Conlangers

will be on the Nimyad community on LJ, which you should join if you're interested. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the proposed removal of the very rare phoneme /w/.

I did also consider forum.nimyad.org, but you seem to prefer LJ communities, so there it is!

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I promise I won't just make conlang posts forever.

The other day I posted an alphabet for Nimyad, and said it would be quite easy to make a font and a transliterator for it. Here's the transliterator; it will only take Nimyad input, so don't bother feeding it English. (Try "tajasel", "firinel", "marnanel", but if they're names, don't forget to put the honorific "g" at the beginning.)

I decided that as well as U+e6e5 AMLIN VOWEL CARRIER we were also in need of U+e6e7 AMLIN CONSONANT CARRIER. So both now exist. The script will add in consonant carriers for you where appropriate, but not vowel carriers (which are much more rarely needed); you can also make consonant carriers by typing "z".

Oh, this uses @font-face embedding, meaning it'll work on Safari, Opera, and Firefox versions 3.5 and above. If you're running older Firefox, or Explorer, you will need to install the font.

Edit: A couple of people asked about numerals.

Edit: There is a small set of very common words: te = the, so = move, wi = to, de = three, ca = five, which begin with a consonant and end with a vowel, and thus need two carriers. I believe this would have been fixed using a diacritic meaning "these two letters are swapped" and then writing them as "et", "os", and so on. I will add this diacritic at U+E6E8.

Edit: I've put up a simple draft of the Babel text in the Amlin script. One day there will be a simple interface which makes the words clicky, and prints the Latin transliteration down the other side. This further demonstrates the need for U+E6E8 AMLIN SYMBOL FOR INVERSION.

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Since several of you wanted to see it, here's an example of my current draft of the Amlin script, used to write Nimyad:

am soc caril tiricoth yalad far ac yoroden til
then the whole earth had one language and a common tongue

This is just to show you what it's supposed to look like.  Note that I slipped up on the first word and wrote a "rejim" for a "maran", so it says "ar" instead of "am".  Sorry.

Below is the current set of graphemes I'm working with.  It's not the first version by any means, but let's call it 1.0 because it's the first public release.  I am using the range U+E6D0 to U+E6EF in the private use area, but that might change.  I may submit this to CSUR when it's a bit more mature.

The "key" column gives a keyboard mapping, for typing Amlin letters on a QWERTY keyboard.

In the story, the script was created by Lififel of Rindal around the year 450 after the settlement, who taught it to the Lirimelen, the college of storytellers.  Lififel gave his letters the collective name "Amlin", after the sacred river where the reeds grew which were used to make the first pens.
( Read more... )

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Since several of you wanted to see it, here's an example of my current draft of the Amlin script, used to write Nimyad:

am soc caril tiricoth yalad far ac yoroden til
then the whole earth had one language and a common tongue

This is just to show you what it's supposed to look like.  Note that I slipped up on the first word and wrote a "rejim" for a "maran", so it says "ar" instead of "am".  Sorry.

Below is the current set of graphemes I'm working with.  It's not the first version by any means, but let's call it 1.0 because it's the first public release.  I am using the range U+E6D0 to U+E6EF in the private use area, but that might change.  I may submit this to CSUR when it's a bit more mature.

The "key" column gives a keyboard mapping, for typing Amlin letters on a QWERTY keyboard.

In the story, the script was created by Lififel of Rindal around the year 450 after the settlement, who taught it to the Lirimelen, the college of storytellers.  Lififel gave his letters the collective name "Amlin", after the sacred river where the reeds grew which were used to make the first pens.
( Read more... )

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Sorry to be spammy, but I was just thinking about this.

I don't design Nimyad by making up rules and then writing texts. I learn the rules through observation of the texts. In fact I was also the one who wrote the texts, but I wasn't aware of the rules when I wrote them.  Then when I've seen the pattern in at least two places, I use it in helping me make new words.

Two good examples of patterns I've learned this way:

• caral = place, coli = city; taras = light, tasi = lightning.  So the zero-grade form of a word plus -i must mean "a coherent piece of something".
• rejil = human, rejim = wisdom; joril = king, jorim = authority.  So if you replace final -l with -m it must mean "the quality which should be exercised by that entity".

In documenting the further application of these rules I need to refer to them somehow.  I'm not sure whether I should

• just number them, or similar;
• make up a name for the principle (like the name "lenition" is used for the mutation principle in Scottish Gaelic);
• name them after the first place I saw the principle ("the rejil rule", "the coli rule");
• something else...

I'm not sure.



comments

Sorry to be spammy, but I was just thinking about this.

I don't design Nimyad by making up rules and then writing texts. I learn the rules through observation of the texts. In fact I was also the one who wrote the texts, but I wasn't aware of the rules when I wrote them.  Then when I've seen the pattern in at least two places, I use it in helping me make new words.

Two good examples of patterns I've learned this way:

• caral = place, coli = city; taras = light, tasi = lightning.  So the zero-grade form of a word plus -i must mean "a coherent piece of something".
• rejil = human, rejim = wisdom; joril = king, jorim = authority.  So if you replace final -l with -m it must mean "the quality which should be exercised by that entity".

In documenting the further application of these rules I need to refer to them somehow.  I'm not sure whether I should

• just number them, or similar;
• make up a name for the principle (like the name "lenition" is used for the mutation principle in Scottish Gaelic);
• name them after the first place I saw the principle ("the rejil rule", "the coli rule");
• something else...

I'm not sure.



comments

Am soc caril tiricoth yalad far a yoroden til. So rejilen majanwi, am fam inten olic Jinarec, am til inten inec. Yad inten tirilec, jetac if ofefen am lath inten tiricoth. Soc inten ofefen al orefen, a soc inten gathamaran al naratifil. Am yad inten, jetil if coli ifoth, dasanmil e mim ten te ojil, ac joc rejilen if a mititij carilec tiricoth. Al dro carilwi te Joril ac fam in te dasan e til te rejilen ten. Yad te Joril, sil jim caran far e yad tenen yalad til ten laracen, jim inten laracen tiricoth. Jeso carilwi if ac tij yalad intenti ac mijoc inten tirilec. Am tij caldacoth carilwi tiricoth te Joril te rejilen, am mitac inten te coli. Ac lac tacan inti Tifij, sel tij te Joril te yalad cariloth tiricoth caldacec. Tij caldacoth te Joril inten thajacwi tiricoth.

You may not know that I've been working on a conlang called Nimyad for the last twenty-odd years. Names like "tajasel" and "firinel" and "marnanel" are words from this conlang. I worry that I don't know enough linguistics-- that things I want to do in Nimyad aren't *really* how a language would work. Also, I haven't worked on it in the last couple of years as much as I should have.

I would like to rectify this. Five is a special number in Nimyad. By this time next year, I would like to have done five things:

1. Finished the conscript (the canonical way to write down Nimyad words);
2. Have a lexicon with at least a thousand words in it (the current one I'm working with has perhaps a hundred);
3. Have written a comprehensive grammar;
4. Have written a primer (i.e. a text to teach people Nimyad);
5. Have translated the entire Gospel of Mark as a demonstration text. But feel free to advocate for other texts.

If you'd like to help with this, and be part of the Nimyad community, please join the Nimyad community on LJ and we can discuss it further. Or would you rather I posted Nimyad discussion in my own journal? Or should we run a forum or a blog on nimyad.org?

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Am soc caril tiricoth yalad far a yoroden til. So rejilen majanwi, am fam inten olic Jinarec, am til inten inec. Yad inten tirilec, jetac if ofefen am lath inten tiricoth. Soc inten ofefen al orefen, a soc inten gathamaran al naratifil. Am yad inten, jetil if coli ifoth, dasanmil e mim ten te ojil, ac joc rejilen if a mititij carilec tiricoth. Al dro carilwi te Joril ac fam in te dasan e til te rejilen ten. Yad te Joril, sil jim caran far e yad tenen yalad til ten laracen, jim inten laracen tiricoth. Jeso carilwi if ac tij yalad intenti ac mijoc inten tirilec. Am tij caldacoth carilwi tiricoth te Joril te rejilen, am mitac inten te coli. Ac lac tacan inti Tifij, sel tij te Joril te yalad cariloth tiricoth caldacec. Tij caldacoth te Joril inten thajacwi tiricoth.

You may not know that I've been working on a conlang called Nimyad for the last twenty-odd years. Names like "tajasel" and "firinel" and "marnanel" are words from this conlang. I worry that I don't know enough linguistics-- that things I want to do in Nimyad aren't *really* how a language would work. Also, I haven't worked on it in the last couple of years as much as I should have.

I would like to rectify this. Five is a special number in Nimyad. By this time next year, I would like to have done five things:

1. Finished the conscript (the canonical way to write down Nimyad words);
2. Have a lexicon with at least a thousand words in it (the current one I'm working with has perhaps a hundred);
3. Have written a comprehensive grammar;
4. Have written a primer (i.e. a text to teach people Nimyad);
5. Have translated the entire Gospel of Mark as a demonstration text. But feel free to advocate for other texts.

If you'd like to help with this, and be part of the Nimyad community, please join the Nimyad community on LJ and we can discuss it further. Or would you rather I posted Nimyad discussion in my own journal? Or should we run a forum or a blog on nimyad.org?

comments

Am soc caril tiricoth yalad far a yoroden til. So rejilen majanwi, am fam inten olic Jinarec, am til inten inec. Yad inten tirilec, jetac if ofefen am lath inten tiricoth. Soc inten ofefen al orefen, a soc inten gathamaran al naratifil. Am yad inten, jetil if coli ifoth, dasanmil e mim ten te ojil, ac joc rejilen if a mititij carilec tiricoth. Al dro carilwi te Joril ac fam in te dasan e til te rejilen ten. Yad te Joril, sil jim caran far e yad tenen yalad til ten laracen, jim inten laracen tiricoth. Jeso carilwi if ac tij yalad intenti ac mijoc inten tirilec. Am tij caldacoth carilwi tiricoth te Joril te rejilen, am mitac inten te coli. Ac lac tacan inti Tifij, sel tij te Joril te yalad cariloth tiricoth caldacec. Tij caldacoth te Joril inten thajacwi tiricoth.

You may not know that I've been working on a conlang called Nimyad for the last twenty-odd years. Names like "tajasel" and "firinel" and "marnanel" are words from this conlang. I worry that I don't know enough linguistics-- that things I want to do in Nimyad aren't *really* how a language would work. Also, I haven't worked on it in the last couple of years as much as I should have.

I would like to rectify this. Five is a special number in Nimyad. By this time next year, I would like to have done five things:

1. Finished the conscript (the canonical way to write down Nimyad words);
2. Have a lexicon with at least a thousand words in it (the current one I'm working with has perhaps a hundred);
3. Have written a comprehensive grammar;
4. Have written a primer (i.e. a text to teach people Nimyad);
5. Have translated the entire Gospel of Mark as a demonstration text. But feel free to advocate for other texts.

If you'd like to help with this, and be part of the Nimyad community, please join the Nimyad community on LJ and we can discuss it further. Or would you rather I posted Nimyad discussion in my own journal? Or should we run a forum or a blog on nimyad.org?

comments