VizionEck

Off-Topic => Off-Topic Community => Topic started by: Legend on Dec 17, 2016, 11:09 PM

Title: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Dec 17, 2016, 11:09 PM
Constructed languages are beautiful and awesome if you're into world building. We should talk about them more often.

Quote
(http://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/udhr_betenic.gif)(http://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/udhr_dave.gif)(http://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/udhr_martolamme.gif)(http://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/smp_kala.gif)(http://www.omniglot.com/images/langsamples/smp_oxidilogi.jpg)
The most famous conlangs are:



I've worked on a few conlangs but they've all kinda merged into VizionEck's.



Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Dec 18, 2016, 04:23 AM
Star Citizen has a conlang.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Cute Pikachu on Dec 18, 2016, 04:41 AM
Im still confused what this is lol.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Dec 18, 2016, 04:48 AM
Im still confused what this is lol.
A thread about constructed languages.  Languages that people make for game, TV, movies, books, etc are all in that category.  

I've always wanted to sit down and create my own language and make a world with history like The Elder Scrolls and Lord of the Rings.  
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Dec 18, 2016, 05:40 AM
Im still confused what this is lol.
Japanese, English, French, etc. all developed naturally.

Conlangs are languages that are developed artificially by small groups of people. They are sometimes designed as universal languages which are easy for most languages to learn, or they are artistic and designed for movies/games. Like in Game of Thrones when they talk in a foreign language it's not just random sounds, it's actually a fully developed real language with thousands of words.
A thread about constructed languages.  Languages that people make for game, TV, movies, books, etc are all in that category.  

I've always wanted to sit down and create my own language and make a world with history like The Elder Scrolls and Lord of the Rings.  
It's not that hard to create a simple conlang. Most conlangs only have a few dozen words and very simple grammar. Dragon speak in Skyrim for example is extremely simple and not a full language.

Get started and have fun!!!
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Feb 18, 2017, 03:51 AM
Lots of info released about the Arrival conlang.

GitHub - WolframResearch/Arrival-Movie-Live-Coding: Documents from a live coding session by Christopher Wolfram related to content from the 2016 film Arrival (https://github.com/WolframResearch/Arrival-Movie-Live-Coding)
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Aug 24, 2017, 06:08 PM
We are David J. Peterson (creator of Dothraki and Valyrian from Game of Thrones), Marc Okrand (creator of Klingon from Star Trek), and Paul Frommer (creator of Na'vi from Avatar). Ask us anything! : IAmA (https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/6vsigd/we_are_david_j_peterson_creator_of_dothraki_and/)
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 28, 2017, 12:02 AM
It's not that hard to create a simple conlang. Most conlangs only have a few dozen words and very simple grammar. Dragon speak in Skyrim for example is extremely simple and not a full language.

Get started and have fun!!!
The biggest reason I've never done it, is because I would want to flesh it out as much as possible.  Put a lot of work into it.  

Ignoring that though, I decided to make a little writing system today.  I'm basing it off Japanese's syllabaries.  Still working on it.  

Words will be similar to Japanese, structure wise.  

There are a few horizontal components that represent vowels and a bunch of more vertical components for consonants.  

Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Aug 28, 2017, 03:26 AM
The biggest reason I've never done it, is because I would want to flesh it out as much as possible.  Put a lot of work into it.  
I can understand that ;D


Ignoring that though, I decided to make a little writing system today.  I'm basing it off Japanese's syllabaries.  Still working on it.  

Words will be similar to Japanese, structure wise.  

There are a few horizontal components that represent vowels and a bunch of more vertical components for consonants.  
So what makes it different to japanese? Are the horizontal and vertical components unique?

What's your goal?
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 28, 2017, 10:02 AM
I can understand that ;D


So what makes it different to japanese? Are the horizontal and vertical components unique?

What's your goal?
Phonetically it's the opposite of Japanese.  

Japanese has characters for vowels and then all of the characters have the form "cv".  Consonant vowel.  So every sound in Japanese has a vowel at the end.  No double consonants. (Although there are exceptions to that).

This is basically the opposite.  
Characters have the form "vc", so words like "am" are possible, but "ma" is not.  

I find this a bit unnatural, but I just wanted to try it out.  


The horizontal are just simple lines.  Like "a" is a solid horizontal line. "--"
Verticals are usually more complicated, but one of them is just a vertical like "|" which is "m".  
Then the character "+" made by putting together, is "am".
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 28, 2017, 05:45 PM
Sharing for funsies.  

I kinda don't like it.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 29, 2017, 09:11 PM
Thoughts?  ^
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Aug 29, 2017, 09:17 PM
Someone posted this in the procedural generation Reddit.  
           
   

    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet (https://m.imgur.com/a/zgrcG)

I'm not really impressed though.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Aug 29, 2017, 09:37 PM
Thoughts?  ^
I'm getting there!

Someone posted this in the procedural generation Reddit.  
           
   

    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet (https://m.imgur.com/a/zgrcG)

I'm not really impressed though.
Yeah looks really poor unless they were going for an illegible look.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Sep 01, 2017, 12:54 AM
@the-Pi-guy

I think it's a cool concept. Has some traces of being a featural system yet isn't as "sterile" as most of those feel to me. A ton of different ways vertical and horizontal elements can be represented. It could be cooler if you embrace this distinction between verticals and horizontals even more than in your example.

Take the Z, V, S, D, B, R, Th, T, Sh, Y, L, F, K, Ch, and W. They all have elements that have a slope of zero. Especially with something like AK, this could be confusing. A speaker would not know which horizontal lines belong to the K and which one belongs to the A unless they had experience with that specific combination.

I and O could be replaced with the horizontal lines of Z and V. Then 45 degree elements could be more common in the vertical characters, instead of only using two as a pair. IE the F character could have one instead of its horizontal bar. Sure it'd look more like the english N, but I feel it'd greatly increase clarity of the designs.


Another/alternative thing you could do is make all the vowels in a word connected. The vowel of the next element would continue from the previous vowel as if they were all a single line. This could give your script a cool visual identity and additionally help with differentiating which lines belong to which parts. It might require shallowing the I and O a bit to keep the vowel line from extending too far up or down. One negative/positive about this is that combinations of vowels and consonants would look different depending on the word they're in. On one hand this makes it harder to parse the syllable directly but on the other hand it makes it easier to read whole words since additional information is encoded in each part. Two otherwise identical words that start with I and O would never be misread as the other.


With the actual aesthetics, the characters with just straight lines feel at odds with the characters with curves. It's pretty hard to judge though without seeing the vowels and consonants overlaid. I like the visual identity of D and F. They feel unique.


It's a cool flip on Japanese to reverse the consonants and vowels. I imagine it would feel really weird for a native Japanese speaker to hear.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 01, 2017, 08:59 AM
@the-Pi-guy
You put way more thought into this than I expected.  :o

I think it's a cool concept. Has some traces of being a featural system yet isn't as "sterile" as most of those feel to me. A ton of different ways vertical and horizontal elements can be represented. It could be cooler if you embrace this distinction between verticals and horizontals even more than in your example.

Take the Z, V, S, D, B, R, Th, T, Sh, Y, L, F, K, Ch, and W. They all have elements that have a slope of zero. Especially with something like AK, this could be confusing. A speaker would not know which horizontal lines belong to the K and which one belongs to the A unless they had experience with that specific combination.
Ak definitely.  That's what I didn't really like about ak.  

I and O could be replaced with the horizontal lines of Z and V. Then 45 degree elements could be more common in the vertical characters, instead of only using two as a pair. IE the F character could have one instead of its horizontal bar. Sure it'd look more like the english N, but I feel it'd greatly increase clarity of the designs.
I think I will try this out.
Z, V, and a few of the other characters, I was imagining them basically as pictograms. So az means down and av means up.  
But I think there's a way to retain that.  

Another/alternative thing you could do is make all the vowels in a word connected. The vowel of the next element would continue from the previous vowel as if they were all a single line. This could give your script a cool visual identity and additionally help with differentiating which lines belong to which parts. It might require shallowing the I and O a bit to keep the vowel line from extending too far up or down. One negative/positive about this is that combinations of vowels and consonants would look different depending on the word they're in. On one hand this makes it harder to parse the syllable directly but on the other hand it makes it easier to read whole words since additional information is encoded in each part. Two otherwise identical words that start with I and O would never be misread as the other.
I think this is a cool idea.  

With the actual aesthetics, the characters with just straight lines feel at odds with the characters with curves. It's pretty hard to judge though without seeing the vowels and consonants overlaid. I like the visual identity of D and F. They feel unique.


It's a cool flip on Japanese to reverse the consonants and vowels. I imagine it would feel really weird for a native Japanese speaker to hear.
One thing I think is really cool about the Japanese writing system is that it basically limits what sounds can be written.  Gives a new learner a good idea of what basically constitutes a "Japanese sound".

Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Sep 03, 2017, 09:06 PM
Someone posted this in the procedural generation Reddit.  
           
   

    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet (https://m.imgur.com/a/zgrcG)

I'm not really impressed though.
I thought this produced better results

           
   

    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet (http://imgur.com/a/KHK3Y)
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 03, 2017, 09:23 PM
I thought this produced better results

           
   

    Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet (http://imgur.com/a/KHK3Y)
Yeah.  That looks pretty good.  

No offense to the other one, but it mostly looks like scribbles with very little structure.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 19, 2017, 08:09 PM
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/7/7f/Khuzdul.gif/revision/latest?cb=20070526150258)(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/e/e4/Elfse_Alfabet.png/revision/latest?cb=20110926155501)

It's incredible all the things that Tolkien made.  :o
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Sep 19, 2017, 08:45 PM
(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/7/7f/Khuzdul.gif/revision/latest?cb=20070526150258)(https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/e/e4/Elfse_Alfabet.png/revision/latest?cb=20110926155501)

It's incredible all the things that Tolkien made.  :o

Those are really small images for text!

The left one looks so much like futhark.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Sep 23, 2017, 06:38 PM
I really like reading about Tolkien.  

That's been something I've wanted to do.  Build a world with people that have their own history and languages.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Sep 23, 2017, 08:32 PM
I really like reading about Tolkien.  

That's been something I've wanted to do.  Build a world with people that have their own history and languages.
That's kinda what ended up happening with VizionEck Adventure. I started a stupid conlang to put in the background and give the game a little bit of interesting background graphics. That evolved into a true conlang, and then a conworld to go with it.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Oct 27, 2017, 07:04 PM
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Jan 16, 2018, 11:34 PM
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 16, 2018, 11:57 PM
I've been thinking of putting together some sort of language, where the letters in the words are basically descriptive.  

I'm not really sure how possible it is.  
It seems really challenging to try to figure out categories, but I've only just started thinking about it.  

As an example:
The first letter might describe if it's a living noun, or a verb or something.  Say 'a' for a living thing.

The second letter might describe how many legs the living thing has.  Say "b" means 2.


So the word "ab" would mean bipedal, and the word for human would start out with "ab".

I want to try to see if there are some good categories so that the words wouldn't become overly long.  
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Jan 18, 2018, 02:04 AM
I've been thinking of putting together some sort of language, where the letters in the words are basically descriptive.  

I'm not really sure how possible it is.  
It seems really challenging to try to figure out categories, but I've only just started thinking about it.  

As an example:
The first letter might describe if it's a living noun, or a verb or something.  Say 'a' for a living thing.

The second letter might describe how many legs the living thing has.  Say "b" means 2.


So the word "ab" would mean bipedal, and the word for human would start out with "ab".

I want to try to see if there are some good categories so that the words wouldn't become overly long.  

Stuff like that is hard and there's no shortage of attempts of trying to categorize everything.

Lots of conlangs try to have as few root words as possible and then build everything by compounding them. Toki Pona is one example.

Yours is different since the second "root" is contextual (and you want to use a single letter so you have less options) but that might give you a direction to start with.


Also maybe look into logban. Verbs in that language have very specific and defined noun relations so maybe you could do something like that. IE "A" means it's living and then that defines that the second letter is leg count, third letter is kingdom, etc.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 18, 2018, 02:24 AM
Stuff like that is hard and there's no shortage of attempts of trying to categorize everything.

Lots of conlangs try to have as few root words as possible and then build everything by compounding them. Toki Pona is one example.

Yours is different since the second "root" is contextual (and you want to use a single letter so you have less options) but that might give you a direction to start with.

I'm thinking at most a single sound, so possibly a few letters.  I'm going to play with it.  


Also maybe look into logban. Verbs in that language have very specific and defined noun relations so maybe you could do something like that. IE "A" means it's living and then that defines that the second letter is leg count, third letter is kingdom, etc.
Will do.  Thanks!  
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Jan 21, 2018, 05:41 AM
I love creating words. You get to think of lots of fun definitions that might be nothing like English. A few of my dictionary entries go into great detail explaining such basic things like "door" or "cube." It really helps to have a culture to guide you and stop things from feeling random.


My conlang is up to about 200 words right now. I used to have a lot more but I restarted it last year after making some changes. Have a lot of free time without a computer right now so it's a good thing to work on.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: the-pi-guy on Jan 21, 2018, 04:06 PM
I'm thinking that verb will be constructed by literally describing what's doing an action.  
Like if read meant read, then r would specify it was a verb, e would specify eye, etc. That kind of thing.  

Just an example of how it'd work.  

I'm kind of excited.  A lot of room for strange slang terms.
Title: Re: The Conlang thread: tlhIngan QIp
Post by: Legend on Aug 18, 2018, 03:09 PM


Pretty poor/casual talk about conlangs but hey it is vsauce.