Conlanging Features you Avoid

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cybrxkhan
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Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by cybrxkhan »

Wondering if anybody is phobic towards any conlanging features.

I tend to avoid prefixes as often as I can, for some reason. I don't like them. I don't like them because they're at the beginning of words. I don't want a lot of my words beginning with the same sounds. That also means by default I tend to avoid VSO. Thus, I'm a prefixophobic or something.
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Chagen
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Chagen »

Heh, I'm the exact same way--prefixes make all the words sound alike at the beginning to me, so I don't like them.
Nūdenku waga honji ma naku honyasi ne ika-ika ichamase!
female-appearance=despite boy-voice=PAT hold boy-youth=TOP very be.cute-3PL
Honyasi zō honyasi ma naidasu.
boy-youth=AGT boy-youth=PAT love.romantically-3S
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by nmn »

Agglutinatism/pollysynthetism. I dislike a lot both in conlangs, but not so in natlangs. Some people seem to think that if a word is half a line long, then their conlang is somehow more complex or prestiguous.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Batailleur »

I dislike particles, which is why I try to avoid them by having loads of cases and aspects and such.
ILR 5 = :eng:
ILR 4 = :rus:
ILR 3 = None
ILR 2 = :fra:
ILR 1 = None
Abandoned = :gla: (Scots), :sqi:, :heb:, :epo:
Current Obsession = ASL
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Prinsessa »

Copulæ, auxilaries for possession and the sound [e].
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CrazyEttin
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by CrazyEttin »

I don't usually have much of a gender system in my conlangs, and if there is one it's usually a simple one based on animacy.
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Xing
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Xing »

cybrxkhan wrote:I tend to avoid prefixes as often as I can, for some reason. I don't like them. I don't like them because they're at the beginning of words. I don't want a lot of my words beginning with the same sounds.
Chagen wrote:Heh, I'm the exact same way--prefixes make all the words sound alike at the beginning to me, so I don't like them.
You don't need to use the same prefixes for all words.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Ollock »

As much as I'd love to make a conlang with clicks, I have never even sketched one out, and I don't know if I ever will, unless I learn a click language well enough to produce a wide variety of clicks reliably (the hard part is the suprasegmental features).
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Avo
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Avo »

A plain and simple genitive case.
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Xing
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Xing »

Ollock wrote:As much as I'd love to make a conlang with clicks, I have never even sketched one out, and I don't know if I ever will, unless I learn a click language well enough to produce a wide variety of clicks reliably (the hard part is the suprasegmental features).
Same here. Though I have rough understanding of how to do clicks, I'm not sure I do it 100% right. And it's even more difficult when it comes to aspiration, voicing, prenasalisation, glottalisation...
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Click
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Click »

I think I can pronounce plain and nasalised clicks. I once read that nasalised clicks are simple: they are just /ŋ/ + click.

OT:
I avoid front rounded vowels (ew!) and most of prefixes (I can only stand person and derivational prefixes.)
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Kuhron »

Fricatives further back than palatal. Phonemic vowel length (I don't know why, but I've just never liked it).
Illogical fusional paradigms (like in Slavic languages or Latin). Irregular inflection.
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by eldin raigmore »

Consonants other than pulmonic egressive consonants.
Phonemic length.
Lexical tone.

I can't think right now of an Semantics & Syntax feature I avoid; only of Phonology & Prosody features, and truthfully, only of phonological and phonetic features.
Edit: However I do find David J. Peterson's Dothraki language for Game of Thrones to be disappointing in part because it's SVO. Probably because of the need for it to be quickly learned by actors who are native speakers of English, it was constrained to be quite similar to English in its grammar. Other parts of its word-order -- in particular, the order of elements of a noun-phrase -- are less Englishy.
Last edited by eldin raigmore on 24 Aug 2012 21:55, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by lsd »

[:x]
Last edited by lsd on 21 Aug 2013 16:36, edited 1 time in total.
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cybrxkhan
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by cybrxkhan »

Xing wrote:
cybrxkhan wrote:I tend to avoid prefixes as often as I can, for some reason. I don't like them. I don't like them because they're at the beginning of words. I don't want a lot of my words beginning with the same sounds.
Chagen wrote:Heh, I'm the exact same way--prefixes make all the words sound alike at the beginning to me, so I don't like them.
You don't need to use the same prefixes for all words.

I know, but something about the fact that the beginning of words is... more systematic... makes me uneasy. Heck, I guess at this point I'm just against any prefixes. I mean, I'm fine with preceeding particles or some clitics, but not prefixes.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by thetha »

Male v. female gender systems; front rounded vowels, /f/, phonological symmetry, and analytic grammar. I've never made an isolating conlang that lasted any relevant amount of time.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Harkani »

Theta wrote:Male v. female gender systems; front rounded vowels, /f/, phonological symmetry, and analytic grammar. I've never made an isolating conlang that lasted any relevant amount of time.
but f is best phoneme! it's the phoneme that goes in [REDACTED].

anyway, I don't like SVO or the fact that around half of you ignore african languages (said by the dude who has θ in every conlang of his and works with VSO.)
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Ollock »

Harkani wrote:
Theta wrote:Male v. female gender systems; front rounded vowels, /f/, phonological symmetry, and analytic grammar. I've never made an isolating conlang that lasted any relevant amount of time.
but f is best phoneme! it's the phoneme that goes in [REDACTED].
I do believe you can swear on this forum. It would be stupid to ban taboo words on a forum dedicated to linguistic pursuits.
anyway, I don't like SVO or the fact that around half of you ignore african languages (said by the dude who has θ in every conlang of his and works with VSO.)
Are you talking the people who avoid prefixes? The only African thing I stated that I avoid is clicks (because they're hard!) and those are only common in a small corner of Africa. Of course, there are other features I have not incorporated that occur in African languages, but they are mostly things that I know little about or didn't know when I was creating my current languages (like crazy noun-class marking on EVERYTHING)
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eldin raigmore
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by eldin raigmore »

Harkani wrote:anyway, I don't like SVO or the fact that around half of you ignore african languages (said by the dude who has θ in every conlang of his and works with VSO.)
I thought the thread was about features you don't put in your own conlangs? not about features you don't like in other people's conlangs?

There are features I avoid in my own conlangs, not because I don't like them, but because I find them difficult; or sometimes for some other reason.

[hr][/hr]

Oh! I just thought of a semantic/lexico-morphological feature I usually avoid: Honorifics!
I like and include registers such as "formal" and "informal" and "intimate" etc., (perhaps a "highly formal" for temple or court), but I avoid expressing "addressing an inferior", "addressing a superior", "addressing an equal" in my con-morphologies.
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Re: Conlanging Features you Avoid

Post by Hacek »

I tend to avoid unpredictable stress and word-final [h]. Other stuff too, probably, but I'm not remembering them at the moment.
[:D] :eng: - [:)] :esp: - [:|] :swe: - [:(] :hun: - [:'(] :hin: - [:S] :ell: :rus: :fra: - :idea: :hye: :sqi: :kal: :zho: :jpn: :gle: :kat:
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