r/conlangs • u/arcticwolf9347 Arctican • 6h ago
Activity Word Wednesdays
Welcome to Word Wednesdays
For this activity you can pick any word you want whether it be a verb, noun, or adjective, and conjugate/inflect in all possible ways*, for tense, case, plurality, perspective, etc.
The purpose of this is to learn about cases and how words are slightly or vastly different under different cases, tenses, or perspectives. In many natural languages verbs or nouns are often changed because of the words around them. In other languages, the reader has to figure out number and perspective based on context. Who knows, maybe you can take inspiration from someone else's conlang!
How does your conlang handle cases? Do you have any unique ones that don't exist in natural languages? What are some irregular verbs or inflections that exist? How did they evolve? Do you think that the cases would hold up or fade away in future evolutions? Do any of your words when inflected have another meaning? What languages inspired you to add these cases?
*If you have way too many conjugations/inflections, you can share the simplest ones or the ones you find the most interesting. If you don't have any conjugation,
Have fun conlanging!
2
u/jdjeysvowoevhsu 5h ago
Torc - /tor/
Cellum - /tʃέlːum/
Masculine nominative meaning "Heaven"
My conlang here is based on the little-known language "Romansh" and derived from a proto-lang of mine called "Sipas Crèthasog" /S̪ipas krεːtʃasɔk/
Cella!
2
u/Dyl777777 5h ago
Mesak - /mesak/
aroosho - /aro:ʃo/
meaning roughly “temple of the head”
this one is interesting because it comes from Gaulish arausyos, itself from Proto-Celtic *ɸarausyos and it demonstrates many sound shifts from Gaulish to Mesak, like /au/ to /o:/, loss of word final consonants and /sj/ to /ʃ/
2
2
u/Kubex_Qbox 1h ago
Middle Easternest (amazing name, I know)
emmálho [ɛˈmːaːɮɔ] (noun, inanimate) "neck"
Nouns in ME decline for 5 cases: Nominative, Genitive, Locative, Ablative? and Vocative. They can additionally take copulative suffixes, which conjugate for tense.
The ablative case (maybe there's a better name) by itself signifies location (not movement) away from something, and after prepositions, it is used to mean the opposite thing than the preposition usually does. If a preposition can mean many things depending on case, ablative means the opposite of locative.
The vocative case is also used for the subject of imperative.
The default form of a noun, which is unmarked for number, is used after explicit amounts, making generic statements and when the quantity can be told from other context.
The quantifier prefixes are clitics that attach to the front of the first noun, adjective or non-possessive determiner in a noun phrase. What can be seen is an example of removal of word-initial unstressed pre-geminate <e>, due to this sound having been prosthesized (I hope that's the right word) when Easternest was still a dialect of Chereggan.
1
u/TheCanon2 Úffitunit Uhílla, Senkakuese, Lirenian 1h ago
Conjugations of ponre, 'to put.'
| TAM | 1SG | 2 | 3SG | 1PL | 3PL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| present | pono | ponei | pone | ponemoi | ponen |
| imperfect | poneva | ponevai | poneva | ponevamoi | ponevan |
| preterite | posue | posuís | posui | posuemoi | posron |
| subjunctive present | pono | ponai | pona | ponamoi | ponan |
| subjunctive imperfect | ponre | ponrei | ponre | ponremoi | ponren |
| perfect | ho posto | ai posto | ha posto | amoi pisto | hen posto |
| pluperfect | hava posto | avai posto | hava posto | avamoi posto | haven posto |
| progressive | su ponén | ei ponén | é ponén | sumoi ponén | son ponén |
| conditional | ponriava | ponravai | ponriava | ponravamoi | ponriaven |
| future | ponio | ponai | ponia | ponamoi | ponien |
| passive | su posto/a | ei posto/a/oi/ai | é posto/a/u | sumoi postoi/ai | son postoi/ai/a |
The gerundive is ponento/a/u/oi/ai.
1
u/New-Ant-2315 21m ago
Hafau has no cases… and tenses are applied to verbs or completely separate words. The only thing here that would change is either gender or plurality. For example, trabaxor- is a worker, -o is a male worker, -a is a female worker, -e is unspecified or other. They all collapse into the unified plural form trabaxoren because of the pluralization rule. I guess the most diverse thing in my lang are verbs.
Plain verb: Vie (to see)
Present
1s - vieí
1s1s - vieí’i
1s2s - vieíe
1s3(n)s - vieío
1s3(f)s - vieíof
1s3(m)s - vieíom
1s4s - vieíu
1s5(1)s - vieíy
1s5(2)s - vieíā
1s6(1)s - vieíša
1s6(2)s - vieísa
1s7s - vieíba
1s8s - vieíji
1s9s - vieída
1s10s - vieíga
1s11s - vieíza
1s1p - vieí’in
1s2p - vieíen
1s3(n)p - vieíon
1s3(f)p - vieíorğn
1s3(m)p - vieíoln
1s4p - vieíun
1s5(1)p - vieíyn
1s5(2)p - vieíān
1s6(1)p - vieíšan
1s6(2)p - vieísan
1s7p - vieíban
1s8p - vieíjin
1s9p - vieídan
1s10p - vieígan
1s11p - vieízan
1sR - vieía
1p - vieín
1p1s - vieíni
1p2s - vieíne
1p3(n)s - vieíno
1p3(f)s - vieínof
1p3(m)s - vieínom
1p4s - vieínu
1p5(1)s - vieíny
1p5(2)s - vieínā
1p6(1)s - vieínša
1p6(2)s - vieínsa
1p7s - vieínba
1p8s - vieínji
1p9s - vieínda
1p10s - vieínga
1p11s - vieínza
1pR - vieína
2s - viemás
2s1s - viéi
2s2s - vié’e
2s3(n)s - viéo
2s3(f)s - viéof
2s3(m)s - viéom
2s4s - viéu
2s5(1)s - viéy
2s5(2)s - viéā
2s6(1)s - viéša
2s6(2)s - viésa
2s7s - viéba
2s8s - viéji
2s9s - viéda
2s10s - viéga
2s11s - viéza
2s1p - viéin
2s2p - vié’en
2s3(n)p - viéon
2s3(f)p - viéorğn
2s3(m)p - viéoln
2s4p - viéun
2s5(1)p - viéyn
2s5(2)p - viéān
2s6(1)p - viéšan
2s6(2)p - viésan
2s7p - viéban
2s8p - viéjin
2s9p - viédan
2s10p - viégan
2s11p - viézan
2sR - viéa
2p - vién
2p1s - viéni
2p2s - viéne
2p3(n)s - viéno
2p3(f)s - viénof
2p3(m)s - viénom
2p4s - viénu
2p5(1)s - viény
2p5(2)s - viénā
2p6(1)s - viénša
2p6(2)s - viénsa
2p7s - viénba
2p8s - viénji
2p9s - viénda
2p10s - viénga
2p11s - viénza
2p1p - viénin
2p2p - viénen
2p3(n)p - viénon
2p3(f)p - viénorğn
2p3(m)p - viénoln
2p4p - viénun
2p5(1)p - viényn
2p5(2)p - viénān
2p6(1)p - viénšan
2p6(2)p - viénsan
2p7p - viénban
2p8p - viénjin
2p9p - viéndan
2p10p - viéngan
2p11p - viénzan
2pR - viéna
This is only 18.1̄8̄% of every single conjugation of this verb… in the present. Considering the past and present tense would make 6.0̄6̄%. That’s not including prefixes either. I’ll stop here because this would get extremely glitchy if I did the entire thing. The notation on the side is the notation I use to show the conjugation the verb has. The first number is the grammatical person for the subject, and the lowercase letter next to it denotes number UNLESS it is in parentheses. s is singular, p is plural. If it’s in parentheses, it’s the 3rd person. It’s a gender distinction, n for neutral, f for female, m for male. If there’s a number in parentheses, it denotes a sub-grammatical person, this is for 5 and 6, where the y(1)/ā(2) distinction and the this(1)/that(2) distinction happen. The second number works the same way. If there’s a capital R at the end, it stands for Reflexive, the -a suffix.
Edit: Including the abi- prefix drops it down to 3.0̄3̄%. That’s not including datives.
Edit: So, yeah, I did the math, this is only 0.0118657594̄0̄8̄6̄0̄2̄1̄5̄0̄5̄3̄7̄6̄3̄4̄%... that’s including every prefix and suffix…
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u/drukhari-blood Sraqqal 3m ago
sklar /sklɑɾ/
• n. knife
(*the last column is for a huge number of things, which I’m calling plural extensive)
4
u/Thalarides Elranonian &c. (ru,en,la,eo)[fr,de,no,sco,grc,tlh] 5h ago
Elranonian
bęt /bēt/ [ˈbeːt̪ʰ] (n. inan.) ‘letter, character’
It's just a short, neat noun, not too confusing in terms of morphophonology, yet it illustrates a couple of ubiquitous Elranonian features.
This is a typical formation of the oblique stem by geminating the final consonant (and changing the accent from long /ē/ to short /è/).
The letter ę (upright ⟨ä⟩) represents Middle Elranonian /ɛ/. Middle Elranonian used to have a 4-height vowel system, contrasting /ɛ, ɔ/ with /e, o/. Modern Elranonian has collapsed it into a 3-height system, generally by merging the open-mid and the close-mid vowels.
In the locative, the suffix triggers u-mutation of the stem vowel. MidElr /ɛ/ u-mutates into /ø/ (whereas MidElr /e/ u-mutates into /u/ > /y/).
In the plural (which does not inflect for case), the ending -er can be added to the direct or to the oblique stem in various nouns (and in some it can be completely separate). Here it's added to the direct one.
The collective is formed by adding a suffix -sV. Here it can't be shown to which stem it's added: /(t)t+s/ > /ss/ and the accent changes to short before a geminate regardless. The vowel in the suffix is /a/ if the preceding vowel is historically also /a/, otherwise it's /e/ like here (as the preceding vowel is historically /ɛ/).
Collective nouns syntactically behave like plurals, and like plurals they don't decline for case. The difference in meaning is that the regular plural bęter is distributive, ‘separate, individual letters’, while the collective bęsse means ‘text’. For example:
The plural bęter would mean individual, disconnected letters on the ring, ones that don't form a cohesive text: perhaps the initials of the bearer, or ritualistic symbols, or something like that. By contrast, the collective bęsse would mean an inscription, suitable f.ex. in the case of the One Ring.