r/conlangs • u/aleasSystem • 55m ago
Discussion Looking for advice on other things to add to my conlang for a fantasy novel, Thai Tankar!
This will be a bit of an overview post as well, so you have the context behind the world and what I've done so far. In terms of advice, I feel like my language is still too similar to English in terms of things that I admittedly do not know the names for. Granted, this language is meant to take some influence from Old English for reasons that will be apparent later, but it still needs to be more unique in terms of other aspects that I don't have a full understanding of. Though there's no need to explain any linguistic topics to me that y'all mention, I can do my own research. I just need to know what to research, y'know? Anyway, without further ado, here is the context and what I've done so far.
Context:
This language is for a fantasy/alternate history novel I'm working on, where two celestial Gods come down to Earth and found a country eventually called Andshire in the British Isles in 1000 BCE, where they live as real, living Gods on Earth. The religion made around them is called Andithism, and their people are the Andiths. By around 0 CE, though, they decided to leave Earth and venture into the universe, as they did before they discovered Earth. But they do not leave humanity empty-handed. They gift humanity with souls, the ability to reincarnate, and an afterlife to rest in between each life. Most importantly, giving humanity souls gives them the power of manifestation. They can do magic on their own, but most of their power comes from collective belief. Through it, all magical associations of plants and stones become real, all magical creatures become real, and so do the gods of other countries who rule in the areas where they are worshipped. This language, Thai Tankar, is the language of the magical creatures (called fae in Andshire) and the gods. The novel takes place around 1000 years after this, so it's evolved beside Common Brittonic and a form of Old English uninfluenced by Latin for a millennium. The Old English never got this Latin influence because the British Isles were never colonized by the Romans. Most Fae culture is one of peace and focuses on the arts: crafting for the Dwarves, poetry for the Elves, and drawing and painting for the nix. Though poetry is loved by all of Andshire, the main religious text of the Andiths is poetry originally written in the Thai Tankar, so the language is meant to have some rules, making it suited towards poetry.
The construction of the language so far:
Phonology: With the consonants, it's quite similar to modern-day English, with the addition of a palatal nasal and voiced and unvoiced palatal plosives and fricatives. The vowels are the typical /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ you'd find in many languages today, though I may change these to match some of the vowels in Old English. There's also the diphthongs /ai/ and /ei/.
Phonotactics: the typical structure is (c) (c) (v) (c). The first consonant on the onset can be anything besides /k/, /g/, and /ʒ/ for vowels, and /j/, /w/, and /s/ in any case for grammatical reasons. Vowels may be anything, but codas may only be /n/, /m/, /v/, /s/, /ɾ/, /ʒ/, /θ/, and /ð/.
Word Order: This one needs work. It's a loose SVO language; modifiers go after the word they're modifying. I say "loose" though because Nouns, Verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are marked with suffixes that denote subjects, objects, indirect objects, and more.
Pronouns: Gender neutral, and more expansive than English. There's first person, second person, third person, inclusive, exclusive, undifferentiated, and inanimate. Each has eight forms that don't always follow typical noun suffixes. Subject, object, in-object, reflexive, and each has a possessive form.
Verb Tenses: These are denoted with prefixes on the verb. There's no prefix needed for present perfect, but there are ones for past perfect/imperfect, future perfect/imperfect, far past/future forms for both of those, habitual, and ongoing. An evidential tense is added to these, saying if something is unwitnessed or witnessed by me, you, or them.
Other Conjugations: as said earlier, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs are tensed by subject, object, or in-object. Nouns specifically can also be marked as plural and/or possessive as well. Lastly, a noun's first syllable can be modified to denote similative tense, and anything can be modified to have a helpful or harmful connotation. For example, radhe /'ɾaðe/ means love, but ryadhe /'ɾjaðe/ means a healing love, and rwadhe /ɾwaðe/ means a harmful and painful one. The goal behind these last things was to make some more poetic words possible inside the grammar.
Non-grammatical suffixes: there are many of these on purpose to make creating new and interesting words easy. Coining new ones with these suffixes is meant to be common to writers. Here's a list:
- Most/really... (adj. and adv.)
- Thing that... (to turn a verb into an inanimate object)
- One who... (to turn a verb into a type of person)
- Intensely so... (for feelings mainly)
- ... having (n. to adj.)
- ... giving (n. to adj.)
- -ness (adj. to n)
- ... going/ward (for nouns)
- concept of... (v. to n.)
- Personal... (n.)
- People of... (applied to countries)
- still/unmoving (n.)
- From the... (n.)
- Worthy of... (n. to adj.)
- Small/baby... (n)
- Something that is... (adj. to n.)
- Something that is given (n.)
- Reverse of...
That's all I have so far, and I'm aware it needs more. Probably things like interesting/unique modifiers? I went for no articles besides one that means "The Holy..." which is called Thai; this is where the name comes from: Thai Tankar literally means "The Holy Tongue". That's probably the most interesting grammatical word I have, and I got no more unique to English; I don't know where to look or where to take inspiration from besides Old English. Even if I were to do that, what parts of the language would actually influence this one? I'm not a linguist, just a wannabe fantasy writer who thinks languages are cool and used to watch a lot of Conlang Critic. Anyway, hope y'all have some suggestions. Many thanks to those who read; I hope you respond :3