# Question
Title: Soudwegian: A Swedish-German process similar to what happened to English and French?
The idea is that the Swedes retain a small bit of what is nowadays German territory that they conquered in the 17th century. This is now independent territory, Soudway, with a language of its own named Soudwegian.

Their vocabulary is basically German with a lot of phonetic changes, plus a huge amount of Swedish loans (and smaller but important contributions from Polish and French), while the grammar is very simplified, like Middle/Modern English as opposed to Old English.

Is that a realistic choice, or was the grammatic simplification that characterised the process between English/French unique—not something that we should expect from other similar fusions?

# Answer
**Yes, that is a realistic choice in fictive works.**

**Abstractly**
Nobody can be 100% sure of how realistic it is, and in conlanging—or even fictive worldbuilding in general—you may always be a bit unrealistic. Think about some fictive works or conlangs you know placed in another world; they make many assumptions that extraterrestrial life has two eyes, hair on their head, ~1m–2m tall, and their mouths have lips, teeth, an alveolar ridge, a glottis and a tongue. (Your idea takes place in our (but alternative) world, but the point of the example still stands.)

**Linguistically**
There could be many ways of forming such a language, of which the most realistic are (chiefly from Mark Rosenfelder's *Advanced Language Construction*):

* A creole. A creole is, by definition, a pidgin which has native speakers. A pidgin is formed when two languages try to communicate, for reasons of trade or otherwise. If you read about *Tok Pisin* (etymologically "talk pidgin", a creole), you'll see a lot of simplified grammar (and, as you say, English is already quite simplified).
* From Swedish, but developing independently from main Swedish. As a native English speaker born in Holland, informal English I use to talk to my family is very different from main English. For example, I'd say **How late is it?* (from Dutch *Hoe laat is het?*) by accident. Also, lots of sound changes happen. Even though I don't merge /w/ and /ʍ/, many people I know that used to be able to can't anymore, and my rhotic in both Dutch and English is \[ʁ\], even though neither Dutch nor the Scottish dialect of English has it.
* A combination of the two. After a period of isolation (independent development), the Swedes start talking more like the Germans (like creoles, but slightly different)—a combination of the two.

So, even though it might be somewhat unrealistic, within the dome of fiction it isn't unrealistic enough to stop you.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Well, in an alternate history this is a perfectly plausible scenario.

Note that the the German contribution to the language should be Low German corresponding to the local dialects of Pommerania. It is cloaser to Swedish because the second sound shift characterising High German has not affected the Low German dialects. A good dose of loan words from High German can add some spice to Soudwegian.

In the time frame you are looking at, Polish or other Slavonic influence is already very low, don't overdo it.

You may look at languages like Plautdietsch or Afrikaans for more inspiration.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: grammar, conlang-creation, diachronics
---


# Question
Title: Are there any examples of artificial creoles of natural languages?
I remember reading somewhere of a creole-ish artificial language of two (possibly more) natural languages. In the text (I do NOT remember where it was) only one creole (I'm using the term loosely here, without regards to native speakers) was mentioned, without any usage/examples.

Are there any examples of constructed languages that are specifically designed to be creoles (again, with a very loose usage of the term creole here) of natural languages?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Additionally, Lang Belta, which is the constructed creole spoken on the science fiction television show *The Expanse.*

# Answer
> 5 votes
To name a few:

# Answer
> 5 votes
More of a pidgin experiment than full fledged con-creole, but worth a mention anyway: Viossa. Being made by conlangers, it likely has somewhat more elaborate grammar than most pidgins though (such as a morphological passive marker and a lot more adpositions than you’d find in most. Source: am co-creator).

# Answer
> 3 votes
There is Lingua Franca Nova, which was named after the original Lingua Franca (yes, there really was once a language called Lingua Franca, it was used by traders in the Mediterranean I believe). But all he had to go off of was the languages it drew its (initial) vocabulary from, knowledge of how creoles develop, and two sentences in the original Lingua Franca which he had no translation to at the time. Lingua Franca Nova is so close to the original, that many think he actually replicated the original Lingua Franca, unaware that he had little to no knowledge of it at the time.

---
Tags: list-of-languages, typology, creoles
---


# Question
Title: What are the benefits of inventing irregular verbs in one’s conlang?
Many natlangs have irregular verbs that do not follow the same patterns as the majority of verbs, often as a product of old verb patterns that are no longer used. Some of the benefits of not having irregular verbs are an easier to learn and interpret conlang, but are there benefits, such as giving a sense that the language has changed over time?

# Answer
Irregular verbs are naturalistic.

For this reason, even an international auxiliary language, namely IALA Interlingua, has irregular verbs to match its Romance source languages (that are famous for their wealth of irregular verbs mostly directly inherited from Latin)

Irregularities add flavour to your conlang.

They make the conlang as a whole more interesting and create some esthetic effect. It also shows that the conlang designer has spent some more time to make Eir creation not too schematic.
> 12 votes

# Answer
An invented language *should* have in it what the glossopoet wants to put in it. Regardless of which point of the **Triangle** your language most closely identifies with, there is plenty of room for whatever you might want to put in there.

So, yes, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language shòuld have irregular verbs (irregular nouns, irregular adverbs, irregular interjections, etc) if that's what is required by the language for it to be true to itself within its context and also be an accurate projection of the glossopoet's vision for it.

Yet also, no, indeed, be it auxlang or artlang or engelang, an invented language should *never* have irregular forms of any kind. If they cause the language to run afoul of its creator's vision for it, then they are inappropriate to the work of art being created. Or if such irregularities would in any way foul up the language's subcreated realism.

In some respects, there may be matters of taste or audience expectation involved. For example, I think most language inventors would argue that auxlangs should be as irregularity free as possible. I'd argue the opposite, but that is indeed a matter of taste and sense of plausibility. Perhaps also a nod to a future where the auxlang in question shall have conquered all others and taken its rightful place as the naturalised L2 of the entire world. Irregularities are bound to creep into such a system.

There is no particular benefit one way or the other *external to the invented language*. I don't think a perfectly regular system is any easier to learn. It's not inherently better to be irregularity free. *Within the language*, it might be argued that verisimilitude and plausibility (leastways of human language) demand some amount of irregularity. Surely that might be seen as a benefit, perhaps for a language within a fictional setting.

So, yeah. Put em in or leave em out. Dealer's choice. Six of one, half dozen of the other! There is no right or wrong answer here.
> 7 votes

# Answer
Depends on what your goal is. If you want to create an auxlang, then you should have few, if any irregular verbs. If you want naturalism, then most natlangs have at least one irregular verb, though the exact number varies widely. Also consider how your irregular verbs will arise.
> 4 votes

# Answer
A benefit to having irregular verbs in your conlang is shortening common words. If common words like "to be" and "to walk" were 4-5 syllables in some conjugations, your speakers might consider it a hassle to say those gigantic words all the time, whereas less regular, but shorter forms of the conjugations might be easier to say.

Though really, it depends on what you want in your conlang. If you're going for naturalism, some irregularities are a must, but if you're going for an auxlang, avoiding irregular conjugations (or possibly even conjugations altogether) would be ideal.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, verbs
---


# Question
Title: Are there any rules of thumb for number of "steps" between two points in a language's natural development?
Let's suppose that you want to create Conlang B. You want this conlang to be derived from Conlang A. Let's also suppose that you have some arbitrary period of time in between A and B. Are there any rules of thumb for how many steps—how many major grammar/vocabulary alterations, etc.—would generally manifest between A and B as a general guideline? Is it entirely up to the conlanger's prerogative, or can patterns from natural languages be found?

# Answer
> 3 votes
It’s relatively hard to say. First, some general numbers:

Over 1000 years, Old High German split into the various southern German dialects, including Swiss German and Standard German. While differences are very noticable, many developments were parallel and speakers usually don’t take long to get accustomed to the differences. A similar time depth can be claimed for English vs Scots. Old High German itself is not readily intelligible to the modern speaker, but many words are recognizable.

2000 years ago, we had Latin and Proto-Germanic, the ancestors of the Romance and Germanic branches of Indo-European. While the modern languages all show clear similarities in most regards of the language, they are as a general rule not mutually intelligible and speakers need to invest a lot of time to learn another of those languages - but still much less than with an unrelated language. Proto-Germanic and Latin are both quite different than the modern languages, showing vast differences in morphology and syntax, as well as having undergone many sound changes since. Nevertheless, with some knowledge on etymology, words can readily be recognized for what they are in a written text.

About 4000-6000 years ago, we have PIE. At this point, the language is no longer immediately recognizable as being related to a modern European language. The grammar is very different - just as an example, PIE verbs inflect for three persons and three numbers, but not directly for tense or aspect, which are instead marked with various more-or-less productive derivational affixes. The phonology would also look very out of place in modern day Europe. And for most roots, even if they didn’t change much phonologically, there was probably a semantic shift somewhere between PIE and English. The average English speaker will understand exactly zero words in a passage in Serbian or Punjabi.

---

But there’s another side to this as well. General tendencies are fine, but what about individual languages? If you compare Italian and French to Latin, then it’s plainly obvious that French has changed more, at least with regards to phonology and morphology. Similarly, comparing English to Icelandic, the latter is clearly more conservative (though no where near as much as some people might make you believe). To me, French and English look like they are 500+ years further in the future than their contemporary siblings — in reality of course they just underwent some more drastical sound changes that in turn messed with their morphology, which in turn forced changes to the syntax. People try to ascribe those changes to various factors, usually external ones such as a large number of foreign learners, but most of this is not grounded in actual science and just speculation.

As such, no definitive answer can be given. I find the time depths I gave above to be good rules of thumb, but single languages may deviate from those quite a bit. To achieve such results, it’s important to apply changes not only to the phonology, but to all parts of the language — especially the lexicon.

# Answer
> 1 votes
As there is no one simple rule of thumb (or generally applicable rule at all), over history these have been messed up. If it would be practically doable, many linguists would want to rename those periods (but many intermediate forms would be lost because of undecided diachronics).

I'd recommend:

* Languages never written (fully reconstructed) usually span a long period of time (PIE spans 2000 years from 4500BCE to 2500BCE). If you'd follow the rule of "many sound changes", we'd be able to split PIE into 10 or more language segments because of sporadic sound changes everywhere.
* Usually before a big separation of languages. Proto-Germanic separated into many languages quite fast (for a hypothetical one, at least). Middle Dutch was a nontrivial influence to both English and French, including my favourite words: *bodge* and *feague*.
* In our sample of the PIE western world, we see a recurring theme: PIE \> sub \> old \> middle \> modern. English, Dutch, German fit this perfectly, and with some fiddling (Counting Latin and proto-Italic as one sub, for no other proto-Italic still exists and Latin was quite early (Proto-Germanic even hypothetically borrowed some words)) the Romance languages. This theme can be also applied to Russian, with some bashing and bodging even the Chinese languages, if I recall correctly.
* Big spelling changes, not by a regulation's suggestions (or laws—think France) but by linguistic fashion changes.
* When a language sees itself as 'newer' and 'better' than its predecessor.
* Just to fit. Calling Old and Middle English 'Old English' collectively would be 'weird' as too many changes have occurred for it to be one language. So they drew a line where they thought it would be applicable.

I don't think it can be reduced to one single rule of thumb, like in jknappen's answer. Som**e** sound chang**e**s affect many words, but don't split the languag**e**. For example: when **-e**'s at the end of words becam**e** silent, many words chang**e**d pronunciation (many underus**e**d words hav**e** an **-e**, which ar**e** less common but mor**e** numerous). Such 'common exceptions' make it difficult to have one single rule.

---
Tags: conlang-creation, diachronics
---


# Question
Title: Consider an isolated, close-knit community; which characteristics is their language likely to have?
For the sake of concreteness, let's say my low-tech conculture is living in a few villages on a smallish island in the middle of the ocean (Pitcairn Islands comes to mind).

Basically, this would mean that no adult ever has to learn their language, and that everyone knows everyone else to some extent.

Can one make predictions as to how the language would more likely look? Such as:

* Would it have a "large" phoneme inventory?
* Would it tend to be heavily inflected or analytical?
* Would there be a large number of irregular inflections?
* Would there be a well-developed system of expressing consanguinity?

Lastly, would the size of the settlement(s) matter much? The difference between a single village or a dozen in regular contact, say.

# Answer
> 10 votes
Derek Bickerton and John McWhorter both have studied pidgins and creoles. A general observation is that communities that have to deal with other communities who don't speak their language, but still have to communicate resort to using pidgins, creoles which are simplified, grammatically speaking. McWhorter says English lost it's complex grammar when Vikings arrived and couldn't deal with the complexity.

On the other hand, island communities that don't have to deal with other people can tolerate arbitrarily complex grammar since children have a spectacular skill for acquiring their first language as compared to adults. So as an isolated language accumulates difficulties, there is no pressure to make them go away, they just get added to the pile of obligatory complexities.

Another feature of Island speakers in specific is they are more likely to use a "towards the shore/away from the shore" as a grammatical marker, ref "When "North" Isn't Actually North: Geocentric Direction Systems"

EDIT: Large phoneme inventory. Chinese, a lingua franca has a small inventory and a small inventory of syllables. Rotokas has a small phonetic inventory. Someone would have to graph this to see if there is a weak relationship.

Inflections (really, any morphology), irregular forms (lexicalizations), culture-specific complexities-- I'd predict more of all of these for an isolated language. Proving it to satisfy skeptics would take a few academic papers. English's "2nd cousin twice removed" system, is complicated, but English is a lingua franca. Hard to say beyond generalities.

# Answer
> 7 votes
There are a lot of hypotheses and conjectures floating around the linguistic community regarding typological features (like phoneme inventories, inflecting or isolating type etc.) and size of the speech community.

However, almost none of these conjectures is currently backed up by real world data (and, on the other side, real world data are often unavailable to evaluate such conjectures).

The linguist David Nettle argues that language evolution is faster in small speech communities, but this is also not a generally accepted point of view.

And last, but not least: *Never underestimate the influence of diachronics*. Many linguistic features correlate very well with either the language family or with arealic features. So the starting language will have a long time influence on the language of the isolated group.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about languages spoken by a small community in isolated islands are the Polynesian languages, like Maori, Hawai'i and Rapa Nui. They have simple phonetic inventories and little to no inflexion, but have a huge array of particles that denote aspect, mood, tense, emotion, etc.

However, at the same time we can look at Papua New Guinea, where there are hundreds of languages spoken by isolated communities. PNG is a bit "problematic", though, because there are so many types of languages there, from analytical to polysynthetic, from small to very large phonemic inventories. It's kind of a linguistic hotspot, really.

My advice for you is to check out Polynesian languages but also take a look at some PNG cultures. They can offer some insight you won't get anywhere else.

Good luck.

---
Tags: phonology, morphology, typology
---


# Question
Title: How do Romance-based naturalistic conlangs deal with the different principal parts of a verb?
The Latin verb has four principal parts (e.g., *ducere, duco, duxi, ductum*) that are sufficient and necessary to create all inflected forms and derived words from it. As far as I know, no naturalistic conlang attempts to preserve the French *passé simple* and related tempora in other Romance languages; so we can drop this one. Usually, the differences between infinitives and present tense forms are also levelled out by dropping most of the Romance verbal inflections.

This leaves us with two principal parts, one for the infinitive, present tense and past tense, and one for the past participle (or at least for derivations from the past participle, in case that the participle is somehow regularised).

I remember that Edgar de Wahl even went further in his design of Occidental-Interlingue using a device called de Wahl's rule (the description in the Wikipedia differs somewhat from my presentation) in deriving also the infinitive and the present tense stem from the past particple, so his word for "to lead" is *ducter*. He isn't 100% consequent, but this adds a lot of regularity to his design.

How do other Romance-based conlangs deal with the principal parts?

# Answer
> 8 votes
I answer first for two of my own invented languages, **Kerno** and **Loucarian**. Since the question is now broadened to invented IALs, I choose to add several additional sections: **Interlingua**, **Sabir**, **Occidental**, **Romanal**, **Medial Europan** and **Lingua Franca Nova**. Also, just so one can get a flavour of these languages, I append the Pater Noster in each.

Looking back at some of my old Romance languages, I don't think I paid much attention to the Latin principle parts as a system. As the languages evolve out of Latin and into their more modern selves, the systematic nature might fall apart or accrete new forms.

In **Kerno**, we can certainly see the survival of at least three principal parts for the regular verbs.

**cantam, cantar, cantú** (sing)
**caru, carer, carú** (love)
**dormu, dormir, dormú** (sleep)

It's not until we meet up with those good old irregular verbs that more principal parts seem to linger:

In the Grammar, there is actually a section that lists the principal parts of the irregular verbs (though for some unknown reason, I didn't call them such):

**doc (or doy), dar, dedai, doú**
**istam, ystar, stetai, ystú**
**currem, currer, coscorrai (or cocorrai), cursú**
**llodu, lloder, llosès, llosú**
**ioc, ir, fu, eú**
**sentu, sentir, senti, sentú**

So, four principal parts surviving.

**a Phazeoir Nusteor que bias 'n y ceues;
foreth noef il tew nom;
gouenyes il tew camouils;
foreth fès la teva gouoluntáts
en lâ derra cuomo 'ny ceues;
danos-el osdia le nusteor panèn cuotidièn;
dimeti y nusteor dheuz
cuomo dimitemus ai nusteor dheutoeres;
et ne nus attrayer rhen al tentación,
mays eliveránus des val.**

---

**Loucarian** takes its inspiration from Sabir and has a similarly reduced verbal conjugation.

**amare, amando, amato
clevere, cleviendo, cleveto
ajire, ajiendo, ajito
pejeire, pejiendo, pejito
vidure, videndo, viduto**

While not a principal part of the ancestral Reman language, modern Loucarian takes the present/infinitive, progressive/continual & past for its principal parts.

**nemet sospeito pôdis IC cata maccareire; etti pejeto IC:
enamverver tim maccareire coudeiere ican:
jenì abba en samayam na
qedd al iccà nomon
sôppere al iccà noummen podeqc festinam
outtato wad al iccà alfas eim en al tir eim en al paradeisiam
cvercare tim adis nasser hotim al jenìm pountim cascoumênem
demetere tim al jenìn nobes eim nas demetere al jenìn namaderam
mire doucere nasser adis peirasmom
mire dê côire tim nasser ad injoudissiam.**

---

**Interlingua** is an invented Romance IAL. From the I-a **grammar article** under Verbs, we can see exactly what has been done with Latin's principal parts.

* All personal inflexion is stripped off, so there can be no "first principal part" as such. However, the Latin present stem remains largely intact, so the I-a present tense could continue to serve as first principal part.
* The infinitive remains distinct.
* The old Latin perfect stems have all been obliterated; the I-a past tense is formed upon the Latin imperfect (present stem), so there can be no "third principal part".
* The Latin past participle remains in I-a.

One could say the principal parts of an Interlingua verb are:

**parla, parlar, parlate
dice, dicer, dicíte
senti, sentir, séntite**

Interlingua is not entirely regular as regards its verbal system. There are a few (unofficial) irregulars (thank Goodness!)

The principal parts of esser are:

**es, esser, era, essite** thus four principal parts.

**Nostre Patre, qui es in le celos,
que tu nomine sia sanctificate;
que tu regno veni;
que tu voluntate sia facite
super le terra como etiam in le celo.
Da nos hodie nostre pan quotidian,
e pardona a nos nostre debitas
como nos pardona a nostre debitores,
e non duce nos in tentation,
sed libera nos del mal.**

---

**Sabir** (also knows as Mediterranean Lingua Franca) was an actual, natural Romance IAL in use within the Mediterranean Sea basin from the middle ages onwards to about the mid 19th century or so.

It is well known for severe reduction & levelling of morphology in general. There are but two principal parts, both surviving from Latin:

**parlar, parlato
fazer, fazeto
sabir, sabito**

The present tense, imperative and infinitive are all wrapped within the immutable infinitive; the past and past participle are wrapped up within the old perfect participle.

There are a couple odd forms. For example, in the Pater Noster we find *noi volir ki nomi di ti star **saluti*** of which I (having no grammar of the language available) can only imagine to be a past participle of saluer. Why the -i termination and why not "salueto", I don't know. Obviously Sabir was not *designed* to level all irregularity. It evolved naturally and over a long period of time within a broad geographical region. Oddities are bound to survive / arise.

**Padri di noi, ki star in syelo,
noi volir ki nomi di ti star saluti.
Noi volir ki il paisi di ti star kon noi,
i ki ti lasar ki tuto il populo fazer volo di ti
na tera, syemi syemi ki nel syelo.
Dar noi sempri pani di noi di kada jorno,
i skuzar per noi li kulpa di noi,
syemi syemi ki noi skuzar kwesto populo ki fazer kulpa a noi.
Non lasar noi tenir katibo pensyeri,
ma tradir per noi di malu.**

---

**Occidental** is another invented Romance IAL. I really don't know much about it beyond a couple articles I've read online. Even so, we can easily pick out the remaining principal parts from a good sample text:

**da, dar, dat
inducte, inducter, inductet
veni, venir, venit**

As with Interlingua and Sabir, the morphology of person is eliminated, leaving only a present stem. Also, the perfect stem itself is eliminated. This leaves us three principal parts.

**Patre nor, qui es in li cieles,
mey tui nómine esser sanctificat,
mey tui regnia venir,
mey tui vole esser fat,
qualmen in li cieles talmen anc sur li terre.
Da nos hodie nor pan omnidial,
e pardona nor débites,
qualmen anc noi pardona nor debitores.
E ne inducte nos in tentation,
ma libera nos de lu mal.**

---

**Romanal** was another invented Romance IAL. I have again no reference grammar, but a perusal of a text shows some interesting morphology.

**das, dar, dat**

Forms like *ne nos inducas* and *dimitta* speak of the survival of Latin negative imperative and possibly imperative forms as well. Romanal is well worth the visit for the spiffy verbal conjugation alone!

**Patro nostri,
qui est en cieles,
sanctificat estas nomine tui,
advenias regne tui,
fias volite tui,
sicut en ciele, et en terre.
Il pane nostri quotidiani das ad nos hodie,
et dimittas nostri debites,
sicut et nus dimitta debitantos nostri,
et ne nos inducas in tentatione,
sed liberas nos ex male.**

---

**Medial Europan** was another invented Romance IAL.

It would seem, from the given text, that all distinctions of conjugation have been reduced to but one. We can see that the present tense and infinitive are distinct.

**pintit, pintir**

**Un englo, un franco ed un deuto havit le taske pintir kamele. Le englo voyajit ad Afrike for studiir le kamele in tisui doimie. Le franco gidit al zoologi jarden, ed le deuto pintit on kamelo ex le profunde de sui psyke.**

---

**Lingua Franca Nova** was also inspired by Sabir. Its verbal system is the most reduced respecting the old Latin principal parts. That is to say, there are no principal parts, the bare verb stem being used for all tenses, in conjunction with temporal particles.

**leva
come
boli**

**Nosa Padre ci es en la sielo,
Ta ce tua nom es santida.
Ta ce tua rena veni.
Ta ce tua vole aveni
sur la tera como en la sielo.
Dona oji nosa pan dial a nos,
e pardona nosa detas,
como nos pardona nosa detores,
e no condui nos a tenta,
ma libri nos de malia.**

---

***NB:*** *I deliberately left out Esperanto / Ido because, while their vocabulary is largely paneuropean, its grammar is not Romance. (I've read several sources that claim it is closer to Slavic grammatically.) Also, I leave out Novial for the same reason, only its grammar is much closer to that of English.*

# Answer
> 1 votes
While international auxiliary conlangs based on Romance languages, such as the ones you're thinking of, typically get rid of most of the verbal conjugation, there are in fact naturalistic Romance-based conlangs that retain a multiplicity of verbal forms on par with French or Italian.

There is no reason why the evolution of the actual Romance languages can't be imitated by a conlanger if they so wish.

An example would be the Siezan language (created by a French conlanger that goes under the pseudonym "Legion" on the Internet), meant to represent what French would be if it were a bit more similar to the other major Romance languages. If you look at the section on verbs, you can find examples such as **devre** 'must, to have to' having **dúi** as its "indicative perfective" (or *passé simple* if you will), which correspond to the Latin principal parts **debere** and **debui** respectively. (You can compare this to the retention of Latin **quaero** ~ **quaesivi** in Spanish: **quiero** ~ **quise**.)

(Latin \> Siezan)
**debere \> devre
debui \> dúi
debuisti \> dús
debuit \> dú
debuimus \> dumos
debuistis \> dustes
debuerunt \> duront**

Note that, just as in the real Romance languages, new principal parts can also be formed elsewhere. The future form of Siezan **falir** 'to fail' has the irregular stem **fodr-** (**fodré, fodrás, fodrá...**) instead of the expected *falir-* (*faliré, falirás, falirá...*).

---
Tags: verbs, naturalism, auxlangs, conlang-learning
---


title: How to keep track of a language?

text:
# Question
Title: How to keep track of a language?
At the moment I have my fictional language written down in a notebook, but as the vocabulary increases its becoming harder and harder to find words.

I am adding new words all the time, so writing them in alphabetical order doesn't last long.

How can I keep a track of this language and still be able to find the words I need?

**Edit**: I have seen this question has been marked as a possible duplicate, but it is different as I am also open to paper-and-pencil methods.

# Answer
One way, while working on paper is to divide things into multiple sheets, making sure to have plenty of extra space at the bottom of dictionary sheets, or alternatively grouping things via e.g. semantic field to not run into the alphabetisation issue to quite the same extent (though this can have the issue that the semantic field of some items might not be easily determineable).

You can also use a computer program to manage your vocabulary, which offers the benefits of easy searchability and ordering. A simple spreadsheet program of your choosing is enough to work in a lot of cases, and otherwise there is the possibility of using actual vocabulary management programs. There are several free ones availible, both conlang-specific ones such as Polyglot (which also has a bunch of other functionality for organising a bunch of other conlanging-related stuff) or one developed for natlangs but still useful for conlangs, such as SIL FieldWorks (which is quite powerful but has a bit of a learning curve).
> 8 votes

# Answer
To add to Gufferdk's answer, Mark Rosenfelder in *The Language Construction Kit* (online version) mentions the use of index cards (as professional dictionary makers used to do in the past) as well as a technique with two-columned pages:

> You can keep a dictionary in alphabetical order by maintaining two columns and just writing in one. New words get placed in the second column. When it starts to get unreadable, it’s time to make a new edition. Index cards work too, with less rewriting.

If you don't mind sharing your lexicon with the entire world, there are also free online services such as ConWorkShop or Anthologica where you can manage your own dictionaries.
> 7 votes

# Answer
One of the easiest ways is a simple document in your favorite word processor:

hawarççomtar, \[hawarçç- +omtar\] n.C. dancer
hawarrôs, \[\*wel-\] n.N. the will, desire; attachment
hawartomar, \[wartam \< \*wert-\] n.N. spiritual awakening, spiritual awareness
hawatam, \[\*wed-\] D vb. sing
hawatar, \[\*wed-\] n.N. poison, medicine; saga
hawatôs, \[hawatam\] n.N. song
hawecam, \[\*aug-\] D vb. add; grow (mid)
hawehham, \[\*aukwh-\] A vb. cook something (w. acc.); cook for someone (w. dat.)

Whatever etymological or grammatical information you feel like adding can be easily inserted. It's easy to insert new words or simply add them to the end of the list and have the software sort the whole thing alphabetically.

One great advantage of doing it this way is that it's a trivial matter of formatting for print should you ever desire to have a printed copy of your dictionary or grammar book.
> 4 votes

# Answer
With pen and paper: Use **index cards**

You need two sets of index cards, one ordered alphabetically in the conlang, the other ordered alphabetically in your native language.

You can use index cards of different colour to retrieve, e.g., roots or basic words.

The index cards take up some space, but 10k of them are still managable.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I use multiple sources for Lortho. For the most part, my notes are all kept on Google Docs and its lexicon is stored in Google Spreadsheets. For the display portion of the language I use three different websites: Linguifex, FrathWiki, and ConWorkShop. In addition, I created a challenge on Twitter and Instagram called Lextreme2018 which keeps track of all my new lexemes for the year and the progress of Lortho's script. As I add a new word with the challenge, I also make it a point to add the new word in both the Google Spreadsheet as well as on ConWorkShop. That way I have my dictionary stored in two separate places should one decide to go belly-up.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I would suggest recording them in an Access Database or something of the like. You can make a table for each part of speech.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary, tools
---


# Question
Title: Is the concept of “spatial aspect” attested in any natural language?
As described here, *Aspect* refers to the grammatical marking of the relation between topic and eventuality *time*, that is, it marking in what way the time an action actually occurs relates to the time currently being talked about. So in the sentence “Before returning home, he had gone shopping”, the topic time would be the moment of arriving home, and the eventuality time the time of going shopping, and the English past perfect marks that the latter happened before the former.

A logical extension of this system then would be to not only mark for differences in topic and eventuality *time*, but also topic and eventuality *space*. In the above sentence, the topic space (or location) would be the home, while the location of the shopping would be the eventuality space. The sentence might then mark for the fact that the shopping center is far away from the home, as opposed to (for example), inside the home. Further distinctions could be made with regards to motion: shopping is fairly stationary, but in “To get home, he had to drive on the highway”, there is clear motion towards the topic space and this too might be marked.

So I am curious, does anything along these lines exist in natural languages? The closest thing I was able to find were cis- and translocative markers in some languages, but the examples don’t really make it clear that this is used in a mandatory inflectional manner the same way temporal aspect is in many language.

# Answer
I don't know of any languages where spatial marking is thoroughly compulsory in the same way aspect often is, however I do know of some potentially interesting cases of spatial marking. A lot of Papuan languages have grammaticalised systems for showing directionality and location. They are usually described as being relative to the speaker, but in at least some cases I have found them described as being relative to either the speaker or the village, or some other not wholly speaker-focussed system. The Nimboran languages in particular have highly complex systems e.g. Wilden(1976) describes Kemtuk as having the following system: https://i.stack.imgur.com/giiWp.png, but says that it is optional. Anceaux (1965) describes 16 different spatial categories in Nimboran proper, but in a rather unhelpful manner. He notes that the unmarked position category, when the speaker is involved has a specific meaning of "near the speaker", but that it is also always used when the speakers position is indefinite or irrelevant, such as in stories or general statements. In at least some languages I have looked at, these markers were compulsory with motion verbs.

A somewhat different system involving location relative to other events is described by Huisman (1973) who reports that Angaataha has a class of medial verbs which are inflected for whether they occur in the same place or in a different place as the following conjunct.

As far as I can tell, none of this completely satisfies your request, but it shows that at least some things are definitely attested, and distinguish other, or more fine categories than what you've found yourself.
> 7 votes

# Answer
*By definition*, aspect is defined in relation to the action's *temporality*. As such, no there is no language, natural or otherwise with "spatial aspect".

However, countless languages do incorporate spatiality in verbs, whether that be in morphology or, less commonly, in the verbal paradigm. Germanic languages particles come to mind, but Nuučaan̓uł has affixes meaning, among others "at the ear", "at the side of a vessel" and "on the beach" (*Advanced Language Construction*, 179-180). Quechua does have (as I understand it) a mandatory directional -mu for verbs of movement. If absent, it explicitly excludes movement toward the speaker.

For sure nothing prevents you from making spatiality the main category affecting verbal forms.
> -2 votes

---
Tags: grammar, tense-aspect-mood
---


# Question
Title: Are Esperanto's part of speech endings actually beneficial?
I was wondering if they really serve any practical advantage.

For one, what they mean depends on what the innate part of speech of the root is, which isn't marked except through the part of speech endings. For instance, attaching the verbal suffix -i to an adjective gives a different meaning than attaching it to a noun.

Further more, Lingua Franca Nova has a rather novel method of marking mart of speech: its own derivational morphology. Unlike Esperanto's affixes, LFN's affixes often transform a specific part of speech into another (or sometimes just leaves it the same). In this say, suffixes that derive nouns are automatically mark the noun for part of speech without the need of an additional affix that serves no other purpose.

But of course, I'm not exactly fluent in the language myself, so I'd like an opinion from people who do actually know and use this language. Are the part of speech endings really useful or are they just a convoluted way to derive new words?

# Answer
For those unfamiliar with Esperanto POS suffixes,

```
-o noun
-i verb (infinitive)
-a adjective
-e adverb

```

For example:

```
sano - health
sani - to be healthy
sana - healthy
sane - healthily

```

Since Esperanto has free word order, having POS markers allows the differentiation between the following phrases:

```
ĝoje knabino ludas - a girl plays happily
ĝoja knabino ludas - a happy girl plays

```

Esperanto and LFN have a very similar affix system, however unlike LFN, Esperanto root words have no innate part of speech, so there is no way of "adding" a verbal suffix to a noun or an adjective. Rather, you would be changing the nominal/adjectival suffix to the verbal one and forming the verb based on the root word. Knowing the POS of any given word makes understanding unfamiliar words a lot easier, which is very advantageous for an auxiliary language.

With that being said, in EO poetry, nouns often drop their -o ending for aesthetic reasons.

> Berlino sen vi estas urb' (urbo) sen harmoni' (harmonio)
> Estas trista, trista, amasloĝej' (amasloĝejo)

Between EO and LFN's, there is no "better" affix system. They are just two different ways of doing the same thing.
> 4 votes

# Answer
POS markers are markers, same as syntactic position, both derived morphology and otherwise.

In a noisy environment it may be helpful to mark things more than once, so if someone couldn't figure out the POS from context, the roots normal POS class, or syntax, they can infer it from the POS suffix.

This guy has some additional criticism of the POS markers.

I've no familiarity with LNF, so I wouldn't know how that differs or not.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: esperanto, morphology, parts-of-speech
---


# Question
Title: How do I do interlinear glosses for a conlang?
Already, in the meta there are discussions about if people should gloss their sample text. I find their argument persuasive that foreign text without a gloss is useless without several thousand hours of study of the language in question.

The professional linguists are using the Leipzig Glossing Rules.

1. Should we expect Leipzig Glossing Rules to work for all invented languages?
2. How does one handle grammar that may not match up with the "standard abbreviations"? Lojban comes to mind, since they as a community reject that grammatical classes in Lojban have any counterpart in natural languages.
3. Conlang audiences are just as likely to be an amateur audience, unlike the readers of linguistics academic journal. Is there a better way to gloss for a popular audience?

# Answer
> 11 votes
**Should we expect Leipzig Glossing Rules to work for all invented languages?**

No, not *all* of them, but the set of languages for which they will not work is exceedingly restricted. Basically, just ask yourself "can my language be written in a primarily linear format?" If so, the Leipzig Glossing Rules are for you. If it is carried by sound, you can gloss it. That right there covers very nearly every language that has been asked about on this site so far. If it's a manual sign language, there's still an exceedingly good chance that you can gloss it. If it's a fully-2D non-linear writing system, the alterations you will have to make to the conventions to make it work then become sufficiently large that it would no longer make sense to call the result "Leipzig glossing". But those aren't exactly common.

**How does one handle grammar that may not match up with the "standard abbreviations"? Lojban comes to mind, since they as a community reject that grammatical classes in Lojban have any counterpart in natural languages.**

Exactly the same way the professionals do: by providing a glossary of your non-standard abbreviations.

**Conlang audiences are just as likely to be an amateur audience, unlike the readers of linguistics academic journal. Is there a better way to gloss for a popular audience?**

That depends on what you are trying to communicate to that popular audience. In some cases, a full gloss may not be needed, even for a professional audience. A simple set of parallel translations demonstrating the effect of a straightforward morphological or syntactic alternation, for example, may be sufficient for its purpose. But in the general case... I don't think so. Leipzig glosses are intended to be easy to understand, and they succeed at that about as well as it is possible to do in most cases.

# Answer
> 8 votes
Since

1. It's really hard to conceive of a human language whose grammar and syntax are truly outside the bound of what exists in natural language (despite Lojban fanboy statements to the contrary) to the point that the Leipzig rules can't be used for it.
2. The Leipzig rules already are already designed to handle human languages, and human languages can get pretty ridiculous already.

I don't see what's the problem. You don't have to go the strict way either, you can be as specific or as generic as your example needs to be, but the Leipzig rules are always a good place to start.

Besides, people are more likely to argue about the terminology (i.e. which abbreviation you're using, again as in your own Lojban example) or what words to use to gloss something than about the application of Leipzig proper.

---
Tags: tools, glossing
---


# Question
Title: Are there any resources to learn Solresol available in English?
I've been interested in learning Solresol, as the idea of it intrigues me. But I haven't been able to find anything in English to learn it from (the original works on the language are in French, which I don't know).

I checked out sidosi.org, and it shows a couple of links to an English translation of the original grammar of Solresol, but one redirects back to the sidosi.org homepage, and one leads to a message saying the site has been retired from service. Other resources are also linked, and also turn out to be missing.

So are there any resources (preferably online) to learn Solresol from English?

# Answer
You can find many articles at SiDoSi (sidosi.org)'s resources page or at this tutorial on blogspot. Also, I'd recommend a translation of "The second major book about Solresol, written by the other major contributor to Solresol, Boleslas Gajewski," also at sidosi.org over here.

---

Note that SiDoSi (sidosi.org)'s resources page has an error that requires you to click the `[+]` and then the link that appears because the direct links don't work and redirect you. Else see the beta version, without broken links.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Sorry I missed this question. Many of the main links on Sidosi's Resources page are unreliable, but you can view the archived copies by expanding the info box for a resource (click the + to the left of the title), or clicking the "Show/Hide All" link near the top of the page.

Alternatively, there is a beta Resources page that hasn't been widely publicized yet, and it presents the resources in a much better format than before, with no broken links. It's only considered beta because this new version was coded from scratch, and there are a ton of new resources due to be added.

There are still many original French documents that haven't been translated to English (Sudre's book, for example), so the Solresol community as a whole shares in your struggle for English resources. Basically, there still aren't any good English resources for learning Solresol, but hopefully the ones that are available help.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: resource-request
---


title: How to "Naturalize" a Conlang?

text:
# Question
Title: How to "Naturalize" a Conlang?
Many conlangs that I have encountered have an “artificial” feel to them–all conjugations and declensions are perfectly regular, stress rules for speaking are rigorously adhered to, and so on. Obviously, changing that (e.g., introducing irregular conjugations or declensions, variant stress, etc.) is necessary to make the language feel more natural, but is it sufficient? What other ways are there to make a conlang less “artificial”?

# Answer
> 23 votes
There is one big point here that really ties it all together:

### Languages have history

Any conlang that wishes to look naturalistic therefore needs to emulate history as well. I’ll show in what ways history can manifest with a bunch of examples from different areas.

**Orthography**

Almost no language with a history of writing has a fully regular orthography. Even if there are regular writing reforms, some aspects of the orthography will just be considered “part of it” and stick. English is of course a very extreme example of this, but you don’t need to take it that far. German for example generally has a rather regular orthography. But the digraph ⟨ie⟩ represents a long /iː/, reflecting that in the past (and in some dialects until the present) there was a diphthong /iə/ in German, which became to be pronounced that way. It also has two separate graphemes for the phonemes /ɛ eː/, namely ⟨e ä⟩, reflecting whether the sound originates from a fronted /a aː/ or not. On top of this, there are some segments which have unpredictable pronunciation: word final -ig for example is pronounced /ɪç/ instead of expected /ɪk/. In short, unless your writing system was designed very recently by linguists, it likely shows leftovers from the past. In the most extreme cases, writing systems can lag behind centuries (English, French, Tibetan), but even if they don’t they can preserve some old features.

**Morphology**

Most languages with inflections show some degree of irregularity among them. This can manifest in many degrees, from almost entirely regular (Swahili has only one class of six slightly irregular verbs, one of which is suppletive in the present tense) to a basically complete lack of predictability (Navajo verb stems have defied any attempts to find rules for their inflections thus far. There don’t seem to be distinct paradigms, every verb does its own thing!). However, these irregularities are not random. To show what I mean, compare these two sets of declensions. The first two are latin singular nouns (in an less traditional order), the second two made up on the spot.

```
NOM filius rēx      kwero   tulya
VOC filiī  rēx      kwerap  tulte
ACC filium rēgem    kweruf  tultsu
GEN filiī  rēgis    kwerim  tulne
DAT filiō  rēgī     kwerx   tulum
ABL filiō  rēge     kwert   tulwo

```

Two things should stick out:

1. The Latin forms of rēx show two distinct stems, those ending in /k/ (rēx, where the spelling hides the fact that really it’s rēc-s) and those ending in /g/ (all other forms). Looking a bit closer, we can see that the /g/ appears exactly before those forms with a vowel in the suffix. Intervocalic voicing (which accounts for /k/ becoming /g/) is a common sound change and applies here.
2. While in both languages, some of the affixes seem to be unrelated, there are still patterns: nominative takes -s, accusative takes -m, genitive has an -i in the suffix… If we added other paradigms into the comparison, even more such patterns would arise, indicating that they really originate from a much more regular system that got changed up over time by various factors like sound changes. In the made up language, on the other hand, the affixes are entirely random, and this causes the irregularity to look more unnatural than if everything took the same affixes.

**Phonology**

Consider the Japanese consonant inventory. It looks something like this (omitting allophones):

```
  m |   n |   ɴ |
p b | t d | k g |
    | s z |     | h
    |   r |     |
    |   j |   w |

```

What this table does not show however is that /p/ is significantly rarer than /t k/. Why would that be? Simply because many instances of that sound somewhat recently shifted to what is /h/ in modern Japanese. In other words, a sound change caused a significant imbalance in the distribution of sounds. If one were to simply generate words with a word generator, not paying attention to the history of the language, all sounds would show up with similar frequency.

**Vocabulary**

If I give you any word, you can probably find several alternative ways of expressing that meaning. “big”, “tall”, “large”, “spacious”, “gigantic”… they all have different connotations, sure, but in the end they’re all descriptions for roughly the same thing - objects which take up a big fraction of your field of view when near them. Meanwhile, many conlangs will have a dictionary entry like **gwop** *adj* “big” and that’s it. Adding synonyms, especially ones with subtly different meanings allows you to greatly affect the way texts read (in a positive way).

At the same time however, often complicated words are derived from simpler concepts. This naturally has the effect of making them longer, causing a variation in the lengths of words - many short words with a few longer ones in-between is a common pattern. But if you simply create a new root every time you make a word, you won’t get that - and your hypothetical speakers will have to remember every single word without help, even ones they barely ever use.

---

I could go on and on and list things in every category of linguistics I can think of, but in the end it all boils down to this:

Irregularity in languages either preserves older, then-regular systems in now untransparent ways (English verbs are another great case study for this) or are the creation of sound change messing with regularity. The former is the reason why common words tend to be less regular - if you commonly hear a word it’s easier to preserve its original form and remember the irregularity once it has arisen. In the case of Navajo I mentioned above, curiously it seems to be that first sound change caused irregularity, and then the native speakers applying analogy caused the whole system to become even more irregular. See the paper I linked above for some hypotheses on how that worked.

Now, onto the actual question: Assume you have a conlang already, and it lacks history and is entirely too regular. “Sterile”, one might say. What can you do? I’d like to present you two options:

1. Invent a history for your language. Sketch out how your verbal system may have looked in the past and see if you can lead that to some interesting irregular forms or alterations. Come up with some sound changes that may have led to the current state of the language. You don’t have to do this in great detail, but obviously (as always with conlangs) the more effort you put in, the better it will look.
2. Make your language the history. If you don’t mind your end result potentially looking vastly different from what you have now, you can decide to move the current state of the language into the past. You may have to make some changes to vocabulary to keep it in line with technology, but otherwise there’s not really any difference between a modern language and a “proto-language”. Then, you can track its changes through history in great detail, and in doing so introduce its natural flavour. No one has to know that the proto-language you worked from was unnaturalistic (but you’ll have to live with that knowledge. Just remember that you have to start *somewhere*, you can’t derive every conlang from the first utterances of mankind).

---

As a footnote, I’d like to make a book recommendation: The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deutscher. In this book, Deutscher discusses (in a very accessible manner) exactly what this question boils down to: how and why did languages become the way they are - messy and irregular and oh so complicated. I believe every conlanger should read this book, regardless of level of experience.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Easy. Apply analogy and sound changes—see a few natural examples at Index Diachronica, a list of sound change types at Wikipedia Sound Change, and also David Peterson (maker of Game Of Thrones's Dothraki) on youtube— to your conlang, and make it replace (not evolve from) the unnatural language. These two elements automatically create irregular conjugations/declensions.

This field of linguistics is *diachronics* or *historical linguistics* (I prefer the former).

# Answer
> 5 votes
Every natural language has more or less *loanwords*. Adding some loanwords to your conlang adds to the naturalness.

So how do loanwords differ from the original words, after all it is a conlang and the loanwords are constructed, too?

Let the donor language have a different phonology and different phonotactics, than the loan words stick out by their shape. You may choose a classical precursor of your actual language as the donor language (We see borrowings from Latin in French), or an unrelated language. Also the loan words may have a different stress pattern preserved in your conlang.

The loan words may also have unusual endings or prefixes not occurring naturally in your main conlang, or show different mechanisms of word formation and derivation.

If you want to go a little further, the loan words even may exhibit loan inflections (just as some English loaned plurals such as *hippopotami* or *cherubim* do).

---
Tags: conlang-creation, naturalism
---


title: Use of string reversion in conlangs

text:
# Question
Title: Use of string reversion in conlangs
I came across the Esperantido Universal where reversion of stems (e.g., *mega* "big" ⁒ *gema* "small", -a is the adjective ending) is used to denote antonymy. Are there other conlangs using this unusual and un-naturalistic device?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Solresol actually reverses the syllable order of a word to denote an opposite meaning, though this occurrence is inconsistent through the creator's published dictionary. For example, *fala* means good, but *lafa* means bad, and *falaredo* means accessible, but *dorelafa* means inaccessible.

---
Tags: morphology, unnatural-features, list-of-languages
---


# Question
Title: How to make good analogy in one's constructed language?
**What steps can be taken to reproduce analogy in a constructed language?** Which parts of grammar are more likely to evolve with analogy, and why? Are there rules for what analogy does to which words, or rules that show where analogy may take place?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Let's look at a made-up example. Assume that we want to apply a sound change from /g/ to /d͡ʒ/ before /e/ and /i/ in Esperanto. Then, the conjugation of the Esperanto verb *pagi* "to pay" suddenly becomes irregular:

*paĝi*, *pagas*, *paĝis*, *pagos*, *pagus* (The infinitive and the past tense have a different consonant (*ĝ*) than the rest).

Analogy will force one consonant for all forms but we cannot predict which one. In this respect, analogy is quite irregular, and we can end up either with the original Esperanto paradigm, or with all forms shifted to the new consonant (*paĝi*, *paĝas*, *paĝis*, *paĝos*, *paĝus*).

Analogy affects usually inflected or agglutinative word forms, such as verbs and nouns, but it can also be applied to derivational morphology.

Another type of analogy tries to level out differences between conjugations or declensions. Assume, your language features two different conjugations. Than borrowing an ending (or prefix, or vowel change) from one conjugation to the other is also an analogy.

---
Tags: diachronics
---


# Question
Title: How does the Wede:i language reflect their cultural focus on government?
We can see that the Wede:i have a focus on the state in their culture:

> The central fact of existence has always been the state, always essential. The southern religions had always preached support for the state, the importance of the collective good, and the social lubrication necessary to a populous and busy state: manners and decorum; respect for superiors; fair and just treatment for inferiors.

Can we see this in their language? i.e., are there more government-related words than in other languages?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I don't think you can generally assume a strong correlation between the vocabulary of a language and culture of the kind you are asking about. Just like the "50 Eskimo words for snow" is a myth, it would also apply to other languages...

Not knowing the language in question I would think that there is a cultural influence, but not as obvious as having more words in a given topic area. I would expect a fine-grained system of honorifics, expressed in, for example, different verbal affixes depending on whether you speak to someone who is superior to you or not. So you express respect by using a different form of the verb, but not a different lexical item.

The same would apply to other areas of discourse. Politeness markers, modality (*should*, *could*, *would*,...) all play a role in social interaction, but do not necessarily manifest themselves directly in the vocabulary.

---
Tags: verdurian-languages, cultural-influence
---


# Question
Title: Why do I have such a problem with my conlangs being ugly?
This is a perpetual problem I have and I find it quite annoying. Yes, I know its kinda subjective, but that doesn't change the fact that, to me at least, my conlangs are always hideous.

For a recent example, my most recent conlang has agglutinating pronouns. For instance, the word for 'I' is 'ta' and the word for 'we' is 'tai' (pronounced like 'tie', minus the aspiration of course). That's not too bad. The issue is when I add the nominative marker -s: 'tas' and 'tais'. To me, 'tais' just sounds hideous.

In past I think it was because I used the voiceless velar fricative far too often. But even if I don't include the phoneme my language sounds hideous, and artificial to the point that its sounds robotic. Though the latter is probably because I have a hard time NOT making conlangs 'logical'.

There are of course nice-sounding conlangs out there, and even natlangs, but I just can't seem to imitate the sound of any other language for some reason, and I don't get why. And I specialize in phonology, so I don't get why I can't get the sound right. Even if my conlang has the exact same phonemes, allophony, intonation, and phonotactics as a natlang, it will sound completely different and I can't figure out why. I mean, how can I screw up the latter? What am I missing?

# Answer
> 6 votes
What you need is to adjust your phonotactics. Since you mention it in your question you apparently know what they are, but you aren't using them to get the sounds you want.

You say you find "tais" to be hideous, but you don't explain why, so let's say you don't like the way that a diphthong sounds in a closed syllable. (If this isn't the case, take this as an example for whatever the problem is.)

Once you've located the problem, you have to determine how to eliminate it by making rules for new phonotactics. You can think of lots of ways:

* The diphthong becomes a monophthong: tais \> **tas**, **tis** or **tes** in a closed syllable (tas might be problematic since it creates ambiguity with the singular). Or, alternatively, two monophthongs: tais could be \[ta.is\] instead of \[tajs\]
* A new consonant could be placed to separate the diphthong: tais could transform into **tayis**, maybe taus could be **tawus** (based on a simple rule of adding y before a front vowel and w before a back vowel)
* The diphthong could monophthongize and simple color the next consonant: tais could be pronounced \[taɕ\]. You could create a pattern with other consonants, e.g. tait \> \[tac\], taid \> \[taɟ\]
* Even if some of these options are problematic in your case (maybe you don't want to "contaminate" your agglutinative language), you could still retain the phonemes /tajs/ and just have some of these options as allophones of it (so e.g. \[e\] or \[e:\] could be an allophone of /aj/ in a closed syllable, \[ɕ\] could be an allophone of /js/)

What you need to do is just determine what sounds ugly to you and create phonotactic rules that cover whatever the problem is.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The obvious point is: Design your conlang for pleasantness.

Several conlang inventors had clear ideas about pleasantness: Zamenhof liked the sound of the Italian language and designed that into Esperanto; Tolkien liked Welsh (designed into Sindarin) and Finnish (designed into Quenya).

So "taste" different syllables and sounds, "taste" combinations of them, and than set up strong phonotactic rules forbidding ugly sounds. Whenever your morphology tries to introduce an ugly sound, think of a remedy:

* Change the morphology
* Apply some transformation that removes the ugly sound (this also adds irregularity, naturalness, and flavour to the language); for detailed suggestions see @b a's answer.

I think getting at a list of pleasant sound combinations (and a list of ugly ones to be avoided) is the difficult part of the program, getting rid of them once you know them is the easier task.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I have a less sophisticated explanation. Tastes change with exposure, so any new language sounds less pretty.

Also, what sounds right or pretty, after you've gotten used to a language, are words that follow the phonotactic rules.

I'm skeptical of the idea that some sounds are apriori prettier or more pleasant. Cellar door sounds good because it is a perfectly ordinary bit of English phonotactics, a language Tolkien was obviously familiar with.

---
Tags: phonology, phonotactics
---


# Question
Title: Can Pokemon language encode enough information to be a language?
I know that like Star Wars' droid, Pikachu's language is just nonsense with emotionally appropriate intonation, that said...

Can suprasegmental features (accent, tone, etc) encode a single three syllable word in enough different ways to get the vocabulary up to toki pona size? (about 100-125) Or up to a natural language size lexicion (say 7000-15000)

The question occurred to me because Alexa has a "speak to pikachu" feature where it then pretends to let you converse with Pikachu in Pikachu-ese.

# Answer
From what I remember from the cartoon, Pikachu could only say certain permutations of its name, with any combination of vowels elongated.

```
3 syllables   pikat͡ʃu   8 words
2 syllables   pika      4 words
1 syllables   pi        2 words

```

Pikachu is also capable of producing at least 4 different tones:

```
Tone     IPA   Made when
High     ˥     Excited
Mid      ˧
Rising   ˧˥    Curious
Falling  ˧˩    Disappointed

```

So, knowing this, Ash's pikachu should be able to say at least 584 distinct "words", which is well above the toki pona threshold.

Sadly it's pretty much impossible for this system to match the lexicon size of a natural language. Using an 8 tone system and adding primary and secondary stress brings the number of distinct words up to 25104, which is significantly larger than the Esperanto lexicon but still far away from that of a natural language, which is around 200K words.

From here on you could introduce some questionable features like 8 more tones, 7 different vocal registers, or the ability to say different permutations of its name (which is probably not as dodgy but also imagining pikachu say /ka.chu.pi/ makes me extremely uncomfortable). The best way in my opinion would be to introduce the *syllabic thunder shock* ⚡, which would require pikachu to release up to three thunder shocks whilst saying a word, all for the good cause of bringing the lexicon size of Pika-ese to a final 198688 words.

(No wonder Meowth learnt how to speak a human language, imagine being stuck with a one-syllable name.)
> 12 votes

# Answer
There is such thing as 'whistled' languages which rely solely on tone. Though they're all based on spoken languages. All the 'speaker' does is mimic the tonal pattern without pronouncing any phonemes. Such languages are used by hunters to communicate without alerting their quarry, because the language sounds just like bird song. But they don't use this language for most day-to-day communication.

As for a pikachu, well their 'words' are made up of three possible syllables: pi, ka, and chu. Thus a pikachu would have a total of 3 possible one-syllable words, 9 two-syllable words, and 27 three-syllable words. As we see, words would need to get quite long to get the possible vocabulary up to 100. Using tones though would easily multiply this. Even a simple two-tone system would double the number of possible syllables. Thus the syllable count would be 6 one-syllable words, 36 two-syllable words, and 216 three-syllable words. And there are real languages that have as many as 6 tones. With such a system, a pikachu would have 18 possible syllables to work with. Of course, you could say pokemon are more sensitive to tone than humans, which could increase the number of tones beyond what any human could manage.

Though a problem arises with cross-species communication. Obviously, no two species have the same set of syllables. Thus, for different species to be able to communicate with each other, the poke-language would probably have to be purely tonal, like a whistled language. Though you could 'multiply' the number of tones using length. A tone held for a short time could be considered a separate 'phoneme' from the same tone held longer. But we might just be fooling ourselves. The pokemon may just see a long tone as two identical tones right next to each other.

Most pokemon of course aren't intelligent enough to warrant a full-fledged language. Even Toki Pona would like contain some words they wouldn't make use of. Yeah, there's things like Alakazam which have an IQ higher than humans, but of course they can communicate telepathically, which would completely remove their need to use a language. And of course, there's some that can learn human language. Team Rocket's Meowth not only can speak, but he even taught himself how to! There's also one of the early movies which features a talking slowking. And one episode of the anime has a tenacool possessing meowth and speaking through him, which would imply it knows and understands human language, but lacks the ability to actually produce human sounds. Though honestly, its astounding that any pokemon could pronounce a human language. We have a lot of features in our mouths unique to our species that allow us to talk. Some birds in the real world can mimic human speech, but they accomplish this differently from how we do. I believe there is a pokemon in one of the later generations that can mimic human speech, though it can't understand language. By the way, the franchise is quite inconsistent as to whether pokemon can understand spoken speech or not.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: classification, phonetics
---


# Question
Title: How can I become a professional conlang designer?
There is some market for constructed languages in film, television, computer games and literature. Some conlangs designs were commissioned to linguists who did the real word.

Is there a possibility to become a professional conlang designer? What prerequisites are needed?

# Answer
> 7 votes
It's not strictly impossible to become a professional conlanger (obviously, since professional conlangers do exist), but it's highly unlikely. There are very, very few conlanging jobs out there, and at this point most who want to hire a conlanger will look for a known entity. Most of the professional conlangers you've heard of got their first conlanging job because they were very, very lucky and got any subsequent conlanging jobs because of their first one. So unless you know a surefire way to increase your luck or you happen to know people who work in showbiz already (nepotism never hurts), your odds of becoming a professional conlanger are not that great.

That said, the Language Creation Society does have a job board where people looking for conlangers to hire can solicit someone -- it's usually empty, but it's really the only good place to look.

As for prerequisites, there really aren't any besides being interested in conlanging (and ideally having done so before) and having the right connections to get someone to actually hire you. A background in linguistics will likely make you better at conlanging, but it's not necessarily going to be required for you to get hired.

# Answer
> 9 votes
The list of ways to make money with a conlang is short, so step one is to be creative.

**Write Genre Fiction Books.** Authors do make a living writing and selling books, sometimes with an artificial language bundled with it. Wardesan, Láadan, Tolkien's books are good examples. I'm guessing the conlang part though is reducing their income, they could write more books if they skipped writing a conlang. Personally, I'd buy a book with a conlang if the author tried to make it simple enough to enjoy for 10 to 20 hours. Instead we get unusable languages that require 2000 hours of study to appreciate them, same or worse than a natural language. And I'm an outlier, so I'd imagine regular genre fiction buyers see a bundled language as a low value gimmick.

**Communication Systems for the Disabled**. Blissymbols made money, albeit in a rather dishonorable way by suing the institution that was trying to help the profoundly disabled communicate with a symbol board, which was in essence an artificial language. I spoke with a specialist in the more modern versions of these, and often vendors don't even bother to acknowledge that symbol boards are not English, but conlang-like systems with all the challenges.

In the realm of conscripts, there is a commercial writing system for ASL. I'm failing to re-find the link.

Historical BSL was essentially a franchise and BSL was something of a trade secret.

**Movies.** Movies have been hiring professional linguists (Klingon, Na'vi) The Klingon dictionary and Avatar handbook sold a lot of copies, but the authors both became professional linguists first, and these books are really side projects.

**Selling learning materials.** This has got to be the worst way to monetize a conlang. The artificial language section of any large library has to be littered with books of people who thought they could sell a lot of copies of their grammar summaries, workbooks and dictionaries. No one wants the grammar summary. What they want is to meet their significant other by learning a language which brings me to...

**Esperanto** Esperanto actually has economic activity, but the language is already written. Building a language starts with grammar and vocabulary, but to extract money from people, people need to learn it. If your interest in conlang building is in the community building part, then it might make more sense to make a living working with an existing conlang that has attracted a community, complete with conferences, etc. That said, I'm guessing no one is getting rich off of Esperanto, but there are teachers of Esperanto, etc.

**Games** There have been reports of people writing full languages for computer games, card games. Magic the Gathering's Phyrexian comes to mind. So far, these have been gimmicks and the amount of money, I'm guessing is not a lot. Some of the game makers don't even bother to publish the grammar and dictionary! This makes it sort of into a laborious game of decipherment.

---
Tags: conlang-creation
---


# Question
Title: What has the impact of Star Trek: Discovery been on the development of Klingon?
Has Klingon changed significantly since it has started being used for Star Trek: Discovery? Has the vocabulary grown significantly? Has there been novel grammar revealed? To what extent is the language still developing under Marc Okrand's guidance to meet the demands of the script, and how much leeway does Robyn "Qov" Stewart have in coming up with Klingon translations for the script?

# Answer
> 19 votes
# The language still has Okrand's guidance, and he trusts Robyn to do it correctly.

From IndieWire:

> Before Stewart initially took the “Discovery” job, she did check in with Okrand himself to make sure he approved. “He said, ‘You know what? I’m really glad you’re doing this for two reasons: One is so I don’t have to do it.’ Because just for a movie, it’s a lot of work, and the series goes on,” Stewart said.
>
> But Okrand then added that he knew “the language is in good hands.” Said Stewart, “It was a huge ego boost for me — his confidence that I’ll do it correctly."

And even though Robyn Steward has Okrand's approval, every change has to get his stamp of approval before officially being added to the language.

TrekMovie tells us:

> As was noted in the video, Okrand isn’t working on Star Trek: Discovery, as the translating for the show is being handled by Klingon expert Robyn Stewart. However, Okrand is still the only person who can introduce new words into the Klingon language, which is maintained by the Klingon Language Institute. As he does at each annual conference of the KLI (called the qep’a’), Okrand introduced a number of new Klingon words in the summer of 2017. You can see the full list at KLI.org (words noted as “qep’a’ 24” were announced this year).

So to address each question:

> Has Klingon changed significantly since it has started being used for Star Trek: Discovery?

Nope - the people working on it are hardcore Klingon speakers, doing their utmost to keep everything accurate.

> Has the vocabulary grown significantly?

Yes, it's grown - you can see exactly which words were added recently in the above link.

> Has there been novel grammar revealed?

As far as I am aware, and from what Google turns up, no. The grammar is still the same as it was - just words are being added.

> To what extent is the language still developing under Marc Okrand's guidance to meet the demands of the script, and how much leeway does Robyn "Qov" Stewart have in coming up with Klingon translations for the script?

As mentioned in the above quote from TrekMovie, Okrand still has control over the language - while Steward has some wiggle room like any other translation to any other language, she has to work with the language, only adding words when absolutely necessary.

---
Tags: history, klingon
---


title: Brahmic conscript with European style

text:
# Question
Title: Brahmic conscript with European style
The scripts of South Asia (i.e. the Indian subcontinent), e.g. Devanagari, and Southeast Asia, e.g. Thai, are almost all derived from the Brahmic script. They show gradual visual relationships and most of them are structurally similar. They are syllabaries with non-default vowels being denoted by diacritics and consonant clusters often forming complex ligatures.

Is there any constructed variant of this family of scripts that intentionally uses shapes found in the major European scripts (Roman, Cyrillic and Greek)? Preferably, it would be based upon the stems and loops of lowercase Roman letters. I think it’s impossible to achieve in a readable way, but maybe there is even a mimicry or "faux Latin" font for one of the existing scripts (e.g. Burmese or Malayalam) that would qualify.

PS: I have attached some roman letters in red to similar looking glyphs in the picture below. The imagined conscript would have a consistent set of letters and diacritics that looked much like roman ones.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Franabugida by François Boullion, though developed for writing French, is a faux roman script with abugida features that fulfills the criteria pretty well, although some of the resulting shapes look quite foreign.

Akkhara Muni by Ian James comes close to being a roman-looking script with Brahmic abugida structure, although it lacks complex ligatures and (non-inherent) vowels are not diacritic-like.

The historic (but unused) Ariyaka script for writing Pali from 19th-century Siam/Thailand is also obviously inspired by Latin and Greek letter forms and the Brahmic system.

BLUIS by Punya Pranava Pasumarty does not meet the criteria, but due to its design, it could be used as a base: One would just need to make the letter forms more roman-looking.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Next project: Pama-Nyungan inspired vocabulary, but using English words

---
Tags: writing-systems
---


# Question
Title: How does one determine the date a constructed language was invented?
Some constructed languages list a date, or at least year, of creation. Is there any official or unofficial standard to determine that date for any given conlang? The way I see it, there are several possibilities, at least the ones I thought up:

* The date that work began on the language
* The date of the first evidence of work on the language, if the prior date is not known
* The date of the first usage of the language (this could be broken down into public *or* private usage)
* The date of the first publication that mentions the language
* The publication date of the first dictionary and/or grammar

# Answer
For auxiliary languages it's usually publication date of the first grammar/dictionary released to the public or the first work dedicated to the language, whichever comes first.

For Esperanto this was *Unua Libro*, which was published in 1887 - more than a year after Zamenhof began working on the language. Wikipedia also lists the year of creation of Occidental as 1922, the year de Wahl published the first edition of the *Kosmoglotta* magazine, despite there being evidence that the language was used much before then, both in private conversation (letters etc.) and even a publication written entirely in Occidental.

The "date of creation" for other types of conlangs seems to be less well-defined, although I'd expect that fictional languages would be associated with the publication of the first book/movie/game that uses them (perhaps with the exception of Tolkien's languages). Wikipedia also uses the day Lojban began being developed as its creation date.
> 9 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, history
---


# Question
Title: What tools exist for creating syntactically correct generated text in new languages?
Another way to put this is, what tools exist to generate sentences in the same way that some conlanging tools generate phonotactically valid words.

I've heard people suggest using word generators to generate sentences. I'm open to the idea, but it seems that morphology and syntax aren't close enough and I'm not smart enough to put my finger on why. If there is a word generator that can do sentences, I'd be interested in looking at it.

Here is an example I laboriously wrote for Toki Pona.

Note: I'm well aware there are a bunch of tools for just generating a random sampling of a dictionary, but that doesn't create syntactically valid sentences.

# Answer
> 2 votes
It is difficult for a machine to passively understand a language (it takes tons of time with machine learning, and that's for Google). Actively, that's even more difficult, as many machine responses are pre-programmed and rarely actually generated (and in that case, mostly nonsensical, but the question isn't for sensical utterances). It will be *extremely difficult* and without appropriate backing *impossible* to make one that learns a new language.

That said, the one like the Toki Pona in your question could be made. But you'd have to program most of it yourself, and in languages like Toki Pona that's easy. Try generating artlangs which more like natlangs.

*This doesn't mean it couldn't **seem** like one.* You could:

1. Extract text (in English or some language) from books or such. You can find enough text online.
2. Translate it (i.e. Google translate) between many languages, obscuring the information. (optional)
3. Translate it from English—or better, i.e. Lojban, Esperanto, Toki Pona or raw predicate logic, as they are less complicated and easier to translate from—to your conlang.
4. Dispose of invalid sentences using some kind of lightweight parser. (optional)

I couldn't find any (good) generators, but you could have the first!

# Answer
> 2 votes
I do not know of any tools that are specifically designed for producing syntactically valid text, but my own word generator Logopoeist could be made to work for that purpose, and it wouldn't be terribly difficult to update it to produce a program actually *intended* for that purpose.

The reason for this is that Logopoeist already treats morphophonology as an extension of syntax, and generates words according to explicit word-syntax parse trees, rather than, e.g., just filling in slots in a CV-style syllable structure template. So, if you are able to write up a formal grammar of the language's syntax above the word level, and put it into a format that the tool can read, then you just need to replace the phoneme/grapheme lists with word lists instead (repurposing phonetic classes to serve as syntactic classes / parts of speech), and it'll spit out random sentences instead of random words.

# Answer
> -1 votes
I've done stories and rhyming poems with my own JABBER.EXE, but it is 16 bit (windows XP or earlier). Besides filling out a dictionary (which includes verb affordances and hyponym trees), you have to set 'parameters' for the language, and ConLangs do too much with those parameters. There can be no general purpose ConLang generator unless it learns like a human.

---
Tags: syntax, tools
---


title: Features of unlearnable languages

text:
# Question
Title: Features of unlearnable languages
In this article about miniature artificial languages on motherboard.com experiments are described where children learn carafully designed miniature artificial languages. It is also said that children give up on learning "unlearnable" languages. A mentioned miniature artificial language is named "Sillyspeak" or "Sillysprochen".

What features of languages make them unlearnable? Is the full documentation of Sillyspeak available?

# Answer
> 9 votes
If you search for the researchers mentioned in the article, you can find some of their research papers. In those, they describe their methodology. In one paper that I looked at briefly, for example, they mention that they varied the consistency by making the placement of determiners random. (This is actually also mentioned in the Motherboard article).

Their research seems to be focused on finding out how children can learn languages, and what universal features of languages there are, so they up the difficulty of their experimental mini-languages by using rare elements, such as OSV word order (most (Western) languages use SVO). Discovery that some mini-languages are unlearnable is thus a side-effect of pushing the limits as to what are possible human languages. From a cursory glance at several papers I'd think that you can make a language 'unlearnable' if you add some random variation and choose a lot of rare grammatical features.

PS: in the Motherboard article they actually give a reason why no documentation of Sillyspeak is available: they want to avoid it 'escaping' into the wild, as its purpose is to be a completely unknown language to the subjects of the experiments.

# Answer
> 8 votes
Original Fith is a stack-based conlang (LIFO, reverse polish notation) and considered to be unspeakable in real-time since in order to speak good Fith you need to be able to remember more parts and recurse deeper than what is practically possible for a human. It also has a full set stack operators like "swap the order of the two last stack items" and \*rotate the top three stack items".

# Answer
> 7 votes
I've seen a paper that children have a lot of trouble learning nonconservative determiners.

For instance, "every" is a conservative determiner because `every dog is brown` is equivalent to `every dog is a brown dog` – objects that are brown but not a dog don't count toward the truth of the sentence. In contrast, if we define `equi dogs are brown` as "the number of dogs is equal to the number of brown objects", then `equi` would be nonconservative because the sentence above is different from `equi dogs are brown dogs`.

(Interestingly, my conlang Jbl has nonconservative determiners; for instance, *glsh* is the *equi* mentioned above.)

# Answer
> 2 votes
Lojban is often considered unusuable by humans because of its design.

A better example however, may be languages that have features that humans simply can not use. For example, Elkaril has an odd grammatical feature where precise measurements can be given by how long a consonant is held, and mentions that the 'infinite space' in-between vowels can also be used to encode precise information, though I can't seem to recall what purpose that serves. Obviously, humans couldn't possibly use a language like this, and that was intentional.

Personally, I limit myself to features natlangs have. Not that I try to create naturalisitic conlangs, I just do that because natlangs are of course tried and tested beyond what any conlang could be, so I can be certain that the features they have are something a human could actually use. I used to have a problem with creating weird languages that were clearly unusable by humans.

Human minds work a specific way, and despite our diversity there ARE universals (for example, all languages have nouns and verbs, though otherwise the list of parts of speech within a language can vary widely). So there are limits to what ways a language can work. You may have some wiggle room, but you can't just make up whatever you can imagine and expect it to be usable.

---
Tags: unnatural-features, miniature-artificial-languages, language-acquisition
---


# Question
Title: What notation do constructed sign languages use?
What notation do constructed sign languages use?
Many well-known big sign languages (such as ASL) have their own form of notation, but that notation is very specific and may not be able to express a sign in other sign languages. For example, ASL *school* is

```
OpenB@Palm-PalmDown-OpenB@CenterChesthigh-PalmUp Contact Contact

```

but some constructed sign language X might require signals that don't appear in ASL, like 'touch your elbow with the thumb of your non-dominant hand'. The notation could be extended but would be complicating it. Language X thus requires its own system for its own signs or an 'international' one in analogy with the International Phonetic Alphabet.

**What are the notations commonly used by constructed sign languages?<br>Which sign languages use them?**

# Answer
The best I've found, for linguistic purposes, is HamNoSys ("Hamburg Notation System", Hanke (2004)). It works like IPA: it is more an instruction-notation than observation-notation. For example; IPA allows glottal stop \[ʔ\] together with (i.e.) palatal, dental, alveolar and labial fricatives, but these are indistinguishable. Another example: \[m͡n\] (depending on notation, I'll use x͡y is simultaneously x and y) is \[m\] + \[n\] but sounds like plain \[n\].
This concept continues on in HamNoSys: see this chart, where overlapping segments are indistinguishable but technically doable and thus notatable. According to Millar (2001), it is the most used notation, alongside Stokoe and derivatives.

Also, HamNoSys has programs that convert HamNoSys into imagery and videos.

---

Hanke, T. (2004), “HamNoSys - representing sign language data in language resources and language processing contexts.” In: Streiter, Oliver, Vettori, Chiara (eds): LREC 2004, Workshop proceedings : Representation and processing of sign languages. Paris : ELRA, 2004, - pp. 1-6.

Miller, C., 2001. *Some reflections on the need for a common sign notation.* Sign Language and Linguistics. 4(1/2):11-28.
> 2 votes

# Answer
There are very few constructed sign languages. On the subreddit, we sometimes get questions about whether anyone has made any, which usually don’t get many replies. This one here has some examples given, and also links a website which has basically the answer to your actual question:

SLIPA is an attempt by David Peterson to fill the lack of sign language transcription systems. However, due to it being ASCII-compliant, it ends up rather unweildy and I’ve never seen it employed in actuality. Nevertheless, the website provides important information that could be useful for you to derive your own system tailored to your language, and to use as a reference for comparing your own notation to.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: sign-languages
---


# Question
Title: Are there any constructed languages designed for legal agreements / country constitutions?
A few weeks back i've watched a talk of Stephen Wolfram. I think was this video. Plus this article is also relevant.

The idea discussed was: **how to build a language for formalizing every day discourse**.

A language that can be understood and acted upon by both humans and computers. With the advancements in AI, crypto-currencyes, decentralization etc.. i feel this problem has become more then just the philosophical curiosity that Leibniz had.

**What is our general status on this issue?**

What are some **successful / failed attempts** of building languages specially designed for handling legal matters ? Are there any?

So far I have not been able to find any language of this nature - maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

# Answer
It strikes me that, while this is not *precisely* what you're asking, **Law French** I think it might be argued fits the bill.

While French, of course, was the everyday language of the upper class in England from the mid-11th to the late 14th century, and was therefore naturally the language of the Law, it can hardly be called a "constructed language". But after this time, it might be said that, divorced of all real connexion with French or Anglo-French culture, Law French came to be something like an invented language *based on* natural French. It was certainly a group project (lawyers and judges, all others need not apply).

Later examples are both humorous and instructive:

* *Richardson Chief Justice de Common Banc al assises de Salisbury in Summer 1631 fuit assault per prisoner la condemne pur felony, que puis son condemnation ject un brickbat a le dit justice, que narrowly mist, et pur ceo immediately fuit indictment drawn per Noy envers le prisoner et son dexter manus ampute et fix al gibbet, sur que luy mesme immediatement hange in presence de Court. -- Sir George Treby*

*ahem*

Perhaps Law French might best be called a *deconstructed* language?

About all that's left in modern times are a few set phrases, mostly in Parliament:

* *La reyne (or le roy) remercie ses bons sujets, accepte leur benevolence, et ainsi le veult* -- (The Queen/King thanks her/his good subjects, accepts their bounty, and wills it so)
* *La reyne (or le roy) le veult* -- (The Queen/King wills it)
* *La reyne (or le roy) s'avisera* -- (The Queen/King will advise)
* *Soit fait comme il est désiré* -- (Let it be done as it is desired)

Even in the USA, we still hear *oyez, oyez, oyez* when court comes to order.

---

Some interesting notes on Law French, especially pertinent to the question:

*"The effort of reporting English speech in French was not merely an expression of affection for the past, for in the long run it probably saved a lawyer more time and trouble than was taken to learn it. ... The formalised French phrases used in the year books gave him a shorthand ready made and adapted for legal purposes."*

*"To the linguist, Law French is a corrupt dialect by definition. Anglo-French was in steady decline after 1300. ... (That English lawyers could seriously complain that French, spoken in France, had deteriorated considerably as compared to its use in England) is in itself a clear demonstration that by the middle of the fifteenth century there was a marked difference between the French of English lawyers and the French of France."*

*A Frenchman living in England during Elizabeth I's reign noted of Law French "...now it seemeth that almost there is no language more far from the true French, then the French of our lawes: There being almost no word, which either by intermingling, or adding, or diminishing, or changing of a letter into another, they have not altered and corrupted."*

*"The lawyers also took what seemed to be a perverse delight in pronouncing Law French as if it were English: indeed, 'their pronunciation differeth so much from ours (French) as it is impossible for a Frenchman to understand them'.*

*"Few of those who used French paid the slightest attention to grammar or vocabulary."*

All taken from J.H. Baker's *Manual of Law French*
> 8 votes

# Answer
I am not aware of an attempt on legal language (legal terms tend to differ very much depending on national traditions and culture), but in the technical domain there is Eugen Wüster's *Terminologieschlüssel* as a basis for standardised technical terminology.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: conlang-creation, list-of-languages, machine-communication
---


# Question
Title: By what criteria can we say that a conlang has a functional speech community?
On another question I commented that I doubted that if Lojban had a functional speech community that its purity would last very long.

By what criteria can we say that a conlang has a functional speech community?

# Answer
Here are some ideas, which when taken together would give a good idea whether a language has a strong functional speech community.

* If a conlang has thousands of fluent first language (L1) speakers, that would be clear evidence, but even Esperanto, the most spoken conlang, has only up to 1000 Esperanto speaking families. Ideally those L1 speakers are able to meet and speak with each other regularly.
* Even if the speakers are second language speakers, if there are so many speakers that distinct dialects have formed (without that being part of the design from the beginning) then that evidence of language change is evidence itself of healthy speech communities.
* If there is friction between speakers of the language and the language's academy or regulators then that shows the language is starting to take on a life of its own. If the language regulators have ever had to make concessions to the speakers, then that shows the speech community is healthy.
> 10 votes

# Answer
I'd lower the criteria significantly and already admit that a conlang has a speech community when it is used on some occasions for real-time face-to-face communications. By these criteria, even Klingon has a speech community.

Whether a speech community is functional or not is probably difficult to decide, I'd go for a kind of temporal criterion like having a speech community (as sketched above) for 30 years with no year left out. This is similar to the criterion biologists use to define an established new species in a certain area.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: speech-communities
---