I know that might sound extremely niche, but one of my latest special interests has been studying the Etruscan language and trying to reconstruct it the way it would be spoken today.

For those who don't know, Etruscan was a language spoken in the centre-north of Italy before the Roman period, before dying shortly after 50 AD. Very little is known about the language, since the only Etruscan to Latin vocabulary written in the Roman period (Tyrrhenika by the emperor Claudius) has been lost to time and the few records we have are too few to try and reconstruct the language.

One day, I came across a YouTube video of a guy explaining how ancient Etruscan grammar worked and I was absolutely fascinated by it. I decided to go and research for myself.

There's surprisingly a plethora of free resources about Etruscan, even for English speakers (I'd recommend the Bonfante manual and the Zikh Rasnal, if you're interested). However, despite all the sources, I could find no one to actually tell me "Etruscan had these rules" or "here's a word list of common Etruscan words". All the sources said things like "ok MAYBE this is the most suitable translation for this inscription but really nobody understands a sh*t about it".

Because of this, I started asking myself: what if Etruscan didn't die? Or, even better: what if it started being spoken again today, out of the blue? And so I did try and find an answer.

I created a uchrony in which Italy is a federal state and the regions of the centre-north start developing some national identity based on their Etruscan heritage. Thus, Etruscan nationalism is born and people start speaking Etruscan again.

Yes, it was all an excuse to make a conlang based on Etruscan, which I called Neo-Etruscan (Neu-Rasnal).

Please, tell me if anyone is interested in knowing more about it. I have a PDF which emulates a linguistic research about said language.

Also, let me know if you have the same (or a similar) special interest lol

As the title states, the import dictionary section has been unusable for years by now, and it's really disappointing that I'd either have to manually bring in each word into CWS, or have to keep everything inside CWS.

I've heard that CWS hasn't gotten any pretty significant updates (imo), but if there were to be any, could there please be a fix for the dictionary?

Is there a way to import dictionaries anyways besides manual insertion, or is it hopeless 💔

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Spanish imperatives are Verb-initial, with a somewhat more complex system than in English. The second person imperative splits into the formal and informal, as well as the plural (one of the cases one will see "ustedes" verb endings used for something which is technically the subject "tu" most frequently). Then there is the first person plural, which I'll get to later. Additionally, negative imperatives for both of them have a different structure. There is also the issue of object pronoun clitics. Lots to go over here.

Starting with the most common: informal, singular affirmative imperatives. These use a special imperative verb form, which is usually the same as the third person, though many verbs are irregular, most commonly be deleting that final vowel:

• (Regular) Canta! "sing!"
• (Irregular) Ten uno! "Have one!"
• (Regular) Come! "Eat!"
• (Irregular) Di! "talk."

The next is the usted form of these, which use the third person singular subjunctive form:

• (Regular) Cante! "Sing (formal)!"
• (Irregular) Tenga uno! "Have one (formal)!"
• (Regular) Coma! "Eat (formal)!"
• (Irregular) Diga! "talk (formal)!"

The plural for both formal and informal uses the third person plural subjunctive:

• Canten!
• Tengan uno!
• Coman!
• Digan!

These attach object pronoun clitics to indicate objects to the right, and not to the left as is the case with finite verbs. This means that imperatives are actually morphosyntactically treated like non-finite verbs:

• Cantalo! "Sing it!"
• Tenlo! "Have it!"
• Comalo. "Eat it (formal)!"
• Diganme "Tell me (plural)!"

Unlike in English, where eliding the subject is the thing that makes imperatives imperatives, the subject is just being dropped for pro-drop reasons, and you can bring it back in if you really want:

• Dime tu! "Tell me, you"

The first person plural imperative is the same as the first person plural present:

• Vamos! "Let's go"
• Tenemos uno! "Let's have one."

You can use the imperative first person plural with the verb vamos at the start and the main verb in the infinitive to get first person plural imperative as wellː

• Vamos tener unoǃ "Let's go have one."

To add clitic pronouns, you use a different ending, -ma, instead of -mos:

• Vamanos! "Let's leave."
• Tenemanos uno! "Let's have ourselves one!"

Negatives just always use the subjunctive, with pronoun clitics preceding the noun:

• No nos vamos! "Let's not go!"
• No me diga! "Don't talk to me!"
• No me pregunten! "Don't ask me guys!"

You can also make these imperatives with venir, which is the imperative of "to come" in conjunction with the second verb in the imperative, which is technically a serial verb constructionː

• Ven cómelo. "Come eatǃ"

Evolution of imperativesː

Getting VSO means its gonna be hard to distinguish imperatives from non-imperatives. To fix this, we will have the following changesː

1. Venir as a serial verb construction becomes the most common way to form non-negated second person informal and first person plural imperatives. The formal, plural, and negated forms do not change.

2. The old way starts to die out as its not clear enough that you are saying an imperative sentence anymore, unless the imperative is irregular.

3. Ven eventually gets semantically bleached, with venga and venemos reducing both to ven with the other verb having the imperative.

4. Eventually, I want ven to reduce fully into an imperative prefix.

Some examples of venir as the default imperative in NYqueno:

• (Regular) Ven canta! "sing!"
• (Irregular) Ven ten uno! "Have one!"
• (Regular) Ven coume! "Eat!"
• (Irregular) Ven di! "talk."
• (Regular) Ven cante! "Sing (formal)!"
• (Irregular) Ven tenga uno! "Have one (formal)!"
• (Regular) Ven coma! "Eat (formal)!"
• (Irregular) Ven diga! "talk (formal)!"
• Ven tenemos uno! "Let's have one."

Otherwise, the imperatives won't change much.

My last method proved to be a little too simplistic, and created situations where verb conjugations blurred together.

There is a unicode error on these with my digraph marker: ︯

Just imagine a little line in between the characters where the big rectangles are. (:

The Worst Conlang Ever!

Welcome back! This challenge is literally about showing off your WORST conlang (in the sense of being extremely difficult or a "curselang"). Show a conlang that is impossible for any human to utter even a word in.

NOTE: Whoever wins this episode will earn the Grand Title of Best Curselanger and the chance to choose the next challenges/constraints and/or what to translate into the curselangs. Every Wednesday, I will announce the official results along with the next episode.

And last infinite time 's winner was... — sorry for the delay — ... u/AwfulPancakeFart

If you weren't the first, don't be sad!

If you haven't appeared here before and are sure your conlang is weird, DM me to update Ranking 5. Don't be offended if it really wasn't a mistake and your conlang didn't appear on the weekly list; it's just a game. Sorry I couldn't tell you in the DMs that you won; I was short on time.

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Please use IPA, glosses, a translation (literal or otherwise), or any other method to aid understanding.

This is a project I've been working on for a while, but I've finalized it and can now share it with you guys. It's a conlang, constructed almost purely by whoever would like to work on it. Each character/glyph is defined by the interior design of the character, and the part of speech is determined by the shape of the exterior of the character. The rules are explained in detail here

Also, for clarification. This isn't a purely typography-based project. These are the words, this is the language.

More about the time calculation in Eunoan will be posted in the following posts.

IPA:

NAMES:

• Ŋras - /ŋra:s/ The 11th solar month
• Ŋrasm - /ŋra:sm/ The 11th lunar month
• Uŋrrím - /ʊŋʈɪm/ The 10th lunar month
• Xósá - /ɦosə/ The current period

DAYS OF THE WEEK:

• Édňá - /ɛdɲə/
• Írrsñá - /iʈsɲə/
• Máñanañá - /mǝɲa:na:ɲə/
• Saíñá - /sa:jɲə/
• Rrsumñá - /ʈsʊmɲǝ/
• Añanarb - /a:ɲana:rb/

PARTS OF THE LUNAR CYCLE:

• Irrsím - /iʈsɪm/
• Mlugím - /mlʊ:gɪm/
• Ulugím - /ʋlʊ:gɪm/
• Ñaméím - /ɲa:mɛɪm/

THE APPROXIMATE SOLAR CALENDAR:

Welcome to the r/conlangs Official Checkpoint. You have been selected for a random check of your language. Please translate one or more of the following phrases and sentences:

"I think I'm too tired to have quantum physics explained to me right now."

"Frankly, I don't think ordering a double cheeseburger is a very 'damn'-worthy accomplishment."

"How the fuck is a Harry Potter fanart trend happening in fucking 2026 and how the fuck did I have to unfollow multiple artists over it?"

"I'm gonna quit. But I'm going to make an exception for today, tomorrow, the day after that, and so on"

"Hmm... Yes... The grass here is made of grass."

"Stop!"

If you have any ideas for interesting phrases or sentences for the next checkpoint, let me know in a DM! This activity will be posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The highest upvoted "Stop!" will be included in the next checkpoint's title!

'Why does he say that you say that there is a house across the street that is next to another house, forming another street?'

I am trying to develop a system of obviation in a language I'm working on and I think I've come about a novel way to do it. The proto-language employs a kind of relational verbs to describe place, and verbs may be used as participles when unconjugated and placed before a noun. Therefor a relational verb may modify a noun as a participle to show place, or be nominalized and used with a locative. This includes the three-way demonstrative series. Eg:

tu  kucin, cin tu   cin  unii arlu   kupit i
dog 3-here here dog here at   person 3-go  to
"The dog is here, this dog goes to the person here."

tu  kuai,   ai    tu  ai   unii arlu   kupit i
dog 3-there there dog here at   person 3-go  to
"The dog is there, that dog there goes to the person there."

tu  kukut,   kut    tu  kut    unii arlu   kupit i
dog 3-yonder yonder dog yonder at   person 3-go  to
"The dog is yonder, yonder dog goes to the person yonder."

Eventually this evolves to where the participle form functions fully as a demonstrative series that indicates obviation based on distance, eventually becoming mandatory before all nouns. You can imagine it like a series of slots: when a new noun occurs it enters the furthest-most slot and pushes everything else further down. Here's an example:

cin tu ai arlu kumac kah ai arlu kut sigmi kupit i kah cin tu kut par tu unii ai sigmi kupit i.

this dog that person 3-bite then that person yonder house 3-go to then this dog yonder other dog with that house go to.

"This dog bites that person, then that person goes to yonder house. This dog then goes to that house with yonder other dog."

As you can see in the last sentence, when the second dog is introduced it has the "kut" distal demonstrative applied, causing the house to become "ai" medial as it is now more proximate due to being older in the sentence. If the person were to re-appear in the story they would become "kut" due to needing to be reintroduced. Functionally, the oldest argument in a sentence is more proximate. It's basically the inverse of how things are done with English demonstratives, which pushes nouns from "this" to "that" based on how known it is; instead this language does the inverse based on how familiar or relevant the noun is to the sentence.

I think this seems like a fairly naturalistic way of keeping track of nouns, it doesn't seem that much more complicated to keep track of a noun's proximateness than needing to keep track of a noun's gender. But do you think it works?

Has anyone ever tried to create language which has very small consonant inventory and very big vowel inventory? If so did anyone have the idea to create script for it that has the reverse conception than Abugida has = unit is based on vowel and consonant notation is secondary?
I was experimenting with this language with such parameters:
Consonant inventory: /x/, /s/, /t/, /f/, /k/, /l/ and /r/.
Vowel inventory: Near-close and close front, close-mid and open-mid front, near-open and open front all in rounded and unrounded varieties. Close-mid central (rounded and unrounded) and mid central. To make matters worse it will differentiate vowels further based on: vowel length, nasalized variations, diphthongs and even nasalized diphthongs, extra-short vowels and even tones (neutral, raising, falling).
I dont even want to count it but this language would have sure as heck ton of vowel variations to have symbols for.
Since this is gonna have reverse abugida language I suppose the syllable structure would be very straight-forward with vowel nucleus being primary building unit replacing coda. Consonant clusters of even as little as two consonants would not be a thing.

I'm experimenting with applying a calligraphic style to the Methwendi script, also known as the Swan script, the native script of my conlang, Lwendic. I figured Arabic calligraphy would be a good fit for it.

Here's my attempt at writing the Basmalah in Lwendic (Arabic: بِسْمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيْمِ, romanized: bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīmi, IPA: /bis.mi‿l.laː.hi‿r.raħ.maː.ni‿r.ra.ħiː.m/).

The Basmalah is one of the most important phrases in Islam, commonly recited before daily activities and acts of worship.
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Notes on Lwendic grammatical genders:

MAT: Material nouns (basically, inanimate nouns)
CEL: Celestial nouns (humans, deities, and culturally important common nouns)
NAT: Natural nouns (basically, animate nouns; not shown in the image)

I am very new at this and am working on a smaller sci fi conlang for a story I am writing. Without getting lost in the weeds the language has cultures which influence the language. Is it a waste of time to organize them separately and then combine them or is having root words of all the language sources on one document fair enough if a language has evolved from a lot of influences. (Sorry if I am asking the question wrong or if there is a better way to word it I really just went too deep on making an alphabet and now I am here.)

Have you ever created language learning materials for your conlang? If so, what did you create and how did it work out?

Hi, guys. So, I'm making my first conlang and I tried to go with an indo- semitic looking/ inspired language (primarily from Hindi and Arabic). I wanted to know y'all's opinion. Of course I added some phonemes that aren't typically semitic or indian. My proto-lang phonology consists of these phonemes:

/m/ˌ /n/ˌ /ɳ/ˌ /ɲ/ˌ /p/ˌ /b/ˌ /t/, /d/, /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /k/, /ɡ/, /q/, /ts/, /dz/, /f/, /v/, /θ/, /x/, /ɣ/, /ħ/, /ʕ/, /h/, /ʙ/, /ɬ/, /l/, /ʎ/

/a/, /aː/, /e/, /iː/, /u/, /uː/

One thing before y'all comment; I can't roll or trill my Rs. That's why I added the bilabial trill (which makes my conlang interesting and kinda unique).

(And sorry if I use the wrong IPA symbols here, I'm new to this)

For the sound changes that may occur, I thought of doing the /ts/ to /θ/ thing where iberian spanish words like cerca (/tseɾka/) shifted to sound like /θeɾka/. Additionally the intervocalic /b/, /d/ and /ɡ/ would shift to /β/, /ð/ and /ɣ/.

Then I thought of highgerman consonant shift, where /p/, /t/ and /k/ became /pf/, /ts/ and /kx/ at the beginning or when they were geminated, at the middle and end they became /f/, /s/ and /x/. This led to a chain where their voiced counterparts became unvoiced to replace them and the fricative counterpart of the voiced consonants shifted to replace them. So, my conlang would lose the new /β/ and /ð/, but also all of the /ɣ/ s that existed.

Then the vowels would go through a sound change where two vowels who are next to each other become a diphthong. After that, the long vowels would go through a sound change similar to the great vowel shift where /aː/ changes to /ej/, /iː/ changes to /aj/ and /uː/ changes to /aw/. So a word like māt /maːt/ (water) would become meis /mejs/.

After these changes, I'd probably start looking at the grammaticalisation process of my conlang.

So, this is my rough idea for my sound changes of my first conlang. I'd like to know y'all's opinion about my phonology, sound change ideas and what I could do better. Anyways, have a great day and thank y'all for reading this.

Hmm well I'm curious about using physical clattering or chattering of teeth to communicate. It's not very nice to do per se, but it's interested me.

What I mean by this is actually making your upper and lower teeth repeatedly strike against each other, rather than just clicking your tongue. Could different patterns, speeds, rhythms, or intensities of teeth chattering represent different phonemes, syllables, or words?

For example, could a language distinguish sounds like:

1. Slow, deliberate clattering, maybe with wider jaw opening
2. Rapid, continuous chattering
3. Short, sharp clacks
4. Different rhythms or sequences of clacks
5. Teeth chattering combined with vocalisation

This might be stupid.

Certain sounds are more liable to change than others. We know front vowels cause palatalisation for alveolars and velars. I am asking for more examples.

For example: kɨ>ki>tʃi>tʃe or kɨ>ku>ʔu>hu.

Whereas something like pa may only turn ba or fa or remain.

This is a game of borrowing and loaning words! To give our conlangs a more naturalistic flair, this game can help us get realistic loans into our language by giving us an artificial-ish "world" to pull words from!

The Telephone Game will be posted every Monday and Friday, hopefully.

Rules

1) Post a word in your language, with IPA and a definition.

Note: try to show your word inflected, as it would appear in a typical sentence. This can be the source of many interesting borrowings in natlangs (like how so many Arabic words were borrowed with the definite article fossilized onto it! algebra, alcohol, etc.)

2) Respond to a post by adapting the word to your language's phonology, and consider shifting the meaning of the word a bit!

3) Sometimes, you may see an interesting phrase or construction in a language. Instead of adopting the word as a loan word, you are welcome to calque the phrase -- for example, taking skyscraper by using your language's native words for sky and scraper. If you do this, please label the post at the start as Calque so people don't get confused about your path of adopting/loaning.

Last Time...

Numoni by /u/SquidsTookMyRightLeg

耻 ユムレ yumure /jumuɾe̞/

n. silence, peace and quiet

尣ノ魚狩ホ。 尣ノ耻。

Hōdêno sagizāguho. Hōdêno yumure.

/ho̞ːdəno̞ sägizäːguho̞ | ho̞ːdəno̞ jumuɾe̞/

尣    -ノ        魚-   狩   -ホ。     尣    -ノ         耻。
hōdê  -no       sagi- zāgu -ho.     hōdê  -no        yumure.
idiot -ɴ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴅᴊ fish- hunt -ᴠ ᴛᴏ ɴ. idiot -ɴ ᴛᴏ ᴀᴅᴊ silence.
'Stupid fish-hunting. Stupid silence.'

'Stupid fishing. Stupid peace and quiet.'

Take care of yourselves and each other

Peace, Love, & Conlanging ❤️

Video about Is-Prišk writing systems, in particular about “simple” and iotised vowels.

it's been five months, but let's do this again! the Random Nonsense Speedlang is an occasional challenge where i give you an english sentence followed by a nonsense phrase, and YOU have to reverse engineer just enough of a clong (phonology, grammar, lexicon) to make the nonsense translate into the english sentence. there are three levels- choose whatever you want/ have time for. got it?

today's nonsense:

Beginner:

Popłetita žife tea egrîpfô Franklin płipzočištle khŷp!- I love you madly and deeply, Franklin!

Intermediate:

Tiga kathibê Sgota tîtoifioh gfia otłeči kuu!- Don't tell Scottish Batman to f\ck off!*

Advanced:

Gupie ploge êpôih pedzep ehpaabrûthip tly dsê fii ôbli koaypo žetikšût trûzu pfêotsi afe hatłôbre khebe!- And every time I try to tell her, what comes out of my mouth instead is "let's rob a bank!"

(bonus point if you get the references, have fun!)

Second one of the fables by Aesop I decide to translate in Etvétēsu.
This one gave me some trouble with all its passives and subjunctives but I made it.

This is the original text I used:
https://m.taleswithmorals.com/aesop-fable-androcles.htm

Though I did make a few changes (as you see in the slides) to make the translation more palatable.

In particular I had to move around a few sentences because of the free use of relatives in English which isn't at all free in Etvétēsu and would make the sentence mean something else.

I put a few more pictures to have a sentence by sentence gloss and IPA to make it more legible, but I did want to have the story on its own with a lovely image in the same fashion as "the fox and the crow".

This project will be hosted in the Indo Uralic Studies Discord server here!
https://discord.gg/sUDZjWu42R

This language will be constructed under the assumption that the theory is true, using proposed cognates between Proto Indo European, and Proto Uralic, (& possibly Yukaghir) representing them as sister languages! Using research from Indo Uralic linguists like Kortlandt, and others.

Looking for people who believe in the Indo Uralic theory (or just want to have some fun) and are very knowledgeable in the Indo European and Uralic fields! We have some reconstruction ideas in the notes and leads channels, and attempted full reconstruction effort in #what-we-know organizing what we are certain about Proto Indo Uralic!

(this is a repost because the old post got taken down for not being formatted correctly. Which I apologize for. I hope this is better)