u/eyewave

I'll assume English is the native of most here.

My native is French but I have learned English, Spanish, Turkish, and currently German,

I was able to get my point accross most of the time but I know that certain untranslatable words make a whole aesthetic pleasant in a certain moment,

for example the phrase "putain de merrrde !" shouted in French makes rage more manageable, "kolay gelsin" in Turkish is a very cute greeting on the workplace that translates roughly to "may your day come easy", and German has a couple of oddities I ended up finding amusing.

I still didn't manage to build my own conlang, so I am wondering what itch you're aiming to solve with yours and how it is going, especially if it is a conlang meant to be used for communication or self-reflection.

cheers!

dear all,

I keep coming back to this sub and reading what I can, but I still have difficulty in tying my phonotactics to phonological process and affix design.

I have a somewhat clear idea of what I want my words to look like, but I struggle to run them through word generators or sound change converters because I don't really know how to format the specificities I want.

I wonder if someone could help me improve this and review my thought process.

1. phonology

• nasal: m, n, ŋ
• plosive: p, t, k, q
• fricative: f, s
• affricate: t͡s
• other: ɾ, l, j
• vowel: a, ɛ, i, ɔ, u

2. reasons for the choices

• I added ŋ because I like the sound of it when it is used as syllable onset
• I have added q because I kind of like the deep quality of it
• I have added t͡s and given it <z> because I like how it is used in German words
• I privilege ɛ and ɔ over e and o, because I feel that's the only way I pronounce these in my native language, French. I also would love back vowels and middle high vowels (Turkish and Romanian come to mind), but I feel I am still lacking experience to properly implement them.

3. allophony

I chose to promote strict rules for allophony when the language is uttered:

• in an onset or coda cluster containing a nasal or an approximant, stops are voiced
• all stops, are voiced between vowels, t takes it to the extreme by leniting into ð
• t͡s and s get voiced between vowels too
• q gets lenited to ç after i, e and j
• ɾ becomes the fricative ʐ in the end of a word, for that I took inspiration from dialects of Turkish
• all stops are aspirated when they are a syllable onset and are followed by a vowel
• f gets lenited to h before i and j

4. cluster work

This is where I am still hesitant, as, with clustering comes the design of syllables, the grammatical constructions and affixes, the sound processes.

I know I'd like to include English or Latin-adjacent clusters, in the onset or in the coda (pl-, pɾ-, st-, -nt) but I also would like to explore slavic-adjacent onsets such as zm-.

I also don't really know what to do of ŋ as I know it is only rarely ever in clusters in English (such as the word Wellington) but I know a general rule is to simply always assimilate nasals to the following sound. Which ironically is not the case in Wellington, as it is more of a ŋg or ŋk even, rather than a pure ŋ.

I like the idea of gemination as a natural occurence as far as derivation and declension will be involved, but I'd keep it rather limited in root words, and would forbid gemination of nasals, tap, approximants, as I rarely have seen a double ŋ or a double j, and I don't need to roll my r's like crazy.

Then comes the topic of vowels. I do not imagine I would have phonemic diphthongs, but instead allow hiatuses of all sorts when there is a derivation or declension involved. I like strong hiatus in words like Taipei, I even can imagine hiatus between same vowels, But then I need to see if there would be indeed minimal pairs involving i and j (so if I do words like maine vs. mayne). Note that I have avoided the topic of u vs. w altogether by simply not having a w in my inventory.

In terms of stops, I also do not mind when 2 stops meet in 2 adjacent syllables, so words like ekto or apti would be of course allowed.

5. Conclusion

In light of all this, I would like to ask resources about how I can design affixes that feel realistic and that have the typical phonological processes you would expect, as I still cannot really describe what happens when my root maq meets with the suffix -ŋip, or what happens whem I branch a suffix onto a word that's already got a 2-consonant cluster as onset.

I would like to better understand a systematic approach to these considerations and to have something I really then could call a phonology, and that will stick around for as long as I build my grammar schemes.

thanks in advance,

I feel my lexicon cannot be a good one until I avoid repeating words.

a simple way to accidentally repeat a word is to give it a meaning, and then realising the same word can be made from another root + declension or derivation.

I feel a good way to avoid that would be to write down declensions and derivations as I go,

but I simply don't find a good system for it.

with excel it's too rigid because I need to write every single root and phonological process manually, and if I need to change something, then I need to manually change and edit every occurence,

with dedicated tools like CWS it's just undoable because I don't understand the tutorials at all,

and I also cannot use databses or any programming language.

Of course I could invest to actually learn CWS or databases (though with CWS it's hard to find anything outside of the in-site and quite frankly, poor, tutorials), but so far my conlang development is so poor that I don't see a benefit.

just to explain my reasoning, I think a good description or table would look like:

- word root + translation to English

- derived word root + gloss

- declension word root + gloss

- all possible declension and derivation combination + gloss

and I could easily edit the whole result if I needed to change a word root or a derivation or declension morphene

at the moment, I prefer to ask what has really helped you move forward in how you describe your lexicon,

thanks in advance!

hi guys,

I never was big on world building, so naturally my conlang attempts at anything "in-world" all resulted in massive failure, as I simply don't have the patience,

then I decided, I love IPA and writing alphabets (in latin letter) so I have a huge backlog of mini projects with just phonology-orthography + some odd words and endings I find aesthetically pleasing.

And recently I found on instagram that "vocal stimming" is a thing, neuroatypical persons will utter words or noises that don't make sense from a communication point of view, but are just generally "pleasing" to utter, you know?

I do have a backlog of words I utter for fun, but I haven't been diligent thus far in writing them, nor in trying to define the feeling they evocate.

My stim words often have mostly slavic sounds as I loved to teach myself cyrillic, also other influences, but they don't really translate to any existing language.

Anyway just wanted to let out that I still don't have a conlang that I have put together, not even a personal one, but I still like linguistics and uttering words and singing in a lot of different languages.

I wonder, am I alone in uttering nonsense words? Was any of you able to transform this habit in creative writing with words that make sense?

as a bonus, please accept this sample of stimwords, I write them directly in IPA:

/berbiot͡snik, pɾutovski, tabɛɾnipopɛt, papɾut͡ski, maxava, fydyɾlɛ̃lɛ̃/

I'm an employee who does his 40 hours no more no less, living in Europe,

I know it's a privilege right now as compared to life in USA, still I find my time difficult to navigate.

between job schedule, commute, various occasions where I have moved out to another country for my career, and other life obligations like fitness and tending to my living space,

I never seemed to be able to pick on one speciality and stick to it to generate side revenue, or hopefully in the future, main revenue.

Problem being I'm curious about plenty of topics and I find solace in watching various youube documentaries about them, but never get to the actual commitment part where I grow my skill slowly but steadily.

I thought by now, age 34, I would have become good at music composition, or creative writing, or photography, or programming, to the point I would find actual outlets to sell whatever, but no, it's not happening, and I keep commiting to my more "realistic" projects like staying relevant in my career and building a stable love and family life, but somehow I still long for a life where I get paid a high $/hour ratio, and also do something creative and exciting. It is just not happening and I don't want to waste the next 10 years daydreaming again. Hell, even if I don't make a great break-through in art first, I could at least find some cool business idea and make it grow until I sell out and enjoy life. But I never have had a salesperson mindset to begin with.

Any advice, Pisces Sun to Pisces Sun?