My latest constructed language, Hearthsider (just started this week). None of this will make sense but here we go:
Verbs are a closed class. To form complete sentences you use an equivalent of “do”, plus a verbal noun phrase. This noun phrase can have determiners such as articles attached to them, which indicate things like whether the action was performed only once, repeatedly, etc. To say “X verbs Y”, it would translate literally to “X does Y a verb”. Plurality will likely not be indicated on nouns but will be in articles.
rMl t qb b sBsb zGK
Light do 2sg a shine friend
“Light shine upon you, friend!”
This is a fairly common greeting crosslinguically, so I have translations in my other two conlangs:
Vowel do a disappear why friend? Is there a vowel harmony type deal and they change, are you just listing root constents like a semitic language? Or have completely misunderstood and “rMl t qb b sBsb zGK” is not supposed to be the Hearthsider pronunciations?
Oh there are vowels, they’re just written differently. These are xenolangs, languages spoken by aliens, specifically These guys:
With a vocal tract like that they’re not going to be speaking the king’s English (or any other human language) any time soon. There are only eight qualitatively different noises they can make, and most languages only make use of six of them. Whines, growls, and grunts are “vowels”, and huffs (a quick exhalation through the nose), chuffs, and yips are “consonants”. They can also hiss, either plain or trilled, but only Hearthsider uses hisses in actual words.
They supplement this very meager set of sounds with contrasting vowel pitches (high, low, rising, and falling), but also volumes (weak, strong, weakening, and strengthening). Vowel length and “timing” are also important. There are long and short vowels, but also early (two-vowel sequences where the second vowel is held longer than the first, making the change “early” in the syllable) and late (holding the first vowel longer than the second, making the change “late” in the syllable)
Here’s a phoneme inventory for Hearthsider.
Vowels:
Phonation
Tone
Weak
Strong
Short
Long
Short
Long
Whine
High
d
D
f
F
Low
b
B
c
C
Growl
High
j
J
k
K
Low
g
G
h
H
Grunt
High
n
N
p
P
Low
l
L
m
M
Hiss
Plain
t
T
v
V
Trilled
w
W
x
X
And here are the consonants (edit: fixed):
Sound
Symbol
huff
q
chuff
r
yip
s
plain hiss
y
trilled hiss
z
Some random fun facts: Commonthroat has no pronouns. You have to either drop the word completely (very common on Earth) or inflect a noun in first, second, or third person (vary rare but not unknown on Earth, see Elamite). Outlander has a politeness distinction, with transactional, amicable, familial, and reverential pronouns in second and third person. Using familial pronouns to refer to coworkers or employees is considered vulgar unless they’re literally family. Last, Hearthsider has (or will have) a bunch of swear words drawn from liturgical vocabulary (cf Canadian French).
All languages use “to smell” where we would say “to feel” as in “feel happy” etc, because emotions are communicated through their musk. There is a rich set of “odor colors” that describe subjective olfactory experiences, rather than the typical (Western) human way of resorting to comparisons with sources of odors. In contrast, their color vocabulary works like English’s odor vocabulary. Other than “light” and “dark” they can only relate color sensations to familiar objects that are so colored, mostly fruits.
Ah! I wondered if it might be vowelless for such a reason. Fun! Big fan of Elam, but i don’t know many details of the language beyond the (increasingly solid, i believe) status as a sister-branch alongside Dravidian.
My latest constructed language, Hearthsider (just started this week). None of this will make sense but here we go:
Verbs are a closed class. To form complete sentences you use an equivalent of “do”, plus a verbal noun phrase. This noun phrase can have determiners such as articles attached to them, which indicate things like whether the action was performed only once, repeatedly, etc. To say “X verbs Y”, it would translate literally to “X does Y a verb”. Plurality will likely not be indicated on nouns but will be in articles.
“Light shine upon you, friend!”
This is a fairly common greeting crosslinguically, so I have translations in my other two conlangs:
Outlander:
Commonthroat:
L rLPq-p BCq-b sFsF-qn OPT light-3D illuminate-NA friend-2Here are the gloss abbreviations:
2sg = 2nd person singular pronoun
OPT = optative modal
2sg.AMI = 2nd person singular amicable pronoun
-OBJ = Object focus/trigger suffix
-3D = 3rd person distal noun suffix
-NA = Nonauthoritative verbal mood
-2 = 2nd person noun suffix
Vowel do a disappear why friend? Is there a vowel harmony type deal and they change, are you just listing root constents like a semitic language? Or have completely misunderstood and “rMl t qb b sBsb zGK” is not supposed to be the Hearthsider pronunciations?
Oh there are vowels, they’re just written differently. These are xenolangs, languages spoken by aliens, specifically These guys:
With a vocal tract like that they’re not going to be speaking the king’s English (or any other human language) any time soon. There are only eight qualitatively different noises they can make, and most languages only make use of six of them. Whines, growls, and grunts are “vowels”, and huffs (a quick exhalation through the nose), chuffs, and yips are “consonants”. They can also hiss, either plain or trilled, but only Hearthsider uses hisses in actual words.
They supplement this very meager set of sounds with contrasting vowel pitches (high, low, rising, and falling), but also volumes (weak, strong, weakening, and strengthening). Vowel length and “timing” are also important. There are long and short vowels, but also early (two-vowel sequences where the second vowel is held longer than the first, making the change “early” in the syllable) and late (holding the first vowel longer than the second, making the change “late” in the syllable)
Here’s a phoneme inventory for Hearthsider.
Vowels:
And here are the consonants (edit: fixed):
Some random fun facts: Commonthroat has no pronouns. You have to either drop the word completely (very common on Earth) or inflect a noun in first, second, or third person (vary rare but not unknown on Earth, see Elamite). Outlander has a politeness distinction, with transactional, amicable, familial, and reverential pronouns in second and third person. Using familial pronouns to refer to coworkers or employees is considered vulgar unless they’re literally family. Last, Hearthsider has (or will have) a bunch of swear words drawn from liturgical vocabulary (cf Canadian French).
All languages use “to smell” where we would say “to feel” as in “feel happy” etc, because emotions are communicated through their musk. There is a rich set of “odor colors” that describe subjective olfactory experiences, rather than the typical (Western) human way of resorting to comparisons with sources of odors. In contrast, their color vocabulary works like English’s odor vocabulary. Other than “light” and “dark” they can only relate color sensations to familiar objects that are so colored, mostly fruits.
Ah! I wondered if it might be vowelless for such a reason. Fun! Big fan of Elam, but i don’t know many details of the language beyond the (increasingly solid, i believe) status as a sister-branch alongside Dravidian.
Thanks for sharing!!