Titus Flavius wrote: ↑15 Apr 2021 16:14
I love this sound [ʟ]! One of my conlangs has it, spelled "ł".
Oh, cool! The "real" spelling of /ʟ/ is ł, but I soon found myself using the asterisk in quick type-ups, since ł was a pain to type. Someday I will use find-and-replace to change all the *'s on the Kankonian pages on my website to ł's.
♂♥♂♀
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 89,000 words and counting
Khemehekis wrote: ↑15 Apr 2021 16:10
The asterisk is /ʟ/.
I hear that sound and I just think of Tom Brokaw...
For me it was a speech impediment. Until I was 13, I couldn't pronounce my L's and R's, and both /l/ and /ɹ/ came out as /ʟ/.
When at age 16, I created the Kankonian language, I decided to make /ʟ/ a phoneme, and gave it the English name "lagma" (from lambda + agma). I also have /l/, but so's not to be too English-peculiar, the R in Kankonian is a /r/, not a /ɹ/.
♂♥♂♀
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 89,000 words and counting
Been working on cases in Hussite, not entirely satisfied with them. Hussite is supposed to fulfill a role similar to Sumerian to Akkadian, but it sure sounds less like a Mesopotamian language and more like some weird Caucasian language
Ahzoh wrote: ↑16 Apr 2021 05:45
Been working on cases in Hussite, not entirely satisfied with them. Hussite is supposed to fulfill a role similar to Sumerian to Akkadian, but it sure sounds less like a Mesopotamian language and more like some weird Caucasian language
I have at least these four kinship terms defined: nar-um "mother" dar-im "father" was-um "daughter" yas-im "son"
And they have special possessed stems: nā- > nā-ni "my mother", nā-ti "our mother", nā-mu "your mother", nā-ku "her mother" dā- > dā-ni "my father", dā-ti "our father", dā-mu "your father", dā-ku "her father wā- > wā-ni "my daughter", etc. yā- > yā-ni "my son", etc.
The plural is usually normal, taking the suffix -ē, although I suppose if there were special plural possessed stems it would look like: nê- > nê-ni "my mothers/female ancestors" dê- > dê-ni "my fathers/male ancestors wê- > wê-ni "my sisters" yê- > yê-ni "my brothers"
These possessed stems are more often used in a vocative sense, like "(my) Brothers, come join me against my enemy"
Coming up with other kinship forms is harder though, I think I want to derive the grandparents and grandchildren through reduplication, and then employ sound changed to muddy up the connection. narnar-um/nanar-um > annar-um (also annā-/annê-) dardar-im/dadar-im > addar-im (also addā-/addê-)
It is a matrilineal society, so it might be reserved for maternal grandparents only
not so sure for grandchildren, prototypically it should be: waswas-um/wawas-um > awwas-um yasyas-im/yayas-im > ayyas-im
But weak consonants like the /w j/ systematically elide all over the place so the end result would be incredibly undesirable. Although it might be reborrowed from a dialect or sister language where the glides are instead fortified (/w j/ > /p k/ in coda and /w: j:/ > /b g/) thus producing: abs-um (special possessive stem: abā-/abê-) ags-im (special possessive stem: agā-/agê-)
Not sure though...
Ahzoh wrote: ↑17 Apr 2021 07:50
Although it might be reborrowed from a dialect or sister language where the glides are instead fortified (/w j/ > /p k/ in coda and /w: j:/ > /b g/) thus producing: abs-um (special possessive stem: abā-/abê-) ags-im (special possessive stem: agā-/agê-)
Aside from words for "enbyfriend", "plot-driven", "character-driven", "custard cake" and the like, Kankonian now has an authentic word for "Bushlicker": Boushiksha.
-iksha was chosen on the analogy of such Dantonese borrowings as:
Yerzefiksha: Yerzefiksha (follower of Heshra Yerzef) Ghadgeliksha: Xadgäliksha (follower of Heshra Xadgäl) Bombaliksha: Bombaliksha (follower of Heshra Bombal) Berfeziksha: Bärfeziksha (follower of Heshra Bärfez) Senzikiksha: Szenzikiksha (follower of Heshra Szenzik) Zhnudgatshiksha: Zhnudgatshiksha (follower of Heshra Zhnudgatsh) Eksazhiksha: Äksazhiksha (follower of Heshra Äksazh) Pmakhskheghiksha: Pmaqskhäxiksha (follower of Heshra Pmaqskhäx) Khsoerblaliksha: Qsöblaliksha (follower of Heshra Qsöblal)
♂♥♂♀
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 89,000 words and counting
A bit of Ilóhra's verbal morphology clicked last night. The protolang had telicity coding that partly survives in the modern language, mainly with the telic perfect and the atelic perfect. I'm still figuring out telicity, so the distinction has been fuzzy for me, but then I noticed how it can work with "to throw" to encode whether the target of the throw caught/was hit by the thrown object.
Telic Šiġġiþ tilluilo.
šiġ-∅-iþ till-ui=l-òu
throw-TEL_PFT-1S ball-ACC=2S-DAT I threw you the ball. / I threw the ball at you (hitting you with it).
Atelic Šiġġiéviþ tilluilo.
šiġ-évi-iþ till-ui=l-òu
throw-ATL_PFT-1S ball-ACC=2S-DAT I threw the ball at you.
This was helpful for me because, when I did the postillion translation challenge earlier, I had chosen to express "to strike with lightning" using a phrase that means "to throw lightning at". But I didn't know whether it was clear the target was actually struck. Then I remembered last night that the verb was in the telic perfect, which does imply making contact and perfectly clears up that ambiguity.
Semantic shifts for Pabappa, a language with about 4000 words. I worked for three hours last night and five hours this morning poring over the entire vocabulary and shifting the senses of the words, ending up with about 1200 semantic shifts that I consider meaningful. Keep in mind that Pabappa is spoken 4,500 years after the parent language, Play, from which I derived all of those words. So, 1200 shifts might seem a bit on the light side.
Here are a few examples of simple semantic shifts involving just one word, with the old sense in italics and the new sense in bold:
pataworker, one who gathers power > play that is fun for all involved watiblasword > kitchen knife (they're pacifists now) pupsilayer, stratum > sheet of paper pipuislandstar in the sky abapalm treestationed on the immediate shore; beach woireason, motivestrategic planning room; office pessepthe sun in eclipsestrong cold wind; to blow cold; northerly cold wave testasacomet, meteor > bird flying alone mabadasupporter, helper > coat hanger
In many cases, the words listed here will not have the exact same form on both sides of the shift, because of noun class suffixes. Pabappa doesnt have grammatical noun class suffixes, but rather derivational ones, meaning that they're optional and most words exist in their bare form .... but words that began with a suffix often need to drop it or gain a new one, and some words that were originally bare will gain a suffix as well. For example, mabada "supporter, helper" becomes mabala when it changes from an animate noun to a handheld object.
My favorite shifts are the chain shifts, where one word shifts to a new sense, another word fills the gap, a different word fills *that* gap, and so on. Here are some examples of chain shifts. I dont list the Pabappa words for these, but the notation here is that each arrow represents a link in the chain, each link involving a different pair of Pabappa words, rather than having one word throughout the entire chain:
soap > comb > to calm down
reason, motive > lamp > to anticipate
to swell, bloat > late in pregnancy > labor as sacrifice
to swim > lilypad > blanket to lie on > algae
front part > border wall > thorny bushes
joint, bending place > petal > veteran > to shoulder chronic injuries or health problems
portion, ration > to stir, agitate > to siege a city > to suck (that is, to drain the life from something)
school > to repent > trigger for a trap
rose > tulip > orange (color)
wheel > button on clothing > victim of bullying
cargo ship > rudder > wheel > goal, plan for victory (the two shifts involving the sense of "wheel" did not overlap, and the word stems did not resemble each other even to scholars)
standing up; erect > pornography > to watch people from behind
spoon > to annoy > to yell into someone's ear
carrot > roots of a tree > able to see through solid objects
energy > squirrel > to assume
The semantic shifts of some of these words may seem contrived even for a 4,500 year time span, but I explain some as random chance and others as incomplete sense shifts, ... for example, the word on the last line never exclusively meant squirrel because it was one of the many words for animals that was structurally a verb, and therefore "squirreliness" was the common trait, where squirrels were seen as being both unusually energetic and unusually frantic, assuming that every human who so much as came close was intent on eating them.
Makapappi nauppakiba.
The wolf-sheep ate itself. (Play)
Pabappa wrote: ↑25 Apr 2021 16:52
soap > comb > to calm down
reason, motive > lamp > to anticipate
to swell, bloat > late in pregnancy > labor as sacrifice
to swim > lilypad > blanket to lie on > algae
front part > border wall > thorny bushes
joint, bending place > petal > veteran > to shoulder chronic injuries or health problems
portion, ration > to stir, agitate > to siege a city > to suck (that is, to drain the life from something)
school > to repent > trigger for a trap
rose > tulip > orange (color)
wheel > button on clothing > victim of bullying
cargo ship > rudder > wheel > goal, plan for victory (the two shifts involving the sense of "wheel" did not overlap, and the word stems did not resemble each other even to scholars)
standing up; erect > pornography > to watch people from behind
spoon > to annoy > to yell into someone's ear
carrot > roots of a tree > able to see through solid objects
energy > squirrel > to assume
The semantic shifts of some of these words may seem contrived even for a 4,500 year time span, but I explain some as random chance and others as incomplete sense shifts, ... for example, the word on the last line never exclusively meant squirrel because it was one of the many words for animals that was structurally a verb, and therefore "squirreliness" was the common trait, where squirrels were seen as being both unusually energetic and unusually frantic, assuming that every human who so much as came close was intent on eating them.
WOW are those some creative semantic shifts! I'm hoping my Txabao words will shift in meaning over the millennia throughout the Txabaoic languages, and when working with Nachtuil and his Kojikeng I've created such gems as qe'u.
♂♥♂♀
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 89,000 words and counting
CC = Common Caber
CK = Classical Khaya
CT = Classical Ĝare n Tim Ar
Kg = Kgáweq'
PB = Proto-Beheic
PO = Proto-O
PTa = Proto-Taltic
STK = Sisỏk Tlar Kyanà
Tm = Təmattwəspwaypksma
In honor of one of my favorite video games' 10-year anniversary this year, I'm working on translating a song into Alál that was actually one of the first long-form things I ever translated into my very first conlang. That first 'lang is very long dead, but this is a fun nostalgia trip and also a great exercise, since translating lyrics in a way that keeps both the meter and a comparable meaning is very challenging. And so far it's leading to the construction of a handful of delightfully specific words with subtle nuances, such as ḳmulárkaḳalkàuí (ḳma<ulv-ŕ>r̀-k-ḳal-kàu-í) (understanding<1INCL-PL>-purpose-die-NMLZ.HUM.PAT-STAT) 'those of us who died for science', a play on mıurhukḳalkuí'one who died in pursuit of knowledge'.
'Tis also fun to cheekily play with clusivity. One can't verbally mark a first person subject and object that share clusivity; there's a separate reflexive construction for that. But one can have a 1EXCL subject and a 1INCL object, in which case some group of people is acting upon both themselves and their interlocutor(s). Combine this with the way quantifiers work and you can say such useful things as Kláhîkıkḳìṭmuàx (klı<áhv-ŕkvr̀-Cḳvr̀ṭ>m-u-à-x) (improve<1EXCL.1INCLPL-all.S-almost.all.O-DEO-CONC-VOL.ACT) 'all of us (excl.) will work to better/improve nearly all of us (incl.)' which has some funny semantic implications: going from all to nearly all when including the interlocutor suggests they'll be left out of this supposed betterment. If you then follow up by claiming that the aforementioned dying-for-science individuals are specifically excluded from betterment, this then implies that the interlocutor will be one of those who dies for science. And the second person never needs to be used at all. I think that's neat. (That the first stressed syllable in that word is roughly homophonous with the English work 'cake' is just the icing on the... well...)
I'm just glad that Lazúılí turned out to be a perfectly good three-syllable translation of "(I'm) still alive". Might also use Lazúılıá, which implies both stubbornness and that the aliveness is a temporary state. This is very fun and I have very much work to do that is not this.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.
I drew more than 200 animal species from Keitel. The next task is naming all the plants and animals! (I've already named the viruses, bacteria, protists, and members of my sessile heterotroph kingdom known as the tlogephlaoms.)
♂♥♂♀
Squirrels chase koi . . . chase squirrels
My Kankonian-English dictionary: 89,000 words and counting