Constructed Languages - 2018-02-06

next day → last day (2255 days later) »

8:14 PM

Welcome to chat for: Constructed Languages

This is a general discussion room, but please feel free to create more subject-specific rooms (a single room with every possible discussion isn't very helpful)

For playing with chat features:

Sandbox

Where you can play with chat features (except flagging) and ch...

For feedback:

Chat feedback

Problems with chat? Let us know...

and remember; please read the FAQ ;p)

Henry WH Hack v2.1.1

Hello and Welcome to the Constructed languages Stack Exchange website/chatroom! :)

98

Q: The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta

The blog post Seven Essential Meta Questions of Every Beta gets linked to prominently from every beta's meta. However, this blog post is somewhat inaccurate and misdirects new users. In almost every beta, the site design question, for example, gets asked and undergoes a fair bit of discussion eve...

support faq beta-phase beta-sites

conlang.stackexchange.com/help

conlang.stackexchange.com/tour

Congrats Franck Dernoncourt Your proposal made it into private beta now let's see if it will get out! :)

user61230

8:29 PM

I'm already getting the sense that it's gonna be awful difficult to get rep on this site if you don't know Elvish. ;)

@Zyerah there's nothing wrong with simply stalking the stack and learning :)

Henry WH Hack v2.1.1

Congrats Zyerah on being the first MOD to enter the room! :)

:42714596 what has been seen cannot be unseen anymore

user61230

Ahaha, thanks!

Suilad!

8:39 PM

as there's actually people on here let me introduce business: conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/17/… what would be the correct VTC reason here? Or am I too biased from other stacks already and it's perfectly fine..?

Gypsy Spellweaver

@dot_Sp0T Too sensitive to the word list I think

@GypsySpellweaver so you don't see any issues with it?

Gypsy Spellweaver

The OP isn't asking for a list of sources, but for a list to consider. Similar to asking "what points should be evaluated in choosing a scripting language?"

yeah, which still means that the longer an answer the better it must be :/

Gypsy Spellweaver

Actually, if it was me asking, I'd want a concise list, not a laundry list. The important points, not every point.

8:43 PM

Point of interest: the founder of the Language Creation Society is an SE user. Definitely someone who should be invited here, if we can.

How do you differentiate? (Don't want to outplay/-maneuver you, I'm genuinely trying to form the right mindset right now :))

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Randal'Thor If you know how to contact them, by all means

In this case, I think that question is at the heart of conlangs, and probably important to the site, and it's users.

Since I don't make conlangs, I cannot say for sure, of course. Just seems important here, more than it might elsewhere.

@Randal'Thor Spreading the word is an important activity for a beta site. Users are what's needed for questions and answers.

I am trying to feel what they're trying to actually ask for. It might be they are looking for a system to test a language for it's properties/features, but it's not clear to me. And I share your sentiment that the core of the question is definitely a subject that is right on here.

Gypsy Spellweaver

The OP isn't asking for a linter, but what the linter should be checking.

0

Q: How should I start constructing a language?

I'm currently experimenting with combinations of sounds that sound right to me, with the fantasy that I might one day create a constructed language. However, I've not generated many 'words' so far, which may imply that this method doesn't work really well. What is a good way to start doing this...

language-development

Too broad?

8:53 PM

If closing it I'd have said opinion-based rather than too broad. While it is utterly broad, so is the whole learning process most of the time. But answers to this question will stem from personal opinions on the subject and are hard to quantify/objectify - some things just work better for some people..

Well, I gotta run. Thank you all for making this a thing and to a good beta!

I voted to close it because it's too opinion-based, though this stack might be a proper place for this kind of question, or might become if we refine the rules enough I guess

Time for me to start doing what people would expect of someone with my username and start learning at least a bit about Tokien's languages...

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Mithrandir I do hope that this site becomes more than that. They (Tolkien's languages) do, however, serve as excellent examples of what a conlang can be.

More than just Elvish, certainly.

I'm hoping to see toki pona, Lojban, Klingon, Láadan, etc questions as well, in addition to questions about creating your own conlang... which is what most of the top A51 questions were about.

9:10 PM

There are Klingon and Toki Pona questions, and it's pretty okay for the SX's first day

Gypsy Spellweaver

Klingon is already here, even if it's a repeat.

Creation type questions are already here as well.

One closed, I might add.

Toki Pona too:

3

Q: Do toki pona speakers, in practice, permit compounding more than three words?

In toki pona, compounding multiple words together is possible. For example: tomo: room/box/structure/home telo: water/fluid tomo telo: bathroom It also allows compounding three words together: tomo pi telo nasa: a bar kiwen mun laso: blue moon rocks This is where the official grammar stops,...

toki-pona descriptive-usage

pretty good question imho

@GypsySpellweaver Yeah, I raised a meta discussion about the duplicate tag.

Gypsy Spellweaver

There's going to be some overlap with SciFi, and RPG for that matter, just as there is with AskUbuntu and Unix & Linux. In time it will be established which site is a better fit for what kind of question. Until then, we'll just muddle along and try to keep it clean.

So hopefully the question I just asked makes sense.

9:24 PM

What I wonder personally is whether the focus of this SE ought to be on a) the creation of constructed languages b) existing conlangs (think esperanto grammar help) or c) both

Well, three questions is enough for one night.

I personally came here expecting a)

@Adarain c.), especially based on what is actually going on at the moment.

and am seing more of b)

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Adarain Both, except that some existing conlangs have their own site

9:25 PM

yeesh the SE notification ping is really loud

Gypsy Spellweaver

Creation questions will be harder to write, and harder to answer, while having a larger impact overall.

I’m just afraid they’d be flooded out

also, question: should I go ask and self-answer some quesitons I would consider valuable but already know the answer to?

I can probably think of some things

Yes, why not?

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Adarain That can be helpful in beta.

idk, etiquette?

I’m new to this

Gypsy Spellweaver

9:27 PM

Helps to establish scope, and get others thinking of their own questions

There's even a button to include a self-answer when you go to ask ;)

btw, @Mithrandir completely unrelated but why does your username strike me as so familiar (apart from occuring in LotR). are you active on some other conlanging-related board with this name?

Nope. Stack Exchange is the only place I use this username.

odd

Gypsy Spellweaver

Though, do try to tailor the question so that it invites others to answer. You might even be surprised with a better answer than your own.

9:29 PM

would a catch-call "What software tools are available to assist conlangers" be useful to have?

catch-all ...

I'll refrain from going NOOOOOOOOO and just go No.

Gypsy Spellweaver

@thrig nope

seems too broad, there’s a lot and it’s very subjective what you would like

what about specific literature questions? like “what are good books to read on [topic]”. might be too much cross-over into linguistics.stackexchange.com tho

17

Q: Should recommendation questions be on-topic?

The previous incarnation of Literature SE included a lot of recommendation questions. I don't have any specific examples to hand from that site, but typical book recommendation questions might look like the following: What are some other good 19th-century romance novels, for someone who enjo...

discussion scope

^ from another SE site

Software Recommendations does work as a site (somehow).

9:32 PM

That should give some pointers on recommendation questions like that.

Wait, why is my rep showing up as 7294 instead of 47.7k?

fair fair albeit one has to consider the difference between recreational literature and textbooks

@pjc90 Why do you keep reverting my edits to fix tagging? tolkien is a really bad name for a tag, since Tolkien invented so many different languages which all deserve their own tags. And black-speech is ambiguous since there must be languages called Black Speech in several different works of fantasy. — Rand al'Thor 3 mins ago

I hope we don't get too many edit wars over this :-/

@Mithrandir Interesting. Mine showed 84.8k for a moment (my rep on Science Fiction & Fantasy) and then changed to 183k (my network rep).

I still see it as 84.8k.

Tested on the sandbox, it shows the parent site rep there as well.

I am seing a bunch of “how do you do X in language”, including some rather shallow questions like What is “lightness” in the Black Speech? or How would you say “good morning” or “hello” politely in Klingon?. I am personally not in favour of seing such questions here, thoughts?

@Adarain I don't see anything wrong with them, as long as they don't overrun the site.

9:38 PM

I agree with @Adarain

Gypsy Spellweaver

@Mithrandir Probably a side effect of going into a new room as a foreign mod. In picking up that you are a mod, it attaches to the rep for that site and applies that to the chat user account. Once the system has a chance to refresh itself it will recalculate the site-wide rep and fix that in the chat user account

Some simple questions are OK.

If the site is all simple questions and experts would turn away in disgust, then we've got problems.

I just fear the SE turning into a general dictionary and/or “grammar wiki” for popular conlangs

@Adarain I don't see anything wrong with them... as long as we don't become a translation service. I specifically asked that one because the answer wasn't obvious, as far as I could tell; there was no simple way to say it AFAIK.

rather than a place to discuss, well, the topic in general

9:39 PM

I feel like the site should be more focused on the art of conlanging rather than (relatively simple) questions about popular conlangs

Hmm, why'd they delete conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/39/…?

Did they realize that I was about to VTC as a dupe of my question? :P

Perhaps if the question is about some strange thing a conlang does I could see no problem, but questions like conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/28/… or conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/29/… or conlang.stackexchange.com/questions/12/… seem ungood in my opinion

Gypsy Spellweaver

The best way to make the site resemble what one would like it to be is to ask questions that fit that ideal.

also other thing: who is in control over the logo (the thing that currently says art)

making that the conlang flag would seem appropriate

SE staff.

Feel free to bring it up on [meta].

9:42 PM

will do

Huh. Why didn't that work?

Gypsy Spellweaver

4

A: Is the icon for this site supposed to be "art"?

art — the ISO 639-5 code for constructed languages and prefix code for conlangs not assigned a code. ref. List of ISO 639-5 codes

Okay... chat.SE doesn't seem to realize that conlang is a valid site yet. The favicon is off, and https://chat.stackexchange.com/?tab=site&host=conlang.stackexchange.com is getting the rooms hosted on my parent site.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Does that help?

I get the art favicon here.

And on the page showing which rooms you are in.

oh I saw that thread and understand why it’s art, but I would personally prefer it to be a symbol of the conlangs flag, which is pretty much the universal symbol for conlangs in every community I’ve encountered

Gypsy Spellweaver

9:45 PM

Anything other than letters has to wait for full graduation.

ah I see

Not necessarily.

Several beta sites have a unicode symbol as the image.

Puzzling.SE had ??, Chess.SE has a rook, there are others.

Gypsy Spellweaver

Well, that's still a "letter" rather than a designed "icon", though it does blur the line.

I doubt there’s a tower of babel unicode icon so the point is moot

if by letter we mean a sequence of unicode codepoints of a nonzero length yeah

it's still irrelevant here because there's no relevant symbol

10:12 PM

Perhaps this tower 🗼

it's not very recognisable

nor representative of conlanging

or language in general; where the rook and ?? were appropriate for their betas (as said above), the tokyo tower's only graphically superficially similar

if anything I'd put forward an IPA character, such as the schwa ə or u-bar ʉ

I can get behind a schwa

ə sure why not

it 'tastes' elegant tbh; it's probably the closest we can get to a conlanging idea without the tower of babel

Why are phonetics a conlanging idea specifically?

They're used in all languages.

10:20 PM

they’re not, but they’re obviously also important for the creation of langauges

not phonetics; but a grapheme representing a common vowel is as close to conlanging as we can get with a Unicode codepoint because it's about language

oh like that

if we don't have a codepoint associated with conlanging in specific, we ought to use one associated with its superset in linguistics I guess

Gypsy Spellweaver

Just as an experiment, I pulled up the Language Creation Society's website, and the favicon doesn't look recognizable to me, even knowing what it's supposed to be. Probably an inferior choice for here.

For what it's worth, it's the tower of babel. That specific icon isn't uncommonly used to represent conlanging

or rather that specific symbolization of the towel of babel

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:31 PM

I knew what it was supposed to be, the page had a larger picture of the flag, Still, as a favicon in my browser tab it was not really recognizable.

their favicon is the seal of the LCS, which features the conlangs flag but is not exclusively it; though

it has that thick purple border around it

making it less familiar

Gypsy Spellweaver

As a personal preference, I like a favicon that I can "see" in the browser tabs rather than one I have to "know". Granted, the size of favicons is very limiting. That just means it takes a very insightful designer to make a good one.

ergo my proposal of the schwa

at least there's enough room for a very legible character in there

there's currently three quite legible characters there so I could see a single character being very legible yeah

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

are constructed writing systems on-topic here?

10:40 PM

I'd very much assume so; if at doubt ask in meta and we can beerhall it

unless there’s a neography stackexchange, I’d consider it a relevant subtopic here

@noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ There's already a tengwar tag, I think.

@Adarain there isn't (there's a meagre 172 stacks on this RAM)

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

kinda goes into normal linguistics though- Korean has the completely artificial hangul script

what I would find more questionable however is spelling reforms of natlangs. personally I would consider that off-topic; same with ciphers

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:44 PM

Artificial or not, I'd expect hangul to be off-topic while tengwar being on-topic

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

@GypsySpellweaver hm, explain?

Hangul is the most used script of Korean

Gypsy Spellweaver

Tengwar was invented for a nonexistent language, or not a natlang anyway. Hangul script was invented to fill the need to write a natlang.

Korean is a natural language.

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

Korean did have a script beforehand, it was just difficult to learn

I'd say Hangul is very on topic when the question is about using it in a conlang e.g, or its design goals and concepts etc

Gypsy Spellweaver

10:47 PM

Many languages were in use long before there was a written form for it. Some still have no native written form.

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

I see

That makes sense

@GypsySpellweaver Many languages have no native written form.

Many of them now use the Latin alphabet, matched phonetically to the language.

Gypsy Spellweaver

How to adapt a script, natlang-based or not, to fit the needs of a conlang seems on topic. Questions about that script itself still seems off-topic.

in The Reading Room, yesterday, by humn

Maori looks phonetic! Like other languages that developed alphabets relatively recently. LIke my native Suomi/Finnish.

Māori language

Māori (; Māori pronunciation: [ˈmaːɔɾi] listen), also known as te reo ("the language"), is an Eastern Polynesian language spoken by the Māori people, the indigenous population of New Zealand. Since 1987, it has been one of New Zealand's official languages. It is closely related to Cook Islands Māori, Tuamotuan, and Tahitian. The number of speakers of the language has been in sharp decline since the end of World War II, despite a language revitalization effort. A national census undertaken in 2013 reported that about 149,000 people, or 3.7 per cent of the New Zealand population, could hold ...

10:50 PM

are there any written-only languages? (well apart from things we only have writing for...)

@thrig Braille?

In fact, I think some natural languages have evolved as languages due to the written form imposed upon them later.

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

language is just the shared context between two people and a way of communicating information, so the method of communication depends on the most convenient way those two people can communicate

@thrig 🤔

IIRC, some of the words for "three" in Quechua are based on the form of the symbol 3, which they must only have started using after the Europeans came.

@thrig classical chinese was never a spoken language, and is notoriously terse

middle chinese was, and is not synonymous

10:52 PM

@thrig How strictly do you define language?

@thrig Blissymbolics!

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

modern chinese is still terse

it's spoken slower, so it has the same meaning per second

user image

and though japanese might have the least information rate, it has words to communicate culturally important things, like deference

@noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ "Modern Chinese" isn't a meaningful term

Gypsy Spellweaver

I think that the international signs might count as written yet not spoken language. Though it is pictographic and not alphabetic

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

@Darkgamma true. modern mandarin, I mean

10:58 PM

modern as in simplified or just recent linguistic developments?

noɥʇʎԀʎzɐɹƆ

@HyperNeutrino as spoken as it is today

ah ok

Wow, this site feels super quiet compared to day 1 of Literature.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

I'll be trying asking some more tomorrow.

Although from what I remember Artificial Intelligence had about the same activity rate the first day.

11:55 PM

So I used the "Invite Fellow Experts" thing in the sidebar to invite Sai here.

I'm not actually sure how that thing works though; maybe by sending an automatic email but attributing it to me?

next day → last day (2255 days later) »

Transcript for

Feb '186

Constructed Languages

General discussion for conlang.stackexchange.com

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile