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I know of other members here who are interested in linguistics so I thought I'd post something I've been working on. It's probably too bare-bones to be posting right now but it's starting to get tricky already and I thought maybe some people here could help.

The purpose of this exercise is to create a language based on strict and consistent rules. I also want the language to be as simple and intuitive as possible. This is purely for fun as I'm interested in linguistics (although I know very few technical details of the subject).

Pronunciation
Letters, especially vowels, are pronounced differently in many languages so I'll try to provide a clear explanation of correct pronunciation. Letters are always pronounced the same way and not affected by syntax.
A - “aah” as in “bar.
E - “ay” as in “may”.
I - “ih” as in “bit”.
O - “oh” as in “toe”.
U - “ooh” as in “moo!”
Y - “ee” as in “be”.

General Modifiers
y- = of
-s = plural (sometimes used to mean “with”)

Pronouns
a = I/me
as = we/us
ya = my: literally “of me”.
yas = our: literally “of us”.
o = you (singular)
os = you (plural)
yo = your (singular): literally “of you”.
yos = your (plural)
e = him/her, he/she (there is no distinction between sexes)
es = they
ye = his/hers
yes = their

Geography
t- = top
b- = bottom
n- = front
k- = back
m- = inner
f- = outer
-u = space (as an abstract concept, not outer-space or a specific position)
-i = time (abstract)

yu = an area, place or position: literally “of space”.
ymu = inside : literally “of the inner space”.
yfu = outside : literally “of the outer space”.
ytu = above: literally “of the top space”.
ybu = below: literally “of the bottom space”.
ym = the inner surface : literally “of the inner”.
yf = the outer surface: literally “of the outer”.
yt = atop : literally “of the top”.
yb = on the bottom of: literally “of the bottom.”

Questions
All queries begin with the letter “v”, the suffix relates to the nature of the question.
Vyu = where? : literally “place?”
Vyas = who? : literally “of us?”

Examples:
Vyaso = Who are you? : literally “of us you?”
Vyuyo = Where are you? : literally “place of you?”
“Vuyo”, using the more abstract lone “u”, asks about an abstract position which could refer to a person's mood - similar to “How are you?”

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I think it's interesting to do stuff like this. I've already found a few cases of words that I don't think exist in English, or at least not in the same form, like "the inner surface": yes we may have the word "lining" but that refers to an inner skin rather than the actual surface of the object. Words like "inside" or "interior" are ambiguous as they don't specify whether you're talking about the inner surface or the inner space.

This is all subject to change. I want it to be a wery logical and intuitive language, so if something doesn't make sense I will scrap the old syntax.

I was thinking about language the other day. I think my idea will work.

basically, people can teach apes sign language which is communication. so what if we communicate to the ape that we wish to create a spoken language composed of sounds that an ape can make. A spoken language designed by an ape for apes and taught to humans so we can actually talk and they can talk amongst themselves.

I think it would be fascinating to be a witness to.

*different tangent now*
Me and my friends used to talk in a language known as arry language, basically it is the language of arrogance, because it assumes you already know what they are saying. and only works if you know what they are saying, to everyone else it is just jibberish.
If you get to know peoples variations of arry you can get some ripper conversations going.

Allow me to rewrite my previous post in the arry language.

arry was tharry abarry larry the arry darry. I tharry me idarry will warry.
barryasicly, parry can tarry arry sarry larry which is comunicarry. So warry if we communicarry to the arry that we warry to crearry a sparry larry comparry of sarry that the arry can marry? A sparry larry desarry by an arry for arry and tarry to harry so we can actuarrilly tarry and tharry can tarry amarry them sarry.

I tharry it would be fasinarry to be a warry tarry.

*darry tarry narry*
Me and me farry used to tary in a larry known as arry larry, barryasicly it arry the larry of arrogarriance, becarry it assarry you alrarry knarry what tharry arry sarryaying and olarry warry if yarry knarry what tharry arry sarryayin, to everyone arry it is jarry jarryiberish.
If yarry garry to knarry parryeapols variarry of arry you can garry some arryipper conversarry garry.

there are some words that pop up that cannot be translated to arry, these are just left in english.

We can only communicate with apes to the level of their understanding. I don't know if we could communicate something that abstract to a gorilla, chimp or bonobo.

while i farry larry fasinarry, i narry harry any intarryest in comunicarry to the arry. darryamn dirtarry arry.

fascinating reads guys, might have some thoughts on this later

This subject is an interesting one, I approached it a couple of times when I was at University, I came up with some rules for creating 2 languages. One was a pidgin of Germanic and Scandinavian languages another was different.

I think when creating a language you create all of the consistent rules and come up with a system, then butcher them with the principles of language change. It's what I did the second time I approached it, look at existing languages and see how language changes and how it creates the inconsistencies we see today - English is a perfect language to study for that reason, it's been influenced by so many languages and has changed so much in the last millennium that Old English is unrecognisable to us, we share less in common with Old English than Icelandic does with Old Icelandic (of the same period).

So to do that I look at the neighbouring countries and think about how the language I wanted to create has been affected by them. This can exist on many levels. So for example, if a country trades with another country then their language for trade may be influenced by the other, like the Greeks and Phoenicians. Or it might be like we had in England, where the French invaded and our language was affected by the French speaking nobles and it is where we get the language of our food, the words we use for types of meat derive from the Old French because the nobles would eat it, whilst the words of our animals are more Germanic because it derives from the language of those who farmed it. Hence pork and pig, sheep and mutton, cow and beef, horse and Findus lasagne.

What makes things even more interesting with those neighbouring languages you might think so different? Languages like Proto Indo-European (PIE for short), so whilst you might think of Old French and Old Germanic languages as being different...they're also related by a much older language.

And well, the of course there needs to be a balance though, I mean if you're trying to be too authentic, well, you're putting a lot of time and effort into do something only the biggest language geeks would appreciate. Still, the topic is very interesting to me. For the second language, I just restricted myself to the influences of 2 languages from neighbouring trading countries and didn't take the history too far back. I didn't create the whole language, but did enough to present a group project to the class.

Interesting topic. In Japanese, the system of speech is quite logical for grammar though the language itself it, at times, ambiguous. I picked up a lot from anime and a little from a course I started years back but never finished. Basically, Japanese links subject and object with operators to denote things. For example, "wa" (is/are/etc) can be used in two very strange (to us westerners):


Structurally makes sense. Modifiers and operators manipulate the sentences. In a way it's a pretty cool spoken language but written is a nightmare (perhaps what demotivated me from continuing the course).

Disclaimer: If I stuffed up a translation, gommen, it's been a while since I've been in contact with the language and I'm still a noob.

Anyway, nice topic. I think there's potential for easy expression in that Obese but there are two factors to account for:
1) Too much similarity in words may confuse some, dunno, would have to try practical application.
2) The actual sounds should be pronounceable by the majority of world languages prolly steep research)
Still, this could indeed be something valuable. At one point Latin was the international language among scholars and their mother-tongue was irrelevant because Latin was compulsory as a serious academic subject. This died as the 1800s came to and end and fell into disuse to the point where only Latin names were maintained for scientific terminology. A pity really but then again I found Latin really tough when I tried learning it many moons ago (I thought it sounded cool. Yes, I am geeky like that).

Yes, I think this is the main issue I've stumbled into, maybe using single letters to define very different things was not a good way to start out. I think I will redo it all.
Some deeper research is definitely in order, but I have learned some interesting things just by experimenting and I will aim to keep those interesting "mechanisms", such as referring to something you own as "of me", and "we" as the plural of "I": This is the case in English but the connection is not explicit; "Who are you?" being asked as "Who of us are you?"; and I also like the flexibility that was gained in describing position by breaking up different concepts like "space", "front" and "in" into word fragments, but as I said these were too small the way I did them.


I fixarry yarry sparry mistarry.


I don't want to butcher this, but those are some nice thoughts and I think I might use them for this epic space game I'm gradually making. I would like the galaxy to have an authentic feel and have toyed with the idea of including several languages (and number systems) to give flavour to the world, and act as a boundary between different cultures. There would be technology available to the player to translate but imagine if there were procedurally generated languages you could actually study and learn (maybe the player community could work together to document the languages) and communicate with the aliens in their native tongue! Maybe they would be more hospitable to you then than if you poked some electronic translation device in their face. That's slightly off topic and extremely ambitious!

What I would love to create is a language that is really modular, so
although I may not define every possible word in the dictionary it would be a matter of applying the rules of the language and you could easily create new words that follow the rules of the standard language. I'm not sure if that is possible though.


That's really what prompted me to do this: I like our language and its mongrel nature but this obscures the links between words and it's not obvious how our language actually works since it depends on many conflicting rules that have a limited scope. So I want to try and make a "clean" language.

I wonder what our language would look like if it were designed rather than evolved. Esperanto is the closest thing I can think of to something like that.

[edit] Apparently you all get weird smiley faces.

Thankarry yarry, though I used larry language as while I find language fascinating rather than tharry this as while I find this fascinating and narry harry as past tense never had though your present darry harry likely works better

The single letter prefixes in your language set as well as ability to combine them also really limits the starting letters of the vast array of basic nouns a language would require. Its a great concept but yeah, I'd agree that they should be a bit longer to better distinguish from a simple letter.

obfuscarry is all parry of the farry of arry larry. I tarry to selarry my arry warrys barry upon flarry of the warrys. But arry agrarry, it arry harry to understarry arry at tarrys.

every parrys arry is slightly darry, but with tarry you can larry their warrys and have farry tarryalkin arry flarryawlessley.

it is a fun bit of language, though yes, hard to understand at times.



is that: I try to select my arry words based upon flow of the words?

only one that gave me trouble...

oddly enough, when i was reading through your first post, before I realized that it was a translated copy of the english paragraphs, i still felt that I could almost read it, you do kind of get into a flow of it.

I think Arry Larry is quite clever, it demonstrates that people interpret things how they want to interpret them and aren't so interested in the actual reality.


I also realised this causes obfuscation -- which is exactly what I was trying to avoid -- since all the pronouns, for example, don't have similar structures: There's no obvious distinction between "yo", "ya", "ye", "yu" and "yi", but some are describing personal possession while others describe space and time. This is not good, it should be obvious what type of thing you are talking about.

Must be all the drugs.