Sometimes, some of us feel a lot of pressure to make our conlangs naturalistic, especially if it's a posteriori. When we're starting out and start mingling with other conlangers the experience often enforces the idea that a good conlang must be naturalistic.

Of course, a good conlang is both:

1. Subjective

2. Not dependent on naturalism, but rather the goal set for it.

So if you have a conlang that turns its nose up at what makes sense, what 'should be' when it comes to natural languages, tell us about it.

I've never been concerned with naturalism, so none of my conlangs I would classify as naturalistic, but most of my conlangs are a priori anyway. My current WIP is a posteriori though and exists in an AU where the Norse that temporarily settled in Newfoundland stayed permanently, their population grew, and they started trading goods, culture, and language with the indigenous populations to the north, in Labrador.

The languages I've chosen to work with are 1000 years apart - Old West Norse and modern Innu-aimun. Could I use Old Cree instead, which would be less anachronistic and more realistic? Sure! And maybe I will, but I'm particularly attached to Innu-aimun. How does one realistically blend a polysynthetic language and a fusional one? You don't! Or at least I can't/don't care to, I imagine it would take a lot more linguistic knowledge than I have.

Does it make sense that ON verbs conjugate within both language's paradigms? That Innu verbs are used in one context, and the roughly corresponding ON verb in another? No, but it sure does make me happy and that's the only thing that matters.

ᛅᚴᚢᛁ᛬ᛔᛂᛐᛅᚿ᛬ᛐᛌᛁᛐᚮᚿᚵᚮᚱ

Ekuî pêten tsîtungur.

/ˈekwiː ˈpeːten ˈʦiːtuŋguɾ/

[ˈek.wiː ˈpeːt.en ˈʦiːt.uŋk.uɾ]

I want to hear your languages.

ek     -uî  pêt;en                    tsî-     tungur
1SG.NOM-VOL hear.it;1SG.INDEP.IND.PRS 2SG.POSS-language.F.DEF.PL.ACC

/matsnar da͡ɪk lexi kuɾuːɾer/

"a daily apple keeps away the doctor"

If you don't have a similar saying yet, you can translate it literally.

English and a Half (EH) is not a conlang but just a constructed variety of English forcefully loaded with phrasal verbs and idioms (but not rhyming slang). Its purpose is to help ESL learners learn idioms and phrasal verbs. The difference between English and "English and a Half" is that it is abundant in force-fit idioms and phrasal verbs for whichever concepts can be expressed using these. The main principle is that it should use idioms and phrasal verbs for words that can be replaced with these.
Why this name: I chose the name "English and a Half" from an idiom that I learned yesterday upon hearing the sentence "That's a question and a half!" on the BBC.

A sample conversation:

A: "Hi, how are you keeping?"

B: "I am ticking over nicely! How are things panning out for you? Are you in the pink of condition?"

C: "My system is pulling through! Thanks for checking up on me."

Ofc ourse, dialects don't work like this, it is way more complex. But this is a kind of generalisation and approximation to this complexity.

since the last post got a lot of attention I decided to keep posting these!

I've been studying ancient Hebrew a bit lately and learned they have a causative stem and I thought that was a cool idea so I decided to incorporate it into my conlang. I haven't figured out if or how to naturalistically add it, but I've added /il/ as an infix right before the final syllable of regular verbs, not sure about irregular verbs yet. I'd love to see your strategies for causation in your clongs!

Here's an example text to translate if interested:

The man made the child eat the fruit because hunger made the child cry.

I'll drop my translation in the comments.

My little baby
I love you
My sweet little thing
Darling love
It is time for sleep
Dream sweet
My little dear

_lina äuna coráu_ 
_äul cor îna_ 
_fârat iláus äuna coráu_ 
_äul isha_ 
_ama ralûs láudha latazh_ 
_béolûs iláus_ 
_äulo äuna coráu_ 

/li'nɑ 'ɑʊ•nɑ koɾ'ɑʊ/

/'ɑʊl 'koɾ ɑe'nɑ/

/fei'ɾɑt i'lɑʊs 'ɑʊ•nɑ koɾ'ɑʊ/

/'ɑʊl i'ʃɑ/

/ɑ'mɑ ɾɑ'lus 'lɑʊ•ðɑ lɑ'tɑʒ/

/'bɛo•lus i'lɑʊs/

/'ɑʊl•o 'ɑʊ•nɑ kor'ɑʊ/

(lit. baby small my
love you i
thing sweet small my
love darling
is for time sleep is
dream sweet
dear small my)

---

Acirium is my fantasy language that's set in a medieval-esque period of time. I don't know what to call the poem but I'm using that to my advantage. It was included in a very old book and info about it is mostly unknown.

Week 13 IPA Prompt - /vrai.no.si.ˈto.ni sa ˈu.tu ˈmo.re no u ˈi.te ke ˈe.fo ˈmo.re u ˈi.te ˈa.ko fe.ˈno.wo/

Welcome to Week 13 of Bad Interpreters, the chaotic conlang game where meaning is optional, phonetics are misleading, and everyone is absolutely confident in their terrible linguistic instincts.

Last week's prompt: /ˈwa.te ˈa.fo ku.no.e.ni.ˈma.ni ˈi.ki ˈmo.ta ˈa.fo ho.ˈro.so u re.ˈsek.to ˈwe.ta ˈta.e vru/
From that, we got these top picks:
Drukhari: ude avu kelu zene mrana i k'im• adra avu huq sruss uretlak dae kevru. ("You all, you go wish as if and I hear you being heart bone my shape and bird.”) [Most Spy Oriented]
Elenca: Las teoras ocurrieron en imagen de quino, eto famoso yo recibo la etería. (“The seasons occurred in the image of the movie, this famous I receive the company.”) [Most Philosophical]
Shoáth: Váthá ávokūn oânëem ánëen ëekëe motá; ávokū roson rūsâkto vâtá tháâl vrūd. ("She silently mixes doubts with a traumatic flashback; you mix regret with a mythological moral.") [Most Mythological]

How to Play

1. Decide what the prompt means in your conlang.
2. Translate it using your phonotactics, grammar, and cultural flavor.
3. Explain your questionable reasoning.
4. Have fun!

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next week, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on weekly on Wednesdays.

I'm not sure if "bizarre" is the right word, but yeah, thought this would be a fun activity!

Hello there I am into day 2 of making my own language now I have a dumb question but for example I had an idea about my own alphabet but I don't know where should I put my toughts:

World/Excel/Notion/README

Where are you storing your simple idea???

This is true guys

What are some real-world country names in your conlang, if there are any? If your conlang is part of a fictional world, it makes sense why it wouldn't have stuff like "Germany" or "China". If you do have them, I'd be interested to see them!

For my conlang, I have to rely on phonetic readings of logographs to represent the sounds, so the names look kind of arbitrary:

Some countries I defined:

Russia: hare•door•country — Ru·sy·xon
Switzerland: door•door•country — Sy·sy·xon
France : weather•box•country — Fy·ran·xon
Germany: songbird•country — Geru·xon
Poland: forest•invasion•country — Po·lan·xon
China: picture•country — Tjin·xon
Spain: dog•country — Hisa·xon
Japan: sun•country — Ki·xon
South Korea: south•ocean•country — A·han·xon
North Korea: north•ocean•country — A·han·xon

Explanations:

The reading rules of logographs in compounds demand that the full reading is shortened to the first syllable. A containing a nasal keeps the nasal.

"rudo" (ru) = hare
"sytan" (sy) = door
"fyzato" (fy) = weather, "ran" (ran) = box
"geru" (geru) = songbird
"potsœ" (po) = forest, lanta (lan) = invasion (lan = mud)
"tjin" (tjin) = picture
"hisa" (hisa) = dog
"kiori" (ki) = sun
(see below for the Koreas)

Unlucky Poland:

The characters that can be read "lan" are either "lanta" or "lan", where "lanta" shortens. One is "forest invastion country" and one is "forest mud country". The semantics are not supposed to play a role here, but it is kind of unlucky for poor Poland to either get something invasion-related or straightup mud. This was a dumb coincidence after I already had those words.

Koreas:

The Koreas are quite unfortunate, because according to the rules, "agœ" (north) and "aken" (south) both shorten into "a", which causes them to sound identical. I am not trying to spread reunification propaganda, I had these words for quite a while before I thought about country names.

The logographs in "South Korea": "Aken Han Xon".
• Aken = south
• Han = sea, ocean – here phonetic
• Xon = country, nation

The logographs in "North Korea": "Agœ Han Xon".
• Agœ = north
• Han = sea, ocean – here phonetic
• Xon = country, nation

For anyone who actually read this: thanks!

(I don’t know how to make a vowel chart, sorry)

Vowels: a e œ i ʏ ə ʌ o u + aː eː øː iː yː ʌː oː uː + a weird offglide thing /ɵw̟/

(a e ö i y o~u~e ü o u + ā ē ô ī ȳ û ō ū + w, stressed forms = á é ő í ý ű ó ú + ẃ and long vowels are stressed by default so there no need for an extra mark)

Wōinkxo: wiă (Wꌩ)

wnerito: wiă (Wꌩ)

wpperno: wniă (Wnꌩ)

note: wōinkxo and wnerito are have same word because wōinkxo is sister language, the some wōinkco word similar to wnerito. in wpperno, Added n before iă (ꌩ). all wnero language pronounced n as /ɱ/ or Voiced labiodental nasal

im not know that how all flair work?

I'm working in several "conlangs" (they have just the basics), just enough for them to be useful to write sentences and name stuff. Though I'm more satisfied than I thought with their uniqueness while writing sentences and small text, they lack a bit of it when naming characters. Like, I have a few names that come from four conlangs that look very different on text, but by look alone they all could be from any of them. As an example, I have this conlang that uses lots of consonant clusters, but the names I was coming up with were far too weird (which is rather annoying since I plan to write using these names, and people should not be paying attention to how the name is weird everytime they come across it), so I had to make use one "easy to speak" consonant cluster at most. My question is if I should keep it like this and expect some intersection between names since there is a limited number of letters I can use to represent different phonemes.

Based on a 5MOYD I translated for last night, the following phrase was coined.

Ährgähre̊ Feran, which roughly translates into "the body is clay, the soul is iron". This is meant to signify that flesh is seen as malleable and fluid in expressing oneself, while the soul, the true self, is the iron core that stands resolute and unchanging.

If you have any similar phrases in your clongs or want to try translating this yourself, feel free! :)

It translates to "I eat my fruit" or directly "I eat fruit'(feminine genitive case marker)"

Im going to translate the 1965 edition winner You can listen to it here (great song by the way) into two of my conlangs to make a language comparison i only have half of the first translation 😭 I have to complete it and then make the gloss and IPA transcription and then do it again for the other language.

I'll try to finish it today wish me luck and please support the post when i finish it I'm uploading it on my PC account

How much time do you guys take to finish a translation? any tips for making it faster? would love to hear them

Hello there! I'm a 25-year-old French guy who can speak French and English well.

I'm currently looking for a job in software development, so I have a lot of free time. I've always wanted to start my own language, and I think now is the time.

I know that creating a whole new language and alphabet isn't an easy task at all. That's why I'm asking what I should know before starting. Thanks for your answers!

This can be etymology, the way it sounds, the way it looks written, anything. I'm curious!

For my logography, it's this one: "suspicion/distrust", romanized "syŋba", pronounced /sɯŋ.ba/. As you can see, it's not really about the pronounciation here, it's about the way it's written.

I saw this in some meme video about whatever, and I just knew I needed to copy that. I sadly don't know the original creator of that meme, it's funny nontheless. And since my conlang already doesn't have any culture behind it and I'm doing this for myself, I can have such random things, some of my basic characters are already totally random but make sense when you know why.

(also I don't really know how these flairs work, I just put a random one)