequor]

Why not 50,000? Kankonian has over 45,000 already, and I'm still too young to become president of the United States.

My Kankonian grammar now comes out at 150 pages as a Corel WordPerfect document!

I have to ask: perhaps you're a bit of a funny person, but why do you say your conlang has more than 50 000 words when your grammar is barely above 150 pages? Also, can I get a copy of your dictionary? I love collecting conlang files, especially large ones, whether long grammars like Mecislau's (Novegradian, Alashian) or the occasional large conlang dictionaries I happen to come across.

If you go for 50,000, that's a realistic and naturalistic number for a language to have: However it might not be realistic in a different sense; a single conlanger will probably have trouble getting that far by himself/herself in a single lifetime. You could do it with collaboration from a speech community, though; but it might take more than one lifetime, and anyway few conlangs get adopted by more than one family or one neighborhood. (Most wind up with one speaker and zero fluent speakers.)

Why not 50,000? Kankonian has over 45,000 already, and I'm still too young to become president of the United States.

I think the key to eldin's remark is "probably". It's doable, certainly. I'm in the youngish range as modern presidents go, but at the rate it's going, 45-50K will probably be a substantial slog -- or significant act of love and heroic conlangery -- before check-out time.

Yeah, but you know, people. There are in fact conlangers out there that love their own conlang so much they do end up spending that much time on them.

The famous auxlangs are special things, and it would not surprise me if a decently-funded "unabridged" Esperanto dictionary would turn out to get past the 100 000 word mark. As far as artlangs go, I think the largest lexicon in existence is the one amassed by Javier Valladolid Antoranz, from Madrid, for his conlang Pantakakiano. I have a copy of the lexicon dated October 14th, 2018, and it has a total of 22 956 entries (it is 915 pages long in its original .docx format).

The Pantakakiano lexicon consists mostly of words taken from various natlangs apparently without any pattern or reason, and otherwise it makes compounds using very short CV, VC or CVC a priori roots. It has the stereotypical outlook of what we normally consider newbie conlangs, but I must admit the breadth of the lexicon is nothing but breathtaking when you take a look at it. Some sample entries, translated from the original Spanish:

• Aantiikeg (from Estonian “antiikaeg”: Classical Antiquity): Classical Antiquity, the Greco-Roman period.
• Alev: the City of Alev, the "mecca" of something, a space of spiritual importance (the spiritual has a strange meaning in the Pantakakistos world; it is strongly linked to power, wealth, and the best places of the Burning Bridge due to the evil acts associated to them, solving the necessity of not only causality but also existence, as giving a universal sense to evil behaviour helps make sense of the world), a space of social importance in which flying carpets (the Alev) act as thieves of spiritual energy. A flying carpet.
• Dizier: literally, a marble series; a TV series [or other media work] of great technical quality but unlikeable because it seems meaningless.
• Dypdak (from “dyp”, water, and “dak” (from Proto-Pantakakiano): tree grove, gigantic tree): sea tree, a gigantic tree in the middle of the ocean, grenache wine grape. (In The Dream in Verse, it is also used for a petroliferous platform.)
• Echor (from Quenya “echor”: encircling): encircling, to encircle, to go in circles around something or somebody, rodeo, Gyre (a creature in Through the Looking-Glass whose name evokes a circular movement and who is associated to the idea of a dog turning in circles in order to scratch an itch).
• Frohjowdor: literally, joy head; to move one's head up and down following something's musical rhythm.
• Nibrincam: literally, narrow language; a language with a limited lexicon or of a limited expressiveness (in Pantakakistos it is applied, for example, to the speech of the Shadows).
• Ohríoh (from Ancient Greek Ὠρίω: Orion): Orion (also an alien species in Star Trek), to chase somebody or hunt something, the hunter by antonomasia, hunter (poetic, of demons and other such monstrous creatures).

And this sample is representative of the ~23 000 entries in the lexicon. They are not simple "[Pantakakiano word]: [Spanish word]" entries, but the vast majority of the entries has this much explanation.


The runner-up conlang I've heard of in terms of lexicon size is the Arka language, developed by a Japanese man going by the conlang nickname "seren arbazard", with the help of a few other people, under the orders of and with the monetary funding of a certain unnamed rich Japanese woman, who he would refer to as his "master" in English, and for whom he said he "would do anything". She had decided she wanted a magical conworld to be developed with a full-fledged conlang, and got them to work on it. He was shocked when I clarified to him that >99.9% of English-speaking conlangers work on their conlangs purely for fun, not because we are paid for it.

Five physical books have been published about this language, including some kind of short tale about 100 pages long written entirely in the conlang's conscript, and a textbook in manga comic form. The online dictionary had over 14 000 entries in 2011, and in its published 2014 edition, over 15 000. You can consult the 2011 edition online here, or download the 2013 edition in PDF form here. A second person, alias "nias avelantis", continued seren arbazard's work alone for a new edition in 2017 (apparently not available online, but worldcat has its ISBN code and lists it in the catalogue of the library of Japan's national legislature). It has been implied in some places that seren arbazard was discharged of his conlang work after causing "trouble" on English Wikipedia and in some English-speaking conlang groups, for which project Arka apologizes.

[Khemehekis]

My Kankonian grammar now comes out at 150 pages as a Corel WordPerfect document!

I have to ask: perhaps you're a bit of a funny person,

Funny strange or funny ha-ha? If it's the former, I am definitely eccentric . . . eccentric in a really unique way. I'm not one of those people who calls themselves/whom others call "weird" but is actually weird in the same ways (obsessively interested in a topic, monologues about special interest, poor conversational skills, shy due to poor conversational skills, can't handle crowds, can't handle loud noise, doesn't like parties, likes comic books, etc.) as tens of millions of other nerds/Aspies around the world, either. I can expand on my own forms of eccentricity/issues in later posts, id you like.

but why do you say your conlang has more than 50 000 words when your grammar is barely above 150 pages?

My lexicon really does have over 60,000 words (almost 61,000 now), but a significant minority of these are names of stars, planets, countries, tribes/languages, etc. in the Lehola Galaxy. Many more are words for plants, animals, foods, articles of clothing, religions and religious concepts, sports/games, legal terms, sapient species, technology, etc. in the Lehola Galaxy that we don't have on Earth. The most common meanings of most of the most common 20,000 English words are covered though (with some stylish deliberate gaps) and there are also some seldom-used words like zediktos (belomancy), helera (ennealogy), and desadtyuph (xyrophobia). Some words have a number of synonyms. There are slang words and words unique to one dialect or another of Kankonian. Many words that are a phrase in English are single words in Kankonian, like hakhsapt (to throw feces) and *as*ukh (to shake a tree). Then I have all those Kankonian words for concepts we have in the English-speaking world, but don't have words for, such as trai*engzh (to sit on a foot or leg so as to cause it to fall asleep) and adskonef (to sit down with the back of each person's heads touching and the faces facing opposite directions). And then some words such as "damp valley" that other natlangs (in this case, German, with Au) have but English doesn't.

As for my grammar, there may be some points I missed, but 150 is more than most conlangs (even the ones that aren't scrapped) get, and I cover some pretty small details. You can read my grammar at http://khemehekis.angelfire.com/basic.htm to get a sense of its level of detail. Kankonian doesn't have cases on nouns nor pronouns, so that cuts down the necessary length of the grammar a lot.

I should also note that my grammar is an HTM file, not a PDF file, and so there are no blank lines at the end of sections. Every line from the first to the last is either text, or a single blank line between paragraphs. Most PDF grammars that are supposedly slightly larger than Kankonian's have a lot of blank space in them, but Kankonian doesn't.

Also, can I get a copy of your dictionary? I love collecting conlang files, especially large ones, whether long grammars like Mecislau's (Novegradian, Alashian) or the occasional large conlang dictionaries I happen to come across.

Sure! PM me your email address and I'll send you my lexicon spreadsheet file as an attachment. It doesn't have the first 5,000 Kankonian words I created (except when polysemy or new English synonyms or idioms using them pop up), but it does contain the newer 55,000+ words. There are 75,724 English-Kankonian entry pairs now (the number is much greater than 60,000 or 55,000 because many Kankonian words have several English equivalents, and because idioms and the like are often included with a Kankonian word), starting with

brick: a brick-wall patterning esewa

and up to

Waitaha penguin alpometza.

Using it has become quite the challenge over the years, especially when I want to look a common word up to see if I already have a meaning. One of the latest additions to my spreadsheet dictionary, for instance, was "take, to (temperature, blood pressure)", for which I settled on using the Kankonian translation paya*i (the Kankonian word for "to measure"). While checking to see if I already had a Kankonian word for this sense of "take", I used the FIND option to go through more than 100 entries beginning with the word "take", such as "take a dump", "take on, to (an opponent)", "take, to (someone's picture)", "take dictation, to", "takeout", "take, to (medicine), "take to heart, to", "take with a grain of salt, to", "take it easy, to", "take; to take (in filming)", "take X under one's wing, to", "take-home line", "take up arms, to", "take a chill pill, to", and "take, to (this preposition ~s the accusative)", and then discovered that I didn't already have this meaning of "take". I could have made it quicker by using FIND on "take, to" to narrow it down to uses of the single word as opposed to idioms, but I thought I might have entered it before as "take X's temperature, to" and didn't want to take the risk of missing it if I did that. With polysemous English verbs like "get", "have", "make", "turn", or "go", or extremely common English prepositions like "to", "in", or "on", I usually go through dozens of entries finding a word I want, or finding if I already have it.

The famous auxlangs are special things, and it would not surprise me if a decently-funded "unabridged" Esperanto dictionary would turn out to get past the 100 000 word mark.

The largest dictionary of Esperanto clocks in at 77,000 entries, making it the third-largest lexicon behind xuxuxi and Classical Yiklamu (both computer-generated relexes of WordNet). Many Euroclones get quite high in lexicon.

As far as artlangs go, I think the largest lexicon in existence is the one amassed by Javier Valladolid Antoranz, from Madrid, for his conlang Pantakakiano. I have a copy of the lexicon dated October 14th, 2018, and it has a total of 22 956 entries (it is 915 pages long in its original .docx format).

The Pantakakiano lexicon consists mostly of words taken from various natlangs apparently without any pattern or reason, and otherwise it makes compounds using very short CV, VC or CVC a priori roots. It has the stereotypical outlook of what we normally consider newbie conlangs, but I must admit the breadth of the lexicon is nothing but breathtaking when you take a look at it. Some sample entries, translated from the original Spanish:

[Clip list of examples]

And this sample is representative of the ~23 000 entries in the lexicon. They are not simple "[Pantakakiano word]: [Spanish word]" entries, but the vast majority of the entries has this much explanation.

Truly amazing! I had never heard of Pantakakiano before, but I have a list of conlangs with over 10,000 words, and now I can add Pantakakiano to my list. Is it a personal language (like Taneraic)?

The runner-up conlang I've heard of in terms of lexicon size is the Arka language, developed by a Japanese man going by the conlang nickname "seren arbazard", with the help of a few other people, under the orders of and with the monetary funding of a certain unnamed rich Japanese woman, who he would refer to as his "master" in English, and for whom he said he "would do anything". She had decided she wanted a magical conworld to be developed with a full-fledged conlang, and got them to work on it. He was shocked when I clarified to him that >99.9% of English-speaking conlangers work on their conlangs purely for fun, not because we are paid for it.

Five physical books have been published about this language, including some kind of short tale about 100 pages long written entirely in the conlang's conscript, and a textbook in manga comic form. The online dictionary had over 14 000 entries in 2011, and in its published 2014 edition, over 15 000. You can consult the 2011 edition online here, or download the 2013 edition in PDF form here. A second person, alias "nias avelantis", continued seren arbazard's work alone for a new edition in 2017 (apparently not available online, but worldcat has its ISBN code and lists it in the catalogue of the library of Japan's national legislature). It has been implied in some places that seren arbazard was discharged of his conlang work after causing "trouble" on English Wikipedia and in some English-speaking conlang groups, for which project Arka apologizes.

>99.9% of all English-speaking conlangers, or >99.9% of English-speaking artlangers? I think most auxlangers make their languages not for fun, but because they have a quixotic dream of changing the world through a Euroclone.

I know all about Arka (but I had never seen the dictionary PDF before, thanks for that, fascinating!), and I remember the "trouble" Author_of_Arka caused on the ZBB. I do have it on my large-lexicon-conlang list, where it is listed as having 16,627 words. Never heard the story about the design team creating it for a rich woman!

Andy Ayres has a language (up at the Conlang WorkShop, I believe) named Celinese. His website lists around 21,000 words. It's spoken on the planet Lorech.

Rolandt Tweehuysen's Spocanian has one of the largest lexica anyone has ever created for an artlang. It's a lostlang spoken on Earth, from the Atlantic language phylum. With over 1,500 pages in its grammar, it holds the record among artlangs for lengthy grammars.

The second-largest number of words after Kankonian's 60,000+ for an artlang is R. Ben Madison's Talossan, with over 35,000 words. It's spoken in the micronation of Talossa, and as the world's most famous and successful micronational language, lots of different citizens, not just Madison, create words for it. With this kind of group participation, we may see 50,000 words within our lifetime.

[Man in Space]

I have passed 40 in my grammar of CT.

[eldin raigmore]

Rolandt Tweehuysen's Spocanian has one of the largest lexica anyone has ever created for an artlang. It's a lostlang spoken on Earth, from the Atlantic language phylum. With over 1,500 pages in its grammar, it holds the record among artlangs for lengthy grammars.

So it’s meant to be from the Atlantic coast of Africa?

I thought it was meant to be from the Pacific Northwest of North America.

[Khemehekis]

Rolandt Tweehuysen's Spocanian has one of the largest lexica anyone has ever created for an artlang. It's a lostlang spoken on Earth, from the Atlantic language phylum. With over 1,500 pages in its grammar, it holds the record among artlangs for lengthy grammars.

So it’s meant to be from the Atlantic coast of Africa?

Yep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spocanian

I thought it was meant to be from the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Are you sure you weren't thinking of Matt Pearson's Okuna? (Formerly known as Tokana, so you could be forgiven for mixing it up with Spocanian.)

[Dormouse559]

I thought it was meant to be from the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Are you sure you weren't thinking of Matt Pearson's Okuna? (Formerly known as Tokana, so you could be forgiven for mixing it up with Spocanian.)

eldin's probably thinking of James Glover's Spokane I certainly did.

[Khemehekis]

I thought it was meant to be from the Pacific Northwest of North America.

Are you sure you weren't thinking of Matt Pearson's Okuna? (Formerly known as Tokana, so you could be forgiven for mixing it up with Spocanian.)

eldin's probably thinking of James Glover's Spokane I certainly did.

Ah! I see where he got that from now.

Perhaps eldin was just being his usual punny self?