#cwihlur

The language has two different types of possession: alienable and inalienable, so things get treated differently depending on how inherent your connection to them is.

Inalienable possession is (roughly) for body parts, kinship, things originating from the possessor, attributes, and mental stuff.

*k͡ʘəwix lu luxɑ merfolk {poss} voice

(merfolk's voice)

*lu is a postposition originally denoting location, think of "the fin at the fish" eventually becoming "the fish's fin".

Alienable possession is for pretty much everything else, things that you can own but can be lost or removed without much difficulty.

*k͡ʘəwix seʀk͡ǁus seʀeq merfolk harpoon {poss}

(merfolk's harpoon)

*seʀeq is a postposition coming from the word for "thing" so it's marking the harpoon as the object, the property.

The word for thing came from the word for "matter, situation" like in Germanic languages, which in turn came from the nominalized form of the verb "to request" because a request or a question can be a "matter" or a "situation" to be discussed.

I had the option of not marking inalienable possession at all and only using one postposition for alienable possession, but I thought it could be fun to mark both. Once I decided on that I learned that apparently some languages use a difference in word order to make the alienable-inalienable distinction, so I thought of how to incorporate that into my language.

So that's why inalienable possession is marked on the possessor while alienable possession is marked on the possessee. And of course I tried to make sure the word order and etymologies matched with the meanings so it's not arbitrary (plus I consulted the World Lexicon of Grammaticalization, love that book).

One more thing is I decided not to treat the following as possession (grammatically):

location, just because a thing is somewhere doesn't mean it's "of" that place, it's "in" it or "from" it

borrowing, the thing is not theirs, it's "with" them

stuff that hasn't been given, it's not theirs yet it's "for" them

A fun exception to the last one is prophecy, as this is seen as something predetermined, something we know is going to happen, so if someone is prophecized to acquire an item you can say the item is just theirs even if they haven't gotten it yet and no one would bat an eye.

I don't usually count my sound changes, but I wrote a total of 57 (I wrote it in Lexurgy and some of the sound changes are more complex and go thru a few steps, so depending on how you count it could be a bit more) and while a lot of the words are still fairly similar to their proto-forms I think there's enough of a change for me to be satisfied, plus the final words sound aesthetically pleasing to me, which was one of my goals so I'm happy with this.

SIDE NOTE: this fictional world is inspired by JRPGs so I figured I would include slimes as part of the fauna in this world, I picture the aquatic slimes as being somewhat similar to sea cucumbers, but of course not identical.

I also made a romanization system as you can see in the screenshots, completely ASCII friendly, except you can mark irregular stress with acute accents if you want, but it's not obligatory.

I actually ended up making 10 words, here they are:

səˈk͡ǃæn̪ - face

ˈʀɨ.pu - arm, hand

el - tentacle

wət̪ - back

ˈjɨ.qɑ - eye

k͡ǁup͡ɸ - head

xil - belly

læs - hair

t͡sem - fin

ˈje.ma - mouth

Of course keep in mind these are merfolk, hence the words like "tentacle" and "fin". Also I decided to name the proto-language "Proto-Abyssal" since these are deepwater merfolk, I think it works well.

In the Obsidian notes I left some bits empty like inflections because I don't know if there's going to be inflections yet, we'll figure it out as we get to that prompt.

So here's what I have so far!

So there's a bit of context I should add: when I conlang I tend to make the inventory for the evolved language first, then I come up with an inventory for the proto-language, and then I figure out how to get from point A to point B. I give myself some wiggle room, so even if I can't get quite to my target inventory as long as I get close enough I tend to be satisfied.

So with that in mind, I actually did make a target inventory for this language, I won't show it until later, it can stay a surprise for now, but for the proto-language I wanted to make an inventory that is somewhat similar to my target but still different enough that the words will have to mutate quite a bit and won't look too similar to their original forms by the time I've applied all of the sound changes to them.

I've wanted to make a language with clicks for a while but I keep hesitating because I can't really pronounce or hear the different types of clicks very easily (like differences in aspiration, nasality, palatalization, etc.), but I decided that even if natural languages tend to have lots of distinctions in their clicks I probably don't need to add that for mine, I will add one distinction but I will end up with very few clicks in total and I think I'm fine with that.

At first I was unsure about the inventory I'm aiming to evolve but I think it's growing on me, and I think even this proto-language inventory looks nice. I also feel like the syllable structure gives me plenty of room to play with, I can evolve clusters into new sounds, simplify them, or make new clusters without too much difficulty.