“...So compounded with other words...” German: *starts sweating*

@OP-bb3vw

4 жыл бұрын

Lucas Lex25 Woh

@semiotik_musik

4 жыл бұрын

propriety traffic approval responsiblity transference regulation?

@freakpandor

4 жыл бұрын

I have this problem in my language, I want shorter words, how do i do that

@bonbonpony

4 жыл бұрын

Polish has this potential too, although not used very often. I once came up with a word that you can hardly find in any Polish dictionary, and yet every Pole would understand it if you said it to him. Here it is: poprzeprogramowywałybyście and here it is again split into morphemes: po·prze·(pro·gra·m)o·w·yw·a·ł·y·by·ś·cie which roughly means: "You girls wanted to program it thoroughly for a while and then started doing something else" ;)

@ComCommie

3 жыл бұрын

@@freakpandor same

When you get so caught up in your language, strange things start to happen: For example from 'tre' meaning 'place' you get a derivational affix 're' for 'place where you do X' similar to 'ery' in English. So for example, if the verb for 'eat' is 'se' then 'sere' would be the word for 'eat-place', i.e. 'eatery'. i.e. 'restaurant'. So you pat your self on the back and spend weeks using the word 'sere' for restaurant completely naturally until all of a sudden it hits you that the word 'sere' means 'He sh*ts' in your native Serbian. D'oh!! (by now the word is so ingrained it would be impossible to change it)

@sporeman2334

4 жыл бұрын

i immediately thought that it resembles the same word in my native belarusian: "срэ" ("sre") or "серыць" ("sieryć"), the second being more dialectal. damn i love being slavic

@everlyw7892

2 жыл бұрын

@@sporeman2334 lol it sounds a bit like Russian too (also it’s cool to see so many Slavic people enjoy worldbuilding as well!)

@burnv06

2 жыл бұрын

NGL that's hilarious

@chesspiece4257

2 жыл бұрын

It’s alright, my “to go” verb which is also used for a type of verb is pronounced like poop ;-;

@eyemoisturizer

2 жыл бұрын

LOL this happens all too often

I love the idiom "fight without a spear." I'll have to start using it in my day-to-day life.

@doctordestructo3360

4 ай бұрын

I think a more modern equivalent would be "To bring a knife to a gun fight".

In ancient Mayan, the word for “wild” literally means “tree-y”, and a wash bowl is “wash-thing”, and “divine” is “god-y”

@Hypie582

3 жыл бұрын

They must’ve had weird poems

@The_Mission_Master

Жыл бұрын

Sounds very german with their "Foot Ground" for floor and "hang infront" for curtin... Source? me is german

@The_Mission_Master

Жыл бұрын

@@KeikoRoblox their word for poem is "this flower of mine, this song of mine" so they where REALLY poetic my guy

@The_Mission_Master

Жыл бұрын

btw "divine" is also "Godly" in english.

@enricobianchi4499

Жыл бұрын

etiymologically, that's what "savage" and "divine" actually are...

I 100% know this is a coincidence, but I can't help that notice that both you and I used the exact same word for grass in my most recent language. I'm, honestly, very surprised.

@MarCel-ih6ui

5 жыл бұрын

He also used exactly the same consonant system in his phonetics tutorial as I did i my language. My focus was on being as proto-ish as possible and apparently I succeeded lol

@thanksyoueel1076

5 жыл бұрын

duuuuude hele is also my word wtf

@Ptaku93

5 жыл бұрын

@@thanksyoueel1076 there's definitely something grassy going on here...

@bonbonpony

5 жыл бұрын

Maybe something bouba-kiki related? ;J

@0Aquamelon

5 жыл бұрын

I didn’t use hele as my word, but his word for “fish” is my word for “animal”. By the way, is it a bad idea to use “animal” as a derivational affix? I just realized it’s likely a culture would name each animal for making the generalization “animal” but idk, it might actually be possible

I made the idiom "A bird wanting to swim, a fish wanting to fly". It is a lesson to appreciate what you have and have sympathy for others.

One should not overdo it with derivative nouns. For example in English we may have a 'bedroom' and a 'bathroom' but we do not have a 'cookroom', we have a kitchen. There should ideally be a balance, mix of the two. Too little derivation and you're taxing your memory, but also with too much derivation everything starts sounding the same and you start to tax your synapses.

@eyemoisturizer

2 жыл бұрын

well, cookroom is indeed a word. you are correct though !

@emicontained6870

Жыл бұрын

The interesting thing I learned about kitchen is the only reason it seems different from words like bed or bath is the root word started in Proto-Indo-European, Latin , Vulgar Latin, was then borrowed in Proto-West German, evolved in Old English, and again in Middle English. Whereas both bed and bath were not borrowed in Latin and came straight from Proto-Indo-European (possibly) to Proto-West German, and Old English . How your language evolves into its modern form might be a better determinate for more interesting words in this instance.

@DontYouDareToCallMePolisz

11 ай бұрын

​@@emicontained6870 i would like to make a small correction *Proto-West-Germanic

@NewEnglandMapping75

6 күн бұрын

Laughs in German

This is something that I've been thinking about for a while. Isn't there a kind of bias in saying that only "simple" things can have roots? What's simple? I think, here, deciding what morphemes and root words you have for your language, is a hugely important place you can start thinking of culture and ways of life. For example, a waterfaring culture could easily have 'simple' root words for 'gunwhale' and 'topsail' and 'rudder' etc. A farming culture could have lots of words for various kinds of plants and animals. Rivers and streams are so ubiquitous that it seems highly unlikely languages wouldn't have root words for them. For example, in Mandarin, there are three words for 'river' 河 and 江 and 川. 河 is the name of the Yellow River. It then began to be used as a general world for 'river' in northern China. 江 is the name of the Yangze river, and it also began to be used to mean 'river' generally, in the south of China. 川 is another word for 'river' and seems to be the more 'generic' root. This just goes to show that languages don't have to dice things up into 'simple' in a way a modern European-language speaker would.

@denpadolt9242

3 жыл бұрын

I think a better term might be "common" instead of "simple". Most simple terms will pretty invariably be very common due to their versatility, but if referring to something more complex/specific is common in a language due to the environment/culture of its speakers, that could develop into a root word due to being used so often, often enough that using a longer compound becomes tedious to its speakers.

@davidedevincentis5444

3 жыл бұрын

That's such an interesting observation, I too start thinking about the cultural context to decide the root words for the language I'm constructing. As a quite peculiar example, in Ukuluf, language spoken by a civilization of short, deep-cave-dwelling humanoids with fluorescent antennae I invented, the most basic word of all is 'noteluf'='tardigrade', due to their society being born around the farming of giant cave tardigrades. That is also the most used word for compounds, suffixes, prefixes and idioms, even making up the words for 'yes' and 'no' and the very name of the people, compound of 'uku' literally meaning 'any individual of a civilized species' and the suffix -luf coming from 'tardigrade'. Almost every other animal is named after its differences or similarities to the tardigrade; at the same time, being used to the sight of huge lumpy bioluminescent mushrooms as the only evident example of non-animal lifeforms, they use a single word, roughly meaning 'luminous tardigrade' to describe all kinds of fungi and plantlife (a 'collection of mushrooms' is a 'forest'), with the exception of moss. Their vocabulary concerning living beings is very limited, but at the same time it is extremely rich in root words for rocks, minerals, metals, elements of the periodic table and inorganic chemistry in general. They also have no root words for 'Sun', 'Moon', 'star' 'sky' or any weather-related phenomenon and almost no time expressions outside of 'before' and 'after'; concepts like 'day', 'year' or 'month' don't even exist and are either translitterated from other languages or rendered through periphases.

@roderickpixler3239

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, Russian has a lot of untranslatable words as well that English needs at least a sentence to comprehend

@fri5728

2 жыл бұрын

@Denpa Dolt Yes! Or maybe there never was a composite word in some cases - like when it was something to be found in the nature of people’s home country which they just considered it’s own thing. Then they could go out into the rest of the world and build composite words describing what they see there via reference to plants, animals, or such which they know from home.

@lilyofluck371

Жыл бұрын

Like, a dwarven language might have hundreds of root words for rocks, for example. A sword might just be a person pickaxe to them

I combined the words for "I" and "you" to get the word for "we" in my conlang. I = Ma' You = Ri We = Ma'ri

@callumburgess7020

5 жыл бұрын

Thats a very specific we though. The reason it’s a 1st person pronoun is because it always has to include a 1st person singular within it, but after that you can have any 3rd or 2nd person singular or plural to combine with the 1st person singular to make a 1st person plural. Like if you say They and I, You and I, Y’all and I, or He and I, those all mean we. It makes sense to do this with the third person or maybe the second person too but for the first person I feel it’s a bit too fine, unless that’s a common pattern in your conlang and in that case I’d make multiple other words for we. But if that’s not the case, wouldn’t you say that’s a bit too specific for a subject pronoun?

@gavinoaw

5 жыл бұрын

That's a fun idea! I think Tok Pisin (The Creole spoken in Papua New Guinea) does a similar thing for its inclusive "we" ;)

@ricey802

5 жыл бұрын

that is really creative

@aleksandrnestrato

4 жыл бұрын

Oh, I like this! It's because I love the idea of marking the 'exclusive we' and 'inclusive we'. Many languages of Pacific region do that. And it it VERY handy to have such an instrument when speaking. "We, you and I, are gonna have great breakfast in a moment!" OR "We, my wife and I, were sleeping when you called". 'Inclusive we' means the speaker + the listener - "I and YOU". 'Exclusive we' means the speaker + someone else who is not listening at the time, or even doesn't know someone's talking about him/her (or even it) now. So that's "I and (S)HE/THEY". There are different strategies in different languages. Some show just two forms like above ones. Some can show number of people included/excluded. "I and YOU" (sing.), sort of I and THOU. I someone talks directly to one person. "I and YOU" (plur.) like I and Y'ALL. I someone talks directly to group of, say, friends or colleagues. "I and HE" and "I and SHE" (gender distinction). Someone can speak of, whoever, mother or father, or husband/wife, son/daughter... "I and THEY". In this one can be specified if THEY is a group of HEs or SHEs, or both. And also it can be shown how small or big this group can be. Like some famous actor is speaking about his fans and how he had talked to them. Or some boy wants to show off and is speaking about his multiple girlfriends:) All of this WEs can be totally different words. Like "tok" for something and "bubu" for something else. You get the idea and can imagine how many possibilities are there. As to me, I think having two is totally enough. The Inclusive one can be I+YOU and the Exclusive one can be I+(S)HE/THEY.👍

@lightninjohn5651

4 жыл бұрын

That’s funny, cuz in the language I’m making while watching this series my word for I is also ma

This helped me understand lexicon the best of any resource

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

Glad to hear it was helpful!

The basic style of your videos (being all in all just powerpoint presentations) shows, that quality is way more important than style. Even though I don't have any linguistic backgrounds (I'm not even a native English speaker), I still understood everything so far, which shows, that you can explain pretty well! Thanks for all of your videos, because of them I want to make my own conlang so bad! :D

Wouldn't the "place" in "home-place" be redundant? I'd use that term for village instead, which seems more consistent with your words for forest and field, but maybe you didn't want it to be too consistent.

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

Sure, "home-place" could very much mean "village" if we wanted it to, that would also make sense. I just went with "house" because it was the first thing that came to me, but when you're making your own derivational systems, you can interpret these things in any way you want.

@SailorBarsoom

4 жыл бұрын

@@Biblaridion "home-thing" for "house." But that's just me. If your society has words going back to cave-man days, the word for "house" could very well be derived from "make-cave" or something like that.

@Jack_n

4 жыл бұрын

True, but you could also derive “village” from “many-house”

@SerbAtheist

4 жыл бұрын

You don't need to have a 'house/home' distinction. A single word easily encompasses both the dwelling and the emotional component of said dwelling. I mean, you don't have a separate word for a beloved toy, so why do you necessarily need one for a beloved dwelling? Come to think of it, though, you could even have a morphological feature that indicates a precious and dear instance of said object, for example turning 'house' into 'home' or signifying your most beloved childhood toy when applied to the word 'toy' or the deity you personally worship when applied to the word 'god'.

@FlameRat_YehLon

4 жыл бұрын

Depending on cultures, "home" can mean more about "the family" (aka, the people) while "house" can mean more about "shelter" (aka, the place to live).

This is a really good explanation of why natural languages often have many synonyms for a concept even without loan words - there often exist multiple strategies within a language that one could employ to describe a concept, and sometimes those strategies end up separately producing derived words which are similar in meaning. Kinda like English "flammable" versus "inflammable" both meaning "able to be/prone to being ignited".

Time in Mandarin can also goes forwards same as in English. Day-before-yesterday is literally 前天 "before-day" and day-after-tomorrow is literally 后天 "after-day".

@haru-bun

5 жыл бұрын

yeah, time in mandarin can go both ways. for example we have 接下來 ('coming below this' for 'after that') but also 從今以後 ('going forward from today' meaning 'from now on')

the funny thing is that forest is the first compound word i made in gúefpantshàuleng. its because gúefpantshàuleng is supposed to mean language of the forest land. gúe = tree. fpan = area. tshàu = land leng = language

@playtimethejumpropegirl7555

5 жыл бұрын

In Môhru, compounds go to a whole another level. įrêsmoðnhinacrentrêcîbbbbbbbbbbretih "when shoelaces get into a tangle"

@pepijndeputter8892

5 жыл бұрын

@@playtimethejumpropegirl7555 That's a lot b's, let me guess, it's the bilabial trill

@playtimethejumpropegirl7555

5 жыл бұрын

@@pepijndeputter8892 Bilabial implosive.

@pepijndeputter8892

5 жыл бұрын

@@playtimethejumpropegirl7555 Cool

@pepijndeputter8892

4 жыл бұрын

@Quin Delamore I agree. Nerds are fun people, right?

My favorite derivational affix in my current conlang is _-kë._ It has a boring meaning, similar to the _-ist_ suffix in English being used to describe a profession. But it _sounds_ very nice to say.

I'm working on my first conlang, going through your steps, and this series is amazing. Thanks for explaining everything so clearly.

Re: metaphors for the passage of time - if yours associates time with the growth of plants, I could see the passage of time being viewed not as "forward" as in English, but "up" (for trees getting bigger) or just plain bigger. That last one appeals to me for some reason - metaphorically describing the future as bigger and the past as smaller.

i once made a language that uses subject-object-verb order in which modified words are placed before adjectives. most words were formed through the combining of multiple words (person + use = user) at one point, though, i got to the point when a word was going to be formed from "person-meat-young-harvest-place-person-beat-now-use" to make a word for someone who works the village's meat tenderizer. by the way, the word is chanmesamaleyuumukainsatrat.

Its interesting how river may be created as water-path, while on the other hand water itself may be "river-stuff" or "drinking-stuff". Makes you think of how the root words are infuenced by the environment and frequency of certain things in it. To complicate it, a pond may be later derived as "river-stuff-sit" (sitting water) or "drinking-stuff-large" (large water)... Interesting, so interesting. What if the tribe where the language evolved didn't know the concept of home, didn't drink water at all on top of having a somewhat different from humans mouth structure? Imagine what such a language could've sounded.

@oz_jones

4 жыл бұрын

Or a ocean could be a large-lake. Or salty-lake. Also, Salt Lake is a real place.

I've recently found a nice way of creating roots: I make restrictions to what sounds can go in certain places in certain words. For example: Right now, in my language, the only consonants that can occur in the coda of a noun (syllable structure is CVC without clusters btw) are nasals, plosives and, pronouns and other words with grammatical meaning (and affixes) end in vowels, adjectives can only end in plosives and ejectives and verbs don't have restrictions. Now I have come with roots that I'm actually quite happy with, like: Tuptep (even though it's a compound, it means village btw, home/house+place respectively). I highly encourage other people to do it, It's not the addition of features that makes it interesting, it's the lack of features that makes it interesting. Also for this conlang (actually It's still my first, I think you'll see why I needed this), I've restricted myself to not use fricatives, cause every time I try to make a conlang, I have a shitload of fricatives (Though now I have 5 plosives (all voicesless, btw), but I have ejectives and the voiceless labiodental plosive and voiced labiodental nasal (didn't think I'd use those). Again, I highly encourage people to restrict themselves, you might end up with a masterpiece, you never know.

I think Chinese didn't perceive time to go "down" until modern era (when the writing direction become identical to western languages, say, English). In the past it was "time" goes "left", but more like "writings" goes "left". So "as written above" was "as written on the right" (如右), and "never ever" was "none gets to the right" (无出其右). Up and down has more to do with good and bad (just like in many other cultures) I think.

@epingchris

3 жыл бұрын

无出其右 is not really about the time though, I'd say it more or less means "second to none", with things on the "right side" perceived as being better. And ancient Chinese was written top-to-bottom first, and then right-to-left, so time going "down" in Chinese need not be a modern influence from outside cultue. It can be exemplified by words such as "下次" ("next time"), "下場" ("end, final outcome" - usually negative) and "下面呢？" ("And then what?", literally "what about the bottomside?")

Just to be clear, could a statue be considered "a rock person/thing" since statues are often stones carved into the shape of a person or thing?

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

Yeah, that sounds perfectly reasonable.

@bonbonpony

5 жыл бұрын

Makes sense, until you try to sculpt a horse or even something non-living :J Then you would need to invent a hack to overcome this ;)

@LadyDeirdre

5 жыл бұрын

@@bonbonpony That would be covered under "a rock horse," using the "rock thing" suggestion. Then you're fine until sculptors invent abstract art :)

@minskghoul

5 жыл бұрын

Yes, for example, in Slavic languages it is not explicit, but words for snowman, dolls, statues, etc. are in animate nouns grammatical class, rather than inanimate.

@SerbAtheist

5 жыл бұрын

It doesn't matter. The compound 'rock-person' could have initially been used for just statues of people before undergoing generalization to mean statues in general. Think of 'ice-cream', a term that applies to all icy concoctions whether 'creamy', i.e. milk based, or not, despite nowadays having specialized terms like sorbet for fruit-based ice creams.

This was really useful! I do find it amusing how if you say 'I'm up for that' or 'I'm down' they both mean the same thing. Despite us relating up with 'good' and down with 'bad'. Or maybe it's just me and my friends who use them interchangeably, who knows.

@xcreeperbombx61

3 жыл бұрын

"I'm down" can be used as "I'm up for that" but can also mean "I'm sad/unhappy"

@jessieballpk

3 жыл бұрын

Aye, that is true! That meaning actually makes more sense to me :’)

@chesspiece4257

8 ай бұрын

“im up for that” - i am capable “im down for that” - i am willing or maybe that’s just me

@jessieballpk

8 ай бұрын

@@chesspiece4257 that makes sense too! upon reflection, i think i actually use “yeah, i’m down” for when i’m more genuinely interested in the proposed activity and “i’m up for it” if i’m able to do it but perhaps wouldn’t be overly excited about it

My newest conlang, Mibaba Lili (literally "babies' words"), has a tense system where there is a word for the present, damo, which is placed at the beginning of the sentence to indicate that the sentence describes something that will happen in the future, the end to indicate that it already happened, and either unincluded or put just before the verb to indicate present tense. A sentence in Mibaba Lili: fi zula ba lu nidi napa-napa lulo damo (literally "a/some small baby a/some(second form) big animal-animal see before-right-now", or in english "a small baby saw some big animals")

@blueyellowtube5825

2 жыл бұрын

nice language but too many short words which 50%of their letters are wowels

@GreenAgouti

2 жыл бұрын

@@blueyellowtube5825 ok and?

@blueyellowtube5825

2 жыл бұрын

@@GreenAgouti its very strange but very cool in the same time

In qedleo, the word forest is a compound of trees and place, but the plural prefix is "keu.ke", while tree is "ke.pa.pa", and place is "pa.qoi", so they all combine to get "keu.ke.ke.pa.pa.pa.qoi", which has simplified into "keu.ke.pa.qoi".

This series is a blessing. Short, concise, didactic.

In my language, the sentence "You ate the big black fish on a rock", is... Va oho-rene temolu ele knanka owa'ua.

@davidedevincentis5444

3 жыл бұрын

Woah, it sounds so nice

@Xatasu

2 жыл бұрын

Cool! Mine is: Azu aka-su kysfi byre-o pappap roko :D

@ningninglvr48

Жыл бұрын

that sounds really cute to my ears (or eyes) mine would have many different forms because it has a free word order but in the vso order (which is my favourite) it would be: lutayam sey kusol 'acuthak é plüś okuma hə otuksar

@fngf3501

3 ай бұрын

Ooh, that probably sounds really cool! My language so far would say that sentence like this: "Absa ruka tida tib il gan tuy ujji." here is gloss for the gloss enthusiasts out there: fish-ACC black-ACC big-ACC eat.NFUT 2S.NOM rock LOC PDIS My language is still in its eaaaaarly stages tho (I made this last year :skull:)

Strategy I have for making root words: I take each phoneme that makes up a syllable under my phonotactics and assign every possible phoneme that could be used there and assign it a number. I then use google's random number generator to pick them. I repeat it for how many syllables I want in the word.

Hi random guy in the internet with a really cool chanel, thanks for the video! I made a language based on the concept of being the simplest as possible, (ik no one is going to read this but whatever internet is all about that) There are 9 letters: V, E, TCH, N, O, P, R, A, D, Z, There are 2 types of words: Name and thing Name is: Me, You, Us, She/He, (Actual name of someone or somewhere) and Number Thing is: an object, feeling or concept Ex: Water, Sadness, Death When adding "R" to the end of an THING WORD it turns into present verb When adding "A" it turns to past and "O" it turns to future Ex: Watter +r = the act of wattering Sadness +r = the act of being sad Death +r = the act of killing (duh) But it needs to be simple so if you're gonna say something sentences look like this: Me wattero you You sadnessa yesterday Me killed me (Yes, everything that isn't a name in this language can turn into a verb) And there are no verb to be " I am super happy" wrong "Me happyr super" writgh If something is plural you just add Z in the end of the word BOOM! Best language ever

@mysterioussoup3393

3 ай бұрын

Nice. It might've taken 4 years but hey, at least somebody read it.

My language has gender/noun class. When I compound, should I compound the 2 words with the affix or compound the roots then add the gender affix?

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

It sort of depends on how your gender system works and how often compounding happens in the language. In a language like German, which is notoriously compound-happy, the modifying noun loses its inflection and the compound inherits the gender of the head noun, whereas in a language like Swahili, where compounds are a bit rarer, both elements of the compound retain their class prefix, which means (since the class prefix also encodes number in Swahili) when pluralizing compounds, both elements change form. I'm considering doing a separate video about noun classes, so I might touch on this at a later date.

On 1:08 you say "But sometimes, a word can become so frequently compounded with other words that is loses its core meaning altogether." In your example, your word for "place" becomes a derivational affix, but what would then be the new word for "place" if the original word loses its core meaning?

@slamwall9057

5 жыл бұрын

The new word for "place" could be derived from the name of a place

@milobem4458

5 жыл бұрын

The word only loses its original meaning in combinations. This usually comes with phonetic changes.But it can still retain its original form and meaning when it stands separately. For example "Hele+kihu" (grass+place=field) turns into "Helkhu" and a suffix "-khu" will be used consistently as a modifier, but the word "place" is still "kihu"

@rowanilsley2941

5 жыл бұрын

Perhaps there is no word for 'place', as happened with the word 'hood' (haidus) - if a place was unknown (in English we would say place in this case) it could be added to a word for 'unknown'. Just a theory

@Afon705

5 жыл бұрын

@@rowanilsley2941 A Lang Theory...

@Leaf682

4 жыл бұрын

In Turkish the word for place is yer, which means earth, that's one idea. It could also come from similar words like ground, area, field, and over time lose its original meaning. Another idea is people can start saying "people-place" "open-place" or "mega-place" (augmentative) and over time with sound changes and blurring together it can become "peopace" "opace" "meglace" respectively. This would obviously depend on the culture, their phonology and sound changes, I just gave examples to illustrate what I mean

Synonym rolls, just like grammar used to make.

How many words would be useful to have in a protolanguage? ^^' Bcz I never know when I should stop or continue x)

@mouselmao

4 жыл бұрын

Admittedly I only started with a bit over 100 and recorded all the changes I made so that if I need another root word, I could just run it through all the changes and whatnot

@goldeviolets4314

4 жыл бұрын

Perhaps around 300 or 400 if you want to be generous

@cringyhotep9078

4 жыл бұрын

If you can realistically derive a word from it, use it. Obviously there isn't gonna be a root word for "car" or "Internet" but anything that's relevant to your culture and environment can be made into a root.

@Sophia_Artura

4 жыл бұрын

300 to 400 is ideal if you’re only going to make specific phrases, but that number increases the more you want people to learn your language. With some languages I make, I only make phrases that I want translated in my writing work, but with others I get waaaayy too ahead of myself and before I know it, I’ve made 1,500 words

@burntbeansoup

3 жыл бұрын

About 10,000 is average for a literary in a language but it can be less or more

In my language I made the word for 'time' and the word for 'river' the same because the place my fictional people live has a river that flows from east to west, just like the sun. So when time passes, the river flows the same way.

@Declanjhoulgrave

Жыл бұрын

What’s the word?

@blueberryy4702

Жыл бұрын

@@Declanjhoulgrave I don’t remember, sorry. It was a project from a year and a half ago that I gave up after a month.

@Declanjhoulgrave

Жыл бұрын

@@blueberryy4702 makes sense

This a great series for helping me outline all the stuff I need for my video game's conlang. Thank you!

Since everyone is finally saying stuff about their words and stuff, so I'm guessing this is an especially useful episode for creation of my language, cause so far I haven't made any progress whatsoever.

These are fantastic videos. Keep up the grand work.

Could you please do a video on how to actually make the fonts for the script? (E.G Font forge)

I have a big doubt... Where do words like "what", "when", "how" or even words like "this" and "that" come from??? I'm really needing help

@mateussiolle8796

2 жыл бұрын

My email mattoliver1908@gmail.com

I found this video series really helpful. Please create more like it. I’m wondering which root words are usually derived from others. (Eg. how 3rd person pronouns usually trace back to demonstratives like this or that)

@Saturinus

5 жыл бұрын

Maybe this can help: fiatlingua.org/2014/09/ It's a list of some common word concepts and how they may change meaning. But don't follow it too slaveishly; it's just intended for inspiration.

When it comes to nouns in Españato 2.0, the nouns in the same semantic field start with the same letter and have the same number of letters. For example, every noun starting with H and having 6 letters is a mammal name. Humanu, hadogu...

@EnriqueLaberintico

2 жыл бұрын

Persú means person, so - pu has the meaning of "person who does X". Tokikar means speak, so you add -to to a toponym to create a language name.

My word for fishing is “rayglabashaharayaofa” which literally means: “to hunt swim animal”

@MrLongDoYT

2 ай бұрын

swim anima should become it's own word. so, to hunt fish!

5:50 for the emotion based plants, you could potentially use the ‘stuff’ suffix to associate between the two. So the flower represents happiness (we’ll say happiness is ‘mapu’) but the flower itself is called ‘mapula’ if ‘la’ is your ‘stuff’ suffix. At the same time you have to consider if the plants have other produce and if the people will use the suffix for the produce of the plant etc.

That outro music is a bop.

ok so, when the words become affixs how do you add new words in to fill those gaps, like person seems like a such a basic concept that a new word would form but how does that happen thx in advance

I made a word for a place where there is people, meaning a house, which was "shkifslawg" and then made "a place where there is a place where there is people" or "a place where there is houses", making "shkifshkifslawg".

For some extra fun your affixes don't have to be existing morphemes. New morphemes can form as the result of reanalysis by speakers. The classic example being -holic in English. Alcoholic as a word is formed from Alcohol with the suffic "-ic" but since we semi-regularly use "alco-" as a prefix indicating alcohol in something (cf alcopop) the "-holic" part got reanalysed as "addict" and now we have "chocoholic" and "shopaholic". Or part of a word may be grabbed and used as a suffix as in "Watergate" was a place name not a scandal about water but -gate has been broken off the word and turned into a suffix. Language is weird that way (that's what makes it fun)

@firebirdfiction7590

5 жыл бұрын

why is part of my comment struck out. What did I do?

@bonbonpony

5 жыл бұрын

@@firebirdfiction7590 Most likely you started a word with a dash, and then ended another one with a dash, and KZread's dumb commenting system took that as a strike-over marker. My bet is on "-holic" and "alco-" (notice that KZread didn't go wild if I put them in quotes, so you can try the same trick to avoid the strike-over). As for -holic, people often confuse it with -cholic, which is another suffix entirely: it come from the Greek word for bile, the fluid found in liver. Just a fun fact ;)

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

wow thanks for this info :).

I'm making a basic conlang for a reason that I may not be able to do anything about now but later yeah i definitely will as I can always change the minor things later.

How would you derive the word lost as in the phrase “Lost City of Atlantis”?

This has given me a good start on my writing system, thank you! My greatest difficulty is creating and correlating a list of verbs to create symbols for, any recommended resources for this or creating lexicons in general?

I would recommend using the root words in the swadesh list on wikipedia.

Miochenn lox ete uoichken einderr nenjouruoichkentag ! Much love and enjoy your day !

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

The compounding in the last word lol.

@xcreeperbombx61

3 жыл бұрын

@@Hypie582 Probably time+small/short+long/tall+area because a day isn't long but isn't short either.

@Hypie582

3 жыл бұрын

@@xcreeperbombx61 short+small sounds a little redundant, don’t you think?

@xcreeperbombx61

3 жыл бұрын

@@Hypie582 small>>>/

I dont know if youve compiled and researched all this from scratch, but bloody impressive effort anyway. This is super interesting! And I appreciate how densely packed with information all your videos seem to be - no wasted time. Would you say it was likely that Mandarins view of the time axis has to do with its being written top to bottom, or is it possible its the other way around? Are there similar patterns in other languages? (boustrophedon style languages must have a pretty wild view of time in that case). ( - of course even Japanese at least doesnt seem to work that way, "in front of" being "before" in time, and "behind" after. (similar to english/western languages with the subject facing the direction of time and traveling forwards))

My proto-language is VSO so I can’t really see a way they’d do noun incorporation. The word for fish is on the opposite side of the word for hunt, with person in the middle

Shelti fâ kiefo! you helped a lot!

After compounding much, my word for time is (double vowel is long) pebyuunyodʐanvag, which is basically, the small suns fall from full to empty. (stars across the sky, leading to this meaning hourglass too.)

@sienna.6654

2 жыл бұрын

You what?

Question! If the word for 'person' turns into a derivational suffix, can you still use it as its own word? If not, how do I re-enter that word into the lexicon? Do I have to make up another word that means 'person'?

@insertnamehere2941

3 жыл бұрын

Eventually, if the word for person becomes a derivational suffix, it will eventually not be able to be used individually. Maybe a loan word could be used.

4:48 I have never heard anyone say 'xiabian'? It may be a regional thing but it's definitely 'xiamian' where I come from.

@pikachu9512

5 жыл бұрын

I think it's regional, my parents have used it. It's probably a southern thing as the equivalent of 'xiabian' is used in Cantonese as well.

@andrewzhang8512

4 жыл бұрын

@@pikachu9512 Yeah it's regional, I say 'xiabian'? 'Xiamian' for me is underside.

How would you derive gerunds and resultatives?

how would you go around doing compound sentences like "I went to the river , but a big animal chase me"

@lotrbuilders5041

5 жыл бұрын

wolfi wolfe create some conjunctives and make 2 sentences for the rest. I still haven’t found any languages that don’t do it that way

@TheKillerwolfi

5 жыл бұрын

LoTR Builders thank you for the help

@xcreeperbombx61

3 жыл бұрын

​@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 You're supposed to do two coughs before AND after

@xcreeperbombx61

3 жыл бұрын

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 lol

With my language, it is a people who value the security of mountains and being underground. They also love music and would likely use musical metaphors. However, due to their culture, things like diamond or gold are not valuable, because diamonds are sharp and for some reason are easily broken and gold is soft and malleable. Someone who's "reinforced with gold" is soft and unwanted, and someone who's "heating up" is about to do something dangerous, as volcanic activity would be seen as very dangerous and a common threat

In Tagalog, the word for "world" literally translates to "one rounding" (sanlibutan), and "family" translates to "one house" (sambahayan)

I like the idioms! Here's one in my Proto-lang: Kalik-luu-mikum Juma (Juma is a name) /kalik lu: mikum juma/ and it translates to: All-their-wheat Johnny (Juma is a stereotypical name in the culture)

I used a VSO order instead, so for noun incorporation I had to use a generic "one" or "person" in there. Instead of "fishing" ("fish hunt") I got something that's more like "fishermanning" ("hunt person fish"), lol

You give some useful thoughts about derivational morphology and idioms, but how about root words? In an earlier video you suggest inventing a few root words so that simple sentences can be made. But a language needs a vocabulary of thousands of words. (Unless it's unusually minimalist e.g. Basic English.) Any advice about making a substantial lexicon?

I haven't gone through all the videos but you didn't mention where suffixes like 'er' come from. Are there any words in English that mean "person who" that shrink to 'er' when added to verbs?

@lotrbuilders5041

5 жыл бұрын

Paul Jackson well the suffix comes from pie so not really

How would I construct a lexicon for a language that is spoken in many different places and cultures?

Would you ever do a video on forming names of cities, countries, and even people?

Wow. I know what vocabulary is, but I didn't know things could be compounded like that. A really dense compound is the English word. Fisher. It is a person that hunts fish. So it combines three main words into a short two syllable word. The words are person, hunt and fish. I wonder if words can be switched around for different meaning. A tree-place is a place of trees. It is a whole environment full of many trees. So this means forest. On the other hand a place-tree is a tree of place. It is a single tree providing an environment. It can be a place for people and animals to stay. For a person, this can mean treehouse. For a small animal, this can mean nest. The animal can be a bird, a squirrel or something like that. Nest and treehouse have a significantly different meaning from forest. The idioms can be a good source of cultural fun. The idiom "gone to fight without a spear" reminds me of the English idiom "bring a knife to a gunfight". Either way one is not prepared to take on a task, and they are going to get into trouble. There are a few English idioms that make no sense, and I find them irritating. One is "eat like a bird", which means to eat very little. In real life birds are very gluttenous creatures. Another is "god complex", which means having an inflated ego and being arrogent. This goes against what I know about spirituality. One tends to sacrifice thier ego, and get rid of it. After that then they become divine and enlightened. A big cultural one is the totem pole idioms. It is confusing because the English speakers refer to something from Native American culture and use the application badly. In the English notion the higher up on the totem pole represents something higher and more powerful in a hierarchy. This is really messed up. Native Americans are a lot more communal than traditionally English speaking cultures. They wouldn't make such a big deal about hierarchy, and having one individual ruling over everybody else. They did have chiefs as leaders. However the chiefs are far more egalitarian than the European kings. When the Native Americans make their totem poles, the hierarchy is either reversed or nonexistant. The English speaker messed up bad. I think it is better to stick with the origional intended meaning. I wonder if I can make up idioms for my made up language. The culture is one that is very magic based. My favorite magic power is shapeshifting into animals. So there is a lot of that going on in the people. There is also a lot of animal summoning as well. Summened animals are extensions of the body controled by the mind. So in this context, they would use a lot more animal idioms than English speakers do. Animals would also get much more positive connotations. People are fond of them. In English, cow is sometimes used as an insult for people. I don't understand why though. If I make up my own animal loving culture, I won't have to worry about that. With some effort, I did think of positive associations. Cows are very strong, so they are good at plowing, pulling wagons and other heavy work. So the cow can be associated with strength, sturdiness, stability, hardworking and perserververence. The most unique feature of cows and their relatives is the ability to ruminate. This allows them to extract extra nutrients from the vegetation they eat. So that can make cows associated with resorcefullness. The positive associations is starting to remind me of Taurus from the zodiac. It is tempting to use associations with beef or milk. However that won't work. I figured out that the magic people would be vegan. They only eat plant and fungus products. So they wouldn't have beef and milk. I am not vegetarian in real life, and I am fine with that. This won't work in the context of magic people. A cow may not just be a regular cow. It may a human that has been shapeshifted. It would be horrible to slaughter and eat that human. It is cannabalism to the people. So the people become vegan as a precaution. They avoid animal product entirely. now that I think of it, the vegan way can extend to clothing. The people can't use any real leather. That is another cow product. Slaughtering a shape shifted human for leather is even worse. The people could probably use plant fiber instead. Maybe they can use magic to make synthetic products. The clothes would be free of animal products. There is no wool or fur either. Fur is something that I avoid in real life. It is just too horrifying. Oh well. At least Hindus are very fond of cows. They even refuse to eat beef. I like to think of positive association for unpopular animals. My imagination runs wild. Here are some examples. Snakes are associated with magic, wisdom and immortality. Spiders are associated with magic, art and weaving. Wolves are associated with loyalty, friendship, comunity, nobility and perserverance. Foxes are associated with magic, intelligence and adaptability. Crows and ravens are associated with intellegence, wisdom and music. Sharks are associated with courage, freedom, boldness and curiosity. This is fun to imagine.

@levvi917

4 жыл бұрын

Wow okay

Hello, I'm a bit confused. For example, how do I use the "is/are/am" and "of/related to" with your syntax/grammar? Like how do I say "My name is ViktorP04" or "This is a rock" for example? Thanks in advance! :D

@markmayonnaise1163

4 жыл бұрын

is/are/am are conjugated forms of to be, a verb.

This is great

My language has the idiom “They’re using a flower to light their path.” basically it’s what you say when someone is doing something that seems helpful now but will hurt them later, usually associated with toxic relationships. This is because a variety of poisonous plants have evolved bioluminescence to show their toxicity. It’s also the reason why calling someone a beautiful flower is offensive and why you give a lover a bouquet of pretty flowers so say you want to break up.

@davidedevincentis5444

3 жыл бұрын

Truly an interesting concept

3:50 Note that "verbal-noun" and "gerund" are different things, the "-ing" suffix just happens to be used for both in English (correct me if I'm wrong)

how would you differentiate between person-hunts (hunter) and “the person hunts” if you have a language without spaces? mines SVO but also head-modifier so i’m not sure how to differentiate them without adding a particle?

what do we do with conjunctions? like how would they integrate into the language with sentences

Is there a list of universal root words / must have words under 500 available anywhere?

How would you create names for numbers? It's something I've always struggled with

@bonbonpony

5 жыл бұрын

They are basically adjectives, so they work the same way as adjectives: by taking a feature from something that naturally and distinctively has that feature, and abstracts it. For example, in many languages the word for "one" comes from things that are unique, one of their kind, sole, alone. Number two comes from things that naturally appear in pairs, like eyes, ears, hands, couples of people etc. The number five usually comes from the fist (due to five fingers in a fist). In one of my languages, I derived the word for "four" from the word for "horse", because the speakers of this language are sentient equines, and the number 4 is special for them, due to their number of legs ;) So "four" is the "horse-number" in their language :) Words like "thousand" or "hundred" often relate to expressions for "many" or "uncountable".

@pepijndeputter8892

5 жыл бұрын

@@bonbonpony thanks

@teresahockett741

4 жыл бұрын

@@bonbonpony Well you explained great. Also I use "it" for one but that might just be me.

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

@@bonbonpony No judging, just curious, are you a brony?

@bonbonpony

4 жыл бұрын

@@Hypie582 Hmm... Hard to say "yes" definitely, because this term may include too much stuff I wouldn't agree with. If anything, I would call myself a "Harmony Brony", which is a term I made for myself and people like me: those who are adult fans of this cartoon about colourful horses and who try to implement the moral standards and life lessons from the show into their own life. But I'm not very much involved into the fandom, especially the more controversial part of it. Does that answer your question?

I came up with an interesting type of affixation. Maybe you have a word for "tool", which could be used derivationally as "A tool used to do X". You might also be able to use the word "to use", but it probably wouldn't work as well.

Absolutely wonderful and informative. But how does one distinguish a forest from woodlands, and jungles. And then we have hills, mountains, hillocks etc. Do we introduce modality here to make such distinctions? And not to mentions oceans, seas, lakes, ponds, pebbles, creeks, streams....... I created my own language quite some years ago and I experienced hell going thru all the variations of a concept or noun, an object, and even verbs as in the tenses. And I still have not finished it.

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

you could call jungles leaf heaven haha.

For the hunter derivation example, would it change if we have the adjectives after the nouns? So over time would it become a prefix (āalutuke for example) right?

@lucyla9947

Жыл бұрын

Could happen but most likely they'd become a Suffix, and stay as a Suffix unless something necessitates that they change to add clarity

Hi again. I have two questions. Is the word "vehicle" a basic term? I am trying to derive words for "plane" [flying vehicle], "car" [land vehicle], "boat" [water vehicle], and "spaceship" [space vehicle]? What would be considered a "water place"?

@tanoshiofm3852

3 жыл бұрын

Water place could be river, lake or ocean.

What if you still want to use a word that’s being compound? Like, if you still want a default word for place. Do you just make a new word for it that’s separate?

@SerbAtheist

5 жыл бұрын

There is no reason not to: Think of the word 'thing'. It is still being used despite it working as an affix in 'something', 'nothing', 'everything'...

Is the Swadesh List good for seeing what should be a root word?

Also, I added a lot of words in this episode, here is my before dictionary: Pronouns: Pe’ - I/Me Hla - You (singular) Ne - He/him Na’ - She/her Me - They/Them Yo’m - It Si - We/Us Cha - You (plural) Nouns: Hlo’ - n. Person Ti’n - n. Animal Teno - n. Rock Verbs: Pohlo - v. To see Yot - v. To sit Pa - v. To give A’po - v. To Finish Oba’ - v. To go Hli’no - v. To take Toma - v. To cause And here is my after dictionary: DICTIONARY Pronouns: Pe’ - I/Me Hla - You (singular) Ne - He/him Na’ - She/her Me - They/Them Yo’m - It Si - We/Us Cha - You (plural) Nouns: Hlo’ - n. Person Ti’n - n. Animal Teno - n. Rock Hli’ - n. Fish Tlala’ - n. Hunter (Comes from: Tla - v. To hunt) Hli’tla - n. Fisher(man) (Comes from fish + hunter = fisher, Hli’ + Tlala’ = Tli’tla) Verbs: Pohlo - v. To see Yot - v. To sit Pa - v. To give A’po - v. To Finish Oba’ - v. To go Hli’no - v. To take Toma - v. To cause Tla - v. To hunt LEXICONIC CONVERTING AND ADDING Verb > Noun: If word ends in vowel suffix la’ But if consonant suffix a’ts Nouns > Verb: If word ends in vowel suffix pe But if consonant suffix ip Noun + Noun: Add the first word plus the first two letters (A consonant group is one letter) of the second word. Example: Rock + Person = Rockperson, Teno + Hlo’ = Tenohlo’ As you can see, I added a lot more words

If I were to use 'stuff' as 'the substance is made of', would I still be able to use that word for 'stuff'

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah but when your proto language (Mother of your new languages) evolves into different languages they will lose that word because it has become a suffix. It's like using -er as a word in english.

My word for Forest literally means Woodmumplace

Thank god I know some X-bar theory, cuz otherwise I'd be lost in trying to translate some of my writings consistently in an unfamiliar grammatical structure

A lot of the words in my conlang are compounds, examples: goda = book egach = many godaëgach = many books I've made every common type of clothes a compound: nonu = clothes kit = bottom kitinonu = pants

@sienna.6654

2 жыл бұрын

Godaëgach meaning many books could also be a library or you could add in your word for place (let’s say it was sa) godaëgachsa and have many books place

Can you conlang just for fun or for the heck of it no world building

@Hypie582

4 жыл бұрын

yeah most people do it for that reason.

Ok I know this is a 5 year old video and nobody is reading the comments but if anyone who had read Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive series does the word for fisherman in the video kinda look like a Horneater word for something (Also if Biblaridion is somehow reading this thank you for making this series it is super helpful to me as a complete beginner)

I have a problem with the root system, and it is that my words that in most languages are simple are just not, for example, my word for "pen" is "Ájezexorréxékébúle", and I don´t know if I should create a new root for it or what.

0:00 Intro 0:33 Compound Words and Word Order 1:08 Derivational Affixes 1:58 Noun Incorporation 2:27 Changing a Word's Part of Speech 3:35 Nominalization 4:03 To Derive or Not to Derive? 4:15 Formulaic Language (Idioms, Common Expressions, Conceptual Metaphors)

How can I create a gerund? From which words can I take it?

Revisiting this two years after it was posted and surprise surprise, I made a, although minor, mistake, and now I can't use derivation because all of my more complex words come from root nouns and it'd be redundant to use a verb instead of its root word

Is there a way to make dialects if your making a fantasy language?

But how can I create those basic words just from my head? How did you create "alū" or "pohlu"?

@lunkel8108

4 жыл бұрын

Have you watched the other videos before this in the series? You should probably first have a sound inventory and some rules about in which order the sounds can appear. Then you can basicly just make up random stuff you like from these.

@horseenthusiast1250

3 жыл бұрын

Once you have a sound inventory, you can just start squishing sounds together in a way that pleases you. If you're feeling really stuck, I recommend looking up a proto-language you feel inspired by and looking at the structures of words, or recalling words you like the sound of in languages you already speak. For example, I'm amused by the PIE root word for fart, "Perd," so if I wanted to make a conlang have a similar word I might take my two favourite sounds of it (P and R) and put some new sounds in there to make, idk, "Purts." But generally, it's a stronger tool to rely on your imagination; too much leaning on a proto-language can make your conlang feel like a cipher.

Could I derive every verb from a noun+do? For example sight+do=to see?

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

I think it's a lot more likely that a noun like "sight" would be derived from a verb plus some nominalization.

Ok, new question: what’s a fair number of roots to use for a language before beginning to evolve it? (So far I only have about 50 roots which is fewer than the number of toki pona words, so I know I should make more roots, but how many is a good number to move on?)

@Biblaridion

5 жыл бұрын

That's entirely up to you. If you already have an idea of how you want your language to end up, then you can have what you've already got evolve into the modern language, see if you like the results, and then go back and forth between the proto-lang and modern-lang as you create and evolve new grammar and vocabulary.

@0Aquamelon

5 жыл бұрын

Biblaridion I plan to have my “modern language” still pretty old fashion because all of the more modern implications would come around the time trade and war is a thing. And after that different dialects would probably emerge. In other words: I don’t plan to evolve the language too much, but I will after I write other languages and further expand my ideas. Is it safe to move on here? Thanks ahead of time. These videos and ur responses are really helping me.

I think when we get to evolution i am going to change the plural of house ' houses' its own word, which will mean 'village'