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My Conlangs

Page history last edited by Matthew McVeagh 2 years, 11 months ago

Matthew McVeagh's conlangs

 

I started several conlangs in my teenage years, in the 1980s. At that time there was no online conlang culture and my work was in exercise books and has never before been copied to the internet. There was not even the word 'conlang'; I thought of it as 'inventing languages'. I stopped after a few years of that and never really got back into it until now, the summer of 2020. I now have plans and ideas for some new conlangs, which will take priority. However I will also type up my notes from my old exercise books and maybe even continue or finish off those early languages.

 

Early langs

 

Langvaje -> Lingwajo

 

An offshoot of Esperanto started when I had been learning E-o for six months to a year, and had become critical of it and wanted to improve it. Intended as a global auxlang, it changed name and content as time went on.

 

Ruman

 

An attempt at a naturalistic Romance language, intended to be used in a novel about a revolution in a fictional central European country.

 

Anathusia

 

Like Lingwajo, this was intended as a world language but it's more adventurous grammatically.

 

Relatin

 

A language reform type morph of Classical Latin, regularising and neatening. Kind of like Peano's Latine Sine Flexione, but with a different purpose.

 

Languages 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

 

Several versions of an experimental language that was not much more than a grammar sketch.

 

Three-case language

 

Another grammar experiment that didn't get very far.

 

Tipikyero

 

I imagined a 'typical' East Asian language, although there is no such thing because there are many different patterns to East Asian languages.

 

Unnamed Model Germanic language

 

I made a start on a Germanic equivalent of Ruman, i.e. an artistic language that would show what a 'model' example of the language group would be like.

 

Unnamed mythological language

 

Some brief notes towards a start on what would apparently be an artistic language (inspired by Tolkien?) that might be used in a fiction.

 

Current and future projects

 

Most of my current projects and plans for projects are within the "engelang" (engineered language) bracket – specifically they are experimental languages or explangs. I have a few ideas for artlangs, mostly of an altlang (alternate history conlang) flavour.

 

Quite a lot of my (proposed) languages are not really intended to be used for communication. Some of them are intended specifically to change a person's understanding and outlook by making them go through the process of thinking how to express things in the language, not only as a user using an already created language, but even just for me in the process of creating it. For instance I don't think any taxonomic, a priori, 'ideal' philosophical language will get us to some transcendental truth that other languages won't, but I do think the process of constructing a lexicon and grammar taxonomically will train a person in semantic relations and systematicness. Continually revising such a language would be a case of topping up and refining one's best effort at organising ideas in such a systematic way, not to perfect a communication tool for others, but to learn better and better how to organise one's understanding of ideas.

 

Explangs

 

Grammar-focused:

 

Inspired by Jörg Rhiemeier's notion of a conlang 'suite' ("a series of engelangs which explore the effects of varying some parameter in their design"), I'd like to create a set of experimental languages with a single common phonology and lexis but different grammar and word formation patterns. Each language would focus on a different issue to explore, or I might combine a few in one. Current planned languages include:

    • 'Vanilla' – a simple, more naturalistic version of the language, without the extremes of the other versions

    • Omnitrans – all verbs are (mono)transitive; intransitive, ditransitive and copulative verbs are reworked to be transitive
    • Verbjunct – there are no conjunctions; all conjunctional semantic content is affixed to the verb

    • Inposition – all dependents and particles are incorporated within heads and content morphemes

    • [unnamed] – syntactic argument slots are based directly and transparently on underlying semantic roles, and grammatical marking then mirrors that

    • Classswitch – verbs become nouns and nouns become verbs

 

A language in which all modes of grammar are possible – all word orders, case systems, adpositions, verb systems, etc.

This language would be take three potential modes:

    • Omnigrammar proper, which would be a standard spoken-written language.

    • Interlingual Pasigraphy (ILPG), a universal purely written language of ideographic symbols that can express the meaning behind any piece of human language. Potentially any human language expression could be translated into it.

    • A sign language equivalent.

 

My teenage mythological language was highly analytic. It would be good to develop a purely analytic language as an experiment.

 

A language with trivocalic roots, like the triconsonantal roots of Semitic but using vowels.

 

A language with two syllables/morphemes per word, the first with all the lexical meaning and the second fusional with all the grammatical meaning.

 

Lexis-focused:

 

Which only describes situations rather than events, and so does not need verbs.

 

Systematising the semantic range, but representing each concept with vocabulary borrowed from existing languages.

 

A conlang, inspired by the Encapsulated Language Project, which specialises in linguistics vocabulary.

 

An experimental language which expresses combinations of verbs and arguments in unique morphemes rather than separate ones for each entity.

A binary language which would form all words from only two syllables/morphemes, indicating word class, all grammatical features and all lexical meaning by sequences of two-way toggles.

 

Contrastive:

 

  • Shilgngí / Antinglish

    An engelang inspired by being asked what language had the opposite typology to English.

 

A combination of opposite conlangs: Ithkuil (complexity of categories and features) and Toki Pona (simplicity of phonology, grammar and lexicon).

 

A language that's so 'awkward' it is completely inconsistent in phonology and grammar.

 

Pasigraphies:

 

  • Interlingual Pasigraphy

Described above

 

 

Philosophical Languages

 

A language that expresses everything from the point of view of a person's consciousness, rather than supposed objective reality.

 

Artlangs

 

A generic 'Standard Average European' pseudo-auxlang, but with polysynthetic grammar.

 

A European alternate history language which is not based on descent from a historically known natural language.

 

A mixed Romlang/Germlang (Romance and Germanic language).

 

South China Sea Austronesian geofictional altlang.

 

Jokelangs

 

All the vocabulary is borrowed from the swearwords and other rude words of the world's languages.

 

A language whose vocab is all taken from one (real) song. To make it practical with a decent lexicon size a long song with many words and references would be needed.

 

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