toki!

Welcome to the third weekly c/conlangs post!

First of all sorry for the delay between the last post and this one, I have been pretty busy last week so I kind of just… forgot. Sorry!

Also, if you have suggestions for a conlang and linguistic feature of the week, please send them to me! I only know so many, so I’m always happy to learn about more, so I can include them in these posts!

Conlang of the week

This week's conlang of the week is: toki pona! This language was made by linguist Sonja Lang, at first to see how having an extremely small vocabulary would influence the way speakers view things. But the language has quickly grown to have a large community, and even lots of speakers (for a conlang) due to it’s cute nature and ease of learning.

What do you think of toki pona? Do you speak it? Do you think it changes the way speakers will look at things? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!

Linguistic feature of the week

This week’s linguistic feature is more of a linguistic curiosity. Keeping with the theme of toki pona, we are looking at how your conlangs might influence the way its speakers think and act!

When German and French speakers were asked to imagine a key and describe its characteristics, they had vastly different answers. People speculate this is because of the grammatical gender that both languages have, one having a key be masculine, the other feminine.

And in toki pona, because you only have very little words to describe things it often forces speakers to break things down to the core of what they want to say, which might actually help them get their point across better too!

In what way might the features of your conlang influence its speakers? Or what things within a language do you think would influence the way people think the most? Please share it with us in the comments!

Post of the week

This week the post of the week is this great post by @Erika3sis@hexbear.com about how people seperate words in speech! Go check it out! https://hexbear.net/post/3003566

Happy conlanging everyone and thanks for being apart of the c/conlangs community!

o musi a!

pe'el!

Welcome to the first weekly c/conlangs post!

Conlang of the week

This week's conlang of the week is: Klingon! The constructed language devised for the strict warrior aliens of the same name, Klingon was first heard spoken in 1979. Klingon is one of the first conlangs to be widely recognised in popular culture, with there even being groups of people learning and speaking the language.

What do you think of the language Klingon? Does it succeed at its goals? Do you speak some Klingon? Was it what first got you into the wonderful world of constructed languages? Tell us about your thoughts in the thread!

Linguistic feature of the week

Keeping in the theme of Klingon, which was designed to sound extremely alien to the audience, the linguistic feature of the week is any feature not existing in a natural, human language.

Klingon was meant to sound extremely alien. This was mostly achieved by picking features and sounds that were exotic to English speakers. The most alien thing I could find in Klingon is the fact that it uses OVS word order, the rarest of all word orders. Some people say Klingon has not really succeeded at being "alien", because pretty much all features it has exist in some human language.

What cool and interesting "alien" features does your conlang have? Or which features do you think are super cool and would you love to see in a conlang one day? Please share it with us in the comments!

Post of the week

There will be no post of the week this week yet, as all posts so far have been made by us, the moderators. Maybe your post can be here next week?

Happy conlanging everyone and thanks for being apart of the c/conlangs community!

Qapla'!

I'll start myself: I've been quite interested in Esperanto recently, and I am thinking of starting to actually learn the language. Esperanto is just really interesting to me, because of its history and size, compared to other conlangs. I don't believe it will become the universal world language, like once was dreamed. And I do think esperanto has quite a few shortcomings when it comes to being an international auxilliary language. The reason I want to learn it is more just for that history and culture.

We want to be a welcoming community, for people to share and dicuss each others conlangs, and to find and share resources for making them. Promoting positivity and encouraging each other to keep making conlangs! Come join us at !conlangs@mander.xyz

CONLANGING RESOURCES

If you have any suggestions for resources, feel free to share them in the comments, and try to provide descriptions of your resources too. Make sure to also upvote the ones you find useful!

General Resources

1. The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder. Collection of general information and tools to get started with creating constructed languages. A must for any aspiring conlanger! 1.1. LCK Resources. Resources recommended by Mark Rosenfelder.
2. Glossary of Linguistic Terms by the SIL. If you ever come across a linguistic term that you haven't heard of, you can probably find what it means in here!
3. World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) A large overview of many features of the world's languages.
4. The International Phonetic Alphabet. You don't need to know the IPA to make your own conlang, but it's a great way to refer to the sounds that you might include in your conlang.
5. Conlanging course from the MIT. A free, university level course on creating constructed languages.
6. Wikipedia Linguistics Portal. A nice gateway to lots of linguistics content on Wikipedia.
7. ConWorkShop. A conlanging community and tools website.

Phonology

1. The International Phonetic Alphabet chart.
2. The Index Diachronica. It lists sound changes by family and sound, so if you're evolving your conlang from another, it gives you a good idea on what would feel natural
3. Mark Rosenfelder's Sound Change Applier. An easy to use tool to apply sound changes to lots of words at once.

Grammar

1. List of grammatical cases. (Wikipedia)
2. Tense, aspect and mood. (Wikipedia)

Lexicon/Vocabulary

1. Lexiconga. An easy way to store your own languages' lexicons.
2. 625 Useful Words. A list of 625 useful words to add to your conlang's lexicon.
3. A Conlanger's Thesaurus. A big lexicon of all the words that you could possibly want to have in your conlang, ordered by subjects and connections between words.
4. Swadesh list. A list of words used to compare langauges. (Wikipedia) 3.1. Appendix. List of swadesh lists for many different languages. (and even some conlangs!)
5. Kinship Terminology. One of the easiest ways to introduce non-English flavour to your conlang.

Conlanging on Youtube

• Artifexian
• Babelingua
• Biblaridion
• Connor Quimby
• David Peterson
• jan Misali
• Koallary
• Lichen the Fictioneer
• Nakari Speardane

Other Communities

1. Conworkshop Events Another nice conlanging community.
2. !linguistics@mander.xyz (Kbin link). A community about general linguistics.
3. !linguistics_humor@sh.itjust.works (Kbin link). A community to post memes and funnies about linguistics.
4. !worldbuilding@lemmy.world (Kbin link). A community to discuss all the other interesting facets of worldbuilding.
5. !languagelearning@sopuli.xyz (Kbin link). A community to discuss practical language learning.