My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

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jan Ape
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Joined: Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:44 pm

My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by jan Ape »

The Phonology

a - a/schwa
i - i/e
k - k/g/h
l - l/r/y/w
m - m
n - n
p - p/b/f/v
t - t/d/s
u - u/o

Adverb/Time-Subject-Verb-Object
No Pronouns
Foreign words/names are treated as adjectives

The Dictionary

negative, not, no, opposite, question particle (when used at end of sentence): nu

science, logic, understand, knowledge, wisdom, know, believe, sense (feel, touch, taste, see, smell): ki

place, location, space, area, here, there: lu

living thing, animal, human, spirit: ni

energy, energize, strong, power, powerful, freedom, inspire, confident, free (of control): pi

seed, nut, egg, start, beginning, initial, first, root, origin, source, parent, God: ma

work, active, activate, business, labor, do, act, deed, action, create, make, build: pa

trade, buy, sell, give, take, get, receive, release, send, have, hold, maintain, keep: ku

way, move, go, come, time, period, mobile, motion, direction, path, road, method, skill, technique: mu

subject, verb, object, clause, separator: li

desire, want, need, require, pray for, wish for, wish, prayer: la

good, well, positive, healthy, improve, heal, help, support, benefit, advantage, simple, easy: pu

different, other, edit, change: tu

up, tall, high, heaven, sky, spiritual, formal, religious, religion, spiritual path: ta

sound, voice, noise, talk, say, music, play (instrument), Suna (language), language: na

light, bright, fire, bright, cook, hot, heat: ka

water, liquid, clean, wash, sauce, wet, aqueous, soup: mi

plant, grass, tree, herb, vegetable, food, fruit, mushroom, medicine: ti


Compound Words

Like Chinese, the words form bigger complex words by adding to roots together.

ta (sky) + ka (light) = taka (sky-light) which could mean star

also spaces are completely optional so it could be "ta ka" or "taka".

UPDATED February 1, 2010
Last edited by jan Ape on Tue Feb 02, 2010 12:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
jan-ante
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Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2009 4:05 pm

Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by jan-ante »

labour and money is the same word? hmm, may be this conlang is too american for me.
what is about parts of speach?
also, could you please formate the text properly; the cuurent version is not easy to read
janKipo
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Joined: Fri Oct 09, 2009 2:20 pm

Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by janKipo »

A little small for a semantic prime language, even with the usual finagling, but an interesting set of choices nonetheless.
janMato
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Location: Takoma Park, MD
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Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by janMato »

Explicit allophones are good. I've read that toki pona could have all it's letters shifted without loss of intelligibility. Then I do a thought experiment with English and think it's all rubbish. Allophones need to be explicitly allowed. I'm not sure what I'd use this flexibility for though-- maybe to change the mood of a sentence. Or would allophones be realized as some intermediate sound?

Since it has only 20 words, either some things are inexpressible, or the rate of compound words with very tenuous links to their constituent parts will be high. This is just a few letters away from sound symbolism (where "b"'s are beautiful, "c"'s are edible, etc)

I like topic markers, voiced question markers. Sometimes I think the smaller the language the more grammar rules it needs to be expressive.
jan Ape wrote:There is no way to distinguish between past, present, future"
More accurate to say no one had tried yet. To be intellectually honest, we'd need something like a Turing test, where two people chat over IM with the goal of communicating "when". People innovate so fast that they'd probably figure out a way to express time-- possibly even without going outside the outline of this framework.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis: a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs

Miners often get Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
mute la jan pali pi ma uta li jo e silejo ike pi kon tawa insa pi ko ma lili ike.

The code tag seem to work best for intralinear gloss, and even then the green on white color scheme is hard to read.
jan Ape
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Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by jan Ape »

It is now an 18 word language.
janMato
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Location: Takoma Park, MD
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Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by janMato »

jan Ape wrote:It is now an 18 word language.
This reminds me of the physicists speculating on what it was like in the first fraction of a second after the big bang--the laws of physics were different but it was such an unstable system it lasted less than a second.

Evolutionarily speaking, this looks highly unstable. But that may be a benefit. Most conlangs are designed so that most of the important decisions are made by the designer and the tedious, unimportant details are worked out by the community. It would be interesting to see what's the smallest core of a language that a designer needs to work out and still have a recognizable stamp on the final outcome.

There used to be a language that was compared to toki pona where the community submitted new words--I forgot the name--although I suspect it would look like the urbandictionary.com after a while-- full of ill thought out neologisms.

And your hyperorthodox fans are going to keep using those two words in protest! :-)
janKipo
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Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by janKipo »

I'm waiting for text.
jan Ape
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Re: My own little 20 word conlang (with one syllable per word)

Post by jan Ape »

janKipo wrote:I'm waiting for text.
mala (Lord's Prayer):

tama li
na li pu
tamalu li mu
tamala li mu
li tamalu li nilu
kuliti
pulini
nili pu litu nini
mu li ni li pu
tamalu li
ku li pi li pu
li mamu li numamu
nilipu

If you want me to translate more please just put the text here. It's so fun to use this language
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