A community for conlangs and conlangers
The Dailies. March 13
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 meant to post last night but then I got sleepy, lol. I was doing some pondering about weather words in Lash-enne yesterday. I have some ideas, though no actual lexemes yet. I think I have determined that the noun ending -am as in [e:mam] (food) is used chiefly for things that are considered to be... elemental, in some way. Basic, simple maybe, probably naturally occuring, as opposed to complex or constructed things. As such, I am considering using it for some of my weather words, like rain (unless I decided to make rain a derivation of water, in which case water would have the -em ending but maybe not the derived form), wind, warmth and coldness. However, I think the term for weather will not have it.
I may also have found the structure (but not the lexemes) for an informal way of asking how someone is. It is inspired by Iraqi Arabic where the term shlonak (for m. addressee) or shlonich (for f. addressee) is used basically as "how are you?" or "what's up?". It is a contraction of shou lonak/lonik (or lawnak or whatever but sloppy transcription galore, lol) which means "what is your color?". I've always loved the expression, sometimes jokingly answer "orange" or something. Anyway, I am thinking of doing the same but with "what's your weather?" instead. Just gotta find the words.
Ooooh! Nice.
And a script draft! Very much draft:
Ohh, I like it! It's very aesthetically pleasing somehow.
Thanks! :D
Cool look!
Thanks! This is the somewhat runic Tatan script.
Not much today, though I might be back later. New word: skoṙffa /skɔ˞ɸːa/ "to be stuck in farewells" or "to say goodbye too many times". Patientive verb. (S=P. Technically this means "unaccusative verb" but that terminology is terrible.) (It can waste several minutes, after all.)
For some reason I want to compare it to the English word "to waffle", maybe it's just the double F.
In a sentence: rospi-du kufai zogůskoṙffatu "I had been saying goodbye too much with my friend". The translation is kind of bad, but as I think you can see it works better in the original.
(Edit: I forgot the dot on the r in skoṙffa. It doesn't make a big difference really because an actual r can't go there, but it's still an error.)
Oh, I love that word.
This is such a useful word! My partner is out of the country right now, and we get stuck skorffa-ing a lot. :)
I do it a lot online, yeah. But sometimes it'll happen in person so I figure a word for it makes sense in a pre-industrial society.
(Also your comment made me realize I misspelled it in my first comment and that made me realize I misspelled it in my lexicon file, in a different way.)
Well, we do it just as badly over the phone, tbh. And in a pre-industrial society where you aren't easily able to get in contact with someone who's not right there with you, it makes total sense that people would do that in person, probably moreso than in modern earth society.
Lovely word and meaning! It's sound reminds me a lot of Swedish somehow.
Fiddled with a numeral script for the South-West Continent, including the Nahul people. It's a decimal system. At first I was going to have it use a symbol for zero like Arabian numerals (and like the numerals the Beldreeni use for their duodecimal system, which are probably used by other peoples on the North-West Continent, if modified for those who count differently). But then I stopped and went "wait, how plausible is it that the zero idea would have been invented independently on both these continents?"
So I thought I'd make a numeral script closer to Roman numerals instead. But then I really liked the symbol I'd made up for the zero...
In the end I decided that the established and traditional numeral script is indeed the Roman-like one, but within the last 20 of their years (around 202 Earth years) the zero idea took hold on the South-West Continent. It did happen independently after all, but it's still regarded as a fancy modern thing by many. Even among those who have adopted it when calculating often switch to the older system when just writing numbers down, especially the big round numbers that are shorter in the older system.
Unlike Roman vs Arabian, the symbols for 1-9 are the same in both systems. Also unlike those, composite numbers are written vertically from top to bottom, just like the regular abugida script for writing.
ETA: Sorry I don't have anything to show yet. I can't quite justify taking time out to scan and retouch them in Photoshop when I ought to be studying hard...
Love the thinking you're doing on this. And no worries, we don't want to show everyone the in-between stages on everything. :D
That is quite cool! The 20 years (202 earth years) really sparked my interest. I would imagine that counting systems evolved in a slightly different way. I like it.
The detail in your world-building here is so awesome.
Today I came up with four verbs related to weather:
NOTE: These verbs can only be conjugated in the 3rd person singular neuter.
very nice!
Seconded!
Little stuff, all Akachenti:
e:t • don't do that, a sound made in warning - related to iet, "oh no" or "that's bad"
Realizing the stressed /g/ is ejective not implosive.
Discovering the imperative, "Breathe!", would be said Ierikánta., which is something like, "(Let) me see (you) be breathing.", as it's an expression made with the adjective, not the verb. Imperatives seem to omit the agent and emphasize the patient. A better translation (than semi-gloss) would be "Breathe for me."
Also, got a start on documenting constructions on a spreadsheet, which wasn't actually in the plans, but whatever.
I like those imperatives!
Thanks!