Cristina Escalante is here.

Alotica! (that is, 'Hello')


Hello everyone. I've been developing and perfecting my conlang for four to five years now. After all this time I'm finally ready to share it, but as I've never shared this with anyone, I'm looking for a place and community to post it on. Does anyone know of a place to host it? To share it? Would anyone want to look at it? I'm glad to find a community about my passion ^o^.

Okay, let me just say a few things.  Although this is not my first attempt at a conlang of any sort (far from it), it is my first time with a polysynthetic language.  I'd, first of all, like to know if everything seems...right and/or makes sense.  Second, and I know this seems out of the blue, but something of key importance is that I need to be able to say, for instance, 'inanimate object-turned-human' or 'human being-turned-abstract concept' with relative ease.

Without further ado, here is what I have so far.  Phonology I will work out soon, after I know that the grammar makes sense.  I have a system of sound symbolism worked out in chart forms, but not an actual inventory of phonemes for the language.

( Lots more under the cut... )

The following is a youtube link which looks at the Na'vi language:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZZbTYdPBk#watch-main-area

i_hope_that
For many of us, the holidays can be kind of rough. If you're searching for a network of understanding friends, this ultra-nurturing community encourages you to express your heartfelt wishes and offer other members encouragement and acceptance. Not for the terminally snarky or emotionally-challenged, this is a good-spirited place to lend comfort and support.

diygifts
Feeling crafty? If you've got a few last folks on your holiday gift list, this is a great place to seed your creativity and generosity. You'll also discover wonderful DIY tips to decorate your home and entertain guests. Offering a no-frills-no-skills attitude that welcomes the cash-challenged and arts-phobic, you're sure to get ideas and make friends in the process.

cooking_club
A fun and friendly community dedicated to those who love to cook, whether you're a meat-and-potatoes type, an aspiring gourmand, and/or a vegan. In search of a brilliant dish to use up those weekly leftovers? Post your ingredients and you'll be whipping up a feast by dinner. You can also share favorite recipes. For Type A chefs, you can spice up your culinary repertoire with exciting cooking challenges.

I don't know what's going on with the links I just posted -- they worked yesterday, but today they return only 404s. However, if you go to Google and type -- "Some highlights of Na'vi" Language Log -- in the search box you can get to the article.

Paul Frommer, the prof who constructed the Na'vi language for Avatar, has done a guest post about Na'vi at Language Log. Quite a bit of information, especially about the phonology. The post is at
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/p=1977#more_1977 .

One of my conlangs (which is as of yet unnamed) is intended to be a special-purpose pidgin which makes use of only a limited array of sounds. Originally it was spelled with only 15 letters (a, e, f, i, j, k, l, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, w). More recently I have considered the use of another 4 with limited frequency (b, c, h, y) for a bit more variety, though some or all may not make the cut. [I also considered, early on, using "h" as a sigh-like pseudovowel, but that might be problematic for some people and violates the semi-Germanic tone I was going for.]

Anyway, I have noticed that all of the words which I have experimented with using fit into just a few fairly complex but very restricted patterns; for example, 'jept' (which I have been using to mean 'gossip') fits perfectly within the "three-consonant" pattern whereas 'apolp' violates it in 3 different ways (the word starts with a vowel, L's never follow vowels, and P is used twice). Note that each pattern does not follow the same set of "rules". And that I didn't create any of those patterns on purpose, or at least not consciously - probably just an overzealous drive to give it a particular flavor.

( Read the other 5/8ths of this )

language of the Avatar

The IPA has only 100 some phonemes, if I understand correctly. But there are clearly more sounds than this in all the spoken languages of the world. One language of Africa has 40+ clicks in it alone. I would be interested to know how many there are total, and I would REALLY be interested in being able to hear them all.

stepstomarrow
When granddaughter, Jada, was born with leukemia, a donor-match was located and Jada made a miraculous recovery. In honor of her grandaughter's health, Jeanna has decided to walk across the country (in the dead of winter) to raise awareness and build support for the bone marrow registry (all that's required is a cheek swab). Follow Jeanna's remarkable journey as she travels the United States by foot.

I've just done a thirty-minute interview about LAadan for the BBC, as part of a segment they were doing on conlangs; other guests on the segment included Arika Okrent, author of _In the Land of Invented Languages_, someone talking about Klingon, and perhaps a few more. The interview went very well; however, I have no idea how much of the thirty minutes will actually be used.

The show is called "Word of Mouth", and this episode goes out on 5 January at 16:00 [GMT]; you can also listen again for a week at the Radio 4 website which is www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 .

I hate to keep dominating this board, but no one else seems to post much. ;-)

I was just wondering how many of you are actually fluent in your own conlang. I want to become fluent in mine, which is part of the reason I'm not straying too far from the grammatical structures I'm most familiar with (those of English, Spanish, French and Hebrew). My vocabulary has a few loanwords but mostly I'm making that up on my own. Vocabulary has always been easy for me to learn, but grammar is another story.

Anyway, how did you reach your degree of fluency? I assume it's just like learning any other language. You would think that since a conlang is your own creation, it would be easier to learn, but I'm finding that doesn't really seem to be the case.

taste_buds
Holidays provide a built-in excuse for indulgent entertaining. This all-purpose foodie community covers everything from homemade hangover cures to dinner party menus. Need quick advice? Get five-minute snack suggestions, low-fat ingredient substitutes, and even measurement conversions. Delicious recipes garnished with humorous advice. Yum.

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

http://www.lycaeum.org/mv/anagrams/PARALINGUA.cgi?article=Jeshap

I have this word in my conlang, jeshap, which means finish or complete. I got curious if perhaps I'd heard that word somewhere before, and typed it in google. This page came up. I'd love to know what language this is!

http://i45.tinypic.com/29ft5l4.jpg


http://i46.tinypic.com/fldc84.jpg

-Reminder for Challenge 66! You guys have til tomorrow to enter our Holiday episode challenge.

-anno_superstar is closing down the Battlestar Galactica challenge comm starttheclock after 3 and a half years. She's invited back all airlocked members for the comm's final anything goes challenge. The challenge post is this a way, please try to enter if you can.

I know a little Hebrew, and it does not use "is, am, are" in the present tense. I know there are some other languages like that as well. I find that as I'm constructing my own language, Carichendan, I tend to inadvertently not use the word for is (which is simply, "a" and means all 4 of these: be, is, am, are) in many cases. So, for example, to say "How are you" (literally, "what is your blessing?"), you should technically say "tsa aluva shoyal a?"
tsa = what
aluva = your
shoyal = blessing
a = is

But in speech, and in this case, even in writing, I do not use the "a" in this sentence. It's just "Tsa aluva shoyal?" (What your blessing).
But in the answer, "ana shoyal a shale" (my blessing is peace)
ana = my
shale = peace
I tend to want to use the "a." Maybe it just sounds better.

To ask how someone is who has been sick, you say "How are you?" which is "Kangi alu?"
Kangi = how
alu = you

Technically it would be "Kangi alu a?" (how you are?) but I don't say that. Just "Kangi alu?" (how you?)

In these everyday phrases, the "a" tends to get left out, and sometimes even in other sentences. But most of the time, I think I do use it, although it may not be necessary at all. But there is another problem - Carichendan has a lot of words which end in vowels. So you often end up with a doubling (or even tripling) of the a-sound when you use the present tense "to be." So, for example, "Aliya a alin" (life is easy). In speech, that is inevitably going to be condensed to sound like "Aliya'alin. The tripling of the a-sound is rare, but the doubling is quite common.
Aliya = life
Alin = easy

I was thinking about making it a grammar rule that the present tense "to be" is not necessary. But then I think there may be some complications with this.

In Carichendan, the adjective comes after the noun. So "Aliya alin" means "easy life." So how would you distinguish between "easy life" and "life is easy"? In Hebrew, there are some conventions that can help distinguish sometimes, but other times it is ambiguous. Most of the time, context clears it up. But sometimes, it does not. This has in fact caused some multiplicity of possible meanings of certain sentences in the Bible.

In Hebrew, if you want to say "the red book" you say "the book the red," whereas if you want to say "the book is red," you say "the book red." So that extra "the" which gets added to the adjective clears up the meaning. However, there is also no "a, an" in Hebrew, so there is no way to distinguish "a red book" from "a book is red," since you can't say "a book a red." It's just "book red" either way.

I do have a word for "a, an" in Carichendan, but I do not wish to have to do something like this, where you have to add a "the" or "a, an" to the adjective. What other ways could one make it clear? Or am I getting too uptight about this?!

So, should the present tense "to be" stay or go? What do you think?