I made my own language! (partially)

[bigyihsuan]

Partially, at least.

The main basis is how I got fed up with the irregularities in languages (like conjugatinve verbs in Spanish. UUGGHH), and how in English, no letter seems to have a single sound.

So I made a language that is based on English, Spanish. Latin (by extension), Greek (by extension), and German (noun-joining).

I haven't made a name for it yet, but I'll take requests.

Link to the Google Doc

Edited March 20, 2015 by bigyihsuan

[xXIndestructibleEVAXx]

How about Gerenganlateek?

[bigyihsuan]

How about Gerenganlateek?

Hmm. Hard to say (both literally and figuratively).

Here's some rules that I've made so far:

• 2 vowels next to each other makes it sound like English long vowel
  
• aa =lake, ee = knee, ii = ice, oo = oboe, uu = utility
  
• All letters pronounced; no silent letters
  
• Apostrophe in between 2 vowels means the vowels are pronounced separately
  
• Combine nouns to make more words. If a word has more than 3 base words, it has a shortened form that uses the first and last three letters of the long form.
  

Here's an example of that last bullet:

granpreesteraarignee’agwa (gragwa)

gran: large, big

prees: Pressure

tera: earth

aar: air

ignee: fire

agwa: water

All totaled:

Large pressured earth with air and fire water. Which is a volcano.

[Deutherius]

• Combine nouns to make more words. If a word has more than 3 base words, it has a shortened form that uses the first and last three letters of the long form.
  

Here's an example of that last bullet:

granpreesteraarignee’agwa (gragwa)

I'm not a linguist, but won't that cause some major conflicts? Basically anything big with water and at least one other component (e.g. big glass of water, big hole filled with water (pool, ocean), etc) will be shortened to the same thing. How do you propose to resolve such conflicts?

[RainDreamer]

taking implied information from context, maybe.

[bigyihsuan]

I'm not a linguist, but won't that cause some major conflicts? Basically anything big with water and at least one other component (e.g. big glass of water, big hole filled with water (pool, ocean), etc) will be shortened to the same thing. How do you propose to resolve such conflicts?

taking implied information from context, maybe.

Maybe I should change that rule, and make the short forms make a little bit more sense. But most likely from context is how you figure out the nouns.

[Whirligig Girl]

You shouldn't have any gendering in my opinion. Because then you have to make sure you're talking about/to a female/male based on the situation.

[Bill Phil]

Why not use umlauts and accent marks? Then you can have letters make different sounds, but they have a distinction.

Also, the thorn.

[bigyihsuan]

You shouldn't have any gendering in my opinion. Because then you have to make sure you're talking about/to a female/male based on the situation.

It's not like in Spanish, where every noun has a gender.

Whatever has a gender is preceded by a gender pronoun. For example, my monstrosity word of "volcano" is gender neutral. So, you place a "ne" to specify that it is a neutral gendered noun.

Another example is with people. If it's a guy, precede with "he". If it's a girl, use a "she".

It it doesn't fit into the categories of male or female, then you use "ne", for either keeping the gender hidden (like in 2nd-person stories with the word "you"), it already is gender neutral, and/or the noun is generalized, like calling a generic dog a poodle. You don't know the specific gender of a sub-species, or an entire species for that matter.

Why not use umlauts and accent marks? Then you can have letters make different sounds, but they have a distinction.

Also, the thorn.

If you look on the doc, it says that the method of writing is using the Latin alphabet with standard English punctuation, with no accents, special punctuation symbols, etc.

I specifically picked the Latin alphabet because any keyboard that has Latin letters on it can use it. And because it's easier to type. Though maybe I'll add that in, possibly as an alternative way of writing the double vowels.

And I don't think there's an easy way of typing thorn without using an alt-number code.

[Bill Phil]

That's why I asked "why not?".

Maybe have an adapted digital version and a separate written version? Or accept both formats?

[Newt]

Me kooms ye's veet!*

This is pretty neat. I have had fun writing up my own languages and studiying constructed languages like Esperanto.

Here's an example of that last bullet:

granpreesteraarignee’agwa (gragwa)

gran: large, big

prees: Pressure

tera: earth

aar: air

ignee: fire

agwa: water

All totaled:

Large pressured earth with air and fire water. Which is a volcano.

This makes me think a bit of the very strange and akward language Toki Pona. If you wish to go this route, you need to define things lest you run into its problems of incredible ambiguity when things become complex.

As far as some of the other things, what sort of goals are you going for? Just fewer irregulars, fun, or some other goal? You lack a lot of tenses (like progressives, for instance) that are common (but unneeded, Esperanto has them but hardly uses them, for instance).

I shall be curious to hear more about how this progresses.

*This is not mean to violate any rule about posting in code or other languages to exclude forum members. If the moderation team view it as doing so, I can change it.

[EdFred]

I suggest toomuchtimeonmyhands

[bigyihsuan]

Changed some stuff.

Do Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G or Cmd+Alt+Shift+G on the doc of full history

Changelog:
-----------
* Added the umlaut rule (umlaut vowel = double vowel)
* Added a few adj, basic nouns, merged nouns, a verb
* Changed short-form rule: Now long basic nouns have a short form (i.e. ignee --> ig)
* Organized the noun list
* Periodic table up to Lithium

[gooddog15]

How about hyconsuperphisyolyostigatedhypertheticaldigintary?

[bigyihsuan]

Changelog:
-----------
(3/23/15)
* Revamped how elements were named
* Elements up to Fluorine
* Colors
* Dark + Light (adj)
-----------
(3/20/15)
* Added the umlaut rule (umlaut vowel = double vowel)
* Added a few adj, basic nouns, merged nouns, a verb
* Changed short-form rule: Now long basic nouns have a short form (i.e. ignee --> ig)
* Organized the noun list
* Periodic table up to Lithium

[Bill Phil]

Hey, what's the syntax?

[bigyihsuan]

Hey, what's the syntax?

Same as English, pretty much. So subject-verb-object.

Adjectives and adverbs can be in any order, so if you want to say a big red dog that is round, in English, you would say "red big round dog." In this, as long as the adjectives/adverbs are before the noun/verb, it's fine. So you can say "round red big round dog" instead.

[bigyihsuan]

5/27/15 Changelog:

* some more nouns
* prepositions and location words
* More elements (up to 35) with rules
* tweak to tense suffixes
* conjunctions
* adverb suffix (-lë)
* MAJOR: removed double vowels for umlauted vowels

Still working on this.

I'm thinking of making a language based entirely on suffixes.

Edited May 28, 2015 by bigyihsuan