#conlang update

Writing System

I feel pretty good about the characters I have made! The script is written vertically. I'm still working on a handwritten script so that you don't have to only write in calligraphy. I still want to make all the letter names a plant, but I have nowhere enough words right now.

Derivation

I am working on more suffixes and prefixes to derive more words. So far I have the prefix "her-" which makes an adjective into a verb.

For example:

Gjalt - large, big

Hergjale - to enlarge, to grow

A suffix I have added it "-ym-" which takes a verb and turns it into the product or result of the verb, similar to "-age" in English.

For example:

Kåre - to cook

I finally busted out a nice chunk of my base grammar!! I’ve worked on the phonotactics, more orthography stuff, and did some reworking on the pronouns, verbs, noun declensions, adjective declensions, and definite articles!

Pardon my sloppy tables below. I am making a cute little journal for my conlang and it fits the vibe. Eventually I will digitalize this stuff, but it feels good to hand write 😁☀️

Orthography

I’ve decided to change some of the spelling rules and letters that are in my language. I also reworked the romanization. I opted to use the Icelandic letters, Þ & Ð, for their respective sounds. I reduced the amount of letters in the alphabet. What I did was halve the vowels in writing because I had originally selected the vowels to come in pairs: strong & weak.

Strong vowels are proceeded by one consonant, while weak vowels are proceeded by two (of the same) consonant, in spelling. This goes for the alphabet and romanization. The left sounds are the strong and the right the weak.

Pronouns

I decided to drop the 4th person pronoun I had and stick with 1, 2, and 3 person. I also took away 3 cases for the sake of having less. The remaining ones are NOM, ACC, DAT, GEN, INS, and VOC. There is still one pronoun for the 3rd person and it does not change based on the gender of the noun.

Definite Articles

I changed my articles so many times. I landed on having definite articles but NO indefinite articles and no plurality in articles or nouns. Clarification can be made with numbers and measure words, which I will be working on soon! I was heavily inspired by German articles when making my own!

Haven’t been up to much today because I have a lot of homework to do and do other boring adult things :((( but I have been messing around with the script and trying to hone it!

The Script

This is just some incoherent words put together. I’m getting a feel for the script. It almost looks like words form a key shape. I’m digging it!!!

I haven't worked on much over the week. I am swamped with homework and work. Instead, I'll take this time to showcase what I o have that I have not shown yet.

Script

I decided to change up the script a little bit. Instead of intersecting lines I separated them. I feel as though it is more pleasing to the eye.

Pronouns

There are nine cases in my language. That might be a bit overkill, but I have simplified other parts of the language to compensate, I suppose. The cases consist of nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, benefactive, privative, instrumental, comitative, and vocative, respective to the chart below.

The 4th person pronoun acts as a general pronoun for indicative statements or in questions such as, "How do you say?". You would not translate as you in my language, you would instead use the 4th person pronoun. Similar to how German uses man in or French uses on. I don't really need the inflections of the 4th person pronoun, I got carried away.

For the 3rd person pronoun I decided to have one and not one for each grammatical gender because I would have seven 3rd person singular and possibly plural pronouns.

Grammatical Genders

There are seven grammatical genders. They are classified as such, food and plants, animals, nature, people, general/objects, place, ideas.

Examples of each

food and plants

Kïlæs - flower

animals

Kvïnïs - cat

nature

Mineres - mountain

people

Dïnas - person, man

general

Vilhamås - knife

place

Næirus - room

ideas

Motivation

I have not been motivated for a while to work on this, but I finally found it! I did an internship over the summer, and I have another job now and school fulltime, but I will make slow and steady progress.

Prepositions

I made a preposition chart to help me visualise what I needed. These are just a few of what's to come. I was inspired by a Greek preposition chart that looked like this one.

Lexicon

I now have 101 words! I've been working on making names for countries and the continents as of now. I wanted to get creative with the names of continents, so I did a little research on pre-colonial continent names. I don't have word for Europe yet, because I am lazy but not lazy enough to transliterate it. Any ideas for Europe would be welcome.

Land Masses

Hilkharkus - Asia, literally "Silk March" or "Silk Region"

Krektïrnus - North America, literally "Turtle Continent"

Lækskeþarnus - Antarctica, literally "Cross Tundra" in reference to the Southern Cross constellation

Lïrïrëmus - Oceania, literally "Ocean Realm/Nation"

Måtïrnus - Africa, literally "Mother Continent"

Ræpïltïrnus - South America, literally "Jungle Continent"

Råkskeþarnus - The Arctic, literally "Bear Tundra" in reference the Ursa Major constellation

Here’s a little update on my conlang! I’m working on my alphabet currently. I’ve worked out the bare minimum of grammar and such and I wanted a break.

I was inspired by a game called Mandagon and Mongolian textiles and wanted a blocky almost woven textile looking alphabet.

I think I want the names of the letters to be named after edible plant categories, that being tuberous vegetables, root vegetables, cabbages, squashes and gourds, and so on. Similar to how the Ogham letters are trees, but I want to focus on culinary aspects as well. Also inspired by Runes, I might incorporate some more meaning behind each letter besides the plant.

Prepositions

Alrighty, for the adpositions I decided to keep them in the front, prepositions, not for any strong reason, but to keep things easy. I made distinction between spatial, directional, and temporal prepositions. As opposed to having two different words for "in" and "into", the proceeding noun will be marked with a different grammatical case. Spatial prepositions use the dative case, directional use the genitive case, and temporal use the benefactive case.

For example:

Whelöm shiv jæn mårkumav.

You are walking in the market.

The suffix -um marks the dative case telling us the preposition is spatial, so the walking is taking place within the market, not from a separate location into the market.

v.s.

Whelöm shiv jæn mårkugav.

You are walking into the market.

The suffix -ug marks the directional case telling us the preposition is directional. The walking takes place coming from one location into another.

Writing Script

So far I have come up with characters I am happy with. The system functions as an abugida. I have the characters, but I have not assigned any sounds to them yet. This is my next goal!!!

Lexicon

I've been making slow but steady progress! I'm taking a few classes for summer quarter, so it's hard to find a break. As for the conlang, I've been just working on the foundation. I've finished constructing personal pronouns, noun declension markers, adjective declensions, basic articles, and basic verb conjugations. I went a little crazy with cases, so I simplified other aspects of the base grammar.

Vocabulary

So far, I only have 37 words, not including pronouns and articles. I'm slowly finding ways to derive words. My favorite word right now is ovary, "rithkjemes". It is derived from egg + home.

Prepositions

I plan on working on prepositions soon. I have an idea of what I am going to do, but I haven't executed anything yet. I want to have a system where the noun of preposition is marked by different cases depending on the function of the preposition. Spatial prepositions will be marked with the benefactive case perhaps.