Welcome to the r/conlangs Official Checkpoint. You have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"Living the dream"

"Life is better with chickens."

"You've been selected for a random linguistic search!"

"How does my voice sound?"

"The scholars consult the official Toki Pona book"

"Stop!"

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next checkpoint, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The highest upvoted "Stop!" will be included in the next checkpoint's title!

In conlanging and world building we develop languages and cultures for various purposes. But would you be willing to teach this to your kids?

I for one grew up under the impression that Filipino and English were superior to my ethnic language and traditions and which lead to me having to rediscover my clan's history alone. I often get false information from the internet regarding my ethnicity and ethnic language so I for one would definitely try reviving what was taken from me so my child if I ever do have one would be central for his/her foundation.

I've created cultures, traditions, languages, neographies, neologisms, and etc. So I'd definitely give that same fascination to my child.

I am creating my first conlang and I really wanted it to have a specific phoneme that I really like. When I entered the international phonetic alfabet I listened all of the sounds, but none of them where the one I want to add. I don't really know why, any ideas?

This language consists of

- Chechenian

-bulgarian

- Macedonian

- Romanian

- Finnish

-Azerbaijani

- old english

-estonian

- Georgian

-Polish

- Russian

-Belarusian

- Ukrainian

- danish

-cyganian

-lithuanian

- german

- jidish

- Dutch

Basic phrases:

Hello- keres kašena

Good morning- gód utro

Good afternoon - gód posliesud

Good evening - gód večur

Good night - gód buksa

Goodbye- jodika gnaxav (x = kh)

Please - bidšyjen

Thanks - blagodaram

Sorry, apologise - sużal

Yes - jo

No - ara

Bye - favel

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1. Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2. Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3. Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

#‎# Šipsuk l₂ä̀či by /u/Akkatos

adzīšit [a.d͡zij.ʂɪt]

blanket

From Proto-Slavic *adzišьda, from Gāndhārī agiṣḍha

> Stay safe, conlangers

> Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

Hello, I'm Nekoniyah and I have been doing conlanging for like 3 years (more if we count years where I was little and didn't know it even existed)

But it was since I think 2025-2024 that I really stopped making conlangs, or at least my one very conlang. I really like languages, but I grew up and found other stuff to do. Somehow I really want to get back to it but only thinking about what I like, phonemes, culture, ideas rather than thinking about how I will structure my conlang (titles, subtitles, organization).

I'm very bad at organisation and to be honest, I lost some linguistical vocabulary that was needed to structure my conlang on an OpenOffice Writer Document.

I'm very lost and really want to make conlang again.

Somehow, I never really explored other types of conlangs (my conlang's style is Tagalog, Japanese, Welsh, etc.) except Germanic for a custom conlang someone ordered me.

Also, sorry for my bad english, I'm usually good, my French often influences syntax and the way I make sentences.

I saw that there were tools to make Conlangs, there were one that was great looking and pretty complete, but I felt it was wrong- it felt like it was vibe coded. As for the generative grammar tree thingy, I didn't understand how to use it, nor how it would be used in my conlang(s).

What are you adivces so I can get started (again) in conlanging ?

I took a break for too long, but I'm 18 years old, I have also too much projects... So.... (Including a worldbuilding as one of my main projects so it could be an excuse to make a conlang)

Thank you :)

Hello! I'm working out my interrogative pronouns, (who, what, where...) and in researching proto-slavic & proto-baltic interrogatives for inspiration, I came across the idea that there is a base interrogative pronoun "ka(s)" in proto-baltic that changes meaning based on what case it declines by (?). How did this system come about? Something confuses me in how the application of cases could change what kind of interrogative the word becomes. Would it decline in the same way that person pronouns do? This is also a phenomenon that I see in a lot of proto-slavic/russian wiktionary entries, and it confuses me really bad so I try not to touch it, lmao!

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a conlang for a fictional culture that lives in a swamp-like environment where people are constantly exposed to a naturally occurring airborne substance that mildly alters perception (time distortion, spatial confusion, reduced fear response, etc.).

Important: they are not “intoxicated” in the usual sense — this is their baseline state of consciousness from childhood.

I’m trying to figure out how this would realistically affect their language over generations.

Some questions I’m exploring:

•	Would tense systems simplify or blur if time perception is less linear?

•	Would spatial language shift from absolute directions (left/right) to experiential ones (flow, density, sensation)?

•	Could evidentiality shift away from visual confirmation toward internal perception (“felt”, “intuited”)?

•	Would syntax become less linear or more context-dependent?

•	Are there real-world parallels (e.g. ritual languages, trance states, psychedelic research, etc.) that might be useful references?

I’m not looking for a gimmick language, but something that feels cognitively grounded and believable.

Would love to hear your thoughts or any relevant linguistic phenomena I should look into.

Just looking to see what the community’s general consensus is about conlang vocabulary development. Should a conlang be 100% a priori? Or is deriving your vocabulary from real world languages but changing it substantially enough to avoid “alienized X language” acceptable? Combination of both? If so, what’s a good split percentage?

I’ve been developing a conlang for my novel. I have been using a combination of derived but altered roots as well as a priori. I have pulled from 60 different languages across the world to make it sound unique and blended. But, was curious to know what other people thought and what their own process was for word generating.

Ezhaccan, my most developed conlang, has a pretty interesting numerical system which can become horrific to the average non-speaker of the language and sometimes a difficulty for native speakers, you know what? Why don't you read it for yourself, bask in its simplicity before it becomes comprehensible yet incomprehensible at the same time:

BEFORE PROCEEDING, PLEASE NOTICE THE FOLLOWING:

Spelling rules: ä/Ä (æ), é/E̦ (ɛ), á/A̦ (ɑ), ú(ȝ)/Ȝ (ɜ), ә/Ә (ə), ó/Ө (ɔ), ü/Ɯ (ɯ), ƌ/Ƌ (ɖ), zh/Ʒ (ʒ), ѵ/Ѵ (y), y/Y (j), sh/ſ (ʃ), j/J (ʤ), dz/DZ (ʣ), Ⱶ/Һ (ɦ), v (β), x/X̧ (x), gh/G (ɣ), ķh/KH(₭) (χ), t̪ (t̄), and vv/VV (Vː).

Ezhaccan is quite the complicated language, with it already being difficult to comprehend due to its lack of nasal anything, to pronounce because of the pharyngeal vowels and consonants [zˤ bˤ kˤ qˤ χˤ hˤ and ɑˤ ɛˤ uˤ] and other sounds someone might not be familiar with, and that it uses an alphabet that has characters from both Latin (A, B, C, D) and Cyrillic (Ƌ, Ȝ, Ҭ), and even a defunct Latin letter (Ⱶ) that represents /ɦ/. The language is agglutinative and bloated with diacritics, I mean, LOOK at this: "E̦v̓éje ʒ̓ikúhəʒ̓ä zhi̓rɯ̓iréʦaje." That means "it will rain according to the weather forecast", my God...

Surely, for a complex language like this, somewhere would be simple enough for a learner to get the jist of. And you'd be right! Let me show you the number system, a simple, base-10 organization.

1 - Ⱶi̓b /ɦiːb/
2 - ƌe /ɖe/
3 - qɯ̓̂sh /qɯ̂ːʃ/
4 - cúhib (3+1) /kɜhib/
5 - ƌec(c)sh̀ (2+3) /ɖek.ʃ̀/
6 - ʒiüshƌe (2x3) /ʒiɯ.ʃɖe/
7 - ѵüseⱵi̓ (1+2x3) /yɯseɦi/
8 - jüehib (4x2) /ʤɯib/
9 - veibib (4x2+1) /βeibi/
10 - ķhiesh̀ (5x2) /χieʃ̀/
100 - ióies̓h̀ (10x10) /iɔi.esːh̀/
1000 - zhüeies̓Ⱶ̓e (100x10) /ʒɯeisːɦːe/

Please note the formation order: (multiplier) + (operation) + (base). The spoken form follows [multiplier + operation + base], even if translated differently in English.

Well, let's do some experiments. How would we conjugate 10 to 20? Well, we start with: kesⱵib (11, kesɦib), ƌekhiesh (12, ɖeχieʃ), qɯ̓shiesh (13, qɯːʃieʃ), cúhibiesh (14, kɜhi.bieʃ), ƌekhiesh̀ (15, ɖeχieʃ̀), cieʒ̓iüshʒè (16, kiʒːɯʃʒɝ), ѵüsehiesh̀ (17, yɯse.hieʃ̀), ķhijɯbi (18, χi.jɯbí), ѵeivvihiesh (19, yeivːiɦieʃ), and finally, eiüccús (20, ei̯yc̟us). The funny thing about 20 is that it was originally written as ƌeʒiücciesh̀ (2x10), but after various spelling reforms, ƌeʒiücciesh̀ reduced to eʒiüccesh̀, then eiüccush̀ and finally eiüccús.

How about the number 30? Well, the root are: ķhiesh̀+ʒiüe+qɯ̓̂sh. Translating that to English, it means 'ten multiplied by three' or simply 10x3. Note that 'ʒiüe' means 'to multiply (by no given value)', which gains a value when followed up by a positive or negative numeral. What do we get when combining these words into one? You get... kieʒɯqúsh, which is pronounced /kies.ɯkɜʃ/. Wait, the /ʒ/ became /s/ and the /q/ became /k/? Weird. But why?

Well, if we were to combine ʃ + ʒ, it would create an unstable fricative cluster, leading to the neutralizing/devoicing of both sounds to /s/. /q/ can weaken to /k/ in a unstressed medial position. What about the ɯ becoming ɜ? The vowel /ɯ/ centralizes and lowers to /ɜ/ in unstressed compound position, particularly after fricative simplification. This likely arose from reduced articulatory precision in rapid speech and later became standardized in formal pronunciation.

How about... 40? 50? 60? 70? 80? 90? Well, here they are: qúidzieⱵesh (40, qɜ.ʣieɦ.ʃ), teshiɯⱵish (50, teʃiɯɦʃ̆), jɯsheʒüies (60, ʤɯʃɝ.ʒɯiè), yuⱵi̓ʒü̓Ⱶesh̀ (70, yuɦiːʒɯːɦɛʃ̀), üeiʒüéhísh̀ (80, ɯey.ʒɯɛ.hýʃ̀) and veiviʒiéⱵsh̀ (90, βeiβːi.ʒiɝɦʃ̀). Tens (20–90) are historically derived from X×10 constructions but are now treated as lexicalized forms in modern speech.

What about anything above 100? Here they are: ƌeiósh (200, ɖeiɔʃ), qóshió (300, qɔʃyɔ), kúbiós (400, kɯvːiɔʲ), shekió (500, ʃeqiɔ), ʒɯsió (600, zɯsyɔ), yɯsió (700, jɯɕɔ), ʒéihió (800, ʒɛiɦɔ), and veiviós (900, βeiβiɔs).

Things seem to be going well so far, why don't we up the antics? How would an Ezhaccan speaker transcribe the number 1,125? To commence forth, we need to split up the number into its respective properties: 11×100+25. Thus, the root for the name of this number is [kesⱵib+ʒiüe+ióies̓h̀+eiüccús+ƌeccsh̀], after gluing everything together, we're awarded with keʒ̓iüeies̓eɯccuʒesh̀ /keʒːɨɯei.esːeɯku.zeʃ̀/, however this is shortened to just keʒ̓eskʒesh /keʒːes.kʒeʃ̀/.

How about 10,355? If we do process we did with 1,125, we end with a root that looks like (103 * 100) + 55 = 10355, or [ióeqü̓shiʒ+ʒiüe+ióies̓h̀+teshiɯⱵish+ƌeccsh̀], creating ióeuⱵiziü̓óieʦesiɯseksh́ /œ́uɦi.ʒiɯːɔiɛsə.siɯseqʃ́/, this is also shortened to ióuʒóis-siüseqsh́ in rapid speech.

What about 102,573? This is where things get complicated, and long. The root looks like (100 * 1025) + 73, yet how the number is formulated is the following: ióies̓h̀+ʒiüe+zhüeies̓Ⱶ̓e+eiüccús+ƌeccsh̀+yuⱵi̓ʒü̓Ⱶesh̀+qɯ̓̂sh. Mushing it all up, we get ióeziüeʒeseccúƌesh̀uiʒü̓shɯ̓ /œʑiɯə.ʒesekːɜɖeʃ̀ui.ʒɯːʃɯː/, you might be frightened by the sheer volume, the sheer girth of such a word. But fear not, this is technically ungrammatical, since it's actually spelt as ióeziüe-ʒeseccúƌe-sh̀uiʒü̓-shɯ̓, each hyphen acts as a glottal stop so the speaker can catch their breath. Of course, this doesn't rule the possibility for a colloquial version, which is ióezieskú-ƌeshsh̀i /ioezi.eskɜ.ɖeʃ.ʃ̀i/.

Now, a big question. How does Ezhaccan conjugate a number like ten thousand, a hundred thousand or a million? It’s simple. We just multiply 1,000 (zhüeies̓Ⱶ̓e) and multiply it by 10 (ķhiesh̀), we construct the root [zhueseʒiesh+ʒiüe+ķhiesh̀] and transform it to zhueseʒiesh /ʒuese.ʒieʃ̀/, this gives 10,000. 100,000 is created by multiplying zhueseʒiesh (10.000) with 10, resulting in juseʒiúhies /ʤuse.ʒɜɦes/, giving us 100,000.

Now, how do you think a million is conjugated? 100.000×10? Is it that? Nope! It's actually ʒüvás /ʒɯvɑs/. While it is calculated as a hundred thousand times ten, it's named this way as it comes from the Proto-Zhygian */ˈʃiɑsu ˈbygy baʦ/, which roughly translates to unfathomable thought or very big thought. So, 1,200,000 is transcribed as 1,000,000 + 200.000 and written as ʒüvás-ƌejuseʒiúhies.

What about a billion? Trillion? Quadrillion? Since these are all unfathomably large numbers, they're often paired with the /gú̓/ prefix that signifies exceptional size or force. So, a billion is gú̓ʒüvás (gɜːʒɯvɑs), a trillion is qɯ̂shú̓ʒüvás (qɯ̂ʃɜːʒɯvɑs), quadrillion is cúhiʒüvás (kɜhiʒ.ɯvɑs), quintillion is ƌec-ʒüvás (ɖekʃɯvɑs) and a decillion is ķhiesh̀üás (χieʃ̀ɯɑs).

Now, let's do the ultimate exercise, what's 1,234,567,891,011 in Ezhaccan? It's…

Ⱶi̓b-qɯ̂shüvá-ƌeióshizesɯ-gú̓ʒüvá-shekiósheüeѵüseⱵi̓-ióseʒüvás-ʒéihióeiviéⱵi̓-juseʒiúhies-kesⱵib

Try to pronounce this twice: /ɦiːbʔqɯʃɜ.ɑʔɖeiɔʃ.ezɯʔgɜːʒɯvɑʔʃeqiɜʃe.ɯeyɯseɦiːʔiɔseʒɯɑsʔʒɛihɔei.βiɛɦiːʔʤuseʒiɜ.hiesʔkesɦib/.

It's a tongue twister for natives and a tongue murder for learners. This leads us to how scientific notation works in Ezhaccan: first, you’ll have to approximate this large number into something more manageable, so this becomes 1,234,568,000,000, later becoming 1.234568 × 10^(12), this is read as: Ⱶi̓b-úfü-ƌejuseʒiúhies-xé-qɯ̓̂sh-cúhib-ƌeccsh̀-ʒiüshƌe-jüehib viúd-ķhiesh̀-viúd ƌekhiesh. Or:

/ɦiːbʔɜfɯɖeʤuse.ʒɜɦesʔxɛʔqɯ̂ːʃʔkɜhibɛɖek.ʃ̀ʔʒiɯ.ʃɖeʤɯibʔviɯχieʃ̀ʔviɯɖeχieʃ/. There are some things to note here.

1. The exponent (ķhiesh̀-viúd ƌekhiesh) can be alternatively written a ķhiesh̀^ƌekhiesh, fully omitting ‘viúd’ while still carrying meaning of multiplication. This only happens in scientific notation, since 4x4 (16) and 4^4 (256) are completely different things.
2. Viúd is the word for ‘multiply’ or ‘to multiply’ in Ezhaccan.
3. Úfü often enables “digit mode”, so instead of reading ‘234568’ as one big compound, you read them independently (one point two, three, four, five [...]).

In natural speech, large numbers are chunked into units (thousands, millions, etc.), and rarely pronounced as a single uninterrupted word.

To end all of this, let's discuss how Ezhaccan deals with negative numbers. We'll also need to mention that the word for ‘negative’ once didn't exist, with mathematicians from early Ezhaccan society writing “jit shua”, which translates to “unknown/nothing number”. This later became jishua /yʃua/, which is the modern day equivalent of the word ‘negative’ in relation to numbers. So while a number is written as -2, it's pronounced as ‘jishua-ƌe’. Jishua is shortened when met with numbers above 99, becoming /ji/ or /jis/, so -100 is ‘jisióies̓h̀’; -1,000 is ‘jizhüeies̓Ⱶ̓e’; -10,000 is ‘jishueseʒiesh’; -100,000 is ‘jiuseʒiúhies’; negative million is ‘jiüvás’ and so on.

And finally, decimal numbers are accompanied with a midfix ‘úfü’ /ɜfɯ/, which descends from an Old Ezhaccan word for ‘split’. So, 10.6 becomes ķhiesh̀-úfü-ʒiüshƌe and -134.23 becomes ‘ióekiɯshúhi-úfü-eiüccúqɯ̓s’ /iɔeqiɯʃ.ɜhiʔɜfɯʔei̯yc̟ɜqɯːs/ for example. If you were to write something like 2.16666666667, you don’t actually have to repeat six (ʒiüshƌe) that many times, instead, you’ll just need to approximate it to 2.167, making it ƌe-úfü-Ⱶi̓b-ʒiüshƌe-ѵüseⱵi̓ /ɖeʔɜfɯʔɦiːbʔʒiɯ.ʃɖeyɯseɦi/. Also, fractions also involve a glottal stop phonetically but is written with a dagger (⹋), so 15/4 is ƌekhiesh̀⹋cúhib, however this isn’t as common as it used to be due to widespread education, even though both concepts follow the same underlying compositional structure and differ in usage, register, and historical origin.

Also, PLEASE do NOT confuse ķhü (half) and úfü (split), ķhü is literally the word for ‘half’ in Ezhaccan and ‘úfü’ is the STANDARD for mathematical equations.

UN. DER. STOOD?

Ok….

That's Ezhaccan numbers for you.

Also, if the dagger symbol doesn't appear, it's similar to this one: ‡

I made a tool called Hubullu for one frustration I kept running into while designing conlangs:

the language changes, but the project around it doesn’t change with it.

If I change an inflection table, or revise the spelling of something, or rethink part of the morphology, there’s usually no good way to push that change through the whole corpus. Dictionaries, lessons, example sentences, and translated texts all risk going out of sync. So I wanted a system where those changes could be described once and then propagated across the project.

A second design goal was that the tool should be as language-neutral as possible. I didn’t want to build in one specific theory of language, or assumptions that only really make sense for one family or typology. A question I kept asking myself was: would this still be a sensible core feature for Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, Latin, and Turkish? If not, maybe it shouldn’t be in the core at all.

The repo has examples for several languages for exactly that reason.

I'm working for VS Code support

I’ve been using Hubullu to build a larger conlang project called Nuçongə (ja: ヌヒョン語, also spelled as Nuchonge), a future descendant of Japanese. One thing I’m especially happy about is that I can use the same system not just for lexical data but for teaching materials too. I’m attaching two screenshots from the Nuchonge textbook as examples.

A textbook for Nuçongə, powered by Hubullu

Also it has an auto-generated glossary

If this sounds interesting, I’d love feedback — either on the linguistic side or on the workflow/tooling side.

Hubullu: https://github.com/frodo821/hubullu-lang
Nuchonge: https://github.com/frodo821/nuchonge