# Question
Title: Evolution of irregular declensions and conjugations from reconstructed proto-languages
In designing an artificial dialect of the Greek Language, most words and inflections have predictable patterns with a well-guessed/documented evolution which show the origin of the word's roots and stems. This makes it fairly easy to go back in time, change the evolution of the sounds or orthography, and use an existing vocabulary from the already existing Greek Language to create an artificial dialect.

For example, I could thus look at the dialectical declension of a word like σύ, and see that in the Genitive, Attic renders it σοῦ, Ionic σεῦ and others σέο, and infer that the root/stem is σε-, and that the contraction rules show that the irregular declension is σε-ο, then insert my own sound changes based off my own set of rules. Likewise I can find out that σφᾶς is a normal contraction of σφέας or σφέανς with an irregular enclitic of σφε.

What I can't seem to do is take a root that is only used in the dual and transfer it to the plural. In the rare First Person dual, the pronouns used are (NA) νώ and (DG) νῷν. I want to make a plural pronoun using that root in the manner of Latin "nos" instead of ἡμεῖς (which possibly reconstructs from ἀσμέες or the likes.) I can conjecture several possibilities based off a pattern, like (NADG) νῷ, νώς, νῷς, νῶν. But these have no real basis in the Greek evolution from its first ancestors to Classical Greek. I can't use σφεῖς or σφώ or σφωέ to trace a pattern without a good reason, because all of them seem to have their patterns traced from the evolution of ὑμεῖς, σφι, and νώ. Where do irregular declensions come from, and how are they most authentically reproduced in a constructed dialect? I am not a professional, so please give me some leeway if I have made errors presenting this question.

# Answer
I know some fellow conlangers are much more proficient in Greek and its history than me, therefore I want to concentrate on some more general aspects of the question.

First of all, you are the conlang designer, so you always have the license to do what you want, even in a very naturalistic and diachronic framework.

Second, irregularities can enter a language in many different ways. Very frequent function words tend to acquire phonological simplifications like contractions that the majority of words don't show. One can see suppletion, i.e., the merger of different forms of different origins into one paradigm. One can see cross-borrowing between different dialects, adding to irregularities in sound laws.

Third, it is easier to work in a *forward* direction in time than *backward* or *sideward* (from one dialect to another at the same time). The outcome of sound shifts is usually unique (taking all constraints by the environment into account), but the progenitor of a given form often isn't. So just postulate a plausible progenitor and evolve it according to the rules you set for yourself. If you don't like the results, try another one. You can play around with this. And don't forget the first point: You are the conlang designer, you decide.
> 6 votes

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Tags: vocabulary, morphology, diachronics, typology, dialects
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# Question
Title: is it naturalistic for a language to change alignment like this?
I'm working on another conlang for my world and its evolution, and one of the defining qualities of its handling for transitive verbs in sentences is using nominative-accusative alignment, but switching sentence structure from SVO to VOS when doing so. what im wondering is if it could potentially make sense that a language that does this would switch from nominative-accusative to ergative-absolutive (on the idea of languages preferring context initial grammar rules) without changing the sentence structure again, and if so, are there any natural languages which have ever done anything similar?

# Answer
VOS languages are rare, but frequent enough for some analysis. Combining basic word order and alignment in the WALS sample we find two languages with VOS and absolutive/ergative alignment, and only one language with VOS and nominative/accusative alignment. This is not enough data to draw statistical conclusions, but probably enough to justify a switch of alignment in your conlang as naturalistic.
> 3 votes

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Tags: grammar
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# Question
Title: If there was a group of perfect-pitched alien, who spoke in whistles, would humans without perfect pitch be able to learn that language of whistles?
Essentially, without perfect pitch, could someone learn a language that requires you to have the pitch perfect.

# Answer
I think no one knows this answer for the general case because no one knows whether all people can learn perfect pitch. I don't think we know what causes this "talent" to say what are its limitations. There is evidence that some people can.

A 2015 study found that some adults can acquire perfect pitch for months. Presumably the initial study's methods are theoretically improvable and repeatable. If you can accept the sci-fi speculation that warp drive is plausible with effort, then surely you can accept the lesser speculation that perfect pitch is plausible with effort. If you want to make the solution more colorful, then maybe write that medically inducing some kind of synesthesia is easier than teaching conscious, full-speed perfect pitch ;)
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-learning
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# Question
Title: Did the Elvish languages converge before they diverged?
I have the impression that Tolkien, for whom pinning anything down permanently was Not The Point, worked his philology forward and backward almost equally.

Is it known whether or not Qenya and Goldogrin (early versions of what became Quenya and Sindarin) were *initially* conceived as related? Or did Tolkien begin them independent of each other (though perhaps with many loanwords) and later think “oh, they ought to be related” and adapt them to fit each other?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Tolkien did work out the history of his languages both forward and backward, that is:

> construct a pseudo-historical background and deduce the form you have actually decided on from an antecedent and different form (conceived in outline); or you can posit certain tendencies of development and see what sort of form this will produce. *\- A Secret Vice*

But AFAIK, these two languages have always been related from the earliest materials so far published (*Qenya Lexicon, Gnomish Lexicon, The Books of Lost Tales* …), just as their speakers in the Legendarium.

I'm not aware of any material regarding even earlier stages of them.

> The ‘Sindarin’, a Grey-elven language, is in fact constructed deliberately to resemble Welsh phonologically and to have a relation to High-elven similar to that existing between British (properly so-called, sc. the Celtic languages spoken in this island at the time of the Roman Invasion) and Latin. - *Letter #165*

I can't say whether Tolkien had Gnomish in mind, or which idea came to him first: to resemble Welsh phonologically, or to have a relation to Quenya.

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Tags: tolkien-elvish
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# Question
Title: Are there any free online conlang creation tools?
I was wondering if anyone knows of any conlang creation websites that are free to use.

I know this sounds silly but I have little experience to go on as for creating a custom language.

# Answer
There are some syntax "toys" online, eg http://www.zompist.com/gtg.html. This will help you write a (formal) grammar of your language, but you will need a good understanding of Generative Linguistics to use that.

Otherwise, what else do you need instead of pen and paper? Maybe a spreadsheet to enter vocabulary? There are so many choices to be made on so many levels that it is not really possible to automate much of it. It's not as if you would enter a few characteristics into a form, press a button, and out comes a conlang :)
> 8 votes

# Answer
There is the Vulgar fantasy language generator, which allows a small language to be generated for free, but requires a subscription for more substantial languages or advanced controls.
> 6 votes

# Answer
We all had little experience to go on when we first started making languages!

I'd actually recommend that you **NOT** make use of a conlang recipe resource. What you end up doing is little more than making an invented language like how the recipe writer makes an invented language.

This just defeats the purpose of the art of glossopoesy.

Instead, I'd suggest you take what experience you've got, little as it may be, and just do the hard work of language invention. Sit down with pencil and paper and doodle words and phrases thereon. Come up with some basic rules (for word order, for syllable structure, for grammar). Get yourself hooked up with a good language invention community (Conlang-L for example) and begin the learning process.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I know you are probably not still wondering, but I use https://conworkshop.com, if that helps.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, tools, resource-request
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# Question
Title: How to translate to Black Speech this sentence "Eye of the Sauron is always watching"?
How to translate to Black Speech phrase "Eye of the Sauron is always watching"? or more simply: "Sauron is always watching", or even more simply "Sauron is watching".

and how to write it in tengwar.

As I try to translate words: eye - hont, Sauron - Shakhbûrz. always - ûkil. watch - hon- , gon-.

I used Black Speech online translator: http://www.blackspeech.ru/los/index.php?page=5

But I doubt how to make full sentence from it. And How to write it.

# Answer
I am not an expert in Black Speech, so I'm going to follow the information from the blackspeech.ru website.

The basic word order of Black Speech is *SVO* (subject-verb-object), as in English, so the subject is *Sauron*, the verb is *watch*, and there is no object. Adverbs (*always*) are to be placed after the words they modify, so we end up with

> Sauron watches/is watching always

as the basic starting point. *Sauron* is straight forward,as there are no cases. With *watch* I would actually choose the translation *tud-*, as it has the sense of *guard*, which seems more appropriate here; in the third person singular this would be *tudat*. The adverb suffix is *-arz*, which gives us *ûkilarz*. So our sentence would be

> Shakhbûrz tudat ûkilarz

With the Tengwar transcriber on the same site it would be rendered as

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UPDATE: In case you want to say "Eye of Sauron", that would be the possessive ("eye Sauron-of"):

> Hont Shakhbûrz-ob tudat ûkilarz

and

There are no articles, so it's either *The Eye of Sauron* or *Eye of Sauron* — there is no distinction in Black Speech.
> 9 votes

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Tags: translation, tolkien-black-speech
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# Question
Title: How to know if a language is constructed or natural?
Imagine you get access to a rather long book for which the following is true:

* It is written in an unknown language with an unknown script.
* We can't rely for whatever reason on the fact that the language of the book is not in Ethnologue.
* The book came with no translation, and no known dictionary of the language exists.

**Given all the above is there a way to say if the language of the book natural or constructed?** How should one approach determining this based only on the content of the book?

# Answer
Unknown language *and* unknown script is a very hard combination to draw any conclusions. Even with a substantial amount of text we are usually lost in making sense of that.

Things become a little bit better when we have some clues on the script like

* words are separated somehow
* we know the principle of the script (alphabetic, syllabary, ideographic)

In this case we can try some statistical methods on things like word frequency and word length (does the language follow Zipf's law?), trying to identify morphemes, especially inflectional ones, trying to infer syntactical features, and compare that to natural languages.

But, unless the language is very schematic and unnatural in its construction, we will probably be unable to give a decisive answer to the question natural or constructed.
> 2 votes

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Tags: naturalism
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# Question
Title: What is the second most elaborate constructed language up to date after Esperanto?
What would be the most elaborate constructed language today in terms of size of vocabulary, complexity of grammar, number of exceptions to the rules of the language, etc.? If we exclude Esperanto, of course, which I suspect would be the number one on the list.

# Answer
> 3 votes
My personal guess would still be IALA Interlingua which has an established language community and some tradition. It came with a rather elaborate dictionary right from the start.

But there are some contenders, Klingon driven by fandom with an active language community, and Toki Pona.

I am not sure about the status of the various projects of zonal Slavic languages like Interslavic—tracking and distinguishing all the ongoing projects with vexingly similar names and frequent renamings or synonyms is already really difficult.

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Tags: grammar, vocabulary
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title: How do trade languages form?

text:
# Question
Title: How do trade languages form?
I’ve read books (mainly Star Wars) that tend to have a species language (e.g. cheunh for chiss) and then trade languages that the greater part of a region also speaks (e.g. Minniesiat and Sy Binsti). That made me curious as to how trade languages form.

# Answer
There are a few different uses of the term "trade language".

One is a language that lots of different groups learn as an L2 (i.e. not as their native language) because it's useful for trade. For example, during the Roman era, people all across Europe and the surrounding areas had some proficiency in Latin; people in North Africa might speak Punic as their native language, and people in Iberia might speak Iberian, but they would both know enough Latin to do business with each other. Or, think about the role of English in the modern world.

These sorts of trade languages tend to come about when one group has enough social or political power that people across a wide area consider their language valuable to learn. I don't know much about Star Wars, but I can easily imagine the language of a Galactic Empire becoming one of these.

Another meaning of the term is a language variety that arises specifically for trade. In this meaning, it's something like a creole, with features of different languages combining together as people try to figure out a way to communicate across language barriers (and then pass the language down to their children). The "lingua franca" used across the Mediterranean during the Renaissance, for example, was probably one of these; people speaking Romance, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish ended up adopting words and pieces of grammar from the other languages in order to do business and ended up with an amalgam of all four. Or for another example, Arabic-speaking traders wanted to do business with Bantu-speakers along the east coast of Africa, and the end result was Swahili.

For this sort of language to arise, you need two or more groups of people with a strong need to communicate with each other, and without the sort of power differential that leads to one group's language being adopted as a default.

It's also worth noting that these two meanings aren't mutually exclusive: they're more like different points on a spectrum. When languages come into contact they always have an influence on each other; the question is how strong that influence is, and how intelligible the end result is to someone who only speaks one of the parent languages.
> 5 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation
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# Question
Title: Why would a language lack a T-V distinction, but with a pronoun system that is the opposite of English?
In English, you is used both in the second-person singular and in the second-person plural (thou is now only used in some old proverbs and old expressions).

At the opposite, French (my native language) has a T-V distinction: *tu* is always used when addressing to only one person, but *vous* is often used when addressing to multiple people; however, sometimes, *vous* is used for only one person despite being always syntactically plural. When addressing to only one person, *vous* is reserved for strangers, or people older than oneself, or authority figures.

In my world (in the sense of a fictional universe I want to create), in the most spoken language used by therianthropes (their scientific name is *Homo pilosus*, so they are humans, just not *Homo sapiens*) (*Homo pilosus* means "hairy human"), *Di* is exclusively used in the second-person singular (even when addressing to a monarch, a president, a stranger, a deity, an elder, etc.) and *Wos* is exclusively used in the second-person plural (in their language, pronouns are always capitalised) (if you ask me, in the most spoken language used by therianthropes, the w is pronounced like the English w as in "world").

So, I wonder why would a language have a second-person pronoun system opposite to English.

# Answer
I agree with most of No Name's answer, but I disagree with "this is a significant departure from human psychology".

Look at this map (via linguisticmaps.tumblr.com) showing which languages in the world have a T-V distinction—that is, a formality distinction in the second-person pronouns.

A T-V distinction is common in Europe, and more elaborate formality systems are more prominent in Asia, but large parts of the world (and in fact most of the world's languages) don't have such a distinction. In Swahili, for example, a single person is always *wewe* and a group of people is always *ninyi* (or *nyinyi* depending on dialect), whether you're showing respect or not. Instead, respect can be shown in other ways, such as adding a title like *bwana* (the equivalent of English "you" vs "you, sir"). Even in Europe, in Classical Latin the plural pronoun *vōs* (presumably the source of your *Wos*) was primarily used for groups of people; the T-V distinction was a later development in Romance.

So you don't need any justification at all for your language to work that way; it's how most languages on earth already work.
> 6 votes

# Answer
You don't really need a reason to not implement a T-V distinction. Just because your native language does, doesn't mean every language does.

But if you insist: In German, "du" (the T pronoun) is used to address God, suggesting that they (or rather, the people in charge of these things want them to) think of God as more a friend than a ruler. Perhaps your therianthropes have a populist leader who insists he's "just one of the guys", so pluralis majestatis (i.e., the royal we) never got off the ground. No royal we, no royal you; no royal you, no T-V distinction.

Of course, this is a significant departure from human psychology, as plural=power is an old, old cheat code, and we love power and flaunting it. But you've already stated that these people are Homo, but not Homo sapiens. Different species within a genus can have significant psychological differences, such as that between Pan troglodytes (the chimpanzee) and Pan paniscus (the bonobo). All of this, however, is worldbuilding - I'd suggest any follow-ups go there.
> 3 votes

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Tags: pronouns
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# Question
Title: For a whistling language, what other keys could be used to represent tones/tone actions
I already have used ~,\<,\>,’,=,-,^, and v for trills, rising tones, falling tones, glottal stops, chord tones, neutral tones, rising/falling tone, and falling/rising tone. This language is structured like music. Letters in exponents denote the lowest part on a chord, or the final tone in any other sequence. All moving tones are 3 tones except trills, which are 4 tones. Are there any other keys on a standard english keyboard that could be used and make sense for whistling? Please include how to get the character if option is used.

# Answer
> 2 votes
If one of your main goals is to be easy to type, I'd recommend **repurposing Latin letters**. This is quite common in real-world languages, since a lot of international standards are now based on the English alphabet.

The Romanized Popular Alphabet, for example, repurposes miscellaneous letters for the tones of Hmong (aka Hmoob). *B* indicates a high tone, *s* a low tone, *j* a falling tone, *v* a rising tone, *m* or *d* a creaky tone, and *g* a breathy tone. There's no inherent connection between these letters and the tones they represent, but they're easy to type and won't cause issues on passports and official documents.

If you don't want to use letters, it would help if you explained your goals in more detail (like what other things you're trying to represent).

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology, music
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title: How would a language of whistles work

text:
# Question
Title: How would a language of whistles work
The language consists of 3 different tones: *high*, medium, and **low**. There are trills (~), chords(=), neutral tones (-), rising tones (\<), falling tones (\>), and rising/falling tones (^). Would the combinations of the whistles make words, or would the collection of tones limit it to a 6 letter alphabet?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Real-world "whistled languages" are generally adaptations of spoken languages, taking some aspect of the phonology (tone, prosody, sometimes formants) and conveying it through whistling. A lot of information is lost, but there's enough redundancy that native speakers can still understand—much like how English-speakers can understand whispering, which discards most information about voicing, or styles of singing that discard some formant information.

It sounds like that's not what you're looking for, though. The rest of the answer is built on the assumption that you're trying to make a language which is *only* whistled, rather than using whistling as a lossy way of conveying a spoken language.

Languages with very few phonemes exist in real life, so an inventory like that is plausible enough. If you want to figure out what the words would look like, I think this is a place where some basic information theory could be useful.

The core idea behind information theory is that you can consider a lot of different things (including a spoken language) as a series of discrete signals, transmitted one at a time from a source to a receiver, and then use some mathematical structures to analyze that. If you've got three tones and six contours, and each phoneme consists of exactly one tone and one contour, then you've got eighteen possible signals. Not knowing anything else about your language, this means you can transmit a bit over two bits of information per phoneme. Each English word generally conveys about eight bits of information (given context and such)—so completely ignoring phonotactics, syntax, and various other aspects of your language, you could theoretically encode the same amount of information as an English word with four phonemes.

Once you add those aspects in, the information load per phoneme will probably decrease somewhat (since all the signals won't be equally probable in all contexts), so I'd expect it to take about six of your tone-plus-contour phonemes to convey the equivalent of one English word. That sounds like a plausible word size to me.

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Tags: vocabulary, syntax, language-structure
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# Question
Title: How many different interjections like 'aha,' 'oh' would you make up for a conlang?
I wonder if other people have thoughts and experience on this topic from the conlanging perspective. Have people with lots of translation experience found the distinction between (for example) 'aha' and 'oh' worth translating into a conlang? What interjections are worth "translating" into parallel words?

I could get foreign language dictionaries and check for how many are listed there.

Thanks for considering.

# Answer
This is as much a question of invented culture as it is invented language. Strictly speaking, one can devise as few or as many such interjections as one likes. Likewise, the breadth and depth of meanings, overlaps and distinctions are similarly up to the inventor.

I'd argue that if the speakers of the invented language sense the need to distinguish "aha" from "oh", then the discoverer of their language ought to take note! Likewise, if they divide the semantic space of "aha" into three distinct areas, or if they don't distinguish "aha" from "oh", then that should also be noted.

As for the question of which are *worth* making words for: that's more a matter of pragmatism. Most language inventors engage with the art out of inner joy and as an expression of fundamental creativity and generativity. Making words is almost never a problem for most language inventors! If she should discover that the speakers of the invented language have a little used interjection, a word will surely present itself!
> 5 votes

# Answer
For other people considering this question in future, these 20-odd are what I have happened to think of since I first starting thinking of these 13 months. Specifically, this is copying from the definitions column in case someone else wants to check their "interjection toolkit" against mine. I brainstormed like half a dozen originally (surprise, pain, hello, yes, etc.) and the rest have come up over time: from translating things, budding naturally off related words, etc.

* hey, hello, look, see here: an interjection calling for attention
* shh, a call for quiet, often repeated like a bird call
* good health, wellness; as an interjection, used as a wish and valediction by itself like 'goodbye' or more formally with 'aŋcyo' as 'aŋcyo aŋcyala,' like 'farewell'
* leisure, free time; as an interjection, used as a wish and valediction by itself like 'bye' or more formally with 'aŋcyala' as 'aŋcyo aŋcyala,' like 'farewell'
* good evening or good night, when you are expecting the person to go to sleep
* good evening or good night, when you aren't expecting the person to go straight to sleep
* wow, aha!: expressing surprise which is not unpleasant
* a cry of pain or alarm
* dang, whoa, oh man, shoot: expressing surprise or alarm which can be pleasant or unpleasant
* dirt smell; as an interjection, an expression of assent equivalent to "no problem," "alright"
* okay, fine, alright
* yes
* intensified yes
* no
* intensified no
* dark cloud, temper; as an interjection, an expression recognizing a bad situation, as crap, damn, alas, yikes
* warning; as an interjection, warning
* "lizard's loincloth": a mild curse alluding to something ill-fated, ruined, or worthless

I have some other idiomatic/cursing phrases that "feel like" interjections, but the line between what's an interjection and what's just an expressive thing reflexively to exclaim seems blurry. So, I omit here further short, idiomatic responses and regular words that could obviously be curses. I include here hello/goodbye, which don't feel reflective but which do feel worth the reader's considering for their own lexicons.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Essentially, you can add as many interjections that you could keep in your memory. Be it a hundred or more interjections with similar meaning (e.g. aha + yes) or a couple of interjections with definitive meanings (yes!, No!, What?, etc.)
> 2 votes

# Answer
I personally oftentimes stick to the basic template of:

1. An interjection meaning yes, true, and correct.
2. An interjection meaning no, false, and wrong.
3. An interjection meaning f\*ck, ouch, damn it.

This is, of course, merely my opinion. Your conlang may have as many or as few as you see fit.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
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title: What are artlangs?

text:
# Question
Title: What are artlangs?
I often hear the term *artlang* applied to some conlangs (e.g. Toki Pona). What does it mean? How would I determine if a conlang I am creating is an artlang? What are some examples of artlangs?

# Answer
According to Wikipedia, an artlang is a conlang made to be aesthetically pleasing or to be part of a piece of literature. Some notable artlangs include Toki Pona, Quenya, and Klingon. Klingon was created to be part of a work of literature, specifically Star Trek. Quenya was created as part of Tolkien's Middle-Earth worldbuilding project. Toki Pona was an experiement in minimalism and the conclusions of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
> 1 votes

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Tags: terminology
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title: What are auxlangs?

text:
# Question
Title: What are auxlangs?
I often hear certain conlangs (e.g. Esperanto) referred to as auxlangs. What exactly is an auxlang? How can I tell if a conlang is an auxlang? What are some examples of auxlangs?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Auxlang is a short word for "auxiliary language", i.e., a language that is designed and promoted as a bridge language between people of different languages.

There are International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) aiming at the whole world as a target, and Zonal Auxiliary Languages aiming at a group of linguistically or culturally related people.

Examples for international auxiliary languages are Volapük, Esperanto, or Interlingua; examples for zonal languages are Interslavic or Afrihili.

# Answer
> 2 votes
According to Wikipedia, auxlangs are languages intended to facilitate international communication. Some notable examples include Esperanto and Interlingua. Of these, Esperanto is the most well-known and successful. Zamenhof created it in the 1880s.

Edit: As pointed out in the comments by @RadovanGarabik, these are only some notable examples of constructed auxlangs. See the comments for examples of natural ones.

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Tags: list-of-languages, terminology
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# Question
Title: How does one go about designing phonotactics for a conlang?
Most every conlanger has heard of phonotactics. However, I have yet to encounter resources about how should one go about the design of a conlang's phonotactics. How should one go about creating a language's phonotactics?

# Answer
Though I had never heard of phonotactics for years after I started my language, I found working on phonotactics very worthwhile. I would definitely do it at the start if I began a new language.

**Why did I?**

In the first big iteration of my language, I had many sounds and no concepts of phonotactics. To me, it never sounded good or distinctive because of this unintentional "anything goes." I could not see or hear any a pattern or rhythm in the sounds. Learning the concept of phonotactics gave me a framework to think how I could redo my phonetics altogether and have it come out differently. I deleted and redid each lexicon entry in the new system. For me, sound is important and motivating. Once the words had some structure and cohesive identity producing aesthetic value, generating words felt less like I'm just an RNG. It's been a lot of fun. I have made up thousands more words, rather more than doubling in 2.5 years what I had done without much enthusiasm in the 8 before. In part thanks to the purposeful aesthetic and cohesiveness, I've just about always enjoyed it more than I did for any words before this sound revamp. The greater enjoyment of generating words and concepts has made world-building more engaging and more immersive throughout.

**Suggestions**

You could take these in steps after first reading all the bullets.

1. Read what phonotactics is in more or less detail first if you have not. 'Onset,' 'nucleus,' and 'rime' are useful at the very least.
2. Personally I am not familiar to recommend any of the large number of videos on this topic, but if you prefer that medium you might add your own useful resources answer.
3. Search videos for poetry and news broadcasts in multiple languages to find what sounds good to you. In my case, I picked one language as a phonotactical starting point, though multiple inspirations informed my language elsewhere. I would not spend too much time on it, but briefly picking a counterexample language could also be informative for the next step.
4. Study the phonotactics of your selected languages for insight and inspiration. Note how their syllables structure and don't structure in terms like CVC, CVCC, VC, etc.
5. Do you want syllable rules to change in the beginning, middle, or end of a word?
6. You're not trying to find every possible syllable in these languages. You want to recognize some patterns you like and hypothesize why. You'll test with your language.
7. Make a spreadsheet of your sounds/syllables for your reference. For instance, I noted which consonants and which vowels can appear in which position in a syllable, with the first syllable being different from mid-word syllables. In my case, I only allowed 3 consonants to "cluster" CC (e.g., my-), so I treated clusters like phonemes for spreadsheet convenience. You may benefit from a different format.

8. Start relatively restrictive to form a baseline of core syllables for your core words. As you make up more and more words and reconsider "Ok, maybe I *shall* allow k to end words after all" or something, you can polish in some less usual-sounding words onto your main line.
9. Brainstorm a bunch of cool-, alright-, and rule-breaking-sounding example words according to your rules. These proof of concept words don't need to be real or grammatical necessarily, just proof of concept. Shuffle and read these to test your above hypothesis. Do you like the phonotactic patterns you thought you would like? Why do you like what you like now?
10. Consider carrying on brainstorming while you're in the right gear so that when you're not you can draw on this pool of good words. I have a tinkering section at the top of my lexicon spreadsheet for words/definitions available, to-do, or up for revision, which I find helps workflow and organization.
11. Wherever you keep your lexicon (google sheets, for me), look into the tools like advanced find and replace, conditional formatting, slicers, etc. These will save you so much time if you ever decide to edit your phonotactics (or probably anything) or see how often you use certain patterns.
12. As you work on grammar or other aspects, you may now consider reserving certain phonotactical patterns for certain purposes. For examples, I make any word an adjective by repeating the first vowel and otherwise restrict duplicate VVs.
13. Make notes on how you are placing the word stress. Starting simply, develop word stress rules. You'll complicate these or realize they were more complicated already naturally as you get more used to your language.
14. Keep these phonotactical and prosodic rules both in mind and in a written reference as you devise and revise words. Sometimes you make up a nice-sounding word later to realize your pronunciation challenges your norms. When you understand what your rules are doing for you, you can understand whether to break them.

**Some word-property concepts that might interest around this stage**

Sonority Hierarchy

Phonostheme

Syllabic Consonant

Nonconcatenative Morphology

Vowel harmony (I don't know this site's tool at all; just the explanation was clear)

Voiceless Vowel
> 3 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology, resource-request
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# Question
Title: Why would a language created by humans lack the /j/ semivowel, and even the /i/ vowel?
What I mean is the sound /j/ (as in English *yellow* and French *hyène* 'hyena') is the most common semivowel around the world. This phoneme is highly conserved in Indo-European languages (this language family include Italic languages like French and Italian, Germanic languages like English and Dutch, Slavic languages like Russian and Polish, etc.).

Also, the sound /i/ (as in English *hippie*) (the word *hippie* is also used in French) in one of the most, if not the most common vowel around the world.

Both phonemes are almost universal, as is the consonant /m/ (as in English *mother*, and French *mère* 'mother').

I know many languages that lack the semivowel /w/ like Albanian, Armenian, Greek, and Russian (the semivowel /w/ is found in both English as in *world*, and French as in *oiseau* 'bird').

In the universe I am creating, there is a species named ogres (their scientific name is *Homo corpulentus* 'obese human', so they are still humans, just not *Homo sapiens*). In the most spoken language used by ogres, there are five basic vowels:

/a/ (as in French *arbre* 'tree'), the sound corresponding to the /a/ in English *gasp*;
/ɔ/ (as in English *oar*, and French *ordinateur* 'computer');
/u/ (as in English *cool*, and French *ouvrier* 'worker');
/y/ (as in French *univers* 'universe');
and the sound corresponding to French /ø/ (as in *euphémisme* 'euphemism').
There are no diphthongs in the most spoken language used by ogres, but there are long vowels, and two nasal vowels: /ɑ̃/ as in French *antagoniste* 'antagonist', and /ɔ̃/ as in French *mouton* 'sheep; mutton'.

Also, the most spoken language used by ogres has both the semivowel /w/, and the semivowel corresponding to the /ɥ/ in French *fruit* 'fruit'.

So, I wonder why would a language created by mammals from the *Homo* genus lack the semivowel /j/, and even the vowel /i/.

# Answer
> 5 votes
One simple way to make this happen would be to make ogres unable to raise their tongues to the roof of their mouths.
\[i\] and \[j\] both require that, so they are now impossible for ogres.
Most of the other sounds you mentioned (\[a\], \[o\], \[u\], \[ø\], \[ɑ̃\], \[ɔ̃\] and \[w\], if I counted correctly) do not use a raised tongue and are still possible.
The only problem would be \[y\], \[ɥ\]. (That second one is the IPA symbol for the labio-palatal approximant, the French ui.) I propose that you could open \[ø\] to the open front vowel \[œ\] and lower \[y\] to the now-unused mid front vowel \[ø\]. On the other hand, I admit, I don't know how to best take care of \[ɥ\] here.

Another way would be to just say that the ogres can't raise their tongues without also rounding their lips, that *might* be biologically feasible, and it would allow \[y\] and \[ɥ\], while ruling out \[i\] and \[j\]. (Rounded \[j͗\] would still be possible.)

On the very other hand, if you're just wondering whether it could naturally happen: Probably. According to Phoible, 92% of human languages have \[i\] and 90% have \[j\], so it stands to reason that at least about 1%, i.e. one or two dozen (!) languages, have neither. Lacking both of them is therefore still naturalistic.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Lacking `/j/` and `[j]` is entirely plausible, no explanation needed. Attic Greek, for example, lost `[j]` and did just fine without it for hundreds of years.

Lacking `[i]` is harder to explain. There's a strong tendency for vowels to expand to fill the available space, metaphorically speaking. Human languages are under a lot of evolutionary pressure to convey as much information as possible without exceeding the limits of our auditory systems, so if there's a way to convey more information without causing problems for processing, languages will use it.

What this means is, since `[i]` is very easy for humans to hear, human languages tend to make use of it in one way or another. Even if a language doesn't have `/i/`, `[i]` will tend to appear as an allophone of something else. This is why it appears in so many different languages. For example, Ubykh is generally analyzed as having only two vowel phonemes, a high one and a low one, but that high one will still surface as `[i]` to convey more information about the surrounding consonants.

If you don't want any `[i]` sound in your language, while still being naturalistic, you'll probably want to invoke some physical reason. The speakers of your language, from the sound of it, are biologically different from modern humans. You could simply make `[i]` difficult for them to produce or distinguish, for various reasons—Richard suggests production difficulties but you could also invoke some perception difficulties. The human ear is tuned to be more sensitive to some frequencies than others, and perhaps the large gap between the formants in `[i]` is not as distinctive to them as it is to us.

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Tags: phonology, phonetics, vowels
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# Question
Title: Why would a language created by humans lack both the /k/ and the /g/ consonants?
In my story, there is a species of aquatic humans often called merfolk (*Homo maritimus*, so they are still humans, just not *Homo sapiens*). They do not look the typical descriptions of merfolk (I want to go on a semi-realistic way instead of a psychedelic-like creature as Princess Ariel from a famous Disney animated film): they are MUCH more massive than anatomically modern humans (they are as large as adult belugas), they have a seal-like blubber, they have webbed digits (both toes and fingers), they do not typically have visible hair, and they can drown (it just takes a MUCH longer time than anatomically modern humans).

In the most spoken language used by merfolk, there are many strange features:

1. There are no /k/ and /g/ consonants (almost all real-life human languages have at least one of those phonemes) (/k/ is the sound corresponding to English "crash", this word is also sometimes used in French) (/g/ is the sound corresponding to English "green", this sound is also found in French, as in *graisse*, which means "fat").
2. There are twelve standard vowels: the /a/ phoneme (as in French *arbre*, which mean "tree"), the phoneme corresponding to the "a" in English "madness", the /e/ sound (as in French *étatisme*, which means "statism"), the /o/ sound (as in French *agneau*, which means "lamb"), the /u/ sound (as in French *ouvrier*, which means both "worker"), the /i/ sound (as in English "hippie", this word is also used in French), the /y/ sound (as in French *univers*, which naturally means "universe"), the sound corresponding to the French "o" in *ordinateur* (which means "computer"), the sound corresponding to the "e" in English "red", the sound corresponding to the Japanese "u", the sound corresponding to "eu" in French *euphémisme* (which naturally means "euphemism"), and the schwa (as in English "about", or as in French *petit*, which means "petite", "little", and "small"). All vowels can be long. There are also the same nasal vowels as in French. There are four semivowels: the /w/ phoneme, as in English "world" (or as in French *oiseau*, which means "bird"), the /j/ sound, as in English "yellow" (or as in French *hyène*, which means "hyena"), the sound corresponding to the "u" in French *fruit* (which naturally means "fruit"), and the sound corresponding to the Japanese "w". Finally, there are five diphthongs: the sound corresponding to the "y" in English "fly" (or as in French *chandail*, which means "shirt"), the sound corresponding to French *réveil* (which means "awaking"), the sound corresponding to English "toy", the sound corresponding to English "brownie" (this word is also used in French), and the sound corresponding to English "slow".
3. There are the following consonants: /s/ (as in English "snake"), /z/ (as in English "zebra"), /f/ (as in English "fool"), /v/ (as in English "virus"), /h/ (as in English "heroine"), the sound corresponding to the English "sh" (as in "shower"), the sound corresponding to the French "j" as in *joie* (which means "joy"), the voiceless English th sound (as in "thick"), the voiced English th sound (as in "father"), the sound corresponding to the Dutch "w", the /p/ sound (as in English "parrot"), the /b/ sound (as in English "big"), the /t/ sound (as in English "transgender"), the /d/ sound (as in English "danger"), the /l/ sound (as in English "lesbian"), the /n/ sound (as in English "nerd"), and the /m/ sound (as in English "mother").
4. There are four rhotic sounds, in order from the most common to the rarest: the guttural "r" (as in French *rédemption*, which naturally means "redemption"), the sound corresponding to the English "r", the voiced alveolar trill (the Russian "r"), and the sound corresponding to the Japanese "r".

Also, merfolk mostly communicate by singing, because they are as solitary as blue whales, but they still CAN speak.

So, I wonder why would a language created by mammals from the *Homo* genus lack both the /k/ and the /g/ consonants?

# Answer
Because it Just Happens Not To.

Hawai'ian has free variation between \[t\] and \[k\]. The more standard pronunciation, reflected in spelling, is \[k\], but you can replace all the \[k\]s with \[t\]s and it doesn't make any difference.

\[t\], it turns out, is the "default" plosive. If you test a bunch of people who speak different languages by asking them to identify phones, \[p\] and \[k\] are confused for \[t\] more often than \[t\] is confused for \[p\] or \[k\]. That is in tension with a tendency towards contrast-maximization--\[p\] and \[k\] are more distinct from each other than either is from \[t\]--but that just means there are in fact reasons for going either way. Hawai'ian happens to have drifted more in the \[k\] direction... but you just happen to have a language that happens to have settled on using \[t\] instead of \[k\].
> 5 votes

# Answer
Your list of phonemes doesn't include any closures at the velum. You could simply say one of the anatomical differences from modern humans is that they can't produce a full closure there. Maybe there's a ridge that makes it so, if the back of the tongue is pressed against the velum, some air can still get through.

You don't really need to justify this, though, especially when your creatures look more like belugas than modern humans. If they're that physically different from modern humans, I imagine most readers will immediately accept that their vocal tract is a little bit different too.
> 9 votes

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Tags: phonology, phonetics
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# Question
Title: Creating a language for intelligent, sapient creatures that resemble large cats
In my world, there is a race of intelligent, sapient creatures that resemble large cats. They have fur, tails, and whiskers, and can purr and meow like regular cats, but they can also walk upright on two legs and use their front paws as hands. What would be the best way to go about creating a language for these creatures that sounds like a mix of meowing and purring?

# Answer
You would start with the phoneme-inventory. What kind of distinct sounds can these creatures make? How can they be combined to form longer units? Would there be a gesture-based system? A sound could have different meanings whether the tail is wagging or not, for example. You probably end up having very few distinct sounds, so that's a constraining factor.

Then think what they would talk about most commonly. Food? Interpersonal relationships? Assign shorter units to more frequent elements.

As for grammar, that's really up to you -- there's nothing inherent in the nature of the speakers that influences the grammar.

As inspiration for a language that has a small vocabulary and simple syntax, have a look at toki pona; that might be a good starting point.
> 10 votes

# Answer
You might want to take a look at the Kzinti language (the "Heroes Tongue"), created by Larry Niven for the Kzinti (pretty much the creatures you described), in his Known Space Universe.

While it has a limited lexicon, it does have a complex system of modes and accents, based on feline anatomy, that may help you develop your language.

Given the behaviour of cats, the Kzinti have a society based on dominance and are very warlike. This is reflected in their language, as modes vary based on the rank of the person you are talking to. Modes are implemented by using the wide range of vocalizations cats can make. This range also contributes to complex melodic accents.
> 5 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology, non-human-language
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# Question
Title: Is this translation of "May we drink from the empty skulls of our enemies" correct?
I'm trying to translate this sentence:

### "May we drink from the empty skulls of our enemies"

to `tlhIngan-Hol` / Klingon, this will be used as a toast at a friends' wedding (of all things). While my understanding of Klingon grammar is pretty basic, this task seems reasonable enough. Using The Klingon Dictionary I've got this far:

### `jaghpu'ma' chim nach HomDu'vaD matlhutlhjaj`

Where:

1. `jaghpu'ma'` is "our enemies"
2. `chim` is "be empty"
3. `nach` is "head", `Hom` is bone - I'm using ~~`nach HomDu'`~~ as a stand-in for "skulls" unless I find something better (see my other question\*, also, see update below)
4. `-vaD` (if I understand correctly) marks the sentence so far as a purpose clause, so roughly "used for"
5. `matlhutlh` is "we drink"
6. `-jaj` makes the sentence into a "wish", `XXXjaj` translates as "may XXX"

So a rough literal translation back to English is something like "May we drink using our enemies' empty head-bones"

Is this correct? Any way to translate the sentence better? Thanks.

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\[Update from 2022\] The word for "skull" is `DughrI'` (details in other question, it was added to the lexicon after this question was posted).

So the corrected rendition is:

**"May we drink from the empty skulls of our enemies"**

**`jaghpu'ma' chim DughrI'Du'vaD matlhutlhjaj`**

Still not sure that's a correct / the best phrasing.

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\*: Addressing this explicitly as this question was marked as duplicate. This is not a duplicate of the question Is there a word for 'skull' in Klingon \- *that* question asks for a specific word, while *this* question deals with the validity and best phrasing of a sentence (regardless of what's the best Klingon term for that specific term).

# Answer
Looking at the grammar page on the Klingon Wiki, it seems to be correct.
> 1 votes

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Tags: translation, klingon
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# Question
Title: Where do you start when you try to translate from an unknown artificial language?
The question is sparked in part by an article about *Phyrexian* language on Polygon.

Imagine you have a text written in a language that nobody knows. You might have some loose idea what the text is about, but that's pretty much all you know. You have no idea about the number of vowels/consonants (assuming they even makes sense for this language speakers), no idea of how the alphabet is built (and if there is even an alphabet, or a set of hieroglyphics), no idea of any grammar constructs and so on.

The question is: **where and how do you start to make any sense what is written in this unknown language?** What are the steps to do to translate the text from such a language?

To limit the scope of reasoning let's assume that:

1. The language is created by another human being.
2. The language is not a cypher of any sort.
3. No Rosetta stone is available (You don't have examples of text translated from this language).

In case of the *Phyrexian* language used in *Magic: The Gathering*, I believe it is just 10-ish cards written in it, all with English copies available. I guess those 10 cards are enough of a Rosetta stone to translate things. My question is more about what to do when there is no such Rosetta stone at all.

Thank you!

# Answer
> 6 votes
This is a rather hard question, the only script I know of that was deciphered without a bilingue is Linear B, and that was possible only because it turned out that Linear B was used to write Ancient Greek.

Let's get the negatives out first:
I believe this is truly impossible if the language is written in an idiographic script, or if you don't have a *lot* of written material.
Even then, it will obviously be impossible to discern the language's phonology; at best, if the script is alphabetic, you might be able to find out which letters are consonants and which are vowels/syllabic consonants, if you're lucky and the language has an easy syllable structure.
Also, you very very likely won't find out most of the vocabulary. At best, if you find a word commonly next to a picture of a tree, you could assume the word actually does mean "tree", and try to deduce the meanings of a few other words from that? (Or, as Chadwick did with Linear B, guess that a word is the name of a city) (Or, as Champollion did with Hieroglyphics, guess that a word is the name of a ruler/pharaoh, because it's written in a special way and repeats across documents)

Now, onto the positives though:
What might be your best bet to find out is actually the grammar of the unknown language! (Though still only in tiny bits) If your language is written in an alphabet or abjad, you got the jackpot, because then you can with super high probability (given enough material) identify common affixes in words, and likely identify different sets of words which use different kinds of affixes, which allows you to distinguish word classes. Given that verbs are usually rarer in sentences than nouns (English has a lot of helper verbs, but other languages don't necessarily), and particles are usually rather short, you can even *identify* word classes.
If you have a language written in a syllabary, this might well be possible as well, but will be harder. (Worse, though also better sometimes, the syllables might stretch across multiple parts of speech; see again the decipherment of Linear B, which relied critically on Alice Kober's insight that exactly this was happening, allowing her to identify syllables with common consonants/vowel contents, but afaik that only enables Chadwick's identification of some words as city names due to repeated consonants/vowels, e.g. ��� as Ko-No-So=Knossos)

Of course, all this is way way way way way WAY more complicated than this, might well not work at all, and is probably impossible if the language is polysynthetic or the script doesn't include spaces or the script is any more complex than *just* "alphabet" or *just* "syllabary". But at least, I hope I could give you some scope on the problem.

# Answer
> 2 votes
this seems like a similar problem to translating the Voynich Manuscript, which is a long text written in a still untranslated alphabetical writing system, where there are no translations of it written in any other languages, and it is seemingly unrelated to any other writing system. approximately zero words in it have been successfully translated, even though the book is full of detailed illustrations of almost everything it talks about. the main problem is that, with so little specific information on whats written, and with so little similarity to anything else, there isn't any convenient starting point for deciphering it. in order to translate something, you need to have a lot of information on what is being said. even with detailed drawings on many pages, there isn't nearly enough to figure out the individual words.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The short answer is, without *some* bilingual information, it's nigh impossible. I don't know of any language that was successfully deciphered without this.

But, the bilingual doesn't necessarily have to be very long! For Linear B, it was a few guesses at city names, like "Knossos". For Egyptian, it started with names of Ptolemaic rulers who were also known from Greek (Ptolemy, Cleopatra, etc). And for Phyrexian, we have some Phyrexian names translated into English and vice versa! The original decipherment hinged on "Elesh Norn" on a judge promo card, "Yawgmoth" in an illustration from a Dominaria card, and eventually the names of the other praetors and Tamiyo from the Neon Dynasty promos.

From these seven or so names, it's possible to work out how the writing system works, and from there start working at the language. In cryptography this is known as a "crib" (a bit of known information about the text you're working with) and just one or two words can make a world of difference.

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Tags: translation
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# Question
Title: Are there set example sentences used when developing a conlang?
When working on fonts, it's typical to use a pangram to show how it handles letters, like so:

> Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow

Is there an equivalent set of sentences for testing how a conlang handles things like clauses, conditionals, pronouns etc?

I'm asking as I'm trying to figure out how my conlang with an idiosyncratic sentence structure (topic marker (linked to the class of subject or object or the verb) - one of several first person pronouns - relationship marker - object and/or subject and verb.) would handle some of the above things?

# Answer
> 7 votes
Probably the closest thing is the text of the Tower of Babel legend that has been (is still?) customarily used to demonstrate your conlang (the alternative being the Lord's Prayer, but this suffers from stilted, archaic language and a necessary religious bias; OTOH, it is available for almost all natlangs). Not quite demonstrating all the possible grammatical features, but the text is rich and long enough to demonstrate basic concepts, and yet short enough to be easy to translate without too much effort.

# Answer
> 7 votes
I have found these 218 Sentences to Test Conlang Syntax quite useful.

The sentences range from demonstrating tense, aspect and mood:

*The sun shines.*

*Happy people often shout.*

*You should go.*

to demonstrating more sophisticated concepts such as clausal subjects:

*Why he has left the city is a mystery.*

and inferential knowledge and evidence:

*Evidently that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it.*

I did find it useful to make many more variants over time, and a version which indexes the grammatical concepts so that you can look up later how you did it would be an improvement. But it's a very good foundation, for my \[unspent\] money.

This google doc is my master copy, of which you are welcome to make your own in the file menu.

I originally found it here, 8/25/13. The original site was down, so I saved them. I understand credit is due a Mr. Gary Shannon.

# Answer
> 6 votes
The *Graded Sentences for Analysis* list (mirror) provides 1000-plus sample sentences, apparently from an old out-of-copyright textbook on English grammar and sentence diagramming.

Rather than trying to translate every single one, you might browse through them looking for interesting features—things you may well take for granted in your native language!

A sample:

> Directly opposite stands a wonderful palace.

> Rip's dog walked along slowly after him.

> The warm south wind, heavy with the perfume of blossoms, came through my window.

> He tried, but failed.

> She had a little narrow blue ribbon over her shoulders, that looked like a scarf.

> I think that that man is a Swede.

> I must now relate what happened to me a few days before the ship sailed.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Another common one I've seen among conlangers is *The North Wind and the Sun*, from Aesop's fables. The IPA (the association, not the alphabet) uses it as a demonstration text; after they describe a language's phonetics and phonology, they'll usually give a transcription of the fable in that language. This means that there are a lot of parallel versions out there to compare.

For reference, this is the version they used for General American English:

> The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
>
> ðə ˈnoɹθ ˌwɪnd ən (ð)ə ˈsʌn wɚ dɪsˈpjutɪŋ ˈwɪtʃ wəz ðə ˈstɹɑŋɡɚ, wɛn ə ˈtɹævəlɚ ˌkem əˈlɑŋ ˈɹæpt ɪn ə ˈwoɹm ˈklok. ðe əˈɡɹid ðət ðə ˈwʌn hu ˈfɚst səkˈsidəd ɪn ˈmekɪŋ ðə ˈtɹævəlɚ ˈtek ɪz ˈklok ˌɑf ʃʊd bi kənˈsɪdɚd ˈstɹɑŋɡɚ ðən ðɪ ˈəðɚ. ðɛn ðə ˈnoɹθ ˌwɪnd ˈblu əz ˈhɑɹd əz i ˈkʊd, bət ðə ˈmoɹ hi ˈblu ðə ˈmoɹ ˈklosli dɪd ðə ˈtɹævlɚ ˈfold hɪz ˈklok əˈɹaʊnd ɪm; ˌæn ət ˈlæst ðə ˈnoɹθ ˌwɪnd ˌɡev ˈʌp ði əˈtɛmpt. ˈðɛn ðə ˈsʌn ˈʃaɪnd ˌaʊt ˈwoɹmli ənd ɪˈmidiətli ðə ˈtɹævlɚ ˈtʊk ˌɑf ɪz ˈklok. ən ˈso ðə ˈnoɹθ ˌwɪnd wəz əˈblaɪʒ tɪ kənˈfɛs ðət ðə ˈsʌn wəz ðə ˈstɹɑŋɡɚ əv ðə ˈtu.

Various translations into other natlangs are catalogued at the Aesop Language Bank. For example, here's Turkish.

# Answer
> 2 votes
There are a few other sample texts that are especially common for Indo-European conlangs.

*The King and the God* is a short passage based on an episode from the Brahmanas:

> **The King and the God**
> Once there was a king. He was childless. The king wanted a son. He asked his priest: "May a son be born to me!" The priest said to the king: "Pray to the god Werunos." The king approached the god Werunos to pray now to the god. "Hear me, father Werunos!" The god Werunos came down from heaven. "What do you want?" "I want a son." "Let this be so," said the bright god Werunos. The king's lady bore a son.

Various PIE scholars have used this as a way to demonstrate different reconstructions of Proto-Indo-European. For example, here's Byrd's:

> **H₃rḗḱs dei̯u̯ós-kwe**
> H₃rḗḱs h₁est; só n̥putlós. H₃rḗḱs súhxnum u̯l̥nh₁to. Tósi̯o ǵʰéu̯torm̥ prēḱst: "Súhxnus moi̯ ǵn̥h₁i̯etōd!" Ǵʰéu̯tōr tom h₃rḗǵm̥ u̯eu̯ked: "h₁i̯áǵesu̯o dei̯u̯óm U̯érunom". Úpo h₃rḗḱs dei̯u̯óm U̯érunom sesole nú dei̯u̯óm h₁i̯aǵeto. "ḱludʰí moi̯, pter U̯erune!" Dei̯u̯ós U̯érunos diu̯és km̥tá gʷah₂t. "Kʷíd u̯ēlh₁si?" "Súhxnum u̯ēlh₁mi." "Tód h₁estu", u̯éu̯ked leu̯kós dei̯u̯ós U̯érunos. Nu h₃réḱs pótnih₂ súhxnum ǵeǵonh₁e.

Another text used for the same purpose is Schleicher's Fable:

> **The Sheep and the Horses**
> A sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses." The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool." Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.

This was introduced by August Schleicher in the 1800s (hence the name) to demonstrate his theories about PIE, and since then has become a standard way of showing the difference between PIE reconstructions. For consistency, here's Byrd again:

> **H₂óu̯is h₁éḱu̯ōs-kʷe**
> H₂áu̯ei̯ h₁i̯osméi̯ h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁ést, só h₁éḱu̯oms derḱt. Só gʷr̥hₓúm u̯óǵʰom u̯eǵʰed; só méǵh₂m̥ bʰórom; só dʰǵʰémonm̥ h₂ṓḱu bʰered. H₂óu̯is h₁ékʷoi̯bʰi̯os u̯eu̯ked: "dʰǵʰémonm̥ spéḱi̯oh₂ h₁éḱu̯oms-kʷe h₂áǵeti, ḱḗr moi̯ agʰnutor". H₁éḱu̯ōs tu u̯eu̯kond: "ḱludʰí, h₂ou̯ei̯! Tód spéḱi̯omes, n̥sméi̯ agʰnutór ḱḗr: dʰǵʰémō, pótis, sē h₂áu̯i̯es h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ gʷʰérmom u̯éstrom u̯ept, h₂áu̯ibʰi̯os tu h₂u̯l̥h₁náh₂ né h₁esti". Tód ḱeḱluu̯ṓs h₂óu̯is h₂aǵróm bʰuged.

You can find a nice overview of several different reconstructions in the Wikipedia article.

Neither of these is as common among conlangers as *The North Wind and the Sun* or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but they're moderately popular among people making a posteriori Indo-European languages, because you can find several different reconstructions for different stages of Proto-Indo-European and its descendants (Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-Iranian, etc) to compare against.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The first article of the Universal Declaration of Humar Rights seems quite popular in some circles, i.e. r/conlangs.

> All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

I use it for my conlangs. For some classes of conlangs, it might be hard to translate; especially in worldbuilding, some of the less concrete cultural things like "freedom" and "a spirit of brotherhood" might be a difficulty.

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title: What uncommon letters are there?

text:
# Question
Title: What uncommon letters are there?
I have made an alphabet, but I think that I need to add more letters. I don't want to invent random letters.

Is there a letter that doesn't exist in most other languages?

My language's alphabet has 16 consonants and 5 vowels, but I think that I need to add a new letter like ñ or ç, but I don't want to add a letter that exists in common languages.

Is there any list of uncommon letters?

(My conlang's alphabet doesn't include b, g, v, y, z).

# Answer
If you're looking for letters that are obscure but still used somewhere, the Case Variants of IPA Letters table can be a good resource. This lists IPA symbols that someone's invented a capital form of, which usually means they've been integrated into the orthography of some language (used somewhere), but are still an IPA symbol first and foremost (not too common).
> 3 votes

# Answer
Unicode is basically a list of characters that you can use on computers. The code charts offer a full list; if the rest of your alphabet is Latin-based, the various combining marks offer unlimited flexibility, and Latin Extended-B through -G offer many rarely-seen characters, including some never used in actual languages and some only used in long obsolete orthographies.

Making more interesting orthographies can be quite fun and make a conlang jump off the page. I quite encourage the use of ñ and ŋ for the nasal sounds normally associated with them, ʒ or ȥ instead of zh, even ƿ or ȣ for w. But while the first four letters don't really need explanation, the last two would probably make more sense in some sort of historical context.

I'd recommend picking your sounds and then finding appropriate letters for them, instead of the other way around, unless you have a historical reason in world otherwise. I'd also think about goals; if this is a language set in a setting where the writers use the Latin alphabet, most such alphabets use one or two diacritics and often diphthongs where Latin's alphabet doesn't cover it. If this is just for fun, it's a balance of interesting and visually attractive versus ease of understanding versus ease of typing. ñ isn't that far away on any normal system, and any of the other characters is a simple alt-xxxx sequence on Windows. But characters like ȥ, ƿ and ȣ noticeably stand out for me on this system, like they're being pulled from a different font. Your font selection may be limited if you go beyond Latin Extended A, and some other people may have a harder time seeing the characters (though that could be overstated; I'm seeing them on a fairly default Windows 10 box, and up-to-date Linux and MacOS boxes should display pretty much everything but the latest additions as well.)
> 3 votes

# Answer
Well, the number of letters that do not exist in any languages (or better, their orthographies) is potentially unbounded. As for uncommon letters, you might want to look into scripts used only for one (or few) languages, such as Armenian or Georgian, or uncommon diacritics, such as some Slovak and Czech letters (ř, ť, ď, ň, ľ, ĺ...) or Vietnamese for a diacritical explosion. But generally, if you want your language to be consistent and aesthetically pleasing, you should perhaps avoid mixing letters from different scripts (but there are exceptions, e.g. common transliteration of Old Church Slavonic into Latin script uses ь ъ and they fit the orthography nicely); or using diacritics haphazardly, or adding new letters just for its own sake - there should be some (perhaps unstated, perhaps not outlined in all the details) reason behind the orthography.
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, writing-systems
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# Question
Title: What sounds would snake-people be able to pronouce?
The snake-people are humanoid creatures with snake-like traits:

Their mouth and nose are longer than in humans. The tongue can work as in humans, but sits only in the front half of the jaw and is forked. The rear half contains the opening of the larynx, which has no epiglottis. The nasal passage is roughly human in its structures, and their face has muscles as in humans

I have already worked out some of the sounds which would be impossible to pronounce, specifically the velar, uvular, and epiglottal sounds (their tongue can't reach velum and uvula, and they don't have an epiglottis). It also seems they may have issues with back vowels. However, I am unsure if there are other sounds which their anatomy could prevent

# Answer
If they can independently control each half of their forked tongue(s) they have unique phonology accessible - double articulation in human languages is rare and only some consonant combinations are observed, but with such a tongue they can co-articulate almost all the possible consonants (most likely alveolars, but if they have lips, also labials+alveolars, dentals etc...). This alone might give you enough richness to compensate for the missing consonants (and quite uniquely sounding languages) - and if not, perhaps their languages will have to resort to tones to get enough syllables.

To summarize:

* if they have flexible mouths and finely controlled tongues, the languages will prominently feature double articulation (of some consonants)
* if not, their languages will be likely prominently tonal
> 4 votes

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Tags: phonology, phonetics
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# Question
Title: How to safely import loan words in a conlang?
Some examples of loan words:

* Human names like "Paul" or "Bhavya".
* Proper nouns like "White House" or "United States".
* Using any word at all from the other language ("which" from English, "the", etc., even if the conlang doesn't have these words). Basically this might be like how we use `syntax highlighting` (\<- like that) to designate "code" when doing software documentation.

What I am wondering is what are the different ways you can "safely" import these words into another lang? Say you have the word `bin` in your conlang, which is a taboo/swear word for example. Then when you import/use an Arabic name like `Aktham bin Sayfi`, technically that might make an impression of the swear word, even though it would be used out of context. Then in English, we have the word "bin" (container), which when used in a conlang sentence like "I closed the bin" (`mea closa tha bin`), where those first 3 words are theoretical conlang words and the bin is English, like saying "Give me back my perro" and we know that it is being used (Spanish perro).

What I was thinking of doing is wrapping each foreign/import word in an opening and closing sound, like `i-<word>-o` or something. Then it would be like `i-barak-obama-o`, but that seems like it would be a lot if you used multiple loan words one after the next.

Then there is the question of, do you change the pronunciation or use the native pronunciation? Sometimes you hear Spanish (Mexican) speakers say "I lived in Méheeko" rather than the regular "Mexico". But other times, like when we pronounce Arabic or Hebrew words like "Israel", we just say it with an American accent.

Or instead of adding affixes or manipulating pronunciation, you could come up with a completely new name (like Chinese does, which I think partially solves the problem of things meaning weird things, like I read with CocaCola initially was phonetically translated and meant something strange like "bite the wax tadpole", which they changed to be "happiness in the mouth").

But in my case, I have a conlang which only has words in these patterns (c = consonant, v = vowel):

* cvc
* ccvc
* cvcc
* cvcvc
* cvccvc
* ccvcvc
* cvcvcc

There are about 500 cvc, 1000 ccvc and cvcc, and 100k cvcvc, 300k+ 6-sound. But maybe only 20k of those will be used. I am picking all the "good sounding" ones to be real words at first, and then the less-good sounding ones are left over. I don't want these necessarily to be used as names, they would be the least-pleasant sounding words. So I am not really sure how to handle generating the names. But you mix this with the problem of importing foreign words, and I might have "paul" mean "past tense" in the conlang, then you import "Paul" the name and it reads initially as "past tense", which is less than ideal.

So what are the techniques you can use to "safely" import foreign words (and do things like importing foreign names)? Figuring out how to name things *within the language* is a separate problem, but importing foreign "people" names and proper noun names just seems hard to do, and I'm not sure what a clean approach would be.

# Answer
> What I am wondering is what are the different ways you can "safely" import these words into another lang?

In natlangs, the one overarching purpose behind everything in a language is to communicate. If some aspect of the language is getting in the way of this, then evolutionary pressures will remove that obstacle over time.

Homophones, in general, don't seem to pose an obstacle. English-speakers are generally fine with the fact that "dam" (block the flow of water) and "damn" (mild profanity) are pronounced the same, because they're used in such different contexts; even when there's an actual ambiguity, like a frustrated engineer shouting "damn this river!", it's a source of puns and humor more than actual confusion.

And the same is true when they involve loanwords. The loanword "junk" (a type of ship, going back to Chinese 船) is pronounced identically to the native word "junk" (trash, worthless things) but actual confusion is rare. And if a problem arises, you can just add another word to disambiguate it, calling it a "junk ship" or the like. Some people consider this redundant, but it happens all the time with loanwords: "chai tea", "naan bread", "miso soup", etc. Some conlangs, like toki pona and a handful of others inspired by it, require this: loans and names have to be used as adjectives, not nouns, which means they're always attached to a native noun showing what sort of thing they are.

> Then there is the question of, do you change the pronunciation or use the native pronunciation?

In natlangs, it generally depends on how speakers see the word. At first, generally, the word will be seen as thoroughly foreign. It will be written in italics\*, imitating the original orthography when possible, and people will do their best to imitate the pronunciation (and usually not succeed, because every language's phonology is different). It won't inflect in any way or combine with other morphemes.

Eventually, if the word catches on, it'll be naturalized and incorporated into the language more thoroughly. It will be adapted fully into the surrounding phonology and morphology and not seen as something distinctly different from the rest of the language.

For example, look at some Japanese loans in English. *Ukiyo-e* and *gaijin* tend to be italicized and pronounced with particular care, and people don't tend to say \*gaijins for more than one. But dojo and shogun can be pluralized like any other English word (dojos, shoguns) because they've been more thoroughly integrated into English. This difference can show up more starkly in languages like Latin and Greek, which have more mandatory inflection on both nouns and verbs; it tends to be very clear which foreign words are treated as foreign and indeclinable, rather than being adapted to the rules of the borrowing language.

* This is an English convention, not universal.

> Or instead of adding affixes or manipulating pronunciation, you could come up with a completely new name (like Chinese does, which I think partially solves the problem of things meaning weird things, like I read with CocaCola initially was phonetically translated and meant something strange like "bite the wax tadpole", which they changed to be "happiness in the mouth").

This is because of the writing system, not the language. Chinese is written logographically, which means you can't write a foreign word without referencing existing morphemes.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Toki Pona, a rather-successful minimalist conlang, has a (IMO) really nice process called tokiponization. The steps are these:

1. If possible, it should be avoided. Simply translate things like "White House" or "United States".
2. If that is not possible, find a "head noun", which goes in front of the loaned word. This can be any noun.
3. Then, the word itself is "tokiponized", which is basically just changing pronunciation.

Examples:

1. Paul -\> jan Pali (jan is a noun meaning person)
2. Bhavya -\> jan Bawiwa
3. White House -\> tomo walo ni (a phrase meaning that white house)
> 2 votes

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Tags: vocabulary, terminology
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# Question
Title: Strategies for dealing with limited/simple phonologies
**What problems arise when creating a language with an extremely simple phonology and what are some good strategies for dealing with them?**

I'm calling this type of phonology *extremely simple* for the purposes of this question, but *limited* or *rigid* might be a better fit. I'm also not sure whether "phonology" is the right term here or if something like "phonological inventory" would be better. Using "phonemes" or "phonemic inventory" is close, but does not cover phonotactics and suprasegmental features.

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An *extremely simple phonology* is one that does not allow the speaker to pack many bits of information in each syllable/mora/unit of speech time. Prototypical extremely simple phonologies have some or all of the following features:

* Few segmental contrasts
* Restrictive phonotactics
* Limited or no phonemic use of gemination or vowel length
* Limited or no phonemic use of tone

Phrased another way, a simple phonology in the sense of the question is what you would get if you started with an inventory like Hawaiian's, Rotokas', or Pirahã's and removed contrastive vowel length or contrastive tone.

Conlangs like Toki Pona have extremely simple phonologies.

**What are some common problems that appear in languages with phonologies like this? What are some strategies for dealing with them? One example of a possible "problem" might be a large number of homophones.**

# Answer
> 7 votes
One major problem is that a small phoneme inventory leads to *longer words*, as you have fewer short ones available. This kind of relates to the point you already mention, namely homophones: here you simply re-use a word form for multiple meanings.

Words would also sound more alike, even if different. This is one of the main problems I have with Hawai'ian (of course the vocab is mostly unrelated to the Western European languages I know), that words are hard to recognise for a learner, and then it's even harder if individual phonemes are different and completely change the meaning of the word.

This is fine for toki pona, which only has a small inventory of words anyway, but any more extensive language would quickly run into longer words or phrases.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I think Oliver pretty much nailed it on the head. There are a couple of ways around the problems that were mentioned. The first way is to have a highly inflectional language; this would give an explanation for why words are similar, but the words would get longer. Because you would already be expecting to have longer words, this could at least be turned into a feature rather than a detriment. The second way is to allow for less 'traditional', let's say, syllable structures. Think of the English word 'strengths' (/stɹeŋθs/) which has a CCCVCCC structure. Using a much more restrictive (C)V(N) will only make the generations of new words more difficult.

Another problem is the potential overlap of meaning. The word *moku* in toki pona basically means *to Ingest* but it also means *something that is ingestible* (to Eat, to Drink, Food, Beverage). If you don't mind having words having a number of meanings which are generally related, then this shouldn't be a problem. If you want a free couple of words, don't put 'to Be', 'of/from', or (more extremely) 'to Have' into the language. That will save you 3 words right there for different concepts.

# Answer
> 4 votes
*Disclaimer: I'm not trying to give a complete answer, just adding on.*

I've encountered this exact problem with a project I'm working on. If the number of possible sounds per syllable is limited, then limiting syllables is going to be one of the main challenges. Some approaches to limit syllables are:

* Assign a separate **meaning to every possible syllable** that could be pronounced. It's best if the meanings are as distant as possible from each other.
* **Avoid synonyms**, similar to the previous point, where multiple different sounds map to the same meaning.
* Allow for things like optional **contractions**, that shorten the spelling or pronunciation.
* Use **strict word order** rules, as opposed to grammatical particles/prefixes/suffixes, when possible. If a subject is always at the beginning of a sentence, it won't need to be marked as a subject, for example.
* When deriving new words by combining existing ones, use very **small fragments of root words** as opposed to the whole thing. For example, instead of `sand + castle --> sandcastle`, do `sand + castle --> sandle/sastle`.
* In addition to assigning meaning to syllables, an extreme approach would be to go down to the letter level, approximate **meanings for each letter**. This can help in the compound word scenario with picking important letters out of a root as opposed to the whole word.

# Answer
> 4 votes
## Elision would become the norm.

Speakers of a language with a small inventory and strict CV phonotactics would speak rapidly to compensate for longer words, like speakers of Spanish or Toki Pona. They would elide weaker phonemes, and listeners would identify the dropped sound through their effect on neighboring sounds.

Start with the inventory of Rotokas and simplify it even further. Give it six consonant phonemes `p, b~v, t~s, ɾ~d~z, k, ɣ~ʝ` and three vowel phonemes `a, i, u` without contrastive length. You end up with eighteen syllables, some showing anticipatory assimilation before /i/: `pa, pi, pu, va, vi, vu, ta, si, tu, da~ra, zi~ri, du~ru, ka, ci, ku, ɣa, ʝi, ɣu`. This allows up to 5,800 three-syllable sequences (or more realistically a fraction of that).

In rapid speech, /i/ and /u/ might tend to drop out in syllables before or after a syllable that has /a/. This sort of elision is productive in Japanese and occurred diachronically with the short "yer" vowels in Russian, which had been /ĭ/ and /ŭ/ and were reduced to traces on consonants. Likewise, diphthongs may arise at the surface when /ɣ/ weakens. Slow, careful speech would bring them back, at least until reanalysis a century or two later causes the next sound shift.

To illustrate, populate the lexicon with a few English loans:

* /vurara/ "brother", \[vɾaɾa\]
* /titita/ "sister", \[sista\]
* /titaku/ "stack", \[stak\]
* /taki/ "touch", \[tac\]
* /raɣutu/ "route, doubt", \[ɾaut\]
* /vaɣutu/ "vote", \[vaut\]
* /patu/ "pat", \[pat\]
* /pati/ "pass", \[pas\]

Even though /patu/ and /pati/ have lost their final vowel, the listener can tell them apart because of how vowel /i/ has changed the consonant. Likewise with the final consonants in /titaku/ and /taki/.

# Answer
> 2 votes
## It's spoken faster.

For natlangs, there's evidence that the amount of information conveyed per second is consistent across different languages. This is "information" in the sense of Shannon's information theory, measured in bits.

If you have a smaller phonology, then there are fewer possible "signals" (in Shannon's terms), so each signal conveys less information. Thus, you need more signals per second to convey the same amount of information.

The end result is:

* Words are longer, as mentioned by others
* More phonemes are spoken per second

This is one reason why English-speakers tend to perceive Japanese as being spoken very quickly. Japanese has a much smaller phonemic inventory than English (and a much more restrictive syllable structure), so the number of syllables spoken per second is dramatically higher. I imagine the same would apply to Hawai'ian and various other Polynesian languages, which are also famous for their small phonemic inventories, though I'm not aware of any studies on them specifically.

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology
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# Question
Title: What parts of speech (nouns, adj., verbs, etc.) could be limited to make a language with fewer words?
Essentially, in the English language how many adjectives, nouns, adverbs, verbs, etc. could be combined to make the language possess a single word for a term. E.g. huge, giant, enormous, and big could all just go under big.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The thing about languages is that they can all say the same things. If it can't say something, it hasn't come across the concept yet. And when it has, it will make up or borrow a word to fill the gap. As a result, there will always be at least one "open" class of words, "open" meaning it can accept new members, like the classes "noun", "verb" and "adjective" in English.
This is not to say that those particular classes must be open for all languages, just that at least one of them must be (or even a different one entirely, like prepositions, one of English's closed classes - although I don't know of any examples of that...).
In a language with a closed verb class, for instance, new "verbs" are one of the native verbs with a noun or adjective complement, basically "I do a run" or "I am a runner" instead of "I run". If nouns are closed, new "nouns" are a native noun with a verb or adjective complement, "one who paints" or "painting one" for "painter", for example.
That last example also highlights another way that word classes can be "closed": inflection and derivation. Consider the case of English adverbs. Under a very niche definition that I just made up, this is a closed class: The only way new adverbs show up is when a new adjective shows up, and the productive -ly suffix turns it into an adverb. New adverbial concepts either take an adjective and stick on -ly or take a noun and stick it into a prepositional phrase.
Side note: this is what Esperanto - the person - was trying to do with Esperanto - the language: turn word class into an inflectional paradigm. The problem is, he was inconsistent. A broso is a brush - a *thing* that brushes - but a kombo is an *act* of combing, not a thing that combs. This is not to say that this is impossible, but you do have to be careful.

With all that out of the way, there's another problem. Using your example: while big, huge, giant and enormous all denote (that is, mean) the same thing, they connote (that is, imply) different things. "Enormous" is bigger than "huge" is bigger than "big". "Giant" is around "huge", but also implies that what is big isn't normally big, and sees use as a noun (meaning giant human). If you want to get around this, you'll need inflectional paradigms to change connotations, and connotation is a much wibblier concept than denotation - and denotation is plenty wibbly, which is why we even have different words for different things in the first place!

But if you're going to ignore all of that, then what you have is a pidgin at best, and an Orwellian nightmare at worst.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This question is probably more suited for the English stackexchange, where it would be promptly closed (or at least that's my gut feeling).

However, there is a way to estimate the number: the (English) WordNet groups words into *synsets*, each synset having a precise, pinpointed meaning (and covers a lot of vocabulary). So, for each of the parts of speech, just divide the number of words (*literals*) by the number of synsets to get the ratio of "words per meaning". For example, adjectives have the ratio 1.62.

**However**, there is a catch: words often mean more than just one thing, English is especially (for a European language) rich in homonymy. So, e.g. the noun *giant* has 7 different meanings, some of them perhaps differing only slightly, but some of them meaning very different things. Thus if you are after a quantitative number, you have to account for this somehow (would you count *giant* once or 7 times?).

And of course, you are opening a Pandora's box, because the deeper (beyond what WordNet covers) you go into less frequent words and more specialized terminology, the more and more unexpected meanings will surface and the numbers won't tell you anything anymore.

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Tags: vocabulary, terminology, verbs, nouns, pronouns
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# Question
Title: What are necessary elements to morphologies that rely upon syntax in 2D?
I've seen several approaches to non-linear 2D syntax for written languages. Circular arrangements of glyphs (ring, spiral and axial), clumping-assemblages (akin to Maya glyphs, etc).

Are there necessary elements or aspects to the glyphs, in order for them to best leverage (or be used in) a 2D syntax arrangement? i.e can glyphs has some affordance(s) that support 2D glyphs?

My question is more in the terrain of semasiology and semasiography — and what necessary for a related system of syntax. For an excellent background context of this matter, see The Elephant's Memory \[1\], \[2\]

# Answer
> 3 votes
One aspect would be an indication of reading direction. E.g. Egyptian hieroglyphs can be written in multiple directions, but you can see from the orientation of (non-symmetric) glyphs which is the reading direction.

I would think that this is even more important in writing systems which are not just one-dimensional.

# Answer
> 3 votes
All natural spoken languages are *linear*. Phonemes come one by one in a sequence over time1.

As a result, all writing systems for natural spoken languages are also linear2. Glyphs come one by one in a sequence over space. The order can be fairly convoluted—you might change reading direction three times in a single Egyptian word, for example, and Mayan hieroglyphs are arranged in three dimensions—but there's always a linear order. Right now, you're reading the letters in these words left-to-right, the words left-to-right, and the lines top-to-bottom.

If your conlang is linear3 (which some especially-alien conlangs aren't!), you'll also need some way for people to put those glyphs into the proper order. Oliver Mason mentioned how Egyptian uses glyph orientation to indicate whether the horizontal direction is left-to-right or right-to-left; it also uses differently-sized gaps between units to indicate whether you should be reading horizontally or vertically at any particular time. If the gaps between columns are wider than the gaps between rows, you should read vertically, and vice versa horizontally.

But, depending on the details of your system, you can also make this order entirely predictable: Mayan glyphs are arranged three-dimensionally but the order is always top-to-bottom, left-to-right, front-to-back. As long as readers can figure out the order, you can really design your glyphs any way you like.

1 Well, it's not *quite* this simple. There are also supersegmental features, which don't fit into this nice linear order. But the system is linear overall and writing systems reflect this.

2 Specifically *spoken* languages. Signed languages aren't necessarily linear in time in the same way. But we also don't have a lot of writing systems for signed languages to look at as examples.

3 jk mentions tree structures as well. It's generally accepted that language is structured recursively (with some sort of tree) in the mind, but it's still put into a linear order to be spoken, since it's hard to speak a tree out loud.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is an example of a non-linear approach to written languages, which I have made up.

https://omniglot.com/charts/yomoal.pdf

**Essential elements?**

This system considers consonants, vowels, and spaces its essential elements. The vowels and consonants are the *necessary* elements and the example script makes vowels the most important element. For context, many scripts take consonants as their primary marks (abjads, abugidas) while marking vowels is of less importance. Alphabets make these types equal in importance. Regarding spaces, like several ancient and contemporary scripts, where a word begins or ends could possibly be left to context (especially if all reading is expected to be aloud). That said, I judged spaces practically necessary since all viewers of the script would be humans accustomed to spaces and not fluent in the conlang.

**Are spaces necessary elements?**

A general comment: spaces may be completely unnecessary for some languages. Phonotactic rules could, in theory, make the beginning of new words perfectly obvious or unlikely ambiguous even without the use of spaces. For instance, if words can only start with a certain set of letters and those letters never appear elsewhere in the word, then these letters would also serve like spaces. Something that takes minimal space like a period or underlining first letters could also save space on "spaces."

**How to minimize written elements?**

A writing system could reduce the amount of information it needs to write by accessing the reader's prior knowledge to help communicate the structure of words and thoughts. For an example of words, suppose everybody memorizes a couple poems which between them contain all syllables in a syllabary once: then the syllabary could be just numbers (and a reference to which poem, if needed).

**What does Yomoal's example contribute?**

Yomoal isn't attempting to minimize the amount of 2d information, per se, and actually it is rather space inefficient on paper. But it does use reader's prior knowledge to structure words and thoughts. The former: Yomoal's consonants refer to common words all speakers would know: the W-sound is written as a frog, the word for which is '**w**aŋ.'

Visually themed as a written river, Yomoal acceses its audience's familiarity with rivers to help communicate relationships between written ideas. For instance, readers are assumed to understand that streams contribute to a main river, and in that way the writer can communicate the sequence and importance of her ideas by writing one "stream" of thought to flow into others. It is necessary to clarify which way the river is "flowing," and for that purpose a mountain symbol heads each "river," its peak tilting also to indicate "left" and "right" of the river (important for syllables). Yomoal has punctuation to expand on the river theme at the same time is helps structure thoughts.

**Another novel example for further reading**

https://omniglot.com/conscripts/oriscript.htm

Oriscript also has an unusual inherent structure for constructing text. Suppose that the space each character (like a letter) occupies is a box. The characters are distinguished by certain positions within each box, rather than by variously shaped letters. I am not best informed to discuss Oriscript at length, but I did think it could be useful further reading to add to my "refers to prior knowledge for structure" point and for a potential "only minimal marks" approach.

I hope this analysis of one example's essentials and structure helps inform the general question of what elements are necessary in any written system.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Syntax follows a tree structure and the writing system can be used to display this tree structure in a transparent way. There are many artistic and creative possibilities to display tree structures far beyond the standard diagrams in linguistics text books, e.g. nested boxes of different sizes.

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Tags: morphology, syntax
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