I think a general principle to follow is that most tags shouldn't have "language" or "conlang" in them. Exceptions would be when it's explicitly distinguishing conlang and natlangs, or when there's already a set phrase with "language" in it. Language change is one such phrase, so I think a language-change tag for questions on natural developments of conlangs would be good
I’d say we’ll definitely see questions about: 1) how to construct a language 2) how decisions in well-known constructed languages were made 3) how certain things in well-known conlangs work 4) various linguistics questions as relevant to conlanging
@curiousdannii My opinion on translation questions is simple: if what you're trying to say isn't in a standard dictionary for that conlang, then it's an acceptable question.
@Adarain Definitely. But pure linguistics questions probably should be migrated. So such questions should make the relevance to conlangs explicit. IMO your question is just on the edge of acceptability there.
I’d say a linguistics question is one that is asking for, well, how stuff works in the science of linguistics, not how things work in a specific language
A definition I've been trying to promote at Linguistics.SE is that linguistics concerns systems in languages. The sounds and meanings of words in languages is often not systematic, but very arbitrary.
I also wouldn’t classify a grammar help question as a linguistics question; but I would classify one asking for how a grammatical feature works as such
like, “how do you use the imperfect in french” is a french question, “what is the definition of the imperfective aspect” is a linguistics question; the former would be definitely off-topic here, the latter better suited for linguistics.SE but could be fine here if say, asking for whether ones own grammatical aspect falls under the definition of an imperfective
@curiousdannii , I'm not looking up your posts, but what you just said is too true. So much of language is experience rather than systematic understanding.
:42750401 Sure, that's something found in natural languages. But what would it be colliding with? And why is that a problem? (Polysemy is very common!)
anyway, regarding the tags, the six categories I described above I’d tag as follows: 1) [tag:language-creation] or [tag:conlang-creation] 2) [tag:conlang-history] 3) (language-specific tags) 4) (subfield-specific tags) 5) [tag:terminology] or [tag:classification] 6) [tag:neography] or [tag:writing-systems]
@Adarain For 6: orthography would probably be best? Covers both scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, Tengwar) as well as how scripts are used in individual languages
after all, a question about applying hangul to your conlang wouldn’t really be neography; and a question about lettershapes isn’t really writing-systems
And except for where there are synonyms in place, people will keep introducing new tags as we go. In 6 months we can reevaluate how these writing system tags etc are being used
phonetic writing for english would imply writing /t/ differently in the words tap, stop and water
@humn spoken/signed languages are a primary means of communication between humans. writing is a secondary way of encoding those languages
there has never in the history of mankind (that we know of) been a language that was exclusively written and not based in some way on a spoken or signed language
if you don’t feel like watching the talk, the summary is basically texting mirrors the way we speak; written english has a very very distinct style that has basically nothing to do with how the language is actually spoken
That pretty much answers my query :) I was just wondering because when I just clicked on the review icon there was stuff to do, but no obvious prompt without clicking it - as opposed to the 'graduated' sites where there's a symbol next to the icon when something is to be reviewed (at least in my exp)
@Adarain seen the answer; You might've better gone with a new Meta-Q though imho
Anyone ideas for easy rep? I am not in the position to currently develop any conlanguage myself due to time constraints :/ But I'd like to get up with rep in order to start doing some community-review action, etc. and help the beta gain in quality and get to public
pretty much my issue; I got some old 2014-ish email conversations with a friend from back when we had time to discuss about languages; will likely draft up the Qs we tried to resolve ourselves back then, but that'll take quite some time to sift through the data and all :)
I've considered posting some of those relatively-basic-but-useful questions myself but the problem is that I'm not sure what's appropriate, what isn't, and what is too broad
I'm a linguist, but never really had much interest in conlangs before. But I'm finding this site quite interesting, and hopefully my linguistic knowledge will help others
Anyone got opinions about a tag named something like "unnatural-features" for questions about designing conlang features with no parallels in natural languages?
However on this site we may need to distinguish between languages changing through use in our real timeline, and languages changing over time in a fictional story
That was one of the subjects we used to discuss about; how to properly simulate language drift and such. We were thinking about creating one language we really wanna do, then do a bunch of 'easy' languages closely based on real languages (e.g. mixes of 2 languages and such) and then randomly pushing words into our orig language to have it drift through influence and such
@curiousdannii hard question, that. a well-done conlang imo is one which a) has some design goals and b) manages to achieve those goals. So for example, I prefer to do naturalistic conlangs, and therefore my design goal is to create a language such that, if a linguist looked at my documentation they couldn’t tell it was a conlang
@curiousdannii to make a relex of an existing language rather than a unique language, or to break the rules/universals about how human languages work in ways that don't make sense
I guess a guide to diachronics might be very well received - but it's more of a blog-subject than a Q on here. What might work would be something along the lines of asking for proven methods to simulate language drift for a conlang, make it a series of questions with different focus - e.g. one focussing on natural drift; another focussing on influences from a second language; how to simulate drift between isolated groups speaking the same base language, etc.
@dot_Sp0T I think a tag would be useful because we've already had several questions about wanting features which deliberately have no natlang parallels. "unnatural-features" seems to communicate this pretty clearly to me.
there’s also jargon terms like engelang (engineered language) that deal with languages deliberately violating some universal and seeing where you can take it
It would be so much fun to come up with a language without parallel. (Or am i behind on that discussion?) I'd cheat by using what i've learned from other animals.
@curiousdannii that sounds like something we should def introduce! :D e.g. break-my-language where people ask others to find issues with the language that need to be addressed
@Adarain that's true, but that makes it difficult to tell what actually counts as a conlang (is morse code a "relex"? what about english encoded in binary?)
I guess I should reword that as "breaking the rules in a way that isn't deliberate and well thought out"
Guys, I think if this site is ever gonna leave private beta, it won't be because of 150 questions, but tons of messages in chat... This site looks like it's mostly chat
I have experience with good formats from the WB stack and am willing to keep it somewhat moderated and clean; but I don't have the conlang knowledege to provide data :(
I hate to put even arbitrary numbers out there because folks tend to fixate on the numbers instead of the exercise itself.
The purpose of a private beta is to show that:
The topic has enough interest to succeed
The topic works pretty naturally within the framework of objective Q&A
High qualit...
@Adarain There is site status on Area 51 and requirement how it should look like
>27 questions per day 10 questions per day on average is a healthy beta, 5 questions or fewer per day needs some work. A healthy site generates lots of good content to make sure users keep coming back. 91% answered 90% answered is a healthy beta, 80% answered needs some work. In the beta it's especially important that when new visitors ask questions they usually get a good answer. 17 avid users 191 total users Every site needs a solid group of core users to assist in moderating the site. We recommend:
@curiousdannii Statistics show that we're not bad, but not good
> In the Archaic period (before 2000 BCE), a number of loanwords from Mixe–Zoquean languages seem to have entered the proto-Mayan language. This has led to hypotheses that the early Maya were dominated by speakers of Mixe–Zoquean languages, possibly the Olmec. > In the case of the Xincan and Lencan languages, on the other hand, Mayan languages are more often the source than the receiver of loanwords. Mayan language specialists such as Campbell believe this suggests a period of intense contact between Maya and the Lencan and Xinca people, possibly during the Classic period (250–900).
I just got a suggested edit that added the klingon tag to a question where I had included the klingon-language tag. As of right now, klingon has one question in it and klingon-language has two.
These seem... kinda redundant to me; why do we have both? Which should we use primarily?
@labela--gotoa To start with, I'd remove the question about whether it's necessary to learn conlangs.
I still think it's fundamentally flawed though. It may have been upvoted on Area 51, but Area 51 users rarely downvote or close example questions enough
I gave my friends a lateral thinking puzzle
There are six eggs in the basket. Six people each take one of the eggs. How can it be that one egg is left in the basket?
My intended answer was
But one of my friend answered
Clearly my friend's answer is more creative then my own (as late...
I hate to put even arbitrary numbers out there because folks tend to fixate on the numbers instead of the exercise itself.
The purpose of a private beta is to show that:
The topic has enough interest to succeed
The topic works pretty naturally within the framework of objective Q&A
High qualit...
I just got a suggested edit that added the klingon tag to a question where I had included the klingon-language tag. As of right now, klingon has one question in it and klingon-language has two.
These seem... kinda redundant to me; why do we have both? Which should we use primarily?
I gave my friends a lateral thinking puzzle
There are six eggs in the basket. Six people each take one of the eggs. How can it be that one egg is left in the basket?
My intended answer was
But one of my friend answered
Clearly my friend's answer is more creative then my own (as late...
Constructed Languages
Constructed Languages