What are my goals in creating this language? I've been working on and off on this language for many years now, and my goals have shifted a lot. I really just want to experiment with language creation, see what happens when I try to implement a feature like an elaborate tense/aspect system or all adjectives being conjugated like verbs or no word for "to be". I also want to have a semi-functional language for my consociety, enough to have a variety of place names and sentences for the characters to mutter in the background when they're not speaking English (diegetically or otherwise). It will serve as a method of highlighting aspects of their world that would be harder to convey in a familiar language.
What are my goals for sharing this language? This language is mostly for me, but I do want to put the complete outline online for people who like looking at other people's conlangs. Maybe I'll share it on Reddit or Tumblr or something. In the event that I actually end up writing a story with this language, I'll put it in the appendix.
Who are my speakers? They are the Bura, my answer to the incredibly important question "what if people were lagomorphs rather than primates". Bunny people. (They'd probably object to that as a human would to being called a "monkey person".) I generally dislike the trope of having alien sophonts visually resemble humans even if there is no reason for them to, but in this case I do want the Bura to read as humanoid to a reader who is not deep in the spec-bio mines. Besides, lagomorphs are close enough on the family tree of life that I think I can get away with it. Additionally, there are the carapacians, who originate from the Incipisphere and first migrated planetside thousands of years ago. They look like...well, you know what they look like.
What are my speakers like? Bura, as mentioned, are humanoid bunny people. They are bipedal and somewhat similar to humans, though they are smaller and have larger and more mobile ears, a full-body coat of fur, and four digits on each limb (plus a dewclaw). They are faster runners but tire quicker, and do not have the requisite shoulder flexibility to climb trees. They also have very sharp incisors and no canines, which affects pronunciation in some way. The carapacians have a full-body shell and very thin limbs, as well as much greater variation in shape and size. They do not speak, but communicate through a limited form of telepathy.
What is the terrain like? The language is spoken throughout the world, but its center of origin is the great grassy plain of Masa. This plain is home to many cities, including powerful centers of global commerce, but there remain wide expanses of nothing in between. A dialect is spoken in the remote peninsula of Kaidel, which has more mountains and rocky shores. The language paradoxically existed before time in the Incipisphere, mostly in the condensed cityscapes of the Dreamers' moons. There are no natural features there, only huge buildings and spires chained together in the weak gravity.
What is the climate and weather like? The world is similar to our own, and Masa is located in a temperate area with seasons. Kaidel is colder and windier. The Incipisphere is quite dry and has no weather to speak of, outside game-sanctioned areas. Planetside carapacians generally live in very mild climates, but are more tolerant of deserts than the Bura.
What is the native flora like? Masa, being mostly grassland, has a lot of grass and few trees. Kaidel has more trees and shrubs. The Incipisphere has no native flora other than the game constructs on the Lands.
What are the native fauna like? Basically the same as Earth, with some flavoring to make it clear that it is not actually Earth. For example, there is a bird named after a mythical creature (which gets prototyped later and becomes the inspiration for that creature in the first place). The Bura have not domesticated any large animals or carnivores, but they have livestock in the form of rodents, fish, and insects.
Summary of the speakers and their world: Masang is spoken around the world by the native sentient species, the Bura, which resemble humanoid rabbits, as well as the carapacians, who arrived on the world by means unknown thousands of years ago. The language has a paradoxical origin both planetside and in the Incipisphere. The language developed naturally in the plain of Masa, where a powerful empire started and spread its influence across the globe. The former capital of the Masang Empire is still a prominent city, the cultural center of the continent. Kaidel, once part of the empire and now a close ally of Masa, speaks a dialect of Masang considered somewhat backwoodsish by the city folk. On the other hand, Masang had been spoken in the Incipisphere since time immemorial, almost unchanged through the millennia. It may be that the arrival of the carapacians influenced the development of Masang among the Bura, but how would that explain the evolution of the language among Bura with no contact with the reclusive carapacians? However it happened, the current state of the language includes several dialects: Standard (spoken in the city), Peninsular (spoken in Kaidel), and Classical (the common ancestor of the other two, and spoken by carapacians).
Consonant series included: bilabial (b/p/m), labiodental (f/v), alveolar (t/d/n/r/l/s/z), palatal (c/q/j/nj), velar (k/g), glottal (h)
Voicing distinction: yes, but it developed later. Some letters were pronounced differently in the presence of liquids, and that became the voicing distinction.
Other articulations: I'm assuming this refers to multiple articulations and non-pulmonic consonants. I'll leave those alone for now.
Vowels: 6 vowel system (a, e, i, o, u, y) except they're weird. A is like a short A in English (the "TRAP vowel") and O is more like "au" (like Yiddish א). Y is a central vowel between the KIT and STRUT vowels. Approximant R is also treated as a vowel.
Diphthongs: ai, au, oi. A word-initial h can be followed immediately by u(a,e,i) or i(a,o,u), in which case the first vowel actually functions as a consonant (w or j). The cluster 'yr' is realized as an approximant R. (does that count as a diphthong?) Syllables ending with V can be followed by a syllable starting with hV, which sound like V-V if the h is elided. True V-V is not allowed, though.
IPA charts (very janky and inexact, mostly just to get me used to making tables in HTML). Some phonemes listed here I write differently than the official IPA symbol - I have added the corresponding symbol after in slashes. Sounds in parentheses are voiced versions of the ones to their right, and were not considered separate in the proto-language (except ng, which is just an allophonic form of nj)
| Consonant | Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p (b) | t (d) | q /c/ | k (g) | |
| Nasal | m | n | nj /ɲ/ | (ng /ŋ/) | |
| Tap | r | ||||
| Fricative | f (v) | s (z) | c /ç/ (x /ɮ~ʝ/) | h | |
| Approximant | w | R /ɹ/, l | j |
Notes: Velar ŋ only occurs at end of word. Approximant ɹ is treated as a vowel. w only occurs as glide between word-initial huV.
| Vowel | Front | Mid | Back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | e | y /ɘ/ | |
| open | a /a~æ/ | o /ɔ/ |
Syllable structure: CV(C). Words that begin with vowels actually begin with an elided H. Final syllables tend to be closed, but suffixes may not be. There are probably rules for what consonant clusters are allowed but I don't want to deal with that right now.
A list of nonce forms I have in my notes app from 2021:
Monosyllabic
Bisyllabic
Trisyllabic
These all have stress on the first syllable. Consonant clusters always stay in the same place of articulation. Vowels will probably change based on stress patterns.
I know this isn't exactly what the prompt asked for, but it's okay for now. Maybe.
As mentioned, the first syllable of a word is always stressed. Trisyllablic words tend to be dactyls, and tetrasyllabic words tend to be two trochees. Words with more syllables tend to have stress pattern SUSUSU...SU (if even number of syllables) or ...SUU (if odd). Exceptions include words with prefixes, which are unstressed.
Note about stems: only the first vowel (or first 2 vowels if the word lacks a non-H consonant at the start or end) is "immutable". Subsequent vowels are subject to change in an ablaut-like fashion, and are thus enclosed in parentheses. They are also generally the same as the primary vowel, and only different when changed by an affix or other grammatical attribute.
Basic words for body parts:
Basic words for terrain:
Basic words for weather:
Basic words for flora:
Basic words for fauna:
Basic transitive verbs:
Basic intransitive verbs:
Sound changes from proto-Masang:
More sound changes
Even MOAR sound changes
Sound changes for vowels
Stress specific sound changes
Wait what? I thought the sound changes I came up with were the final ones. What do you mean I need to pick a few???
uhhhhh ok hold on. In order of application:
Other rules mentioned may or may not apply.
I DID THAT ALREADY fine. Let's see how different roots are affected by the order of operations above:
More animate nouns
With sound changes, some alternate forms: hiq, song, qampa, kajal, mudan
Sound changes with compounding forms
God I am so sick of sound changes. I didn't want to do the diachronic thing in the first place.
Solidify ordered sound changes. I don't wannaaaaaaaa
Instead, I will say that the palatals are sliding forward in Standard and backward in Peninsular (so Standard c, q, x are pronounced more like ʃ, tʃ, ʒ/dl while Peninsular c, q, x are pronounced hj, kj/tj, gj).
Phonotactics for modern forms.
Look, when I started this challenge, I really wasn't anticipating going all in on the diachronic model. I created my consonant inventory and sound change list with the intention that it all applies to the modern language - that is, Classical Masang. The sound changes weren't from the proto-language to Classical, or even Classical to Standard or Peninsular, but between roots and affixes when they are concatenated. Consider this my formal objection to this style of conlanging, because I just want to make ONE language. Even my dialects are similar enough that they don't need days and days of individual prompts to hammer out the differences and decide how Classical divided over time into Standard and Peninsular. This is STUPID and I hate it.
Romanization
Again, did this already. See Day 15.
Dictionary will be linked somewhere when I'm done.
Word order and syntactic alignment. Finally, we're getting to grammar! Masang is VSO and heavily head-initial.
Sample sentences to show alignment
Synthetic vs analytical - I think that over time, the language became more analytical, not from long words breaking apart, but from grammatical information being isolated into modifying words and particles instead of being compounded on the words themselves.
Basic intro to grammar: Masang is a VSO language with nom-acc alignment. Parts of speech are not clearly defined; rather, each root can function as a noun or verb depending on context. It has 3 noun classes and 4 cases (to be confirmed), and grammatical information is communicated via affixes in Classical (more synthetic) and modifier words in Standard and Peninsular (more analytical).
Noun classes! Masang has 3 noun classes: Animate, Inanimate, and Construct (which is not related to the Hebrew grammatical structure of the same name). Singular nouns are not marked.
Numbers! Nouns are marked with class-specific suffixes when plural. Dual form also functions as a natural group (i.e. the suffix used to mark 'two hands' as opposed to one hand or many hands is also used to mark 'a set of teeth' as opposed to one tooth or many unrelated teeth).
Marking Definiteness - definite is marked the first time an object is introduced, and indefinite is always marked. Therefore, an unmarked noun phrase is always one that has already been introduced.
etc. will be filled in as year progresses