If natlangs were conlangs

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
User avatar
Mándinrùh
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 161
Joined: 21 Aug 2016 20:37
Location: New England

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Mándinrùh »

Salmoneus wrote: 15 Nov 2021 03:51 To be fair, the creator of English hasn't bothered creating new words for almost anything in the last... what, 1,200 years? They just cycle through which languages to borrow from.

OK, so I'll grant you that "network", "internet" and "software" are innovations. But "web" and "film" are inherited; "pizza", "click", "sport" and "computer" are loanwords (Neapolitan 'pizza', Middle Dutch "clicken", Old French 'desport' and French 'computeur'); "hamburger" is a phonological borrowing that may or may not be a semantic borrowing (it's unclear when and by whom it was specifically associated with hamburgers).

I mean, they call English a language, but 80% of its vocabulary is loanwords! That includes 30% of the vocabulary stolen from French alone (rising to 40% in business contexts, apparently), and another 30% from Latin. Ridiculously, the only language English HASN'T borrowed from at all is Brythonic, its direct historical substrate and longest, closest neighbour, which is totally unrealistic...
But unlike Italian, English adapted the pronunciations and spellings to match the rest of the language. It's /kʌmˈpju.ɾɚ/, not /kõ.pɯˈtʊʀ̥/. Italian borrows words whole cloth with no regard for its own phonology or orthography.

For example, Italian doesn't typically allow words to end in consonants except for some small particles that don't tend to have their own stress. But most of these borrowings end in consonants: sport, computer, clic, internet.
Creator of Image Atili
My website | My blog
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Salmoneus »

English has anglicised older layers of loanwords, yes, because they're old. They very much weren't anglicised for the first few hundred years, giving us /Z/ and /y/ and /ui/ and things like that. And more modern loanwords are only sporadically anglicised, which is why words like 'envelope' still violate English phonotactics!
[of course, it helps that English phonotactics are much more accepting than most of the languages it borrows from...]
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Omzinesý »

Mándinrùh wrote: 13 Nov 2021 19:41 The creator of :ita: Italian got lazy. They stopped creating new words for things invented after the mid 20th century and just borrowed everything from English without even trying to make the words match the phonology of the rest of the language:
  • Lo sport /lo sport/ = "The sport" (Even though Italian doesn't normally allow coda clusters)
  • Il computer /il kom'pju.ter/ = "The computer" (Even though anywhere else "pu" is /pu/ and not /pju/)
  • Fare clic /'fa.re klik/ = "Click" (at least they changed the spelling on this one)
  • Il software /il 'sɔft.wer/ = "The software" (Italian doesn't have silent "e" anywhere else)
  • Il Web /il wɛb/ = "The web"
  • Gli Internet /ʎi 'in.ter.nɛt/ = "The Internet"
  • Il film /il film/ = "The movie"
  • La pizza /la 'pi.tsa/ = "The pizza"
  • Il hamburger /il am'bur.ger/ = "The hamburger" (and it's a hard g, even though normally g would be soft before e)
I don't know if Finnish is really more 'naturalistic', having gained its own word or adapted to loans phonetically.
  • urheilu = "sport" from "urhea" 'brave'
  • tietokone= "computer" ("tieto" 'information + "kone" machine', if the context is clear just "kone")
  • klikata = "to click" (adapted to the conjugation that usually takes borrowed verbs)
  • ohjelmisto = "software" (ohjelma 'program' + -sto 'collective')
  • verkko = "web"
  • internet = "internet" (direct borrowing but often adapted in everyday language "internetti" or "netti")
  • elokuva= "movie" (elo 'life' (poetic) + "kuva" 'picture', Finnish also has word "leffa", which is surely not native but I don't know the source. "Filmi" only means the concrete 'film tape' RIP)
  • pizza = "pizza" (I personally spell it "pitsa")
  • hampurilaine = "hamburger" (calque, "Hampuri" 'Hamburg' -lainen 'inhabitant of', I have even seen that nativized as "porilainen", Pori being a town in Finland)
    [/quote]
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
User avatar
Shemtov
runic
runic
Posts: 3283
Joined: 29 Apr 2013 04:06

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Shemtov »

I want to congratulate the conlanger who did Assamese. When I first read your grammar, I hated it. It just seemed like Bangla pushed TO THE EXTREME with a lot of Tibeto-Burman influence. Then I thought about what you were trying to do, have a language descended from Apabhramsha Abahatta, closely allied with Bangla, that lived alongside and grew up with Tibeto-Burman. I reanalyzed that as a context for your language, not as an aim, and now it's one of the most beautiful diachronic projects I've ever seen.
Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.
-JRR Tolkien
Porphyrogenitos
sinic
sinic
Posts: 401
Joined: 21 Jul 2012 08:01
Location: Buffalo, NY

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Salmoneus wrote: 27 Nov 2021 18:06 English has anglicised older layers of loanwords, yes, because they're old. They very much weren't anglicised for the first few hundred years, giving us /Z/ and /y/ and /ui/ and things like that. And more modern loanwords are only sporadically anglicised, which is why words like 'envelope' still violate English phonotactics!
[of course, it helps that English phonotactics are much more accepting than most of the languages it borrows from...]
Wait, how does 'envelope' violate English phonotatics?
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Salmoneus »

Porphyrogenitos wrote: 18 Apr 2022 01:28
Salmoneus wrote: 27 Nov 2021 18:06 English has anglicised older layers of loanwords, yes, because they're old. They very much weren't anglicised for the first few hundred years, giving us /Z/ and /y/ and /ui/ and things like that. And more modern loanwords are only sporadically anglicised, which is why words like 'envelope' still violate English phonotactics!
[of course, it helps that English phonotactics are much more accepting than most of the languages it borrows from...]
Wait, how does 'envelope' violate English phonotatics?
English phonotactics don't usually permit nasal vowels outside of loanwords; "envelope" is /Q~v@l@Up/ (in the letter sense; /Env@l@up/ in the ambit sense, demonstrating the sporadicity of anglicisation; c.f. the nasal vowels in "bonbon" or "soupcon", vs comple anglicisation of "tampon"...)
Porphyrogenitos
sinic
sinic
Posts: 401
Joined: 21 Jul 2012 08:01
Location: Buffalo, NY

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Porphyrogenitos »

Salmoneus wrote: 18 Apr 2022 02:38
Porphyrogenitos wrote: 18 Apr 2022 01:28

Wait, how does 'envelope' violate English phonotatics?
English phonotactics don't usually permit nasal vowels outside of loanwords; "envelope" is /Q~v@l@Up/ (in the letter sense; /Env@l@up/ in the ambit sense, demonstrating the sporadicity of anglicisation; c.f. the nasal vowels in "bonbon" or "soupcon", vs comple anglicisation of "tampon"...)
Oh, I see. I checked Wiktionary and apparently that's an RP pronunciation. Which makes sense, since I understand that British English tends to nativize recent French loanwords less than American English. As an American I've never in my life heard any pronunciation for that word except [ˈɑnvəloʊp] or [ˈɛnvəloʊp]
User avatar
Egerius
mayan
mayan
Posts: 1587
Joined: 12 Sep 2013 21:29
Location: Not Rodentèrra
Contact:

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Egerius »

Salmoneus wrote: 15 Nov 2021 03:51 To be fair, the creator of English hasn't bothered creating new words for almost anything in the last... what, 1,200 years? They just cycle through which languages to borrow from.

I mean, they call English a language, but 80% of its vocabulary is loanwords! That includes 30% of the vocabulary stolen from French alone (rising to 40% in business contexts, apparently), and another 30% from Latin. Ridiculously, the only language English HASN'T borrowed from at all is Brythonic, its direct historical substrate and longest, closest neighbour, which is totally unrealistic...
That's because the creator of English was robbed of his lang by the creator of French, who was so overwhelmed that he just scrapped that very nice™ orthography and let Norse, Latin, Greek and basically everybody else ghost-write the vocab after a while.
Brythonic snuck in details of grammar when Norse lost the page on nominal and adjectival inflections and French had to improvise.

I am still bummed that none of them did a collab with the creator of English to keep that lovely West Saxon.
I mean the Norse guy could have done it in a similar fashion to Icelandic later (but nuuuh... Françoyyyyys had to steal it). :mrred:
Languages of Rodentèrra: Buonavallese, Saselvan Argemontese; Wīlandisċ Taulkeisch; More on the road.
Conlang embryo of TELES: Proto-Avesto-Umbric ~> Proto-Umbric
New blog: http://argentiusbonavalensis.tumblr.com
Aseca
sinic
sinic
Posts: 359
Joined: 04 Jun 2012 14:34

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Aseca »

Tbf, /envelope/ should be invelop (like develop but for paper) to be consistent with English rules but not everything is consistent in English.
Sikatāyām kaṇam lokasya darśasi, svargam phale vanye ca.
See a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.
Ānantam tava karatalena darasi, nityatām ghaṇṭabhyantare ca.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.
Salmoneus
MVP
MVP
Posts: 3030
Joined: 19 Sep 2011 19:37

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Salmoneus »

Aseca wrote: 04 Jul 2022 05:07 Tbf, /envelope/ should be invelop (like develop but for paper) to be consistent with English rules but not everything is consistent in English.
Huh?
Khemehekis
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 3883
Joined: 14 Aug 2010 09:36
Location: California über alles

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Khemehekis »

Aseca wrote: 04 Jul 2022 05:07 Tbf, /envelope/ should be invelop (like develop but for paper) to be consistent with English rules but not everything is consistent in English.
1. Your use of the slashes is odd, because slashes before and after a word are normally used for phonemes.

2. English speakers don't pronounce the E at the end of "envelope". It's silent, like the E in "cake".

3. We do have a word "envelop"; it's a verb, not a noun, and it means "to form a sheath around". Like the limerick (warning: dirty limerick ahead)
Spoiler:
A woman I know from Uttoxeter
A prurient, pleas'rable cock-sitter
Her prehensile hole
Envelops my pole
Then she squeals up and down as my rocks hit her
4. "Envelop", unlike "envelope", rhymes with "develop".

5. And it's spelt with en-, not in-.
♂♥♂♀

Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels

My Kankonian-English dictionary: 86,336 words and counting

31,416: The number of the conlanging beast!
Zekromaster
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 2
Joined: 24 Jan 2023 16:37

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Zekromaster »

Mándinrùh wrote: 13 Nov 2021 19:41 The creator of :ita: Italian got lazy. They stopped creating new words for things invented after the mid 20th century and just borrowed everything from English without even trying to make the words match the phonology of the rest of the language:
  • Lo sport /lo sport/ = "The sport" (Even though Italian doesn't normally allow coda clusters)
  • Il computer /il kom'pju.ter/ = "The computer" (Even though anywhere else "pu" is /pu/ and not /pju/)
  • Fare clic /'fa.re klik/ = "Click" (at least they changed the spelling on this one)
  • Il software /il 'sɔft.wer/ = "The software" (Italian doesn't have silent "e" anywhere else)
  • Il Web /il wɛb/ = "The web"
  • Gli Internet /ʎi 'in.ter.nɛt/ = "The Internet"
  • Il film /il film/ = "The movie"
  • La pizza /la 'pi.tsa/ = "The pizza"
  • Il hamburger /il am'bur.ger/ = "The hamburger" (and it's a hard g, even though normally g would be soft before e)
Sorry for necroing, but the choice of describing "pizza" as a loan from English might or might not get you banned from the Schengen area altogether.
User avatar
Mándinrùh
cuneiform
cuneiform
Posts: 161
Joined: 21 Aug 2016 20:37
Location: New England

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Mándinrùh »

Zekromaster wrote: 07 Feb 2023 18:42 Sorry for necroing, but the choice of describing "pizza" as a loan from English might or might not get you banned from the Schengen area altogether.
It was a joke, of course.
Creator of Image Atili
My website | My blog
Zekromaster
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 2
Joined: 24 Jan 2023 16:37

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Zekromaster »

Mándinrùh wrote: 11 Feb 2023 19:27
Zekromaster wrote: 07 Feb 2023 18:42 Sorry for necroing, but the choice of describing "pizza" as a loan from English might or might not get you banned from the Schengen area altogether.
It was a joke, of course.
Don't worry, I was sarcastically playing along.
User avatar
Arayaz
roman
roman
Posts: 1218
Joined: 07 Sep 2022 00:24
Location: Just south of the pin-pen merger
Contact:

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Arayaz »

Oh, have y'all seen that conlang called English? I think it's been mentioned in this thread before. I think they did a nice job with the diachronics, and I love how they worked out all the dialects ─ but come on! Some of those sound changes are ridiculous. You don't need to be ashamed to just use normal sound changes! I mean, I get it, after all those dialects you're sure to run out of ideas ─ but turning /ə/ into /ɪ/ after velars, postalveolars, and ... /v/? Like ... why?

Edit: I was looking back through this thread because I really like it and I ─ found this post. What was I thinking. Say something dumb, someone calls it out, and I change my original post ... arghgrhgrhghr. I can't believe it. I was so dumb. Anyway, very sorry, to everyone but especially Sequor.
Last edited by Arayaz on 21 Feb 2024 02:30, edited 2 times in total.
Proud member of the myopic-trans-southerner-Viossa-girl-with-two-cats-who-joined-on-September-6th-2022 gang

:con: Ruykkarraber languages, Izre, Ngama, Areyaxi languages, ???, 2c2ef0
my garbage

she/her
User avatar
Sequor
sinic
sinic
Posts: 438
Joined: 30 Jun 2012 06:13

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Sequor »

...That doesn't seem ridiculous to me? Dropping /j/ or /w/ in the context C_V seems pretty normal, especially if it's /j/ after a coronal. Consider Latin battuere > Italian battere, or Middle Chinese 張 pronounced something like *[ʈʂjɐŋ] > Mandarin zhāng [ʈʂɑŋ].
hīc sunt linguificēs. hēr bēoþ tungemakeras.
User avatar
Arayaz
roman
roman
Posts: 1218
Joined: 07 Sep 2022 00:24
Location: Just south of the pin-pen merger
Contact:

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Arayaz »

Sequor wrote: 20 May 2023 19:33 ...That doesn't seem ridiculous to me? Dropping /j/ or /w/ in the context C_V seems pretty normal, especially if it's /j/ after a coronal. Consider Latin battuere > Italian battere, or Middle Chinese 張 pronounced something like *[ʈʂjɐŋ] > Mandarin zhāng [ʈʂɑŋ].
Now that I think about it, it does make some sense ─ though I don't know what the % or " mean. I might change it to something better, because the point does remain.
Proud member of the myopic-trans-southerner-Viossa-girl-with-two-cats-who-joined-on-September-6th-2022 gang

:con: Ruykkarraber languages, Izre, Ngama, Areyaxi languages, ???, 2c2ef0
my garbage

she/her
User avatar
collect_gluesticks
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 27
Joined: 27 Nov 2021 00:49
Contact:

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by collect_gluesticks »

Is it just me, or is English the most poorly designed international auxiliary language? If you're designing an IAL, wouldn't you want your language to be easily learned by as many people around the world as possible? Yet English includes unusual sounds like /θ/ and the grammar so irregular (why is the plural of house "houses" but mouse "mice" ?). How is that easy?

Also, most of the vocabulary seems to be borrowed from French. And they say Esperanto is too Eurocentric!

I can't believe anyone thinks that one day, people without a common language would ever conduct international business using English as a go-between.
:con: website for my conlang, Yeh.
User avatar
Omzinesý
mongolian
mongolian
Posts: 4079
Joined: 27 Aug 2010 08:17
Location: nowhere [naʊhɪɚ]

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Omzinesý »

collect_gluesticks wrote: 05 Aug 2023 22:17 Is it just me, or is English the most poorly designed international auxiliary language? If you're designing an IAL, wouldn't you want your language to be easily learned by as many people around the world as possible? Yet English includes unusual sounds like /θ/ and the grammar so irregular (why is the plural of house "houses" but mouse "mice" ?). How is that easy?

Also, most of the vocabulary seems to be borrowed from French. And they say Esperanto is too Eurocentric!

I can't believe anyone thinks that one day, people without a common language would ever conduct international business using English as a go-between.
Surely!

You are a bit exaggerating. I guess Ubykh or Navaho would be much worse linguae francae, but yes, English is not a good one.

- It's pronunciation is horribly difficult, not because of its sounds but because unstressed vowels and word-final consonants reduce.
- It's writing system is among the most irregular phonemic writing systems. Apparently Tibetan is even worse, though.
- English vocabulary has so many layers of borrowed words, used in different registers. For an L2 speaker, it is actually the Germanic every-day vocabulary, with the phrasal verbs, that you don't know cos it does not appear in academic articles.

But all languages are difficult in a way or another. Though all languages are not equally difficult.
English morphology is super easy. Mouse-mice are very rare. (A L2 student of Finnish told me that the partitive form of 'light house' is majakoita instead of majakkoja, because majakka is a Russian loan word and Russian loan words tend to inflect like that. I was happy that I had just acquired the morphology.)

But when somebody in the USA decided that English will be the new lingua franca after WW2, he surely did not think if it is a difficult language. He thought that the position of English will symbolize the position of the US as the unchallenged superpower. He though that using English in business negotiations will give them an economic advantage. He though that making everybody learn English will enable them to spread their superior culture (all cultures think theirs is the best). And Hollywood is of course an economic project as well as an ideological one.
China or Chinese will never conquer our hearts because their government does not allow them to create 'free' culture, not because Chinese writing is even more difficult than that of English.
My meta-thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5760
Visions1
sinic
sinic
Posts: 438
Joined: 27 Jul 2021 08:05

Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Visions1 »

Latin: Oh, suuuuuuuuuuure, you're going to make an analytic language with free word order and cases. How lovely. How original. How exotic and challenging.
Not.

Hebrew: Okay, so I appreciate how you have a couple aspect constructs that literally have no rhyme or reason to them. Very nice, absolutely not confusing. Nope, not at all. /s
But you're in this with Latin.

Great Andamanese: Body parts becoming essential morphemes in the language?
Very nice, I like the creativity! And the richness in terms of culture and nature is incredible!
But there is no way this would occur naturally.

Inuktitut: Why do you sound like a more fluid version of Klingon. And also *turning away from the language to the speaker*, I thinks it's cheating if you just tack on affixes like that. It's too simple! I mean, since when was a language supposed to be easy for kids to learn, anyways?

Mixe-Zoque: Okay, the phonology and grammar here are superb, following a consistent middview, but you do realize you made an entire family that is impossible to Romanize, right?
You basically the opposite of all conlangers, so in any case, good on you.

Pirahã: WHY

The entirety of Australia: I can't believe a whole continent forgot about fricatives!
No really, I can't!
WHY CAN'T YOU BE NORMAL?

Sinitic languages: Honestly, very solid. The script is cool too. But the Mandarin """dialect""" is too rhotic, and has disyllabic words. Why is THAT the standard dialect?
And did you just borrow like half the words from your other projects? Oh come on!
And now they're borrowing from Sinitic? What the heck?
Actually, I like that. Good world building.
Post Reply