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 Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:22 am
I bet you saw that apostophe and said your conlang's version of 'you fail', right? xd Anyway, I'm abandoning Gonn for a second attempt at conlanging, this time with a better conlang. With Gonn, I besically took an electric chainsaw and went BZZZRRRRT on English and put the peices back together. Now, I'm going to try a better approach. Better phonology, well sorta, more creative grammar, and stuff.
Basically, I'm using a diesel chainsaw this time. 3nodding
Now to the point. Phonology.
~~~
English sounds: P, T, K, F, S, M, N, L, R, W, Y, CH (designated C), long and short A, short E, long I, Long and short O, long U. In addition, the nasal stop-thingie 'ng' is used. It is a blockage at the back of the mouth, instead of being labial or whatever N is.
Also, I have four non-english sounds. "Z" is basically like R and SH together. To pronounce it, move your tounge up in an R position and force air through your teeth like SH. It sounds like a satanic SH. "Q" Is a plosive at the front of the palatte(sp?). It sounds like a low T with a hint of K. "X" is the German 'ch' sound, a voiceless velar (I think) fricative. It's a hiss at the back of the mouth. Finally, "V" is a voiceless bilabial fricative, the "phew" sound.
Also, note that the T sound is also against the teeth in this language. It sounds kinda affricate-y, I think. It's like the regular T, but move the tounge forward to the teeth.
So, yeah.
Plosives: "Q", P, T, K
Fricatives: F, S, "Z", "X", "V"
Approximants: R, L, W, Y
Nasals: M, N, "J"
Affricates: "C" (CH)
Vowels: short and long A, short E, long I, Short and long O, long U.
My orthography sucks. Get used to it. biggrin
To differentiate between the long and short O's and A's, the orthography uses a carat above the long vowels A and O. Since I'm lazy and want a way available directly from the keyboard, Imma also use 'Ah' and 'Oh'. Or 'Au' and 'Ou'.
Oh, right, a phonology feature oddity: ft, fk, fp, fq, sp, sk, st, zq, zp, zk, xk, xp, vp, vt, and vk can stand on their own as syllables. Vowels need not apply with them! So, these backwards affricate thingies sound kinda different. They are marked with an apostophe at the the end. So, english word " daft " sounds different from " daft' ". Daft vs. Da-ft. You can get a feel for these sounds with ft', which has the most obvious difference. The T sounds like an impact.
I probably did something horribly unrealistic and full of phail here. xd Wow, I'm not even to the grammar yet.
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Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:32 am
Stop! Grammartime!
~~~
Verbs go like this: Verb-(Adverbs/Time/Location). The time word designates when, obviously, and the location word is where. The adverbs, time, and location can be witched around within those parentheses however you desire. Now, here's the tricky part: There is no set structure for Subject-Verb-Object. Nouns in the subject get -(e)t as a suffix, as do conjunctions that link compound subjects and adjectives describing the subject. Objects are left alone.
Prepositional phrases are linked insepereably as Prep-Noun, but can go anywhere in the sentence.
Relative clauses are designated with yah as the universal relative pronoun at the beginning. For subjects, add -t to yah. Directly after yah, add what you want to say in the relative clause. Also, use a pronoun to refer to the subject, and at the end of the clause, add yoh. So, for "John, who is my friend, painted the house for me", 'who would be replaced with 'yah', the Ft'olz word for 'he' would go before 'is', and 'yoh' would go after 'friend'. (John, yaht he is my friend yoht, painted the house for me.) Because the relative caluse is enclosed in 'yah' and 'yoh', rather than being bounded by a single realitve pronoun, you can relativise more in Ft'olz than you can in English. Actually, you can pretty much relativise whatever you want, for 'yah' and 'yoh' are like open- and close- parentheses.
Conjuctions linking sentences can be placed anywhere in the sentence as well, but they have to have z(a)- as a prefix and 'el' between the sentences being linked.
Possessives...add -(oh)l to the possessor of a subject, and add -(oh)m to the possessor of an object. For an adjective describing the possessor, add -(e)rl to the adjective for a subject-possessor and -(e)rm to the adjectives of an object-possessor.
If you have a possessor within a possessor, like "mom's only child's bike", add the suffixes twice to refer to the super-possessor. For three possessings, add the suffix thrice to the highest possessor. For possessor n, add the suffix n times.
SOANYWAY. Back to the flexible sentance structure. T sum it up, S, V, O, R.claus, Pphras, Posesr, and Conj can go wherever you want in the sentence. Just use the appropriate suffixes, or your meaning could get scrambled.
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:12 pm
Woo. More junk.
~~~
'Kay, verb truth values. Before you scratch your head and go 'wtf iz dat', I'll explain. Verbs normally have the suffix "-ej", or you can just omit the suffix. This is the positive 'yes' form of the verb. To negate the verb, replace "-ej" with "-in". "Probably/Sort Of Yes" is "-ef", Probably/Sort Of No is "-an", and Maybe is "-af". "-ef", "-af", and "-an" are used for uncertainty, as you can guess.
Operators. These are like using mathematical symbols in your sentence, like we see done on the internet occasionally.
pi -- "="
mal -- ">"
sk' -- Arrow "-->"
qo -- "+"
foh -- "-"
These are used like verbs and conjuctions. "A --> B" is understood as "If A, then B".
Another, more complex operator exists, saw. This lets you reuse parts of a sentence when you use it as a conjuction. Adding a "-t" reuses the subject, "-n" reuses the verb, "-s" reuses the object. You can combine the suffixes as well-- "-nt", "-ns", "-st", and "-nst". Since this operator is prety much only used for sentence conjunctoins, you don't have to add the "z(a)-".
For Yes/No questions, add a "-t" to the end of the verb of the sentence. This goes after the suffix for the verb truth value, which can be omitted in this case. Using the Probably or Probably Not suffixes are like saying "X, right?" or the opposite.
For complex questions, add "-roh" to the end of a noun pertaining to what you want answered. >.> How to explain...Whatever you're adding "-roh" to is what you want the other person to explain, be it method (how), object (what), or person (who). Putting "-roh" by itself in the sentence is a generic sort of question, and putting "-roh" by itself with no surrounding words is kina like saying "Huh?" or "LOLWUT".
Imperatives...Suprise, there are no imperatives in this language. How do you get around that? eek It's complicated. If you want Person X to do action Y, simply say you want them to do Y. If you need to know X, say you need to know X. ...Hey, It's acutally not so complicated. But it'll take some getting used to, and you may need to reword your "hinting" under different circumstances.
Helper verbs, yay. These things get annoying in English and would be difficult to impliment in the fluid sentence structure of Ft'olz, so let's try something else. They go as suffixes to the main verb, after the truth value and "-t" suffix for Y/N questions. "I need to go there" would switch to Ft'olz grammar and end up as "I go-need there". Forget about the "to"; all it did was take up space. ORITE, if you have multiple helper verbs ("I shouldn't like to need to go there"), they're backward from the way they are ordered in English. ("I go-need-like-shouldin there") Also, operators can't have helper verbs.
Relative clauses as noun replacements: You know that annoying song, "This is why I'm hot"? The relative clause is used as an object. Yeah, you can't do that in Ft'olz. Use the pronoun e and then you can throw in your relative clause. ("This is e why I'm hot")
Adjectives as objects: "X is/are Y", where Y is an adjective. Just say "YX" or "XY". Also, don't use the subject "-t" tag for that stuff; It's a sentence fragment.
Stress rule: second-to-last syllable. If the word has four or more syllables, also stress the first syllable.
Phonetic Constraints: I'm not entirely sure. The language is a bit freer than English on how big/structured the constonant clusters are, with a maximum of four constnonants per cluster. A cluster that begins a word can have a maximum of three. I'm gonna figure out exactly what clusters are allowed later. >.> I'm working on it.
~~~
For people with poor working memory, this must be the conlang from hell.
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:16 pm
Comparisons. Use a comparison word (more, less), and add -k to the compared object. Example: for "There is more blocks than blinkers here", 'more' would become the correct Ft'olz counterpart, you'd scrap the 'than', and add -k to 'blinkers'. To put it in an understandable form, "X Y than Z", where X is a comparison word, becomes "X Y Zk", of course applying other grammer rules and the flexible word structure of the langauge. The comparison word and the compared words can be on opposite sides of the sentence for all Ft'olz cares.
Dependent clauses are put in a sort of "word parentheses" like the 'yah' and 'yoh' of relative clauses. The first parenthetical word is the word that makes the clause dependent (like, as, while), but the second word is always co.Say whatever you want in the dependant clause.
If you want to say something while you're in the middle of a dependant clause or relative clause that does not pertain to the current clause (@.e), add '-(s)ah' to every word you are saying that is out of the clause. I'll demonstrate.
"I met a man who was wearing a lage black suit, a funny looking tie, white boots strangeah and a beanie walking dwon the street.
'Strange' describes the man, according to the other grammar rules of Ft'olz. You need to add '-ah' to every word, because this isn't a feature of the language that is probably going to get used. >.> Also, '-ah' goes after every other suffix.
~~~
WARNING: Conscript from the seventh circle of hell in next post. Or at least the fifth circle.
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:19 pm
*sneaks in* Uh, I found the internet after an absence that I don't care to explain right now.
The writing system of Ft'olz operates on the shallow concept of not having to lift your pencil off the paper until you get to the end of the line. Constonants are all variations of a slanted line ("/", but more slanted). When constantants are together, you invert the second one vertically. the next constantant is inverted again, and so on ("/V"). You keep zigzagging like this until you hit a vowel, all of which are variations of a vertical line ("|"). You can invert the line to put the variation in a place where it wouldn't get in the way of the constants. Then, resume zigzagging with whatever constonants come after the vowel. The result is a word looking a bit lacy ("V|/|/V", for example. CCVCVCCC, if you're wondering). To go to the next word, draw a horizontal line the width of a constonant, starting wherever that word ends. Thus, the space can look like an underscore or an overscore, whatever that means.
It seems I have a habit of explaining the mechanics first, then the other stuff. Here are the constonants and vowels.
For the backwards affricate thingies, you place an unaltered slanted line after the end, as if it were a constonant.
Yeah, this is the conscript from hell. Let's straighten this out by walking through it.
Let's say we're trying to write the name of this language, Ft'olz. First, we get the letters. Then, string them together, using the inversions of the constonants. For the sake of ease, we're starting from the lower left instead of upper left. " Ft' " is a backwards affricate, so we place a slanted line after it. Then we place the vowel, but it gets in the way of the constonant, as shown in the following picture. So, we invert it. Place the other two constonants and you're done.
Ignore the grey lines; those were just there to keep the writing straight.
Oh, I forgot the punctuationz. Hmm...
Punctuation marks are modifications of the line representing a space. Here's a picture of some mark explanations.
Yep. THe last one can be combine with the others. You can't combine other marks. If you want to emphasize something directly after a period, move it somewhere else in the sentence. This is Ft'olz, after all, so you can do that. Yay for things finally starting to come together!
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:21 pm
Miscellaneous junk that I'll sort out later.
There are no articles in this language. With the flexible sentence structure of Ft'olz, they'd just get in the way of your message.
Indirect objects and their adjectives: Use the suffix "-(e)f". If you have multiple indirect objects, use other suffixes for them. Suggestions are "-(e)p" and "-(e)w", but you can use whatever you want. Am I intentionally making this difficult? Maybe. >.>
...I need pronouns. I'll get to that later.
Consider the following sentences:
"There are energetic and soothing songs on this album."
"That song is very fast and energetic."
The meanings can be a bit unclear. In Ft'olz, we can correct that. Adjectives are not connected by the word 'and'. For an adjective describing another adjective, we use a suffix "-(e)c" on both adjectives, the one describing the other and the one describing the noun. For compund subjects that have adjectives, add "-(ah)l" to the adjective and the subject. For multiple cases of needing to use one of these in the same sentence, it would get confusing, so you would add a different suffix that you arbitrarily choose for other instances.
On a related note, repeating a subject within a compound subject. ("Red blocks and blue blocks"). Use "ku" to repeat the noun in a compound subject or object, applying the "-t" subject tag for subjects. Use "ko" for adjectives in the same way.
Okay, now I'm starting to confuse myself. >.> I think this language is starting to look too much like Lyra-chan's nerurav.
To turn an adjective into a noun, a noun into an adjective, or a verb into a noun, you change the stress rule. Stress the last syllable of this changed word. An apostrophe at the end lets you know that it is changed (or a slanted line in the proper writing system). For one-syllable words, add "-(o)x" instead.
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 1:28 am
Updates n' whathaveyou.
Dec 8 '07: Tweaking.
Dec 29 '07: Posted the writing system and put some stuff in the Misc. junk section.
Dec 31 '07: More misc. junk.
Jan 9 '08: Added two sounds: "V" and "X".
Jan 13 '08: More misc. junk.
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Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 6:40 pm
Keblah. I've finally ironed out the exact phonetic properties of Ft'olz.
Anyway, now I work on the pronouns. I've stopped caring about this thread much. Information on Ft'olz may be out of date.
Also, please, if you think you might consider even a halfway-attempt at getting the feel of the grammar and phonetic constraints, please spare your sanity.
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Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:01 pm
About the "Conscript From Hell" I totally agree with the fact that you could stumble upon the sample you posted on a rock or something else in Hell......Is the language spoken by the Devil and his minions? razz I like the script alot and would love to see more of it. How would you write "boingy" in it? Incase you don't know what a boingy is, look below:  That's a boingy. I have alot of them in different colors and all sorts. I collect them and they're mine! I'm the master of the boingies! MWAHAHAHAHA! mrgreen Ok back on topic about the pretty scripty. It reminds me of Ogham. But it's prettier!
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Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 1:10 pm
Ogham... gonk That looks like it takes too long to write. One of the concepts behind the Ft'olz writing system is not taking bloody ages to scribe. The 'double c' in Ogham is a nightmare, and people would surely simplify it.
As for the Devil question, actually, no. However, the race that speaks this language was created and is still watched over by a Gaian demon. A really, really powerful Gaian demon that keeps them stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, except for one of them, which he thinks is dead, but is actually in Gaia. And, yes, I'm referring to the world in this website.
Boingy? Um, I only have a few words. Since Ft'olz doesn't have sounds for "B" or "ee", I can't really say. >.>
~~~
In other news, I still have a lot of grammar flaws to iron out... >.> You'd think with all the time I spent on grammar and avoiding vocab, I'd have that near seamless...
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Posted: Sat Feb 09, 2008 8:40 pm
The conlang word maker doesn't do phonetic contraints all to well, but it's pointing out how difficult this language will be to pronounce with long and clustery words like ft'ajpyxepzp and zazk'uwjk <(sh)a (SH)K oowngk>. Gyhugh...Imma just make words by hand so that they can be pronouncable.
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 12:10 pm
rapst pi ziq kfah afam pomemk nohft. sp'am afa proju wit.
---
First(subject's adjective) ['=' operator verb] more important [subject-referential pronoun](object 2) others(object 1)(being compared to) sword-attack(subject). Second(object's adjective) [subject-referential pronoun](object) stop+('can' suffix) It(subject).
---
"The first strike is the most important. It can stop the second."
~~~
I'm working on vocab now. Sort of. A little. >.> I'm also testing the Grammar Hammar on stuff I'm translating. (I know it's spelled 'hammer', don't PM me.)
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Reply
