🗣 Conlangs 🗣

Conlangs (short for CONstructed LANGuages) are languages that are consciously made for a certain purpose. This can be for fun, for worldbuilding (e.g. LOTR Elvish, Star Trek Klingon), for learning about languages, or in an attempt to try to improve or make a better language (e.g. Toki Pona, esperanto).

I've just recently gotten into the business of conlanging and have finally finished my first conlang. Sort of. It's always hard to define when a conlang is done because you can always add words and things. But then a language is never finished. So in my opinion it's best to see it like a piece of software or something, in that it's never final and can always get updates, which is actually how real languages work too! The language I made has around 220 words and basic grammar rules and I've started translating some things.

So this page just serves as a place for me to present my conlang(s) as I do plan to make them in the future. And I might also throw some tips and resources here for people who want to get into or try conlanging (you totally should, it's very fun).

My first conlang is called Lotzhena (/lotʒεnæ/), meaning first language (very creative name, I know). Combining the phonology of Asian, Middle Eastern, and African languages, it aims to have a varying but consistent sound through use of consonant clusters along with a concise but modifiable range of vowels. The grammar and sentence construction is also relatively simple (mainly because grammar is a pain to come up with), as will be demonstrated below.

Phonetics

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	p b	ɱ		t	ɖ		k g
Nasal				n			ŋ
Tap/flap				ɾ
Fricative		f		ʃ ʒ			x
Lateral fricative
Approximant		ʋ				j
Lateral approximant				l

Vowels

Transliteration

Because Lotzhena has a writing system that is difficult to emulate in a digital format and this grammar is digital, it is important to have a transliteration for readability and information. Below is a table with the letter (or letters) from the Latin alphabet and the corresponding phoneme in Lotzhena.

Consonants	Vowels
p: /p/	i: /i/
b: /b/	u: /ə/ uu: /u/
m: /ɱ/	e: /ɛ/ ee: /e/
f: /f/	o: /o/
w: /ʋ/	a: /æ/ aa: /a/
t: /t/	ju: /jə/ juu: /juu/
n: /n/	io: /jo/
r: /ɾ/	ja: /jæ/ jaa: /ja/
sh: /ʃ/
zh: /ʒ/
l: /l/
d: /ɖ/
k: /k/
g: /g/
ng: /ŋ/
h: /x/

Clusters and Stress

Lotzhena follows a CV pattern with no restrictions (any vowel can follow any consonant), though often vowels and consonants can be extended to form clusters. These consonant and vowel clusters are, however, treated as single consonants or vowels, respectively, especially from an orthographic perspective, where vowels are denoted by diacritics written above or below consonants or consonant clusters, so technically, CⁿVⁿ would be a more appropriate designation.

Similar to the CV patterns, vowel clusters have almost no phonotactic restrictions, though typically clusters are limited to a maximum of 4 phonemes. Consonant clusters are a bit more complicated, as certain clusters are difficult or impossible for humans to pronounce, especially as consonants are added to the clusters. Because of this, consonant clusters are limited to a maximum of 8 phonemes, and while there are no "illegal" clusters, there are some that are just not seem often. Additionally, ng is the one consonant that never appears in clusters.

All Lotzhena words follow a second-to-last stress pattern.

Inflection, conjugation, and declination

Lotzhena is an agglutinative language with relatively simplistic conjugation and declination rules. Nouns have only three cases; nominative, accusative, and possessive. Verbs have only an infinitive form and a conjugated form, which is used for all cases. Declination and conjugation charts for the words "ngkiee" (bread) and traakgaang (to give) are below.

Singular

N: Ngkiee (the bread)

A: Ngkieeke (to the bread)

P: Ngkieeki (the bread's)

Singular	Plural
Wo traakga	Woi traakga
Tshee traakga	Tshei traakga
Ktaa/kto/kti traakga	Mfto traakga

Pronouns are declinated the same way as nouns for creating possessive and object pronouns. Through this, simple sentences can already be produced:
Woi tsheike traakga ngkiee woiki (We give them our bread, lit.: "we them give bread our")

Additionally, below is a chart of the different suffixes used in lotzhena

Use	Suffix
Infinitive	-ang
Conjugated	(no suffix added, remove -ang)
Nominative	(no suffix added)
Accusative	-ke
Possessive	-ki
Singular	(no suffix added)
Plural	(none, inferred from context)
Interrogatory	(verb)-dzhe (often with pitch raise)

Tense

Lotzhena has no way to tense-mark verbs, tense is only inferred through the context and there is no perfect form. However, when the point in time at which the action took place is not completely clear, the following words are added:

	Past	Future
Far away	fjouu + (V)	(V) + fjouu
Closer to current point in time	fja + (V)	(V) + fja

Lexicon and Example Sentences

Because it would be ridiculous to put the lexicon (currently at 200+ words) on this page just like that, I will put it as a download link some time (too lazy right now but let me know if you want it and I'll put it here). And here are some example sentences and phrases, with their corresponding audio files so you can listen to me reading them aloud (might misread some stuff, my apologies):

"Tower of Babel" Genesis 11:9, Old Testament
1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as they migrated from the east,[a] they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." 5 The lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.
Tldo lotzhe na bugaatee jaa lotaa shongi. Jaa dtihu mfto naangmtake dle mfto shptaataake dibet do Shinaar hile jaa hdnae mfto kwongu. Jaa mfto dotaake gluto: "hkliouu, woi zhiuung fja ngwo nmoiaa jaa mftoke bilebo mlokeaa." Jaa mfto bugatee ngwo poflee hilengwo jaa dobofidzhe poflee kibimtko. Waardi mfto gluto: "Hkliouu, woi zhiuung fja kjuubangoke jaa bangitemlokke klaabaamjuu mlokkopoki do duamkjaa jaa mfto zhiuung shpokoke woi poflee; shikdzhe woi bdeneang fouu kmnihwe hwuoi tldo."" Dngmlokeaa hkliouu heleeang kjuubangoke jaa bangitemlokke hijee nmoiaa dngtiee fja zhiuuung.

What can I take from this?

As with all my projects, unfinished (90% of them) or not, there is always something I can take from it. I'd say the biggest thing I can learn here is what not to do when making a conlang and what I enjoyed and would like to develop more or keep using in future conlangs. If you have some experience with conlangs, you can tell there are some holes in the language. The grammar isn't super refined and the transliteration is a bit messy or hard to learn/interpret at times. So in the future, I definitely want to make a less verbose transliteration and develop the grammar more, though forming finer grammar rules such as gerunds and clauses will always be a bit daunting for me. But I do like the phonology and phonotactics (though simple) I chose for the language. I think as a whole, the language sounds good, though the consonant clusters are a bit less refined than I expected, so I do want to work on consonant clusters more in future languages, just that I should probably study consonant clusters (along with other stuff) before I try those things again.
Overall, this was a fun experience and I'm super excited to make more conlangs. Now go make a conlang, doesn't have to be complicated, it should just be fun for you!
Goodbye, and have a nice day (or "Faladubije, bugatee tshije kngkobijee!" as we'd say in Lotzhena)!