#conlangers

LCC11 will have over 26 hours of content (over twice as much as our last in-person conference); two invited speakers (Deaf linguist Dr. Erin Moriarty Harrelson and blind linguist Dr. Sheri Wells-Jensen); ASL and BSL interpretation; two tracks; multiple specialty sessions, including sign languages, loglangs, and writing systems; both open and private meetups (Christian, pro conlanger, ASL signer, autistic, disabled, plural, queer, and trans & non-binary); and a special conlang-centric performance from the Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company.

Please register by March 4th to have a say in scheduling and time allocations (it's in the registration form).

Register by March 11th to get early registration discount, and to order an LCC11 shirt (and to contribute your conlang to its design).

Regular in person registration is $95, online $30 — with discounts for early registration and LCS members, and as-able rates for self-declared financial need. Shirts are $20 plus shipping (if any), only available if ordered by March 11th.

We look forward to seeing you all there! Please, I would ask anyone who sees this to spread the announcement and news far and wide. It would really help us get the word out about our event! This year’s conference is *by far* the largest and most ambitious LCC yet.

Fiat lingua,

Margaret, LCS President

Hey, we’re S and B, and we’ve been interested in conlangs (or constructed languages) for a Very Long Time, but never got onto our feet and went for it. But that changes, starting, well, pretty much now. This blog’s going to document our (mis?)adventures constructed a language. We’re newbies, so please give us any CC, advice, or comments you want, and please join us on this ride. Here’s to not crashing and burning! Let’s go, kiddos. 

Well, look who forgot about Lexember entirely. I guess this one is gonna have to be a little more elaborate with today’s post. Not that anyone cares, but it’s the principle that matters...

This is a goat. I’m sure you knew that, but have you noticed how long its fur is? Bet I had ya totally bamboozled for a second there. The Tak people (or “Taks”) were too when they were introduced to the long-haired goats of the Pakans. Just to give you some background:

The Taks live on the island Kēsad [ˈkeːsaθ] (with several small, uninhabited tiny islands around it as well as one little, slightly larger island called Šīpav [ˈɕiːpaʋ] (Šyipaw [ɕʷyjpaʋ] in its own dialect)). These people speak the Kotekkish language (< Old Kotekkish < Proto-Kotekko-Pakan).

On the mainland, which is only seperated from the Taks’ islands by a slim belt of sea, live the Pakans. In contrast to Kēsad, which mostly consists of small volcanic mountains covered in dense forest, swamps, and beaches, the land of the Pakans is predominantly covered in grassy plains as well as smaller, less dense patches of forests around.

The Pakans have a domesticated a long-haired variant of goats, the fur of which they use for garments, rope, and all sorts of things. A general term for a goat is kali (< OP keali < PKP *ke-a-li). The Proto-Kotekko-Pakan root is *ke meaning “hair” or “fur”.

In the Kotekkic branch, this got a human-suffix *-ka which combined with the “hair”-part of it made the word keāk (< OK kealk-o < PKP *ke-a-li-ka) meaning “young man” or “teenager”, referring to the whole process of, you know, growing hair and stuff...

So anyway, keali is a generic term for an adult goat in Old Pakan. But it was much more common to refer to a goat by its gender specific name: pili for males and hqiuke for females. Females goats produce milk; milk can be made into cheese. Who has the goats? The Pakans. Who wants the cheese? The Taks. So what do they call this delicacy? Why kiuke as a loan from hqiuke. This ends up as the Kotekkish word kiug [ˈkiwχ].

I have made a discord server for people who like to build worlds, characters, languages, etc.!

This includes D&D, fanfic writers with considerable non-canon additions, or original content writers who write for sci fi and fantasy!

Okay so uhh this is gýχy [ˈŋyxʏ]. It means “call” or “voice” and is used in some rather interesting ways if I do say myself.

So in Old Pakan, there was this word ńuku [ˈɴukʰu], which meant “(angry) voice”. It came from Proto-Kotekko-Pakan *ńucu (> Old Kot. nuco > */nyɟ/ > Kotekkic nij [niç] “sign”, “warning”).

One of the ways that ńuku could be used was with the verb meku “to cut”, “to penetrate”. The phrase meku ńuku meant “to scream (angrily)” in the sense that you sort of penetrate the air with your voice.

The word meku as “to cut” was going out of fashion in favor of kahka. Now meku was basically only used in this expression. Furthermore, ńuku’s meaning had shifted to a more neutral term for “voice”. Because the original meaning had been blurred, the speakers reanalyzed the phrase with meku being the word for being angry, while ńuku simply meant “voice”.

Through analogy, the speakers started using ńuku (later gýχy) as an adverb sort of word, that turned ‘verb X’ into ‘the sound you make when you verb X’.

That resulted in some (in my opinion) cool phrases:

θíta gýχy “to laugh” (θíta “to have fun”, “to play”) χýχy gýχy “to weep (in pain)” (χýχy “to be in pain”) láy gýχy “to cry (from sadness)” (láy “to be sad”) láθy gýχy “to pitter-patter” (láθy “to rain”, “to fall”) θíθa gýχy “to make out” (θíθa “to kiss” – this refers to how passionate kissing is often accompanied by sounds)