What languages influence your conlangs?

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hippopotame
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by hippopotame »

Hesdiva's phonology is influenced by Finnish and Icelandic. Grammar wasn't really heavily influenced by anything, though maybe sliiiiightly by Turkish, English, and Telugu.

Ghaghina's phonology is strongly influenced by Hindi/Telugu, and the grammar is influenced by Telugu.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by ol bofosh »

For Gnoughish: Modern English, Old English, German and anything else that takes my fancy. At least for the grammar and morphology. Phonology is only partially Germanic, more the consonants than the vowels.

For Alahithian: nothing really. I took a few thing that took my fancy, things I could understand. I took a couple of things from French, some from Spanish and some from English and some other bits and pieces. Apparently the phonology looks influenced by Indonesian or Javanese, which I hadn't intended, but I like the connection.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Salmoneus »

Xing wrote:Polynesian and Micronesian.
Likewise.
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Zontas
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Zontas »

Languages don't influence my conlangs; songs, art, and pictures of any kind do.

However, Insular Keltic has influenced my phonologies.
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Dormouse559
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Dormouse559 »

Helios wrote:Languages don't influence my conlangs; songs, art, and pictures of any kind do.
Maybe not specific languages, but the very fact that you're human and speak a language means that you approach conlanging with human language as a baseline.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Kuhron »

WTL, with the initial goal of being easy, takes a lot from English. But then there's the isolating morphology which is inspired by Hawaiian, Chinese, and Vietnamese. There's also a bunch of loans from random languages.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by vampireshark »

Ilian: Finnish, Hungarian, and German
Telèmor: French, Romanian, Italian, German, and various others for vocabulary
Oshaháru: Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, and Polynesian languages
And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise;
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder,
My mouth on the dew of your thigh...

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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Corphishy »

Vúase (At least Northern Vúase) had an originally very English-y phonology, that being:
/m p b f v w n t d s z ʃ ʒ ɹ l j k g h/
/i u ɛ a ɑ/
That has since been widdled down and evolved into:
/m p v w n t s ʃ ɹ l k h/
/ɪ ʊ o ɛ ʌ a *ɑː/
*This coming from the diphthong aú-originally pronounced /aʊ/

The has been vaguely influenced by Romance languages as well as English.
The syntax has been inspired by Welsh, being that Vúase's word order is VSO.
Other little things, such as pronouns and relative clauses, have been inspired by Semitic languages.
Aszev wrote:A good conlang doesn't come from pursuing uniqueness. Uniqueness is usually an effect from creating a good conlang.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Sasquatch »

I'm influenced almost exclusively by the language of the voices in my head.
Englishcanbepolysynthetictoo <--------- All one word!
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Click
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Click »

Umm...
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Valosken »

Germanic languages (especially those from Norse), Finnish, Latin, Italiano, and Quenya. There are other, very minor influences, as well, but those are the main ones.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Click »

Very original, I'd say.
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AureusFulgens
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by AureusFulgens »

My earliest languages were all Latin/Quenya/Sindarin clones, with a powerful English influence.
My currently stagnant language, Inraet:
- The consonants: Irish Gaelic
- The vowels: Derived from a Mandarin-esque system; I have no idea what natlang they look like now: /i 1 u e @ o E a O/
- The case system: Finnish, with modifications
- The noun classes: Swahili (though when I last worked on it I was considering a Navajo-esque animacy system)
My current language, Siulatese has a Hawaiian-influenced phonology and a sort of Swahili morphology (in the sense that it's prefixing). I might steal some stuff from Mandarin, as well, once I do some more with it.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Duchess_Gummybuns »

Well for Mautu' (my most developed conlang), I've based the phonology on Proto-Polynesian with some more Oceanic phonotactics. The vocabulary is mostly a priori although I have adapted a few Indonesian, Hawaiian, Maori, and Javanese words and if I come across a word in any language that sounds good I'll use it with a different meaning. (Also, because I just love the word, I did directly borrow the Sumerian "Musennu" meaning "bird")

For my second conlang, Çalaŋa, I've basically just been making it up as I go along. The vowel system is basically SAE only the back vowels are unrounded because the speakers don't have lips (semi-reptilian creatures) and I've been looking at Northwest Caucasian languages for the consonant inventory.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by thetha »

For Taahu I drew inspiration from Iroquoian/Algonquian languages for the sound system, and various other Native American languages for the grammar. Particularly my experience with Navajo made me put an animacy distinction in it.
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Celi-Folia
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Celi-Folia »

I don't have an adequately described conlang for now but I do have a sketch where I did notice similarities with Northeast Caucasian languages in the phonology and system of noun classes:P
Perhaps in an alternate timeline the sketch that I described could represent a close relative to Proto-NEC (Nakh-Dagestan)
However, unlike the NEC languages my sketch has initial velar nasals, apical/laminal distinction in alveolar consonants, five noun classes instead of four, counter words with numbers three and greater and only five noun cases instead of dozens in some NEC languages ~hehe~
~Caeli~ (genitive) the sky
~Folia~ (neuter plural) a leaf, collection of leaves
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Click
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Click »

Kaıpó was not influenced by any language in particular, but it ended up being not far from Southeast Asian language with regards to phonology and morphosyntax, so if I were to place Kaıpó somewhere on Earth, I'm pretty sure it would fit best as a language of some hill-tribe in the mountains of Laos or Myanmar. The vocabulary is completely a priori, except maybe for some real-word references which I've forgotten about.
Last edited by Click on 18 Aug 2013 13:57, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Sangfroidish »

My consonant inventory is some kind of hybrid of that of German and Welsh with a few extra palatals thrown in just because. My vowel inventory was downright just lifted from German, but I've fiddled around with it a fair bit since and now the resemblance isn't quite so uncanny.

For the grammar I've mostly just been doing whatever, not drawing from any language in particular, though its cases have grown to look suspiciously like Latin's or Russian's.

In terms of vocab I try to produce mainly words that wouldn't look too out of place in Germanic languages, Slavic languages, Latin, Welsh, Russian, French, Finnish, or Arabic. In fact occasionally if I'm stuck for a word for something I just translate it into a handful of the above and either tweak the one I like most or just mash two of them together.
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✫✯♛Adnaan♛✯✫
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by ✫✯♛Adnaan♛✯✫ »

Thanks for starting a thread with an interesting topic, this thread is ideal for me because my language in essence is a Indo-Aryan dialect it takes it's grammar-base from Indo-Aryan languages and most if its technical-vocabulary is from Sanskrit (there's the occasional Arabic/Persian here and there).

My con-lang is mainly based on Northern Indo-Aryan Languages, it takes most of it's vocabulary and grammar from languages like Punjabi and another Punjabi dialects, I've taken the neuter gender from the gujarati Language (I think it comes in handy sometimes), and I've taken the word for "is" from gujarati and changed it in order to make my language more different and unique.
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Re: what languages influence your conlangs?

Post by Kehgrehdid »

Fedrelar has been influenced by Latin in choosing noun cases, Spanish in verb inflections, Latinized Biblical Hebrew (think about how Biblical names are pronounced in the West) in the pluralization of nouns, and retroactively in choosing VSO word order, and Swahili helped me decide on syllabic structure. All of these except Latin have influenced some vocabulary. English has influenced certain vocab as well, but more often in the form of in-jokes, such as "ehlehdar" being a teacher, from "elementary education" as a college major being shortened to "El-Ed". And usually when I say influence, I mean just what Sangfroidish described - mashing words together and seeing what comes out.

I really want to avoid having Fedrelar become a typical romlang, SAE, or any other kind of "standard" language. Almost a complex about it.
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