If natlangs were conlangs

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DesEsseintes
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by DesEsseintes »

Znex wrote:
All4Ɇn wrote:
Frislander wrote:
All4Ɇn wrote:I mean if you're going to have a heavily Chinese influenced conlang, complete with tones and everything, at least have the audacity to use Chinese characters like that Japanese one.
They tried and it worked fairly well, but the creator must have chickened out, what with all the effort it would have taken.
At least they tried being creative with it what with all the new characters for words that already had Chinese characters
I've always been a fan of this Chinese-influenced script. The creator didn't feel like they had to stick with pictographs; they just made their own from bits and pieces and forcing character parts together. The Chinese conlanger would look at it with complete horror, but I think it just ends up being such an interesting deconstruction and creative way to work with a predecessor conscript.
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I actually prefer Tangut to actual Chinese, most likely due to the familiarity-breeds-contempt principle.

Hmm, if I ever get round to making a script for Áánene... *Des's ambition grows a new head*
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Egerius »

Frislander wrote:And instead of creating something truly unique when it came to the conworld they just had all of the languages become endangered due to British imperialism. Really? England conquered an entire continent? Seems unlikely
Don't even get me started on Poland... :mrred:
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by LinguoFranco »

Basque, a language, despite being so close to Spain is almost nothing like Spanish except for the vowels. How did you do it, Basque? How?
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by GrandPiano »

Clearly, the creator of Romagnol doesn't know much about phonology. You can't have /θ ð ʂ ʐ/ but not have /s z/. That just doesn't happen.
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by LinguoFranco »

Nahuatl, created by a guy who chose a VSO word order just to be different, yet it doesn't follow a lot of the rules that VSO languages normally do. Nahuatl has an animacy distinction while the majority of VSO languages have a masculine and feminine gender. Not to mention Nahuatl is agglutinating/polysynthetic while the other VSO languages are fusional or isolating. Oh, and Nahuatl only has singular and plural forms while Ancient Hebrew, Arabic, Scottish Gaelic and Hawaiian all have dual numbers.

Pay more attention to what VSO languages do, Nahuatl creator.
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Creyeditor »

If all natlangs are just bad conlangs, why is naturalistic artlanging such a hype?
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by LinguoFranco »

Creyeditor wrote:If all natlangs are just bad conlangs, why is naturalistic artlanging such a hype?
So we can make better natlangs, of course!
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Lao Kou »

Creyeditor wrote:If all natlangs are just bad conlangs, why is naturalistic artlanging such a hype?
[+1]

(to pass a panel of linguists who could say, "This may well be real. Spoken in PNG, is it?")
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All4Ɇn
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by All4Ɇn »

Lao Kou wrote:to pass a panel of linguists who could say, "This may well be real. Spoken in PNG, is it?[/size]
Our very own Turing Test [;)]
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Frislander »

LinguoFranco wrote:Nahuatl, created by a guy who chose a VSO word order just to be different, yet it doesn't follow a lot of the rules that VSO languages normally do. Nahuatl has an animacy distinction while the majority of VSO languages have a masculine and feminine gender. Not to mention Nahuatl is agglutinating/polysynthetic while the other VSO languages are fusional or isolating. Oh, and Nahuatl only has singular and plural forms while Ancient Hebrew, Arabic, Scottish Gaelic and Hawaiian all have dual numbers.

Pay more attention to what VSO languages do, Nahuatl creator.
Oh, and they only say it's VSO, but in reality they do whatever they want when it comes to word order: "all of my numbers move off to the end of the sentence" and nonsense like that.
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Shemtov »

Mixtec was created by a fan of Niger-Volta languages who wanted a similar language in Mesoamerica.
The creator of Tobati is nuts. OSV word order AND a very imbalanced consonant inventory AND crazy yet regular consonant clusters? Kitchen sink much?
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by WeepingElf »

Whoever made the Dravidian and Australian languages must have believed in Lemuria, with both groups using essentially the same consonant inventory - and a pretty weird one at that, with way too many coronal POAs and no fricatives. At least, he went different ways when creating the vowels.
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Shemtov
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Shemtov »

Oh, and whoever did Yoruba took some drugs while making a sister to igbo.
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by k1234567890y »

The creator of many Indo-European languages might have some sexist thoughts...and English, Swedish and Norwegian would be created by someone who try to undo those elements.
I prefer to not be referred to with masculine pronouns and nouns such as “he/him/his”.
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by WeepingElf »

The Kartvelian family is a masterpiece. The consonant inventory incorporates all the major distinctions characteristic of the area where it is set, but without falling into the kitchen sink like the other two Caucasian families. But the consonant clusters sometimes go quite far - a bit less would have been better - and the five-vowel system of Georgian is just boring (the other languages, especially Swan, are better, and at least, there is an interesting ablaut system behind it). The morphology is also very nice, except that the verbs are quite heavy. Where the author excels most is the morphosyntactic alignment, which is interesting and subtly differs from language to language in fascinating ways. And the Georgian alphabet is one of the most beautiful scripts ever made! (And extra points for that stunning vocal music tradition!)

To sum up: An excellent job, with only minor imperfections.
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CarsonDaConlanger
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by CarsonDaConlanger »

Shemtov wrote: 22 Dec 2016 22:47 So the the other board has this thread, so why not start one here (I don't go there anymore, because that's were the fun of conlanging goes to die.)
Which other board? (Sorry for bringing up an old topic lol)
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by shimobaatar »

CarsonDaConlanger wrote: 15 Sep 2018 02:05
Shemtov wrote: 22 Dec 2016 22:47 So the the other board has this thread, so why not start one here (I don't go there anymore, because that's were the fun of conlanging goes to die.)
Which other board? (Sorry for bringing up an old topic lol)
The ZBB, probably.
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CarsonDaConlanger
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by CarsonDaConlanger »

shimobaatar wrote: 15 Sep 2018 02:08 The ZBB, probably.
Oh. What's that board like?
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Birdlang »

The creator of Kabyle definitely had strange ideas for a phonology and alphabet. Some of its relatives are also VSO.
And why /θ ð tˁ/ but no /t d/?
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Re: If natlangs were conlangs

Post by Shemtov »

To whoever did the Ethiopic subfamily of Semitic: Where did the emphatic biblabial come from? And why did you take a VSO family and make it SOV?
To whoever did Welsh: A lateral fricative in Europe? And it's not even an isolate- it's IE. And <u> for /ɨ/ and <w> for /u/? And don't get me started on how you use <y>.
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