A community for conlangs and conlangers
The Dailies. February 5
Did you work on your language today? Create any new rules of grammar or syntax? New progress on a script? New words in your lexicon?
On the other hand, do any excavating or reading or enjoying stuff you've already created? Do you have any favorites to share?
How did you conlang today?




I settled on how to conjugate the copula. I thought I'd already done that, but if so it must have been in one of my notebooks only, because it wasn't in a file before.
So here it is - apart from the present form, the contentless particles sa and so are used with the ordinary verbal conjugation endings. (Nearly. There are fewer variations according to formality on these ones, as that's already expressed by the form of the copula itself. But as you can see, several conjugations still add to that.)
There seems to be no real reason why these particles can't also be conjugated for negations like other verbs can be. They just can't. Maybe it's because they don't exist for the present tense anyway.
The verb meaning 'to have', yowai/yoru/yobo, is conjugated the same way as the copula: sa yowai, sati yowai, sadde yowai and so on.
ON THE INFINITIVES
"Infinitive I" is what I call the "normal" infinitive in Beldreeni, the one that's used with auxiliaries. In regular verbs it consists of the stem and the suffix -nan, -yan or -an, depending on phonology.
"Infinitive II" should perhaps have another name. It's used for sentences where the infinitive is the main theme of the sentence, like "To be or not to be, that is the question" or "It's fun to sing".
Laho apayo baen sati wai. 'I was her teacher.' (Formal)
Maldzheda saan bo! 'Don't be sad!' (Familiar)
Baen maldzheda sadde ru. 'I will not be sad.' (Neutral)
Baen malda sonan ru mashten. 'I don't want to be sad.' (Neutral)
Suke so wai to, anman wai. 'To be yourself is the best.' (Formal)
Congrats! This looks awesome. Also kind of love the sa and so as s(a) is the copula in Akachenti. Fun coincidence.
That is indeed a coincidence! The sa came about because the preterite suffix for normal verbs is -s in the neutral form (sometimes with vowels inserted), and so for the preterite of the copula I took a particle beginning with S. And then just kept using it... The so is due to the Infinitive II suffix being -so (or -iso) for normal verbs.
I would like to insert a table, but in spite of looking at markdowns of other tables on posts, I can't figure out how to do it. You have to add a link to where an image is stored... but it looks like the image is stored right here on the post?? So how can yu add a link, then?
To insert an image on a post, you should be able to drag/drop or copy/paste. To do it on a comment, you have to link to an external URL pretty much or copy/paste with the Aa turned on (and Java not fluking out).
ETA: That is, I screenshotted my tables, copied the screenshot, then clicked where I wanted it to show up and clicked CTRL+V. On a newer machine, this resulted in an upload and appropriately linked image.
If you want to write a table in markdown, that's different.
Thank you!
no prob!
Midnight here, have to go to bed now, will return tomorrow!
Sleep well!
I haven't really conlanged today. Feeling kind of bleh because I didn't really reach my goal for the week. I mean, I posited /ah/ as "to have" but then someone asked about allophones (can't recall who) and I started thinking about how I haven't dealt with that yet and need to do more research... And so I don't feel like I've really done what I meant to since I don't know if it'll actually be /ahwyn/ for "I had" or something else. Sigh. And still no plural. I've just been so busy this week, and when I do sit down with it I just end up second guessing myself into decision-paralysis.
Relatedly, I have no idea what to pick for a weekly vocab topic for next week since I've sort of lost steam a bit... Ideas?
Kinship terms maybe?
That's a good one! Let's go with that! Even if I don't manage anything, it's still a fun topic.
Ack, I know that feeling, that second-guessing one. It's hard when you feel that whatever decision you make will end up limiting you, isn't it? Have you tried putting the proposed form in a sample sentence? You have words for 'food' and 'snack', right, so you could perhaps construct 'I had a snack' now...?
Yeah, I have, but I'm still faffing about. I'm gonna do some reading on allophones today I think and see if that helps. I should probably just try to settle on my consonants overall, to be honest. Even if I change my mind later and add/remove stuff at least I would have a place to start then.