Do your worst!

How non-English can a human language get?

I started by heading over to the World Atlas of Language Structures, a site that any conlanger should be familiar with. For every linguistic element described, this language (called Atswi) uses the farthest option from English.

For example, English has a very large vowel inventory, so Atswi has a very small one. English has a single past tense; Atswi has four.

The result is pretty far from English, though it's not actually as far as you can get. But it's far enough that I'm happy with the results. (Geographically, I've decided that Atswi should be an endangered language of northeastern Zambia, so it'll have the occasional borrowing from Bemba, Swahili, and English.)

Here's a fable in Atswi, The Jackal and the Lion, with a few explanatory comments.

Çaansansònk’on xo tɬát’a siinfà čağoo aasòtic͓wi θ͓ači čağó
/çã:sãsò̰k’õ xo tɬát’a sĩ:fà tʃaɰo: a:sòtiǃʷi ǀatʃi tʃaɰó/
"When the Jackal saw the Lion for the first time he was very afraid"

We start with a subordinate verb, using the prefix ç- to make a "when" clause. It's marked for the noun class of its subject and of its object, using the prefix as- for both, since they're both of the same class.

But those prefixes don't show up as çasas-, they show up as çaansans- /çã:sãs/. Atswi has nasal harmony, so the nasalization of the root spreads to all the affixes. Fricatives also cause preceding vowels to be long and middle tone, but only one long vowel is allowed in a word.

Siinfa "lion" changes to siinfà "the lion (accusative)" only by making the last vowel low tone. It used to be -dd but the consonant caused a low tone on the preceding vowel and then disappeared. Tones have only recently emerged in Atswi.

(And yes, siinfa is a borrowing from Swahili simba.)

Atswi has four click consonants: interdental θ͓ /ǀ/, alveolar c͓ /ǃ/, and labialized versions of both.

yo yöösòtwi yo haasòtiri swaàdda c͓òqoò.
/jo jœ:sòtʷi jo ha:sòtiʁi sʷà:ɗa ǃòqò:/
"and he fled and hid in the tall grass."

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

They’re on standbi

Pilot on me!!

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

When I got home, they were still there.

I won't be doing that today!

You take away their little brooms

This morning, my 4 year old daughter.

Daughter: I'm hungry

Me: nerves building, smile widening

Me: Hi hungry, I'm dad.

She had no idea what was going on but I finally did it.

Thank you all for listening.

There hasn't been a post all year!

Klojban, an Evolving Conlang: Introduction

With the downfall of r/EvolvingConlang and the rise of like ten others in its place, I firmly believe that a spiritual successor to it must be made. u/EkskiuTwentyTwo, if you want me to delete this, I shall.

Anyways, here is Klojban, named in the same manner as Lojban was to Loglan. Somewhat. It will have more rules than the other "add features by commenting them" conlangs:

• The top three comments will be added instead of just the topmost one
• The phonology must consist of actual phonemes; the grammar and lexicon, though, can be as wild as you want them to be
• The orthography can be changed but it must be done in a separate comment.
• If you want me to append a link to your suggestion, you can do so, but make sure it isn't NSFW or anything
• Words added at the same time as a sound change do not have the sound change applied to them, as they are loanwords.

Previously... (Winning Changes)

By u/Anjeez929 with 2 points:

>I didn't realize you already posted this.
>
>The past auzilliary verbs shorten by one syllable
>
>Theoretical Past: śaha
>
>Mythical past: uha
>
>Very far past: aha
>
>Far past: oha
>
>Near past: śeha

By u/NoCocksInTheRestroom with 2 points:

>add more example sentences

By u/RBolton123 with 1 point:

>ajkan /ajkan/ - (v) to be able to (can)
>
>otu /ɔtu/ - (v) to be obligated to (should)
>
>ajamwili /ajamwili/ - (v) to be willing to (would)
>
>ba /ba/ - (part) question marker
>
>Word Changes:
>
>sikśitasi /sikʂitasi/ becomes sićikasi /siʈʂikasi/ through epenthesis
>
>ekśikituwentitu /ekʂikituwentitu/ becomes ećikituwentitu /eʈʂikituwentitu/ through assimilation
>
>Morphophonology:
>
>/i/ becomes [ʅ] near retroflex consonants
>
>/a/ becomes [ɑ] near /ɫ/

(Bonus Words: owejuf /ɔwɛjuf/ - (n) egg [natural phenomena class]; fainali /fainali/ - (adj) final, finally; aweken /awɛkɛn/ - (v) to awaken, to wake up; awejik /awɛjik/ - (adj) awake, conscious, lucid; traji /tɾaji/ - (v) to try to do; kuros /kuɾɔs/ - (v) to cross, to go across, to traverse; borodero /bɔɾɔdɛɾɔ/ - (n) border, boundary [abstract concepts class])

Phonology

It’s pronounced “Noel.”

After all his first name is No-vac

What, then, is Chinese rap?

Edit:

Notable mentions from the comments:

• Spanish/Swedish/Swiss/Serbian hits

• French/Finnish art

• Country/Canadian rap

• Chinese/Country/Canadian rock

• Turkish/Tunisian/Taiwanese rap

There hasn't been a single post this year!

(Happy 2022 from New Zealand)

Nothing, it just waved

Bob

Just to clarify, 12345678

So that I could frequently say, "I am going to walk 5 miles now."

Edit: My most popular post on Reddit! 😀 Thank you for the awards.

Why

Me grabbing a soda from my (what I thought was) half full 12pk...

Notices there's only 2;

Me: "Awe man... This is a damn bird box!" Her: "What the hell does that mean?!" Me: (Pulls both cans out & shows them to her) "It's only got Toucans."

I'm not ashamed to admit the look on her face was glorious.

I was just sitting there doing nothing.

“BOOM”?!

"That's what they're fighting about."

free

Because his Visa didn’t work.

I guess I'm writing these now. Also, I made the chart more compact

Klojban, an Evolving Conlang: Introduction

With the downfall of r/EvolvingConlang and the rise of like ten others in its place, I firmly believe that a spiritual successor to it must be made. u/EkskiuTwentyTwo, if you want me to delete this, I shall.

Anyways, here is Klojban, named in the same manner as Lojban was to Loglan. Somewhat. It will have more rules than the other "add features by commenting them" conlangs:

• The top three comments will be added instead of just the topmost one
• The phonology must consist of actual phonemes; the grammar and lexicon, though, can be as wild as you want them to be
• The orthography can be changed but it must be done in a separate comment.
• If you want me to append a link to your suggestion, you can do so, but make sure it isn't NSFW or anything
• Words added at the same time as a sound change do not have the sound change applied to them, as they are loanwords.

Previously, on Lucifer... (Winning Changes)

By u/Anjeez929 with 5 points:

>"Haka", a word based on the prefix "hak(a)-", means "Fish and Chips"
>
>My reasoning:
>
>French->French Fries+Fish=Fish and Chips

By u/RBolton123 with 1 point:

>Existing /ɕ/ becomes /ʂ/, still represented with <ś>. Similarly, existing /tɕ/ becomes /ʈʂ/, represented with <ć>.
>
>From there, /x/ becomes /ɕ/, yet again keeping its orthography of <x>, and /dʑ/ devoices into /tɕ/ and is represented with <ģ>.
>
>/n/ word-finally disappears, but it becomes /j/ in liaison if the word is followed with a vowel-initial.
>
>/ŋ/ nasalizes the vowel preceding it. In the case of ńi, it nasalizes the vowel after it i.e. the /i/.
>
>/ɲ/ becomes /nij/.
>
>Lastly, all cases of /ə/ become /a/, represented with <a>, and rhotic vowel harmony is dismantled. I'm sorry to see it go.

I'm just going to make all the vowels in a word that used to have rhotic vowel harmony into /a/ but vowels in prefixes won't turn into /a/ when added to them.

Hey everyone on r/conlangscirclejerk! Did you miss us? Well, in fact! We never left you!

Klojban, an Evolving Conlang: Introduction

With the downfall of r/EvolvingConlang and the rise of like ten others in its place, I firmly believe that a spiritual successor to it must be made. u/EkskiuTwentyTwo, if you want me to delete this, I shall.

Anyways, here is Klojban, named in the same manner as Lojban was to Loglan. Somewhat. It will have more rules than the other "add features by commenting them" conlangs:

• The top three comments will be added instead of just the topmost one
• The phonology must consist of actual phonemes; the grammar and lexicon, though, can be as wild as you want them to be
• The orthography can be changed but it must be done in a separate comment.
• If you want me to append a link to your suggestion, you can do so, but make sure it isn't NSFW or anything
• Words added at the same time as a sound change do not have the sound change applied to them, as they are loanwords.

Previously... (Winning Changes)

By u/NoCocksInTheRestroom with 2 points:

>add almost 30 ways to say cum in toki pona as official vocabulary

New words: "telo" meaning "fluid", "ko" meaning squishy, "walo" meaning "white", "umpa" meaning "sex", "olin" meaning "love", "kule" meaning "color" is "colorful", "pilin" meaning "feeling", "pona" meaning "good", "pali" meaning "to make", "sike" meaning "round", and "palisa" meaning "stick" or "long and hard". Also, "telowalo" meaning "milk"

By u/Anjeez929 with 1 point:

>The first few lines of the Bee movie script as an example!
>
>New words.
>
>-(n)et marks the passive participle
>
>Tana /tana/ - (prep) according to
>
>Sona /sona/ - (v) to know
>
>lawa /lawa/ - (n) laws
>
>tawaso /tawaso/ - (v) to fly ("Flight" and therefore "aviation" is made by nominalizing it)
>
>Majkel /majkel/ - (n) Bee
>
>Redbul /ɾedbul/ - (n) wings
>
>Tu /tu/ - (adv) too (as in too small)
>
>lili /lili/ - (adj) small
>
>haja /ħaja/ - (v) lift
>
>fat /fat/ - (adj) fat (n) fat
>
>korpa /koɾpa/ - (n) bo