#oayhaou

How important do you think it is for a conlang to have words for each individual thing or action?

Obviously the answer depends on what the language is intended to be used for and on the people who use it. A more analytical and exacting conlang will probably have a separate word for each and every individual variation of things that could possibly exist. But for an almost exclusively conversational language like 'Oayhàoù, where most use of the language is in close proximity to what you're talking about and pointing to a body part or which bird you're referring to gets the job done just as well as a word for each, how important do you think it is?

I'd like to remove redundancy to keep the vocabulary small (except in special circumstances—I have like 5 different words for "move" to cover different speeds), but I can't shake the feeling that making a vocabulary too small, like toki pona’s, would be too limiting...

‘Oayhàoù is primarily a spoken language, and it is a fairly terse, imprecise language heavily reliant on context at that. It is intended to be used to communicate what is necessary by gesturing toward what you are speaking about and is generally not good for flowery exposition (though it is certainly accomplished through the overuse of metaphor by its speakers). The fact that sentences have no grammatical structure beyond the emphasis of the word depending on its position also makes it difficult to get too elaborate.

As a result, the written form of ‘Oayhàoù is grossly inadequate for effective communication, but it gets the job done nevertheless. There is no punctuation in 'Oayhàoù because of its terseness, and there are no pronouns because of its reliance on the subjects being close enough at hand to gesture toward. In a person’s absence, their name is used and reference to them is a gesture away from/to the right of the speaker to indicate “them”. And because there is no punctuation, line breaks are used to separate sentences, which makes written 'Oayhàoù look a little like poetry, even when it’s totally not!

Example: –◠›○⊂⇃ <◡~◡~ ›◡◠◡⇃ ›⊃⇃ ◡~◡~ ›◡⇃ ↾⇂⊃ ◟⊂›◡ ↾◡⇂◡ ◞

Romanization: fy'uo⇃ <amam 'aya⇃ 'e⇃ amam 'a⇃ ↾he ào'a ↾haha è

Literal Translation: I need food. Come with me eat. To me your day speak. You happy?

Unlike English, however, the written form does have an indicator of when a verb is instead being used as a noun: placing a “<” before any written verb indicates that you intend to use. It’s an important helper because the word order of sentences in 'Oayhàoù is used to derive more meaning—words are ordered from most to least important.

That is, “Hello!”

This is the new repository of knowledge for all things 'Oayhàoù, a conlang for mammals. I’m developing a lexicon on Lexiconga right now, where I’m storing all the dry information about the language, so you can look at all the words and read all the details here if you’d like. But this blog will be devoted to interesting things about the language as well as discussion about conlanging and linguistics in general. I have no formal training in linguistics and only know what comes naturally when it comes to conlanging, but I’m always trying to learn! I’ll be trying to organize my tags as well as I can, so things tagged “oayhaou” will obviously be about 'Oayhàoù while something like “not oayhaou” will be reblogs and other content.

I’ll also be posting ideas for a conworld (tagged “conworld”) within which 'Oayhàoù is the lingua franca of all mammals and most other creatures and Zirka, my all-purpose crypto-artlang, is the language of humans. Along with that will be concultures (tagged “conculture”) related to speakers of 'Oayhàoù. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the conworld, but I’ve been wanting to build a unifying umbrella for all my ideas to live within, so we’ll see what comes of it, I guess!

If you want to chat about conlanging or if you get followed by either of my main blogs (personal or gamedev) feel free to engage me! :)