For those of you don't know, ‘conlang’ stands for ‘CONstructed LANGuage’. ‘Conlanging’ is the process of creating such a language.

Some people may consider conlanging to be for nerds, others as a hobby, and for some (like myself), an art. Conlanging truly requires you to use your creativity and brains.

I myself have created 3 fully completed and functional conlangs.

If you are intrigued by this idea, let's all create a conlang on here (perhaps we'll call it Scratchese??).

If you want to help, we must all agree on some basic things about our language (i will get into some really technical terms, but i will explain as best as i can).

OUTLINE:

* Phonology (what are the sounds of our language?)

* Morphology (how are words formed?)

* Style 1 (do we want to go for pretty sounding, harsh sounding, or weird sounding?)

* Style 2 (do we want the language to be simple, practical, or complex?)

(continuing from morphology)

There are three (3) basic types of morphological alignment:

1) Isolating. An example of an isolating language is Chinese. Isolating languages don't have a lot of morphemes (things that have meaning), so you can't really ‘glue’ words together. Instead, you make up sentences by using a ton of smaller words with less meaning. For example, instead of saying ‘house’, you would literally say ‘the thing that people live in’.

2) Fusional. An example of a fusional language is Spanish. Fusional languages have a high morpheme ratio (meaning that one word could mean a lot of things). Take for example ‘hablo’ and ‘habló. The -o suffix in ’hablo' means multiple things, specifically the 1st person (speaking from yourself), present tense (action is happening now), and the indicative mood (stated as a fact). Whereas the -ó suffix means the 3rd person (another person is speaking), past tense (action happened already), and the indicative mood (stated as a fact). Sentences in fusional languages are generally compact and short because words can take on so many different meanings, thereby reducing the role of syntax (how words are ordered)

3) Agglutinative. An example of an agglutinative language is Japanese. Words in Japanese can have multiple affixes (an affix means a prefix or a suffix) attached them. The difference between an agglutinative and fusional language is that affixes in agglutinative languages mean ONLY one thing, compared to affixes in fusional languages which could mean 2 or more things. For example, one affix will ONLY mean the 1st person, another ONLY the present tense, and so on and so forth). Agglutinating languages generally have LONNNNGGGGGG words, but they pack a lot of meaning. I mean, seriously, just look up Hungarian lol.

If you have any questions or are intrigued more about this, ask me, I'm a conlang ‘expert’ lol

sounds like a good idea

thegoldfish wrote:

sounds like a good idea

Thank you for replying i thought no one would lol because I thought people would think this is too complex. Anyways, we can discuss phonology later as that will take some time, but, what do you want our morphology to be?

I have no idea what on earth this is, but this sounds interesting, heheh.
(I've heard of constructed language but never thought about it)
So do we just choose random syllables for words and invent a grammar system?

Anyway, I think an Isolating…alignment?…would be fitting since Scratch is made up of blocks. Maybe try to keep it simple as possible too, since Scratch is supposed to be simple.

Polaris- wrote:

I have no idea what on earth this is, but this sounds interesting, heheh.
(I've heard of constructed language but never thought about it)
So do we just choose random syllables for words and invent a grammar system?

Anyway, I think an Isolating…alignment?…would be fitting since Scratch is made up of blocks. Maybe try to keep it simple as possible too, since Scratch is supposed to be simple.

I like your logic for choosing Isolating lol. As for phonology…umm..it can be more or less random. To make it easier, we should choose a language and model our sounds after that language's sounds. I mean, we can get PRETTY in-depth about phonology, and I don't think you want that lol (I don't even want that because it can get pretty crazy).

Bump. Oh, and if you want to help, please follow this thread to keep yourself updated on the progress of the conlang

THAWKK wrote:

Polaris- wrote:

I have no idea what on earth this is, but this sounds interesting, heheh.
(I've heard of constructed language but never thought about it)
So do we just choose random syllables for words and invent a grammar system?

Anyway, I think an Isolating…alignment?…would be fitting since Scratch is made up of blocks. Maybe try to keep it simple as possible too, since Scratch is supposed to be simple.

I like your logic for choosing Isolating lol. As for phonology…umm..it can be more or less random. To make it easier, we should choose a language and model our sounds after that language's sounds. I mean, we can get PRETTY in-depth about phonology, and I don't think you want that lol (I don't even want that because it can get pretty crazy).

hmm sounds interesting

For those who are intrigued and want to participate, I can do all the heavy-lifting (like the detailing and specification of the more technical and finer details of the language), but first I need you guys to decide what you want the phonology and morphology to be. To make it easy to decide what the phonology is, just name off your favorite language and we can incorporate some of the sounds of that language in here lol

Bump

Bump. Come on people, this would be a super cool idea if we all worked on this together

This is my idea:

Phonology - Vowels

* A – as in ‘ah’
* E – as in an English ‘e’
* I – as in the ‘i’ in ‘pit’
* O – as in an English ‘o’
* U – as in ‘oo’ in ‘food’

Phonology - Consonants

Pretty much sound the same as English consonants, though a few exceptions below.

* G – always “hard”, as in the ‘g’ in ‘got’, never the ‘g’ in ‘gentle’

* S – always unvoiced, meaning it sounds like the s's in ‘stress’, never the ‘s’ in ‘tease’

* C – always ‘hard’, meaning it sounds like a ‘k’, never a ‘s’

* J – sounds like a French ‘j’

Styles

Weird sounding and practical

Morphological Alignment

Isolating

THAWKK wrote:

This is my idea:

Phonology - Vowels

* A – as in ‘ah’
* E – as in an English ‘e’
* I – as in the ‘i’ in ‘pit’
* O – as in an English ‘o’
* U – as in ‘oo’ in ‘food’

Phonology - Consonants

Pretty much sound the same as English consonants, though a few exceptions below.

* G – always “hard”, as in the ‘g’ in ‘got’, never the ‘g’ in ‘gentle’

* S – always unvoiced, meaning it sounds like the s's in ‘stress’, never the ‘s’ in ‘tease’

* C – always ‘hard’, meaning it sounds like a ‘k’, never a ‘s’

* J – sounds like a French ‘j’

Styles

Weird sounding and practical

Morphological Alignment

Isolating

sounds good, now where do we start?

thegoldfish wrote:

THAWKK wrote:

This is my idea:

Phonology - Vowels

* A – as in ‘ah’
* E – as in an English ‘e’
* I – as in the ‘i’ in ‘pit’
* O – as in an English ‘o’
* U – as in ‘oo’ in ‘food’

Phonology - Consonants

Pretty much sound the same as English consonants, though a few exceptions below.

* G – always “hard”, as in the ‘g’ in ‘got’, never the ‘g’ in ‘gentle’

* S – always unvoiced, meaning it sounds like the s's in ‘stress’, never the ‘s’ in ‘tease’

* C – always ‘hard’, meaning it sounds like a ‘k’, never a ‘s’

* J – sounds like a French ‘j’

Styles

Weird sounding and practical

Morphological Alignment

Isolating

sounds good, now where do we start?

Well, let's decide on what word order we want. S=subject. V=verb. O=object. English uses SVO word order. However, the most common order in the world is SOV. Chinese is an isolating language just like this one and it also uses SVO order like English. But, we can go weird and do word orders such as VSO, OSV (<— the word order Yoda speaks in), etc.

We also should decide what differentiates verbs from nouns and other parts of speech (e.g. what do verbs end in that clearly says that their verbs).

Wait is this like Lojban?

IronBit_Studios wrote:

Wait is this like Lojban?

Well we already decided that this would be Isolating, and I think Lojban is agglutinative.

THAWKK wrote:

Phonology - Vowels
* A – as in ‘ah’ Ok
* E – as in an English ‘e’ English vowels have multiple sounds. You mean “ee”? (That would be the same as the i)
* I – as in the ‘i’ in ‘pit’ Ok
* O – as in an English ‘o’ English vowels have multiple sounds. You mean “oh”?
* U – as in ‘oo’ in ‘food’ Ok

Phonology - Consonants
Pretty much sound the same as English consonants, though a few exceptions below.
* G – always “hard”, as in the ‘g’ in ‘got’, never the ‘g’ in ‘gentle’ Ok
* S – always unvoiced, meaning it sounds like the s's in ‘stress’, never the ‘s’ in ‘tease’ You mean a longer S? Because Wikipedia says S and ß (German, it's basically SS) sound the same
* C – always ‘hard’, meaning it sounds like a ‘k’, never a ‘s’ Yeah, that way it looks weird too :D
* J – sounds like a French ‘j’ Voiced palato-alveolar sibilant?

I think we should use Spanish's vowel phonology, because it's simple, just one sound per vowel, and easy to pronounce (At least for me, since my first language is spanish)

Vowels

Aa ah father fader
Ee meh pet pet
Ii pit machine macʃin
Oo log pot pot
Uu moon poop mun
Ww boat goat bwt
Yy Put lips like oo and say ee

Consonants

Bb bowl bwl
Cc always hard, koala cwala
Dd diamond daimond
Ff forest forest
Gg always hard, game geim
Jj jewel juwel
Ll lame leim
Mm monkey monci
Nn notification notificeiʃon
Pp polar bear polar ber
Rr Which one do you prefer? Alveolar Approximant (English's R) or Alveolar Trill (Spanish's Double R)? Some kids have trouble saying the Alveolar Trill so we could use Alveolar Flap (Spanish's R)
Ss silent sailent
Tt time taim
Þþ thorn Thorn (letter) þorn
Ʃʃ sheep Esh (letter) I suposse Cʃ, cʃ for Ch ʃip cʃat

Suffixes

after a vowel: -da Female female koala - cwalada female monkey - moncida
after a vowel: -do Male male koala - cwalado male parent - moncido
after a consonant: -a Female female tiger - taigera female elephant - elefenta
after a consonant: -o Male male tiger - taigero male elephant - elefento
Nothing Neuter scratcher - scratcʃer chair - cʃeir
-s Plural plants - plents sheeps - ʃips Goes after the gender suffixes
Nothing Singular potion - pwʃon koala - cwala

Pronouns

Person (gender) Subject Object Possessive Possessive Reflexive
Determiner Pronoun
Singular
First ci cit cip cipe cite
Second þu þut þup þupe þute
Masculine jedo jedot jedop jedope jedote
Third Feminine jeda jedat jedap jedape jedate
Neuter (alive things) je jet jep jepe jete
Neuter (objects) jw jwt jwp jwpe jwte
Plural
First cis cits cips cipes cites
Second þus þuts þups þupes þutes
Third (alive things) jes jets jeps jepes jetes
Third (objects) jws jwts jwps jwpes jwtes

Sorry if it looks weird on screens with smaller resolution

The possible word orders:
Order Example Example with the alphabet above
VSO Broke Jack the plate Brwc Jac de pleit
VOS Broke the plate Jack Brwc de pleit Jac
SVO Jack broke the plate Jac brwc de pleit
SOV Jack the plate broke Jac de pleit brwc
OVS The plate broke Jack De pleit brwc Jac
OSV The plate Jack broke De pleit Jac brwc
Kinda looks like french
I'd like to try VOS, since it doesn't make sense in English and sounds weirder than VSO

Bumpity bump!
Guys, this is a great idea, help us! we could dominate the world together hehehehehehe

Bump
THAWKK?

-Io- wrote:

Bump
THAWKK?

Sorry, my internet has been down for a while lol

THAWKK wrote:

-Io- wrote:

Bump
THAWKK?

Sorry, my internet has been down for a while lol

And yes I had a Spanish vowel system in mind. Also, where did you get all the information from lol?