# Question
Title: How to get rid of "for" and "of" when making a conlang coming from English, aiming toward Chinese?
I have learned about serial verb constructions, and I am looking into Leonard Talmy and his theories of translating between and among Chinese/English. I have seen a few examples where "for" is used in the English, but obviously nothing (even close) to it is in Chinese, it's completely different. I haven't yet been able to wrap my head around how to get rid of the idea of "for", as in "I will wait for you", or "I want it for my friends", or "the main thing is for you", "let those eyes droop down for just a little longer", etc.. amongst a million other more complex examples.

How does Chinese do away with "for"? What patterns can I go by? I can see how "to" is made into the verb "arrive", so there is a 1\<\>1 mapping between English/Chinese in that small aspect. And "up" is "ascend" and "down" is "descend", etc.. But what about "for"? How can I get rid of "for" when creating my conlang so it doesn't feel like it's a direct port of English?

Same with "of", I can't find a verb for that one, or an equivalent construct in Chinese. So not sure what to do when essentially translating to Chinese. (Which will help when building the conlang, to give it a flavor of Chinese).

The only example I've found of "for" so far is in The Linguistic Encoding of Motion Events in Chinese:

But it is not enough to go off of.

# Answer
> 4 votes
If you don't want your conlang to be a reskin of English, I recommend not trying to find "the Chinese equivalent of this English word". Words don't match up one to one between languages. Instead, think about the actual meaning behind each English phrase, and other ways to convey that meaning: not the words but the meaning they're being used to transmit.

"To", for example, means a dozen different things in English. Some of those are translated with a verb meaning "arrive" in Chinese. Most aren't. Translation isn't as simple as just find-and-replacing each word with its direct equivalent. The "to" in "to like" means something entirely different from the "to" in "to the store" and it's a historical accident that English uses the same word for them.

"For", similarly, can convey a lot of different things. In the sentence at the end of your question, it indicates that what follows is the duration of the event (rather than, say, how long it took before the event happened). Latin conveys that by putting the time in the accusative case for a duration and the ablative case for the span during which it happened. Some of your other examples use "for" to indicate the beneficiary of the action. Latin indicates this with the dative case, while Lingála adds an applicative (a modifier that adds an extra argument to a verb).

Other examples in your question use "for" to indicate the the recipient of something being transferred (also the dative in Latin, the word's position in the sentence in Lingála) or to change a one-argument verb into a two-argument verb (Latin uses prefixes or switches words entirely; Lingála would use another applicative). Since they mean fundamentally different things, it's really just a coincidence that English uses the same word for all of them. Other languages generally do not.

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Tags: verbs, chinese
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# Question
Title: What languages prefer the shortest sentences?
I read somewhere that Chinese prefers short sentences while English prefers longer ones. I don't have great examples of this, yet.

This is particularly problematic in legal texts where an English sentence can be hundreds of words or a long paragraph, making it tricky to translate into Chinese (somehow). I am listening to the Tao Te Ching, which appears to be composed of very short sentences, yet offers great insight.

What languages prefer the shortest sentences, and compose meaning out of extremely short sentences?

> What languages prefer short sentences. And which compose meaning out of extremely short sentences?

*(I tried to make it into short sentences, but it feels awkward with that conjunction in English beginning the second sentence.)*

> I tried to make it into a short sentence. But it feels awkward. With that conjunction in English. The conjunction which begins the second sentence.

Wondering how short you can get and still be expressive.

> Wondering how short you can get. And still be expressive.

What languages (natural or conlang) use short sentences mostly? What are the general patterns for it or where to look for more info?

I would like to learn how to write in English with short sentences, like the Tao Te Ching. Or even in the conlang I'm working on. To have short sentences everywhere. But not quite sure how that would look/feel/work.

In English it feels like a mixture of short and long sentences is the most *poetic* and expressive and beautiful sounding, but I'm guessing that's probably just a quirk of English somehow. So curious what the possibilities are for expressive, beautiful statements, rich with meaning, yet concise and to the point.

From the Tao Te Ching:

```
Once upon a time, those who knew the Way, were a mysterious and subtle people.
Transient yet profound.
Tranquil yet utterly unfathomable.
Since they are inexplicable, I can only tell what they seem like:
Cautious, as if wading through a winter river.
Wary, as if afraid of their own neighbors.
Grave, like the courteous house guests.
Elusive, as of melting ice.
Pure and natural, as of unchiseled gems.
Wide and open, as of a deep valley.
Yet mysterious, oh yes, they were like troubled water.
Who can remain tranquil amidst troubled airs, that calmness may flow from within?
Who may remain at peace eternal, that motion would yield birth to nature?
For those who follow the Way, fulfillment has never been their aim.
Only as they are forever unfulfilled, can such freshness be ever renewed.

```

Is it some sort of poeticness that is happening here, or can any language have shorter sentences like these and have it be the norm?

# Answer
This question is really difficult to answer, because sentence length is a tricky beast. We usually measure it in words or tokens (which is words + punctuation marks). There are languages that can put much information in one word, like Greenlandic, a polysynthetic language. Such languages have short sentences in this measure.

The second problem is that sentence length is dependent on factors like genre, the existence of prescriptive style guides and personal preference of the author or speaker. Some prefer extremely long sentences, others prefer to produce aphorisms and proverb-like statements.

So I'm afraid there is no general answer, but my bet for a language with short sentences (measured on some carefully translated common text, to eliminate genre/preference as good as possible) is a polysynthetic one like Greenlandic.

P.S. Although average sentence length on a multilingual corpus seems to be a low hanging fruit, I did not find any papers on that in a very quick and dirty search.
> 3 votes

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Tags: semantics, sentence-structure
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# Question
Title: Do constructed languages need to have their own letters, words, & sounds?
In order for me to ask a higher quality question, I need to know, do constructed languages need to have their own letters, words, & sounds?

# Answer
No, a conlang does not **need** any of it. You can construct a language based on gestures (a sign language) or on whistles, or on other signals transporting information. You can construct a Pasigraphy, i.e., a written-only language.

But for a more conventional design that meets our intuition of language, you will probably use sounds and words, and letters to write the language. It is up to your creativity to come up with original sounds and letters, but there is definetely no need to do so. Many conlang designs rely on sounds (and complete phonologies) that occur in natural languages, and use usual letters (mostly Latin, but also Cyrillic or other existing writing systems like Runes) for writing. The words of a conlang are most often original but I even can imagine a conlang without original words: Draw existing words for natural languages in an eclectic way or create a conlang closely based on a natural language or a group of natural languages. The vocabulary of IALA Interlingua is hardly original.
> 11 votes

# Answer
As has already been said, the answer is, generally **no**. However, I’d like to look into it a bit deeper:

**Letters**

Many (most?) constructed languages are written with the Latin script, i.e. what I’m using right now to write this answer. However, many conlangers find the base set of 26 characters it provides too restrictive, and will make use of things like diacritics (áèñħ…), special characters used in some languages or the IPA (ŋß…) or letters from other alphabets (εφϑ…). This is a choice, and by no means a necessity. Some conlangers, in particular those creating languages for a constructed world, also like to invent entire writing systems and consider the representation with the Latin script (“romanisation”) merely a tool for easy representation online. Again, this is optional, but depending on your goals might be a good idea. It would not make sense to create a new writing system for an auxiliary language though, for example.

**Words**

There’s three ways one might interpret this question:

* Do I have to make my words sound different (from English / any other language)? Certainly not: auxiliary languages often take heavy inspiration from existing languages, as familiarity makes it easier to learn a language. Similarly, if you want to toy around with grammar but don’t really care about the actual outcome, you might as well just use placeholder words taken straight from English and focus on what you really care about.
* Do I have to make words which mean different things than the words in English/any other language? Here I am inclined to say **yes**. If you simply copy an English dictionary and replace all the words by other sounding words, then you’ve created what is called a *relex*. Whether relexes are considered conlangs or not is up for debate, in my eyes they are ciphers. However, there’s layers upon layers to this - is a conlang still a relex if you copy the lexicon but use completely different grammar? Perhaps not, but it’s not as interesting as if you also made a custom lexicon. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that doing so takes away most of what makes a conlang unique.
* Do I have to follow the idea of having sentences broken down into words? Absolutely not: it’s actually surprisingly hard (read: an unsolved problem) to define the concept of a word in a way that works for every language. Look into the (just as loosely defined) concept of polysynthesis if you’re intrigued.

**Sounds**

Language doesn’t have to rely on sound. There’s sign languages as a primary counterexample that also shows up “in real life”, and on top of that, graphical (written only), touch based and many other kinds of languages have been created.

But let’s assume you’re going to be making a spoken language. Two questions:

* Do I have to make *new* sounds? Well… no. There’s only so many sounds our mouths can make and most of them already occur in some language (and those that don’t, e.g. smacking ones teeth together don’t occur for good reasons), so it’s rather hard to even *make* new sounds. But if you’re making a language meant for aliens/sapient animals/whatever nonhuman you can come up with, then maybe you might want to. But many conlangers don’t bother, as it is *really hard*.
* Do I have to make a new sound system or can I just use the sounds of English/other language? Same point as with the words above: You don’t have to, and if your goal is to focus on other parts of the conlang you might as well ignore it, but if your goal is to make a good, interesting and unique conlang, then… yea you should.

**Summary**

In short, what you do and don’t do depends entirely on your design goals. If you wanna toy with a particular grammar concept, then focus on the essentials. If you wanna make the new big international auxlang then keep things familiar to the target audience. If you want to make a natural looking conlang, then go all in and be creative.
> 7 votes

# Answer
**Yes** -- after a fashion.

The main issue I have with your question lies in the specific terms used: words, letters & sounds.

So far, the answers have gotten around these things by pointing out whistle or sign languages. And I agree: technically speaking, in a sign language, there are no words and certainly no sounds.

The reason the answer is actually yes, I contend, is because I am sure what you actually mean by "words" is "discrete meaning carrying units of language" and by "sounds" & "letters" you probably mean "some way to convey said meaning through an interpersonal medium of communication".

When taken at the broader level, of course, language has to have "meaning carrying units" and it has to have "medium of communication". Else, language ceases to have meaning.

I would say that yes, ever invented language must have "words" (whether those words are spoken, signed, thought or written) as tokens of meaningful communication; and they must have "sounds" (whether spoken by mouth through the air or sent via radio waves between antennae) as a native & non-technological way of conveying meaning.

"Letters" indicate a specifically technological advancement to communication via language. An invented language's culture does not need to be that advanced. And even if it were, it would not need "its own" letters. It could borrow either someone else's writing system; for example the way Persian borrowed Arabic writing. Even though Persians had been writing for centuries already.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Yes and no. Every language spoken by humans has its own way of dividing the universe of possible speech-sounds into a few dozen phonemes, and its own restrictions on how phonemes can go together to make syllables and words (phonotactics).

If the language is written, there must be a way of mapping phonemes (or syllables) to characters.

But you're not required to make any of these different from those of all other languages!

You're not required to define the phonology first; likely it will not settle down until you're well into composing sample sentences and think “hm, that consonant-cluster or this diphthong doesn't fit the intended flavor.” Similarly, you might make a full grammar and dictionary in Latin script (or Cyrillic or hiragana or ...) before deciding that your fictional culture needs its own writing system.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation
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# Question
Title: How large must my consonant inventory be in order for nonconcatenative morphology to work?
In my quest to create a language for some fictional characters of mine, I came across nonconcatenative morphology like triconsonantal roots. If I wanted to employ this in my conlang, how many consonants must I have? I see Arabic and Hebrew, for example, have at least 25 consonants. Could I use fewer?

# Answer
It's a matter of combinatorics; if all your roots have three consonants, then you can have n^3 different roots; with ten consonants that would be 1000. (This assumes that all combinations are valid/usable). With 25 consonants you'd be at 15,625. If you add more variation, ie add biconsonantal roots as well, you can increase the number a bit.

So I would start off by thinking about the inventory you need, and then work backwards from there. But don't forget that 'root' is not the same as 'word': it would be more like 'concept': once you add vowels in between the consonants, your total number of words will be a lot more than the number of roots.
> 5 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, morphology
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# Question
Title: What words would naturally evolve tri-consonantal roots?
I determined to create a conlang with tri-consonantal roots (I call them tri-cons for short). My question then arose, "what words would naturally have a tri-con?" Verbs and the nouns derived from them would have tri-cons as exemplified in natural nonconcatenative languages. At the same time, those very languages have words which seem unrelated to tri-cons. In essence, I do not want to create tri-cons where none would evolve for naturalism and efficiency purposes.

Perhaps a more clear question is, "how prevalent are tri-cons in nonconcatenative languages?"

# Answer
Besides nouns and verbs, there are more content words that probably evolve triconsonantal root, namely adjectives and adverbs.

I won't expect function words like articles, determiners, pronouns, pre-/post-positions, particles, and conjunctions to be triconsonantal: Those words tend to be very short in any language and three consonants are already a heavy payload.

Somewhere on the fence are numerals and interjections: They can be "rooted", but they needn't.
> 0 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, morphology, naturalism
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# Question
Title: I need help with understanding perfect, perfective, perterite, and pluperfect
After reading the definitions of perfect past, perfective past, preterite past, and pluperfect past, I am confused as to what their distinctions are. They all are past tense forms indicating a completed action. Some of the articles I read even said there is overlap in their usage. Should I worry about these distinctions?

# Answer
> 5 votes
All the times you mention are in the past, but many languages, including English, care about more specific aspects of this past.

In a nutshell, preterite past describes *things that happened*, perfect past describes *things that **were** happening*, while pluperfect past describes *things that had happened*. Perfective past, the way I've seen it used, is synonymous with preterite past. There is also the **present perfect**, which also describes the past.

Because I think the more "complicated" forms are easier to explain, I'll go through them in reverse order.

Let's say you are telling about something in the past that happened around the time X.

**Present perfect** doesn't care about X at all, but just denotes something took place before the present. If you tell me you have met the pope, there's no way for me of telling when this occurred without further questions. Sentences "I have studied the mysteries." or "Have they eaten?" are not concerned about precisely when these things might have happened, just that they were in the past.

**Pluperfect past**, also called past perfect, tells you what happened before X. Consider "I had just left the house." or "They had seen this many times before.". These sentences don't take place at the time you left your house or when they saw whatever they saw, but after. We use this to give background information.

**Perfect past** goes on to describe what happened during the time X, to set the stage if you will. In the sentence "I was walking in the park when the phone rang.", the walking happens in the perfect past.

**Preterite past** describes things that happened right at the time X. In the sentence above, the phone rang in the preterite past.

So to answer your question:

### You **should** worry!

Or rather, you should **think about whether to worry or not**!

Some languages take great care not to confuse these concepts, some have just one verb forms that cover all the pasts. The English "I walked in the park when the phone rang." might work in some dialects or varieties of English, but to my (admittedly foreign) ears it sounds a bit off, or maybe old-fashioned (?).

English basically have three verb forms, exemplified by 'see', 'saw' and 'seen', two of which concerns the past, and forms the different kinds of pasts by adding words around them. Some languages, like Spanish, have more verb forms for the different pasts. "I saw" would translate to "Yo vi", while "I was seeing" translates to "Yo veía"¹

Some languages use even more past times. There is a time that's in the past, but after X, and there is nothing stopping you from giving this time its own verb form. In English, you could express this bu the (comparatively clunky) "I was about to eat when you came".

In the end it's up to you, but I think you'll have a more interesting conlanging time if you at least give it some thought!

¹) I *know* the 'yo' isn't necessary, I just think it might be clearer for those not very familiar with Spanish.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The most important thing to recognize is that **many of these terms are language-specific**. The word "preterite" is mainly used in describing Germanic languages, for example; in Ancient Greek, which has a very similar tense, it's called the "aorist".

So for a concrete example, let's use Latin. It's got several different past tenses that we can poke at using various different terms.

In Latin, each "tense" (*tempus*) actually involves two components: the *time* and the *aspect*. The time indicates the reference point of the action: past, present, or future? The aspect indicates the action's relationship to that reference point. This means you can have several different verb tenses (or "TAMs" if you prefer) that all relate to past time, but have different aspects.

In Latin, there are three aspects, which actually correspond very nicely to English verb forms. The **imperfective** (from the Latin for "not finished"), also known as the *progressive* or *continuous* aspect, indicates that something is happening over a period of time or happens frequently: "I am eating". The **perfect** (from the Latin for "finished"), also sometimes called the *perfective* aspect, indicates that the event is over and done with and you're talking about the aftermath of it: "I have eaten". And the **simple** aspect, also known as the *aoristic* or (confusingly) the *perfective*, treats the event as a single point in time: "I eat". (Unlike in English, you can't combine these in Latin; there's no one-to-one equivalent to "I have been eating", for example, to talk about the aftereffects of a long-term action.)

These are the foundation of the tense system:

* The **imperfect** tense is **past imperfective**, "I was eating". It indicates an event happening for some time in the past.
* The **aorist** or **preterite** tense (from the Latin for "passed") is **past simple**, "I ate". It indicates an event happening at a single point in the past.
* The **perfect** tense is **present perfect**, "I have eaten". Note that the reference point is actually the present! Remember, the perfect aspect focuses on the aftereffects, and the aftereffects of the past are happening now: I have eaten (in the past) so I'm no longer hungry (in the present).
* The **pluperfect** tense (from the Latin for "beyond finished") is **past perfect**, "I had eaten". This is talking about the aftereffects (perfect aspect), but those aftereffects themselves happen in the past.

This is how Latin decides to break things down. (It also has all of these aspects for the present and future times as well, giving tenses like the *future perfect*, talking about future aftereffects: "the show starts at nine? I *will have eaten* by then".) But other languages can, and do, handle things differently! And, annoyingly, there's no consistent standard for how these terms are used.

Some people, for example, use the term "perfective" for what I've called *perfect aspect*. Other people use it for what I've called *simple aspect*. The word "aorist" comes from the Greek for "undefined", so some people apply it to whatever the most "default" tense or aspect is in their language. And since "preterite" literally just means "passed", it's a convenient label to slap onto whatever past tense is lacking its own name.

What matters most is that you understand the distinctions *you're* making in *your* language, and give them labels that you (and hopefully the audience too) can understand.

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Tags: grammar, terminology, tense-aspect-mood
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# Question
Title: Roadmap for effective construction of a novel language
I have trivially dabbled in Esperanto, Klingon, and a few other languages. Now I want to build one, and not a distorted copy of an existing one. I want to make a non-junk constructed language.

Is there a decent guide for how to build a totally novel language? What sort of approaches are used?

Could you point to decent books, or high-quality articles on the subject?

Are there classes on the subject?

I'm looking for a better start than insert-here for dummies. What is a high-quality start?

# Answer
> 6 votes
One good place where many a conlanger has started out is The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder. I first encountered it as an impressionable teenager, and I think it's hard to overestimate the mark it left in that young brain of mine.

It introduces the reader to topics from phonology to grammar, as well as the overall process of creating a language. It also comes with examples and concrete tips on how to approach a project, what pitfalls to avoid and more!

# Answer
> 7 votes
In addition to *The Language Construction Kit* that @Edvin mentioned in his answer (and linked to), Mr Rosenfelder also has *Advanced Language Construction*, *The Conlanger’s Lexipedia*, and *The Syntax Construction Kit*; I have and recommend all four. *ALC* picks up where *LCK* leaves off; Mr Rosenfelder recommends using the *Lexipedia* to assist in building the vocabulary for your language, and *SCK* focuses on the syntax of languages and some of the problems involved in developing viable ones.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The Language Construction Kit is where I got my start, but there's also **The Art of Language Invention** by David J Peterson (the creator of Dothraki, among others). This is intended less as a step-by-step guide and more as a discussion of everything involved in conlanging, written by an experienced conlanger.

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Tags: conlang-creation, unnatural-features, design-goals
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# Question
Title: Could [j] and [ʎ] coexist in the same language as distinct phonemes?
As the title asks, could \[j\] and \[ʎ\] coexist in the same language as distinct phonemes? I imagine one would merge with the other or some other mechanism forms to make each more distinct. If the speakers had hearing exceeding that of humans, would this feature be more viable? Just a thought of mine.

# Answer
Sure. Italian does this. For a minimal pair, *aglio* `/aʎ.ʎo/` "garlic" vs *aio* `/a(j).jo/` "tutor". (There's no phonemic distinction between `/jj/` and `/j/` in Standard Italian.)
> 6 votes

# Answer
Such a distinction is pretty common across Romance languages, and a distinction between /ʎ/ & /j/ is preserved in Italian, Occitan, and most of the languages of Iberia (this latter phoneme is also often transcribed /ʝ/ in some languages). Spanish itself is unusual amongst the languages of Iberia in having mostly lost this distinction (with both undergoing yeísmo, merging /ʎ/ into /ʝ/), although lleísmo (with the distinction) is still the official standard in Spain itself, and preserved in some dialects (especially when spoken by people who speak other languages of Iberia).

Going through PHOIBLE, **the vast majority of languages with a /ʎ/ also have a distinct /j/**. There were 94 distinct languages with /ʎ/ in at least one listed inventory, of which only something like 7 languages (Ayacucho Quechua, Jungle Inga, Kabuverdianu, Liko, Pampanga, Paraguayan Guaraní, Serbian) didn't have a /j/ listed in at least one inventory. That's \>90% of languages with a /ʎ/ also have a distinct /j/. From that, if it's natural to have a /ʎ/ phoneme, it must be natural to have distinct /ʎ/ and /j/ phonemes.
> 3 votes

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Tags: phonetics
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# Question
Title: How should I define the lexicographic order for my conlang?
Though I've had a tough time choosing the phonology and the orthography of my conlang, I think I've finally confirmed it: 12 consonants, 10 vowels, Cyrillic script.

The consonants are:

* **Пп** for \[p\]
* **Тт** for \[t\]
* **Цц** for \[t͜s\]
* **Чч** for \[ʈ͡ʂ\], or \[t͜ɕ\] when iotified
* **Кк** for \[k\]
* **Ҁҁ** (koppa) for \[ʡ\]
* **Фф** for \[f\]
* **Ѳѳ** (fita) for \[θ\]
* **Сс** for \[s\]
* **Шш** for \[ʂ\], or \[ɕ\] when iotified
* **Мм** for \[m\]
* **Нн** for \[n\]

The vowels are:

* **Аа** for \[a\] / **Яя** for \[ja\]
* **Ээ** for \[e\] / **Ее** for \[je\]
* **Ыы** for \[ɯ\] / **Ии** for \[i\]
* **Оо** for \[ɔ\] / **Ёё** for \[jɔ\]
* **Уу** for \[u\] / **Юю** for \[ju\]

But how should the words of my conlang be ordered on a dictionary? It seems that the best solution is to follow the Russian lexicography, while inserting the missing letters owing to their Phoenician origins. That would give the lexicographical order of **АЕЁИѲКМНОПСТУФҀЦЧШЫЭЮЯ**. Or is there a better option?

(Sorry for bad tagging; there is no "lexicography" tag.)

# Answer
> 5 votes
People aren't especially consistent about this with natlangs; it tends to depend on the target audience. For example, Akkadian words are conventionally sorted by English alphabetical order, with Š and Ṣ inserted after S. This is convenient for English-speakers, who will see a letter that looks like an S, and find it in the S-esque section of the dictionary. Hebrew-speakers, who are used to separate letters for S, Š, and Ṣ, would probably prefer to put S (samekh) after N, Ṣ (tzade) after P, and Š (shin) after Q. But the majority of people consulting an Akkadian-to-English dictionary are probably not familiar with Hebrew alphabetizing conventions.

In-universe, the speakers of your conlang can get used to any lexicographic order. They tend to be pretty much arbitrary, after all, and children memorize them without issue. So I would think about out-of-universe convenience. Who is going to be consulting this dictionary? What ordering will they find most intuitive? The target audience is probably you more than anyone else (you're going to be adding to this dictionary, after all), so if referencing Phoenician alphabetical order works for you, I'd go with that.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I think your proposal sounds well-considered--especially if you want your computer to sort your vocabulary lists in alphabetical order rather than you having to do it all by hand.

If I were you, I'd (a) write your alphabet with each letter inserted into the cell of a single column table, (b) have the computer sort the items in the table, and (c) adopt the results of the sorting as alphabetical order.

# Answer
> 4 votes
For the Western alphabets (including Cyrillic), the lexicographic order is essentially arbitrary. If there was once a reason behind the original order of the Semitic alphabet, it is long forgotten and buried in the dust of time.

There are some scripts with a more rationalised lexicographic order, Indic scripts like Devanagari separate vowels from consonants and order the consonants by place of articulation. The conscript Tengwar by JRR Tolkien has adopted this approach. Also, the Universal Alphabet by Francis Lodwick followed this approach.

The decision is essentially yours: Reasons for some preference can be convenience of usage for the potential users of your conlang, æsthetic criteria like elegance of the sorting order or grouping similar shapes of the letters together, or linguistic criteria as in Devanagari.

# Answer
> 3 votes
It's ultimately an arbitrary choice. But, I assume that you want a "naturalistic" order to make it look like your version of the Cyrillic alphabet evolved in parallel with Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, etc., I would make one change: Move Ҁ (Q) to between П (P) and C (S), to match its position in the Phonecian, archaic Greek (Ϙ), and Latin alphabets.

**АЕЁИѲКМНОПҀСТУФЦЧШЫЭЮЯ**

An alternative ordering can be obtained by treating your alphabet as a more direct descendant of the Phonecian and Greek alphabets, treating Ц and Ч as counterparts to Tsadi/San (between P and Q), and Ш as Shin/Sigma. This gives:

**АЕЁИѲКМНОПЦЧҀСШТУФЫЭЮЯ**

And then there's the lazy programmer's approach of just using the Unicode code point order:

**ЁАЕИКМНОПСТУФЦЧШЫЭЮЯѲҀ**

# Answer
> 3 votes
dan04's answer gives several good options, but I will suggest some others, which are more likely if the letter was re-adopted after having fallen out-of-use. When a new letter is added to an existing alphabet, there seems to be a strong tendency to insert it at the end. This happened with the latin "Z" which was inserted at the end of the alphabet even though its Greek counterpart is towards the beginning of the alphabet. That would give you:

**АЕЁИѲКМНОПСТУФЦЧШЫЭЮЯҀ**

Another option is to put it with a letter that sounds similar, probably **К**:

**АЕЁИѲКҀМНОПСТУФЦЧШЫЭЮЯ**

Finally, you can put it with a letter that looks similar, like **С** (this is how the Latin letter G ended up coming after F).

**АЕЁИѲКМНОПСҀТУФЦЧШЫЭЮЯ**

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Tags: conlang-creation, writing-systems
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# Question
Title: Do you make a word then give it meaning, or do you think of a meaning and assign a word to it?
I wonder which is more effective, creating a list of conwords then giving definitions or, creating a list of definitions then assigning conwords?

# Answer
**meaning** and then words, because every language is built on the needs of the environment in which is based. **List the main words used** in that environment according to the geography and culture you are planning, **then you can start to separate it into groups and assigns common radicals** and all the other word-creation processes.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I have mostly made up conwords when I had a new meaning in mind. Most of the time now I am deriving new words from combinations of existing words. I do occasionally think of a conword that sounds so good that I replace past words or seek out a meaning so that it will become a fairly common usage.

That said, one way or another, I do wind up with conwords I like but don't need yet. I keep a list of them for future use. Importantly for my productivity, I have a counterpart list of English concepts for future use: so that I neither forget them nor randomly divert myself from the task I'm on when I think of them.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
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# Question
Title: How can I make complex relative clauses?
I can make simple relative clauses that share arguments just fine, but I struggle with certain clauses.

Take the following English sentences:

* Someone killed\* a person\*
* I hated the killing\*.
* You saw a person\*.

In English, this would be nested as "You saw the person whose killing by someone I hated." However, that uses a copious amount of particles, which is incompatible with my heavily agglutinating conlang, and I don't want to relex English anyway. How could I turn something like this into a sentence with relative clauses in an agglutinating SOV language? I tried making parts of this, but each has its own problem:

|R 1-NOM R person-S-ACC kill-PST-NMZ-ACC dislike-INT-PST| contains the clauses that would become relative, except I can't find a way to make the main clause reference the person behind multiple layers of clauses.

|2-NOM R thing-NOM kill-PST person-ACC see-PST| has the main clause and what I believe would be the first layer of the clauses, but I can't find a way to add descriptors to the verb without nominalizing it, which would ruin the entire clause.

# Answer
> 1 votes
In terms of different approaches to relative clauses, Hittite does it "backward" from English: it puts a marker on the noun in the relative clause, and then has a pronoun that's used in the main clause to point back to it. This means it should be compatible with basically anything you do with your nouns.

Quoting my answer on another site:

Hittite puts the noun inside the relative clause, then puts a pronoun in the main clause. The case of this pronoun indicates the role of that noun in the main clause.

> ÌR.MEŠ=*YA*=*wa=za ku-ēs dā-s nu=war=as=kan kattanta pehute-t nu=war=as=mu arha upp-i*
> subjects=my=QUOT=INT which-N.PL take-2S.PST and=QUOT=3P.ACC=MOD away lead-2S.PST and=QUOT=3P.ACC=1S.DAT back send-IMP.SG
> "**My subjects that** you have taken, you have led **them** away, send **them** back to me!"

Or in idiomatic English: "Send back my subjects that you have taken and led away!"

> *nasma=tta* URUKÙ.BABBAR-*sas* ZAG-*as ku-is BĒLU maninkuwan nu* ERIN₂.MEŠ ANŠU.KUR.RA.MEŠ *apē-dani wek-ti*
> or=2S.LOC Hattusa-GEN border-GEN who-N.SG lord-N.SG near and soldiers chariots that-DAT.SG request-2S
> "Or **the lord of the borders of Hattusa** (NOM) **who** is near to you, ask **that one** (DAT) for soldiers and chariots"

Or in idiomatic English: "alternately, ask the border-keeper who is closest to you for soldiers and chariots". The noun is in the nominative since it's the subject of the relative clause; the pronoun is in the dative because it's the indirect object of the main clause.

If necessary, the noun can also be repeated in the main clause; this is helpful when there are several relative clauses in a row, to emphasize which one goes where.

> dU-*as kuē-dani* UD-*ti hatuga tethi-ski-t* \[…\] *ANA* ĜIŠGIGIR-*ya=kan kuē-dani apē-dani UD-ti ar-hahat* \[…\] ĜIŠGIGIR-*ya tūriyan apātt=a dāi-r*
> stormgod-N.SG which-LOC.SG day-LOC.SG fearsomely thunder-ITER-3S.PST \[…\] LOC chariot=MOD which-LOC that-LOC day-LOC stand-1SG.PST \[…\] chariot-ACC harnessed there-and take-3PL.PST
> "**The day on which** the Storm-God thundered furiously, **the chariot on which** I stood **on that day**, they took **the harnessed chariot**"

Or in idiomatic English: "they took the harnessed chariot that I stood on on the day when the Storm-God thundered furiously".

# Answer
> 0 votes
Simplifying a little, I do this by letting combinations of case markers reference their foregoing nouns, like pronouns.

***1. What does that look like in simple examples?***

Here in SOV using case suffixes and freestanding pronouns, "referring" case first so it reads kind of like "the ACC object is the NOM up next." You can rearrange that sort of thing.

> Fred likes trees which lean.
>
> Fred-NOM trees-ACC like ACC-NOM lean.

> Fred points toward trees which lean.
>
> Fred-NOM trees-DAT point DAT-NOM lean.

You don't necessarily need the first -NOM if the subject is always first.

> Fred owns the horse and kicked Bob.
>
> Fred-GEN the horse-POS owns, GEN-NOM Bob-ACC kicked.

> Fred owns the horse that Bob kicked.
>
> Fred-GEN the horse-POS owns Bob POS-ACC kicked.

> Fred owns the horse that kicked Bob.
>
> Fred-GEN the horse-POS owns POS-NOM Bob-ACC kicked.

***2. What does that look like for my example?***

> You saw the person whose killing by someone I hated.
>
> You-NOM person-ACC saw, I ACC-GEN killing-POS someone-ERG POS-ACC hated.

***3. What if I have multiple objects of the same type?***

For me, the case particles also "and" by repeating.

> Fred likes trees and buildings which lean and which stink.
>
> Fred-NOM trees-ACC buildings-ACC like ACC-NOM lean \[ACC-NOM\] stink.

If a verb always comes last, you may not need the second 'ACC-NOM' to "and" there. A "zero-and" was an emergent behavior from my syntax which I love.

The speaker should decide whether the intended antecedent is clear in context...

> Yuki teaches Japanese and Javanese, which is uncommon in Tokyo.
>
> Yuki-NOM Japanese-ACC Javanese-ACC teaches, ACC-NOM uncommon Tokyo-LOC is.

... whether you are better off with two sentences or a different tool (a "verb case" for this and other non-finite verbs? a pro-verb to refer to a verb?)...

> Yuki teaches Icelandic and Javanese, which is uncommon in Tokyo.
>
> Yuki-NOM Icelandic-ACC Javanese-ACC teaches. Teaching-NOM those subjects-ACC Tokyo-LOC is uncommon.

Or perhaps use word order to link by proximity. Below there are two different "locative objects." Context might already tell the listener that "they" can't take "the day." Still each appears closest to the clause where it is relevant.

> The day on which the Storm-God thundered furiously, the chariot on which I stood on that day, they took it
>
> The day-LOC the Storm-God-NOM thundered furiously, the day-LOC I-NOM the chariot-LOC stood, they-NOM LOC-ACC took.

***4. What does that look like in a more complex example?***

> Alice sees Bob, who points at Charlie, who runs from Alice, who is Bob's neighbor and boss.
>
> Alice-NOM Bob-ACC sees, ACC-NOM Charlie-DAT points, DAT-NOM Alice-ABL runs, ABL-NOM-POS Bob-GEN neighbor ABL-NOM-POS boss is.

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Tags: grammar, syntax, sentence-structure
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# Question
Title: The pros and cons of having the same word be a noun, verb, and/or adjective at the same time?
I have this burgeoning principle of "let all words be in a base form such that the base form means the abstraction behind a noun, verb, and adjective". Then you *realize* a word into one of those 3 with a suffix. I actually have a 4th kind of word, essentially a particle. So in my word list spreadsheet I am starting to map out how a base word can be realized into multiple forms, such as this:

*The "manner" column is an adjective/adverb/determiner/pronoun sort of thing, and the "fusion" column is a preposition/particle sort of thing. Only have like 50 particles so far, but 4k base words (4k rows in the spreadsheet).*

Notice how several of the words fill out 2 or 3 of the middle 4 columns. This is because, at least in English, there is a relevant concept in that word form. Like "certainty" is the noun, and "certain" is the adjective.

However, I am not sure this is the best idea, wanted to run it by you to see the pros and cons, and measure it against natural languages at a high level, specifically one aspect of it, described below.

The pro is that we have short words with only a single syllable appended as the suffix for each of the 4 word forms. The con is the following... Not all nouns/objects are the same type of thing. Not all adjectives/manners are the same type of thing. Not all actions/verbs are the same type of thing. Let me explain.

* Certainty is like the "state of x", the state of being certain. It is relative to the adjective.
* Propagation is either the "propagate event" itself, the "propagate result", or the "propagate process". It is not the "propagation state". Also, it is relative to the action, not the adjective like certainty.
* Multiplication is either the "multiply process", or the "multiply result". Relative to the multiply action. So it is kind of similar to "propagate".
* Frailty is a derivative of the adjective frail, and is like the "state of x".
* Substance is the base noun, and substantial is derived from that. Substantial is like "substance containing".
* Explanation is like "the explain result". Explanatory is "capable of being explained" or something like that.
* I have others such as "ambush" (the action, and the noun, being the "event of ambushing").

Here is some more:

* A "dig" is an action, and the place that was dug (in English). This is like the "dig result".
* Leniency is dependent on the adjective lenient, and is like the "nature of being lenient" or something. The action seems like it could be "to be lenient", but then it is the action of being lenient.
* Convergence could be a noun for converge, and convergent the adjective. But convergence is like the "function or nature of converging". And convergent is like "converge-able".

So needless to say, the structure of the actions/verbs, objects/nouns, and manners/adjectives/etc. are not the same across words. However, there are some standard ways we can perceive things related to the underlying concept, and so it at some level makes sense to have things like 3 words in around the concept of "converge", filling 3 of the 4 roles. In other cases, there is only 1 role filled, in others, 2. Maybe it's possible to fill all 4 roles, I'm not sure yet.

But in any case, essentially, this is filling the roles with arbitrary meanings, there is no pattern to it. That means essentially you have to memorize each case (so for converge, each of the 3 uses must have the meaning memorized, because "convergence" is the "nature of x", not the "x result" or "x event", etc.). There are at least 5 noun structures I've outlined here, but I have at least 30 cases marked out. So a noun might be any one of the 30 possibilities. Likewise, an action might be "being x" or "making x" or "doing x", so there's a few possible action categories as well. Same with adjectives.

So it seems that there is no way around this, other than to not use this pattern. That is, forget about having the 4 forms of words with their short suffix, and assigning them seemingly random/arbitrary meanings related to a central concept. Instead, just be straight and say "converge nature" or "converge result" or "converge event", when talking nouns, and same for verbs/adjectives. I think with this approach you would no longer need suffixes because every word is only ever a noun or verb or adjective, not more than one. But at the same time, I think that latter approach might be more verbose, and you would have things revolve around one of the 4 categories, and then the other related words would have to have at least an extra word (since this is an analytic style), since it would be building off of the reference word (whether its a noun, verb, adjective, etc.).

So I am wondering, and hence the question. Is it okay to have this arbitrary assignment of meanings to the 4 slots? English does this, for sure. But is it a bad thing? A learner must already memorize all 4k words, but now there is potentially 4x more words (1 in each slot) that they would have to memorize. Instead of just memorizing "x event" or "y nature", which feels more low-level and reusable, and so less to memorize.

Basically, is it bad to have this sort of arbitrary assignment of meanings to these categories? Or is it possibly a good or natural thing? I am not so sure. What are the pros and cons, and how does it compare to natural languages?

Here are a list of some more nouns, and their adjective or verb derivation:

* chat (the chat object)
* count (the count result)
* security (secure system/framework)
* diagnosis (diagnose result)
* invocation (invoke event)
* turn (turn event)
* sneak (sneak event)
* opposition (oppose force)
* repentance (repent process)
* ignorance (ignore state)
* membership (member state)
* jiggle (jiggle action)
* clarity (clear feature state)
* frivolity (frivolous essence)
* innocence (innocent nature)
* diligence (diligent essence)
* gallop (gallop event)
* marvel (marvelled thing)
* revocation (revoke result)
* undulation (undulate event)
* slit (slit result)
* commit (commit object)

# Answer
Yours is an impressive insight! Nouns do lump together random/evolved combinations of "noun structures" and I had never really thought about it until reading here: neither in English-speaking life, nor in learning other languages, nor in conlanging.

I take that as significant. Like I have heard statistics about hairs and things in peanut butter which I wouldn't choose to eat, say: and since I have been eating them, apparently they're not so bad. No harm, no foul. Similarly, most days I must see 1,000 objects in colors I can distinguish by color: they're "brown." If we have not needed to disambiguate these noun structures all the time, then apparently we do not need to disambiguate these noun structures all the time. In the same lumping spirit, I will continue mixing metaphors: you've unearthed a big ugly dragon with a "live and let live" attitude.

If you're doing an Ithkuil kind of conlang and need to leave nothing unsaid, then I might recommend a variety of noun suffixes instead of just one?

If you're not, then you get to choose which details you want to talk about and which can remain ambiguous. Instead of equipping each noun to disambiguate noun structures by itself, when you DO need to make such a distinction, let multiple words lend a hand like you did here in English. If you find you're making the same distinction all the time, you'll already have the noun structure insights to choose how to distinguish words on a case by case basis.
> 1 votes

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Tags: vocabulary, morphology
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# Question
Title: Are there examples of languages where prepositions are treated as nouns/verbs/adjectives instead?
I am struggling figuring out how to consider "function" words (like particles or prepositions) in a conlang. Verbs, nouns, and adjectives have been relatively straightforward but not these function words. Here are 70 prepositions from English:

> aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, anti, around, as, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, concerning, considering, despite, down, during, except, excepting, excluding, following, for, from, in, inside, into, like, minus, near, of, off, on, onto, opposite, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, round, save, since, than, through, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, versus, via, with, within, without

Some are movement/location/position based, some are containment, etc..

Are there any languages which lack treating these kinds of words like this, and instead treat them as nouns, verbs, or adjectives/adverbs ("features"/modifiers)? If not, why not? If so, what are some examples?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Swahili has very few actual prepositions; in most cases where English would use a preposition, Swahili uses a noun.

> Paka iko ndani ya sanduku.
> cat located inside of box
> *The cat is in the box.*
>
> Paka iko juu ya meza.
> cat located top of table
> *The cat is on the table.*
>
> Nitakwenda nyumbani baada ya kesho.
> I-FUT-go home-LOC after of tomorrow
> *I'll go home after tomorrow.*

These "prepositions", *ndani*, *juu*, *baada*, are syntactically just class-9 nouns meaning "the inside", "the top", and "the time after"; as nouns, they can be joined to other nouns with *-a* "of". Swahili really likes its nouns and uses them in many cases where English would want a preposition, an adverb, an adjective, etc.

Notably, the main reason English has so many prepositions is because they used to be an open class. All the ones starting with "be-", for example, are derived from nouns.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I faced English prepositions with the same bewilderment.

Anybody should... I drew out a list of adposition "functions" using Spanish's smaller set. I am usually looking at my own table, not the English/Spanish, but I do not recall needing to add any adpositions to that list in many dozen (maybe 100+ by now) pages of different translations.

For my own conlang, I worked up a set of "position" verbs which filled the functions through their several verb forms,

intransitive

* "Fred ins" being "Fred enters"

or transitive with objects in different cases

* "Fred ins ACC-yard" being "Fred is inside the yard"
* "Fred ins DAT-yard" being "Fred goes into the yard"
* "Fred ins GEN-house" being "Fred goes in from the yard"
* "Fred ins INS-house" being "Fred goes through the yard"

I had extra spaces left on my VerbxCase multiplication table. I assigned those to other common verbs: "Fred fars" -\> "Fred is unfamiliar."

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Tags: vocabulary
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# Question
Title: What is an example of a constructed language focusing on beauty and conceptual purity?
By conceptual purity, I mean it tries to avoid arbitrariness, and seeks the most default or neutral way to achieve an aim.

For example, some languages are written right to left, others left to right. The spatial arrangement may be convenient, but it seems to add more layers to the system than may be needed. If words could be represented in a form permitting nesting (circle, square), “sentences” could be arranged in a central way. With computers, instead of representing time as a spatial axis (the flow of communication from left to right), we could represent it as change, through time, exactly what it is (the forms on the screen morph in real time).

Also, “letters” can be made beautiful as well as less arbitrary - the letters of the Roman alphabet don’t have a stark resemblance to the sounds they stand for. The order of the Roman alphabet also seems arbitrary.

If something is unordered, it should be reflected that way. It would be interesting if there were a very elemental mathematical function which could generate distinct shapes, but randomly. Or, the letters should have diagrammatic coherence with mouth patterns. You could have a symbol for the part of the mouth, and the type of activity / force (labial, plosive). You could also develop this system with more precision, make the standardization of the International Phonetic Alphabet also appear arbitrary (I think). I actually don’t know, but I think there may be phonemes that are borderline between two IPA phonetic concepts. Since certain phonemes have continuously varying parameters that really define them, as well as with allowable margins of nearness for a sound to be understood as that phoneme, there should be a phonetic symbol that denotes this explicitly - the entire specification of a phoneme, the total information, in a logical diagram that is sort of like “the picture theory of language”, it actually maps to the phenomenological / ontological form of the sound phenomenon, and is not taken to stand for it by convention alone.

Or, we could use a series of dots, like die faces, or Braille, but maybe we could use principles to decide what maximal beauty could look like. How spaced should the dots be, and why? We should consult a cognitivistic theory of aesthetics. Maybe this more tempered form could at least write from top to bottom, since somehow it feels more human and natural to me than bottom to top. Maybe on a smartphone screen you could read downwards infinitely, or you could have the idea of “lines” by scrolling to the bottom whereupon the nice line ascends upwards in reverse order; you continue reading by scrolling up.

Or, of course, you could get rid of phonemes entirely.

The grammar should try to keep what we understand to be the pure functions of semantics intact rather than, again, conventionalized. I can think of more ideas later. The idea is the same: what form maps purely to the nature of logic/propositions/semantics, minimizing arbitrary representation conventions?

Which constructed language is like this?

# Answer
Probably there is no conlang or conscript that implements all the mentioned levels of "purity" or beauty touched in the question.

For scripts I'd like to mention Alexander Melville Bell's visible speech that does not only have a logical order of the symbols but also symbols encoding the way the sounds are articulated.

Hangul, already mentioned in a comment by Janus Bahs Jacquet also deserves a honorable mention here.
> 1 votes

# Answer
I'm quite fond of Rikchik. Hangul taken to the nines.
> 1 votes

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Tags: list-of-languages, design-goals
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# Question
Title: What steps in the conlang process am I missing?
My currently known process for conlanging is 1) set goals, 2) define phonology, 3) Romanize, 4) phonotactics, 5) define word order, 6) define morphosyntactic alignment, 7) define morphology type, 8) create list of basic root words, 9) phonological evolution and new word derivation

Is there anything I am missing? Should I reorder any of these?

# Answer
Remember that "word order" and "morphosyntactic alignment" and "morphology type" are broad categories used to make generalizations about natural language. Saying that English is SVO can be a useful shorthand, but that ignores everything that makes English syntax interesting!

These broad categories are a starting point, laying out the basic groundwork for you. But it won't give you anything unique or individual about your particular language. That part is up to you.

So I would replace those steps with figuring out the syntax and morphology in general. Don't limit yourself to Greenberg's universals—because often, linguistic "universals" aren't. And this goes double for conlangs.
> 2 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation
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# Question
Title: Treat the gerund and/or infinitive as a case
Basic questions:

**Do we know of any property of a gerund or infinitive which prevents it being treated totally like a type of noun?**

**Do we know any language which expresses gerunds or infinitives as a noun case?**

Background:

I combine noun particles to mark noun properties like declension, plurality, etc.

Examples with accusative particle 'ya,' then with three noun particles:

> Na caye ya mwaecolo.
>
> 2PS.FUT change ACC everything.
>
> You will change everything.

> Na caye yaliaŋc omahál.
>
> 2PS.FUT change ACC.DEM1.PL dress.
>
> You will change these dresses.

I have been making verbs into certain non-finite verbs in the same way.

> Na hel óya caye.
>
> 2PS.FUT avoid GER/INF.ACC change.
>
> You will avoid changing.

For years I have just had it sitting to the side, the only noun particle with nothing else in its category.

It just occurred to me I could treat this infinitive/gerund particle ó as another noun case. As above, it already indicates a type of object for use with some verbs. It can be compatible with other noun particles (e.g., *this swimming,* *many changings,* *neither swimming nor running*...). I could give it some pronouns (like my other cases have) for where the antecedent is an action (e.g., *He did so*). It would be an unusual case insofar as it can also combine with other cases (It's safe **from** run**ning**.)

Presently I haven't found a sentence where treating gerund-ness as a noun case messes things up. I could use help thinking of a test situation for this.

# Answer
You'd want to think about constructions like "a talent for swimming" or "the art of cooking", but if it can combine with other "cases", this isn't an issue.

My question for you is: why call it a "case" at all? The word "case" is usually used for a marking that can be applied to any noun to indicate its relationship to other words in the sentence. And this doesn't seem like a marking you can put on any noun: you can't put it on nouns at all, only on verbs.

So I'd probably call it a particle that turns a verb into a noun (gerund or infinitive or whatever you want to call it) and leave "case" for the exclusive markings. But the definitions of these terms aren't set in stone, and it certainly wouldn't be the weirdest use of "case" out there.

For a real-world example, Swahili has a single category of marking on nouns that encodes number, gender, and certain semantic roles (like "this is where the action is happening"). This is the category that triggers agreement on verbs and adjectives, and can be used to distinguish pronouns; since it covers semantics that would be marked by case in other languages, it's not unreasonable to consider this a "case" marking, in the sense used in your question. And there's a special one of these markings for infinitives (number 15).
> 4 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, grammar, nouns
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# Question
Title: Denoting arbitrary ligatures when transcribing my script to Latin
I'm working on a written language where ligatures are important. Pretty much any letter could be joined to any other, and doing so could change the meaning of the word.

Too facilitate writing about this language digitally I'd like to transcribe it to Latin letters, but arbitrary ligatures are hard to write in a fluent manner. One idea that has occurred to me is to use some sort of diacritic to note that a letter should be joined to the next. Using a suitable editor (I use Emacs, enabling the TeX input method) this as is easy as pushing an extra key or two, and it can be done without interrupting the flow of writing. (Easy to write diacritics include t̄, ṯ, ṫ, ṭ, ẗ, t́, t̀, t̃ and t̂)

Question: Is there some method already in use to denote arbitrary ligatures, preferably denotable in Unicode?

Ideally, I would like to draw slurs above or below the letters, as is done in sheet music, but I haven't found a convenient method of writing this.

My current favorite is using a bar below a letter to denote that it should be tied to the next. It lo̱oks li̱ke ṯhis. I'm not sure though, as it might be more "logical" to underline both the conjoined letters, li̱ḵe ṯẖis.

The method needs to be able to denote ligatures with a̱ṟḇi̱ṯṟa̱ṟi̱ḻy̱̱ m̱a̱ṉy̱ ḻe̱ṯṯe̱ṟs̱.

A problem with this approach is that **the under lines move around depending on the font used**! If I copy some of my underlined text into the box where you can write an answer, the lines seem to move one letter to the right, and when posted they seem to be shifted more or less randomly. (You could try this to see for yourself!) Their position is nice and consistent when I write them in Emacs, but it would be nice to retain the option of exporting the text to some other format some day.

I've seen the method of using brackets, li\[ke\] \[th\]is, but I will be conjoining *a lot* of letters, and it sort of looks a bit clunky.

At this point I'm still open to diacritics, maybe some kind of brackets or perhaps even hyphens (lik-e t-his), or something completely different, I just thought knowing what others have done might help me to figure it out.

# Answer
> 2 votes
For completeness, I'd like to mention that Unicode *does* support putting slurs over an arbitrary number of characters…in theory. Characters U+1D177 "begin slur" and U+1D178 "end slur" (or U+1D175/6 "begin/end tie") are mainly meant for use in MusicXML and similar formats, but they're characters like any other. In theory, you should be able to use them in text, to put a slur over your letters.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any font that supports that usage, currently.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Consider adopting - or reversing - a convention that I have seen used in Catalan: “ll” is normally a digraph representing a single sound; there are words in which it should not be considered a digraph, but instead two separate occurrences of “l”. To indicate this, Catalan uses the interpunct (centred dot), “l·l”.

If, in your Latin alphabet transcriptions/transliterations, your ligatures are less common than isolate letters, use the interpunct to signal that the letters on either side are to be ligated (e.g., *a·e* is *æ* and *ae* is *ae*); if the reverse is true, use the interpunct to separate non-ligated letters (e.g., *ae* is *æ* and *a·e* is *ae*).

(*The interpunct as a HTML entity is · or ·.*)

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Choose a notation you like. Choose a font where it looks good. Use those wherever possible.**

You describe a font issue that’s causing problems for your chosen notation. This *should* be possible to work around at the font level!

Literally *any* text might be formatted in an undesirable way by some font, rendering engine, or combination thereof. It’s just hitting you hard in this case because of the combining characters. These often have bugs that may only be apparent on combinations of characters that the designers didn’t expect to be used (“nobody ever puts an ogonek on a letter t!”), or with a particular combination of font and rendering software.

For what it’s worth, my system<sup>\[1\]</sup> *doesn’t* have the “shifting” you report: the underlines in “a̱ṟḇi̱ṯṟa̱ṟi̱ḻy̱̱ m̱a̱ṉy̱ ḻe̱ṯṯe̱ṟs̱” appear in the same positions in your question and in this text box where I’m typing. Well, almost the same: the font in this box is monospaced, and also larger than that elsewhere, so I can clearly see spaces between each underline where I’m typing. In contrast, the proportional font used in question and answer text loses these spaces between narrow letters (like “itr” and “ril” in *arbitrarily*).

Hence my recommendation. Wherever it’s in your control, you can use the font that works for you. If you choose a freely available font, you can recommend the font to readers to try and cover cases where it’s not in your control. And if publishing your transcriptions on the web, which is an odd mix of “in your control” and “not”, you could use a font from Google Fonts or similar.

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\[1\]: I know my setup isn’t especially typical, though. I’m on Fedora Linux 36, and my browser (currently Firefox 107) reports the fonts I’m seeing as Liberation Sans for question and answer text, and Liberation Mono for the text entry box.

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Some further thoughts: Unicode offers a wealth of combining characters. Some may serve your purpose better than your current choice, which is U+0331 COMBINING MACRON BELOW.

* For example, here’s U+0332 COMBINING LOW LINE instead:
“a̲r̲b̲i̲t̲r̲a̲r̲i̲l̲y̲ m̲a̲n̲y̲ l̲e̲t̲t̲e̲r̲s̲”
(This looks better to me, forming an *almost* unbroken underline. Almost: there’s a gap after the “m”, and the descender on each “y” pushes the line out of place.)
* Some combining characters specifically tie two successive characters together. The most slur-like is U+035C COMBINING DOUBLE BREVE BELOW. This looks good for me in a monospaced font, but it turns into a bit of a mess with a proportional font:
`a͜r͜b͜i͜t͜r͜a͜r͜i͜l͜y m͜a͜n͜y l͜e͜t͜t͜e͜r͜s` … a͜r͜b͜i͜t͜r͜a͜r͜i͜l͜y m͜a͜n͜y l͜e͜t͜t͜e͜r͜s
* Another option is U+035F COMBINING DOUBLE MACRON BELOW:
a͟r͟b͟i͟t͟r͟a͟r͟i͟l͟y m͟a͟n͟y l͟e͟t͟t͟e͟r͟s
(This isn’t so good in the fonts my browser is using, but it looks much better in my text editor, which is using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.)
* There are also the Combining Half Marks, at least some of which are explicitly meant to be used to compose marks that span more than two letters. The trouble is finding a font that supports this properly! Another downside is that it can be fiddly to insert different characters for the start, middle, and end of your sequences.
    + This example uses U+FE2B to start each tie, U+FE2D for the middle, and U+FE2C for the end. To me, it looks *okay*, but not fantastic:
    a︫r︭b︭i︭t︭r︭a︭r︭i︭l︭y︬ m︫a︭n︭y︬ l︫e︭t︭t︭e︭r︭s︬
    + I get better results with the “continuous macron” characters used by Coptic (U+FE24, U+FE25, and U+FE26), but they’re an overline, not an underline:
    a︤r︦b︦i︦t︦r︦a︦r︦i︦l︦y︥ m︤a︦n︦y︥ l︤e︦t︦t︦e︦r︦s︥

Finally, **markup may be more suitable** than any character representation. For instance, a simple underline produces an unbroken connecting tie on most systems.

# Answer
> 1 votes
One idea (roughly borrowing from the practice of transcribing cuneiform) is make creative use of capital letters: Use lower case letters for single letters of your conscript and capital letters for the ligatures. When two ligatures follow each other without an intervening single letter, place a separator, e.g., the middle dot ·, between the groups of capital letters.

If you want to use slurs (I like that idea) have a look at MusicTeX (you will have to fiddle around a bit with it to apply the slurs to letters instead of musical notes).

# Answer
> 1 votes
In cuneiform studies, it's common to use "half brackets" to indicate a damaged section of the text.

You might find these less disruptive than full brackets, in terms of the overall flow of your text. The usual Unicode characters for this are top left corner (U+231C) and top right corner (U+231D), but depending on the font they may introduce an annoying amount of whitespace into your line: a⌜eio⌝u. And unfortunately, while there are several options for the right half that take up less space ("end of stimme" aa, "combining left angle above" a̚a), I haven't found any good options for the left half. For the image above I used LaTeX to override the font's kerning.

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Tags: writing-systems
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# Question
Title: Is there a language whose every sentence is a command?
I am building a conlang that is heavily based on the Haskell programming language, and I was thinking about how sentences work. Let me call this conlang **Jeksa** for the moment.

Jeksa models every sentence as an action to modify the real world — Haskell's `RealWorld`, aka the state of the `IO` monad.

Then I found that every sentence is a command, at least under this model. In addition to usual imperatives, declarative sentences are commands to let them know, and interrogative sentences are commands to let them tell. To demonstrate:

> \[Usual sentence\] One plus one equals two.
> \[In this model\] **You gotta know that** one plus one equals two.
>
> \[Usual sentence\] Does one plus one equal three?
> \[In this model\] **You gotta tell me whether** one plus one equals three.
>
> \[Usual sentence\] Who told you that BS?
> \[In this model\] **You gotta tell me** who told you that BS.

To paraphrase, declarative sentences are attempts of modifying the listener's knowledge, and interrogative sentences are requests to fetch the listener's knowledge.

However, I've never seen a natural language that actually goes well with this model. Is there any?

# Answer
> 11 votes
You need some kind of a test to show that a sentence in a particular language is a command, which is a communicative function. You can't just rely on e.g. defining an imperative verb form and defining a "command" as a sentence with an imperative verb form. The neutral essence of the concept of "commanding", or "ordering", is communicating a desire that some proposition be true, and furthermore that you have enforcement authority to enact consequences against the addressee. The consideration of "enforcement authority" tells you that "Do you have the time?" is not a command, even though it is an indirect request to another party to tell you the time. Your examples lack the "enforcement authority" aspect of commands.

Requests can be very difficult to identify on linguistic grounds, for example "I bought lettuce at the store" is a command, in some social contexts (it's up to you to imagine the scenario, and then to explain how this sentence could / should be interpreted as a request). The listener simply has to ask "Why in the world would you ever say such a sentence to me; what am I supposed to do about it?".

"Command" is not a linguistic thing, it is a social thing. If there is a society where all interactions between people are necessarily orders with an attached threat, then the language will not need any explicit markers of "command" status, and a child would never be able to learn the function of the markers, instead they would just conclude that the marker is a bit of obligatory noise added to every sentence. It's only when commands are distinguished from non-commands that it makes sense to say that a given sentence in a language is a *command* rather than just a *sentence*.

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Tags: natural-languages
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# Question
Title: Help, drowning in Dative---What should inform my conlang's exact usage of it? Do languages ever have a "miscellaneous" case?
I am a native English speaker that wanted to make a conlang.... recipe for disaster, I know. My language has Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive. I was having difficulty internalizing how to use the Dative case and went looking for guides to help familiarize myself with it. I found that languages differ in exactly how they use it and what can count as a Dative. I had previously tried to translate the phrase "the son of god is given," and realized that I didn't know weather "god" should be in the dative or not. The language treats "of god" in this case as an adjective. Since it's a noun shouldn't it have nominative marking, which is the "default" or should/could anything that's not nominative or accusative get shoehorned into dative marking?

So in summery: -Does anyone have recommendations for resources that provide a better perspective on what datives can be like in different languages?

-What do languages tend to do when a word doesn't fit into any of their cases-- what does it default to?

-What if anything should inform my decision on how the dative is used?

# Answer
> 4 votes
The names of cases are pretty arbitrary -- there is no law that a language has to have any particular cases.

Many inflected languages express functions through particular endings; for example, the actor of a given action, the thing/object the action affects, or the target of the action. As these are similar across languages, philologists are using the same names for these paradigms of endings, and call them *cases*, using the names from Latin grammar.

So the nominative indicates who executes an action, the accusative expresses the object or thing, and the dative the target. The genitive expresses possesion.

Now in English we don't really have cases (apart from pronouns), as function is expressed by word order or through prepositions.

> The girl gives the dog a bone

The nominative is the default first noun group, and because *give* takes two objects, *the dog* is the 'dative' and 'a bone' is the accusative. But they're not marked. If you swap them around, you need to use a preposition:

> The girl gives a bone to the dog

(You can also insert a preposition into the first example for emphasis: *The girl gives to the dog a bone (and to the cat a piece of string)*)

So when designing your own language, you don't need to start off with cases *a priori*. Think about the functions you need to express, and then think of a way how to express them using morphology (word endings) or syntax (word order, prepositions/particles).

In your example, *the son of god is given*, one would call *of god* a genitive; German: "der Sohn Gottes", Latin: "filius dei" (note that English uses *of*, whereas German and Latin use endings). The *son* is nominative; as the whole example is in the passive voice and it is the subject. (It would be in the accusative if it was *X gives the son of god*).

So my advice is: if you're unclear about grammar, simply think of the functional relationships between the words. This is usually what cases express, and they are realised in different ways in different languages. If your conlang is not inflected, you use prepositions, otherwise endings. Whatever floats your boat... But don't get fixated on linguistic terminology from a specific language. Esperanto, for example, does not have a dative, but uses prepositions instead to express an indirect object (the dog in the example above), but the accusative for the direct object (*la knabino donas al hundo oston*, or *la knabino donas oston al hundo*)

As an example: *give* (as a conceptual act) has the following 'slots'

1. actor
2. object
3. recipient

When you use a word expressing the concept of giving, these are the slots you need to fill (some are optional sometimes). How do you distinguish the slot fillers from each other? This is where your word endings or prepositions as markers come in.

# Answer
> 2 votes
### Ask a Native Speaker

Seriously.

You can look in grammars and check out WALS and CALS, but really I'd suggest introspection. Let your inner native speaking guide show you how her language works.

For example, you've told us that "of God" (and presumably other similar phrases like "of wood" and "of England") is 'treated as an adjective'. What this tells me is that, leaving aside theological considerations and matters of scriptural exegesis & translation, properties like origin and constitution the like can't be nominal.

So, "of England" is always going to be "English"; "of wood" is always going to be "wooden". I'd suspect that "of God" is thus always going to be "divine" or "godly".

As you talk with her about her language, your understanding of how it works will improve.

This is but one way to create a language. There are other ways, too.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Well, first of all, every language uses its cases differently. Even though both Latin and German have a "nominative" case, they're not used in exactly the same way. This means there's not really a resource describing what the "dative" means in different languages, because the name is really just a label; more often you'll find a resource describing what *all* the cases are like in one specific language.

The name "dative" comes from the Latin word for "give", because that's one of its most obvious uses: when you have a verb like "give" that takes three nouns, the third one usually goes in the dative. For the same reason, it's sometimes called the "indirect object case": conventionally, the first noun attached to a verb is called the subject, the second one is called the direct object, and the third one is called the indirect object.

But in Latin, that wasn't its main purpose. The real purpose of the dative case in Latin is to indicate *who benefits* from an action. The person who benefits from giving is the recipient, for example. But it's also used with verbs that take less than three nouns. The person experiencing an emotion is given in the dative (*mihi placet* "this pleases **me**"), as is the person making use of a thing (*mihi nomen* "**my** name"), and the person whose perspective is being referenced (*mihi vidētur* "it seems **to me**").

In Greek, on the other hand, the dative tended to indicate the circumstances of something. In Greek you can use the dative to indicate someone who was nearby during an event, even if they weren't directly involved, or the time or place where it happened. In Latin, other cases or prepositions are used for this.

To answer your explicit question, it is common for languages to have a "default" case when nothing else applies. In Latin this is the nominative; in English, the accusative. (Think about which form you use when there's no verb in the sentence: "who's there?" "me", not \*"I".) But it's generally used when nothing in the sentence assigns the noun a different case. It sounds like "of god" here has a specific role it's been assigned—a modifier to "son"—and that role would normally give it a case. I don't know how the cases work in your particular conlang, but Latin and English would both use the genitive here (*filius deī*, "the god's son").

# Answer
> 2 votes
I'd like to focus on the second title question:

***Do languages ever have a "miscellaneous" case?***

Yes. Hindi's oblique case comes to mind. Subject and direct objects are very common, not very remarkable. They take the normal noun form/case. Hindi (re)marks miscellaneous nouns with the oblique, "Non-Subject-Non-Direct-Object" case. Hindi goes SOV:

* I donations want.
* I boxes want.
* I donations boxes want.

Wait, what do you want, donations or boxes? What's the other one doing?

* Do you want donations *in boxes*?
* Donations *of boxes*?
* Boxes *of donations*?
* Boxes *for donations*...?

Whichever *of these non-direct-object-nouns* it is, Hindi marks it with the oblique (not-subject-not-direct-object) case AND then specifies what it's doing with a postposition (rain *Spain in*). Sometimes the postposition is implied (I 8:00 ate), but you can tell it from the direct object because it is still marked oblique.

Similarly, it shows up (that I know of) two other times nouns are doing something miscellaneous.

* *Mark a noun* an adverb: I *contentment* watched. -\> I watched contentedly.
* It makes numbers *not-literally*: It's *millions and millions* \[read: a lot\] worth.

**In conclusion, in this topic, you're used to English preposition and you're trying to tell when to mark nouns with specific cases. Hindi uses oblique case to split the difference.**

# Answer
> 1 votes
The dative is indeed a very diverse case, reading some teaching grammars of languages with a dative (e.g., Latin, Classical Greek, and German) or a preposition close to the dative case (Italian and French) can inform you about possible usages of the Dative.

An interesting thing are ***dative external possessors*** (as Haspelmath calls it), one of the common features of the Standard Average European *sprachbund*, see this question on Esperanto here and this question on esperanto.se, but absent from English.

For your question: God could be an external possessor in the sentence *A son was given* but this would not mean the same as in Christian theology where mankind is the external possessor of the Son of God.

At the end of the day, it is your conlang, and the dative will mean what you want it to mean. Test what sounds right to you.

# Answer
> 1 votes
First of all, I apologize for my English. My native language is Czech. This language contains seven cases: 1. nominative, 2. genitive, 3. dative, 4. accuzative, 5. vocative, 6. locative, 7. instrumental. In the Czech language, the dative often expresses "the addressee of a verb with two objects". That's the definition.

To an English speaker, I would explain it like this: if I have a verb that expresses the "movement" of something to something, "to something" will be in the dative form. By the verb that expresses "movement" I mean, for example, to go, to run, to give, to lend, to send, to tell, to write...

Examples:

*He gave the **dog** a bone.* Dog is dative, because he is the addressee of the bone.

*He explained it to **me**.* "Me" is dative, because I am the adresser of the explanation.

*I'll go to that **tree** over there.* The tree is dative because it is the addressee of my future presence.

For inspiration, you can read something about Old Norse, it also uses four cases.

P.S. "the son of god is given", "god" is genitive.

P.P.S. A Word always fit into some case but the default case is nominative.

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Tags: grammar, case
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title: How to say right and left in Toki Pona?

text:
# Question
Title: How to say right and left in Toki Pona?
As we know, Toki Pona is a quite minimal language and it sometimes not easy to come up with a word we use everyday in English. The problem is that I cannot think of a non-culture-specific and easily understandable way of saying right and left.

How to say right (and left) in Toki Pona as those words are not a part of the official dictionary?

# Answer
> 9 votes
One popular proposal that comes up in a lot of discussions on this topic is to base it on the direction of the official writing system (i.e. Latin characters). Thus "poki open" for left, and "poki pini" for right. However, there is still no real consensus on how to say "right" and "left", so these expressions might not be understood by everyone.

# Answer
> 9 votes
I agree with thrig that you would need to create something to handle this case. toki pona doesn't normally differentiate between specific sides, and this is one of those cases - there are no ways to describe "left" and "right" natively.

However, I'm not sure thrig's examples necessarily do the job the way it needs to be done - poka wawa could work, but it implies something about strength, when that's not often what people mean by dominant and non-dominant side. And meli/mije are not used to describe strength in this way.

Instead, I would suggest using:

* **poka lawa**: your *leading* side.
* **poka kama**: your *following* side.

No matter what, though, if you use this you're going to have to indicate that you're setting it up as such in advance. You can still do this in toki pona itself: **mi toki e ni: poka wan li poka lawa. poka tu li poka kama.** This sets up that you're saying one side is your poka lawa and the other side is your poka kama.

# Answer
> 6 votes
Building on the answer by thrig: one could say **poka pilin** (*side with a heart*) for the left side and **poka pilin ala** for the right side.

It should be rather neutral and understandable as it is based on biology facts instead of culture-specific ideas.

# Answer
> 1 votes
People have come up with quite a few extra words some of which are used to some extent on discord. 'soto' is left & teje is right. several of the words are just joke words but some like 'linluwi' - netwowrk/internet (len), & lanpan -take/grab (kama jo) are useful.

# Answer
> 0 votes
poka pi lawa musi (The side with the artistic brain) poka pi lawa nanpa (The side with the reasoning brain. Might work.

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Tags: toki-pona, phrase-request
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# Question
Title: When basing a conlang on an existing language, how can I keep the essence of that language while making it unrecognisable?
I wanted the names in my fantasy world to sound like they came from a coherent language, so I found a language that on paper (via Google translate) looks how I want my language to sound. When I wanted a name, I translated a relevant word, then changed/added/removed letters to make a new word.

The problem I have is that the new words I’ve come up with still appear to mean something in that language: Google translate either still recognises the original word or else comes up with a translation to a different word. If I change enough letters that Google no longer recognises it as any word from that language, the characteristics of the language that I like end up disappearing.

I really don’t want the original language to be recognisable, because I don’t want anyone to think that the people in my fantasy story are in any way connected to the people who speak the original language. I would like it to be an inspiration, nothing more, nothing less.

How can I go about keeping the essence of how the language looks but moving far enough away for it not to be recognisable?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Maybe a massive consonant swap can help depending on the structure of the language you are starting with. David Crystal reports in the *Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language* a game where the Javanese 20 consonants (in Javanese order) are *h, d, p, m, n, t, ḍ, g, c, s || j, b, r, w, y, ṭ, k, l, ñ, ŋ* are matched in a mirror fashion, i.e., *h* and *ŋ* are switched and so on. This should make words and some of the character of the resulting language different enough to be not immediately intelligible, not even for uninitiated native speakers of the starting language.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Since you're only worried about proper names with a cohesive sound, and not a whole language with grammar and all, it might be fruitful to start with the definition of the phonology and phonotactics of the language you'd like to use as a model.

Pick valid words at random according to the phonology/phonotactics and plug them into Google Translate to see whether you've created a real word by mistake. Make sure to use "detect language" because you may have accidentally made a word in *another* language.

You could even use software or a web-based generator using your preferred phonology.

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Tags: conlang-creation
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# Question
Title: What phonotactical constraints are commonly used by conlangers?
I'm continuing development of *Der Spracherfinder* (to help you fellow conlangers), and I want to know which phonotactical constraints are most common and helpful to conlangers. For example: forbid sonorants clustering with obstruents in coda position.

# Answer
I doubt there is a comprehensive survey that could tell you what's "common" (especially considering that the vast majority of conlangs are probably private matters). Is your question intending to be an informal survey?

For conlangs intended to resemble natural languages, I would suggest:

* Looking at the constraints in natural languages with a similar phonology.
* Speaking possible words out loud and trying to reduce the effort required to articulate.

For conlangs not intended to resemble natural languages, especially those used in fictional settings by non-human speakers, anything goes.
> 1 votes

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Tags: conlang-creation, phonology
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# Question
Title: Should I include a glossary with english translations in my fantasy novel?
I am writing a fantasy novel and I have created a few languages for it, these being Twergit (pronounced /'twer-git/ - I don't know IPA so I'm using Merriam-Webster pronunciation symbols, a guide can be found here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/assets/mw/static/pdf/help/guide-to-pronunciation.pdf), Faean (/'fā-in/), Urg-va (/ȯrg-'vä/), and Tharzhnik (/'thärzh-nik/). I am wondering if I should include a glossary in the back with english translations of text in other languages that appears in the book like Christopher Paolini did in Eragon to help readers understand characters that speak in my conlangs.

# Answer
> 4 votes
It depends what the purpose of the languages is, and how they are used.

If there are only short stretches, and the meaning can be inferred from context, or is not vital to the story (like a comment on the weather or so), then a gloss might not be needed. In that case the purpose of using conlangs is mainly for atmosphere, to create a sense of strangeness or the unknown. Having other characters talk in an unknown language does not necessarily require the protagonist/reader to understand it -- this is what happens in real life after all when cultures meet.

However, if it is important to the plot, you want to make sure that the reader can understand it (and they might not be able to infer the meaning).

In the end it is your choice. You did go through all the work of creating these languages, rather than using random character sequences in your novel, so you might want to provide a gloss for your readers' benefit. It would also signal that you put the effort in, and that you give attention to details, which might make the readers overall enjoy it more.

# Answer
> 2 votes
### YES

As a reader, I like when there is a glossary at the back. I also like a nice map at the front! It's always a pleasure to see that an author either took the time and effort to make a language or hired a language inventor to do that job properly. So my vote is **YES**.

**Suggestions:**

I would learn IPA. It's everywhere and it is the de facto standard in use by the language creation community. It'll make your life and everyone else's so much easier!

I would make your lexicon count by not just having a list of X = Y entries. Rather, give us some cultural, historical, linguistic background that may not have been specifically included in the text. Take a look at Tolkien's numerous appendices to see what I mean.

Might also want to rise above Paolini's dubious glossopoetic and literary output. I've never heard anything particularly good about either for all that he was hailed as a genius. There are better models to look at and learn from.

# Answer
> 1 votes
It depends on the style of your work. Adding such kind of glossary emulates a quite old-fashioned style of adventure books taking place in exotic regions, or travel journals to such regions. So when this is fitting to the overall setting of the story, it is fine.

It is also kind of OK when it does not really contribute to the atmosphere of your story and just provides some bonus bits of information for the fans of the work.

In fact, I cannot see any strong reason against it (saving a few pages of paper in a printed book, especially when you need additional 16 pages of paper because of binding restrictions might be one).

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Tags: translation, conlang-documentation, artlangs
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# Question
Title: How do languages which have adjectives after the noun work with complex phrases?
Say I have a phrase like these:

* The seat of the great rock of the north. = The north('s) great rock's seat - 北方(的)巨石的基座/底盤.
* The man of the forest of the east. = The east('s) forest's man - 東方(的)叢林的男人.
* The super tall man of the great green forest of the far east. = The far east('s) great green forest's super tall man - 遠東(的)大叢綠林的超高男人.

These have several noun phrases separated by `of`, the last one being the best example where each chunk between `of` is several words. In English, you have "super tall man" and "great green forest", where the adjectives/modifiers precede the main/head noun. How does it work in languages with the adjectives trailing the "head"/main noun, like apparently in Vietnamese, or perhaps some conlangs?

It's hard for me to imagine stuff like this:

* The man tall super of the forest green great of the east far.

But is that basically how they do it and understand it with ease? Or do they do something different here? Basically what is the spectrum and/or what is most common when it comes to adjectives/modifiers *following* the main noun/thing?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes, that's how it works. Some languages say "super tall man" (putting modifiers before the head) while others say "man tall super" (putting modifiers after the head).

English is inconsistent about this, and generally puts prepositional modifiers after a noun ("the book on the table") and all other modifiers before it ("Alice's expensive book"). This is also not uncommon. Languages may do some modifiers one way, and some modifiers another way.

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Tags: vocabulary, grammar
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# Question
Title: How do atomic languages handle breaking down and sequencing complex English noun-phrases?
Along the lines of How do languages which have adjectives after the noun work with complex phrases? (my last question), I am wondering now more about compound English words and how to break these apart and somehow "reverse" the order of things (though not necessarily reverse, because I'm not 100% clear yet on what I want totally, still unclear to me so far).

Basically I am thinking of phrases like this:

* carefully planned meeting
* crazy beautiful
* insanely tricky puzzle

If I try and straight ahead "reverse" these, I first have to break them down into more atomic units. So first, before reversing, I do:

* care full \[like\] plan \[past\] meet \[flow\]
* crazy beauty full
* insane \[like\] trick \[like\] puzzle

Not perfect, but seems close enough. Then I try and go about reversing it (to make the adjectives trail after the head noun or element):

* flow meet past plan like full care
* full beauty crazy
* puzzle like trick like insane

It would be perceived sort of like this:

* \[flow meet\] \[past plan\] \[like full care\]
* \[full beauty\] crazy
* puzzle \[like trick\] \[like insane\]

To me, this doesn't make any sense, and feels really hard to grok. Is it just because it is unnatural to me? Or do languages do it like this? Or am I doing it wrong and real or constructed languages do it differently when they do the "adjectives last" approach? How exactly do they do it when these words like "beauty-full" are compound words which need to be split up, and somehow also rotated in the phrase?

*How do you know what should feel natural? Meta-question, can I train myself to feel new ways of doing things are natural? The english way, where we have nested structures chained together like `[[a, b, c], [d, e, f]]` just "feels right" for some reason, and I'm not sure it's purely based on my upbringing.*

Another simpler example to demonstrate the point is, `-ed` past tense. A word like "walked". Does it become `[past] walk` or `walk [past]`? Which part of English should be reversed and which shouldn't basically? I have been thinking about it in terms of a URL structure, how would I do that. Would it be one of these?

* `/past/walk`, where it's first scoping you down to an abstract past, then to a more specific action (general -\> specific)
* `/walk/past`, where it's filtering the walk to a more specific walk, but really going specific -\> general in terms of terminology.

I can't tell which one would be more appropriate, if the goal is to make a hierarchy of sort of "filtering" like this (a website even).

https://yourvietnamese.com/learn-vietnamese/vietnamese-adjectives/

# Answer
> 5 votes
> Meta-question, can I train myself to feel new ways of doing things are natural? The english way, where we have nested structures chained together like \[\[a, b, c\], \[d, e, f\]\] just "feels right" for some reason, and I'm not sure it's purely based on my upbringing.

First and foremost, the answer to this is to **learn another language**. The best (really, the *only*) way to get used to non-English ways of structuring language is to see how other languages do it differently. Ideally, take classes from a native-speaking instructor for a semester or two (it'll be a lot easier and faster to absorb than Duolingo or the like). If you're looking for something distinctly non-English, Mandarin and Japanese are popular enough that you can find classes for them everywhere.

There's been an unfortunate tendency in linguistics since its earliest days to assume that the way English structures things is "logical" or "natural" and the way other languages do things is "strange" and "unnatural", which is absolutely not the case. If you grew up speaking Japanese instead, Japanese sentence structure would "feel right" and English would not. The field of linguistics as a whole is still in the process of recovering from this assumption.

> To me, this doesn't make any sense, and feels really hard to grok. Is it just because it is unnatural to me? Or do languages do it like this? Or am I doing it wrong and real or constructed languages do it differently when they do the "adjectives last" approach? How exactly do they do it when these words like "beauty-full" are compound words which need to be split up, and somehow also rotated in the phrase?

Even staying entirely within the bounds of English, we sometimes do structure our compounds this way, thanks to all the syntax we borrowed from French. In English you can say either "beautiful" or "full of beauty"; "prettier" or "more pretty"; etc.

So instead of "extremely beautiful", we can say "full of beauty to an extreme". Instead of "careful movement" you can say "act of moving with care". The fact that the "after" forms of modifiers require prepositions is just a quirk of English grammar; other languages use this structure by default, and don't need any extra words to mark it.

> Another simpler example to demonstrate the point is, -ed past tense. A word like "walked". Does it become \[past\] walk or walk \[past\]? Which part of English should be reversed and which shouldn't basically?

English puts the past-tense marking after ("walked"), but future-tense marking before ("will walk").

Ancient Greek does the opposite, with past-tense marking before (the augment) and future-tense marking after (the sigmatic future).

Latin puts all the tense marking at the end.

Swahili puts all of it at the beginning.

Lingála puts it on both ends, what linguists call a "circumfix".

Akkadian puts it in the middle of the word, changing out the vowels while keeping the consonants the same (an "infix"). English sometimes does this too: run vs ran.

Mandarin generally doesn't mark tense at all. It's a quirk of English that tense marking is required on every verb; many other languages don't require this (but may require something else: Turkish requires you to mark how you know the information).

Every permutation of this exists somewhere in the world. I really do recommend studying another language to a basic level to get a sense of what's possible.

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Tags: grammar, sentence-structure, phrase-structure
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