Jörg Rhiemeier's Conlang Page

NOTE: This list is neither complete nor exhaustive. I have only included posts which are probably of lasting significance, and omitted the many cursory replies on various threads I have participated in over time. Here you can find posts about Old Albic and Germanech (much of it now out of date, though), the futility of auxlanging, the misguidedness of taxonomic vocabularies and other matters.

The messages are listed in chronological order in each category, with the earliest on the top.

The art of conlanging

• Wittgenstein on conlanging Are conlangs "private languages"?
• Auxlangers vs. Artlangers #2 #3
• Non-human languages #2
• The Great Sundering (of CONLANG and AUXLANG) #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 Auxlangs in conworlds #2
• Was Tolkien a good conlanger? #2
• What makes a good conlang? #2 #3 #4 #5
• The Naturalist Manifesto revisited #2 #3
• Of artlangs & engelangs
• Wittgenstein & 'private language'
• Linguistic knowledge and conlanging #2 #3
• Magical languages
• Constructing plausible language evolution - two book recommendations on the subject.
• What is it we are saying in our languages?
• What criteria do you have for your own or others' languages? #2
• Can realism be retro-fitted? On problems of diachronic conlanging.
• How do diacronic conlangers work? Discussion with BPJ. #2
• artlangs/auxlangs/engelangs Comments on the Gnoli triangle. #2 #3 #4
• Efficiency/Spatial Compactness #2 #3
• artlangs as engelangs discussion with And Rosta. #2 #3
• Aesthetics #2 #3 #4
• Futility of auxlangs
• Building from primitives. On problems with closed vocabularies and loglangs. #2 #3 #4 #5
• A proposal to bring together the conlang communities #2 #3 #4 #5
• Conlanging and journaling #2 #3
• Conlanging with constraints
• Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources Discussing Wikipedia's policy on conlangs. #2 #3 #4 #5
• Conlangs as art - a spin-off of the above thread. #2 #3
• Facing mortality - what will happen to your conlangs after you have died? Discussion with Rick Harrison.
• The philosophical language fallacy #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9
• Art is when someone says 'Now' -- or is it? #2 #3 #4 #5
• Average life of a conlang #2 #3 #4
• Juvenile fooleries
• Theory informs practice. Or not?
• Theory informs practice, again. Differences between engelanging and naturalistic artlanging; alien conlanging.
• Fictional auxlangs as artlangs #2 #3 #4 Unnatural auxlangs Juvenalia
• Oligosynthetic languages in nature. Comments on a misunderstanding.
• Formal vs. natural languages #2
• Does conlanging change your sense of reality? Sapir-Whorf, once again. #2
• Does your language have a mind of its own? When conlanging feels more like discovery than invention. #2 #3
• How to tell when you're conlang's complete #2 #3 #4
• The art of conlang critique #2 #3
• Conlang referral service for movies/games/books. Sai Emrys has an idea how to sell our conlanging skills to Hollywood. #2 #3 #4 #5
• Masculine and feminine nouns affect how one perceives objects? More fun with Sapir and Whorf, or do German tablecloths have sex with tables?
• Arithmographic languages #2
• Why are you constructing your language(s)?
• Dead conlangs? Or merely dormant ones? #2
• A Conlang for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Ideas about magical languages, e.g. in role-playing games.
• Optimizing Vocabulary. Ideas for very concise conlangs.
• Engelang with unnatural statistical properties? #2
• "Naturalistic" for auxlangers vs artlangers? Different meanings of a word. #2
• Problems with oligosynthesis #2 #3 #4
• Naturalism and engelanging - reconcilable? #2
• Licensing of Conlangs/Conworlds #2 #3
• Question about a priori versus a posteriori artlangs - different usage of the terms between artlangers and auxlangers.
• Semi-Taxonomic Lexicon Building - reasons why the philosophical languages failed.
• Self-segregating morphologies #2 #3 #4 Oligosynthesis #2
• "Best" way to write a complete description of a language
• Tokana, Skerre and Watakassi Become Natlangs! An amusing research snafu in a scholarly paper, and what it may say about conlang naturalism. #2
• Conlangs as Academic Evidence in Linguistic Studies What can conlangs say about the human language faculty?
• The Platonic fallacy #2 A philosophical tangent.
• Langue and parole
• Artlangs and engelangs On conlang classification. #2
• Conlangs as Academic Evidence in Linguistic Studies again. #2 #3 #4
• The van Steenbergen Hexagon Comments on a conlang classification scheme. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7
• Euroclones - what makes a conlang one? #2 #3
• Glossopoeia vs. reconstruction
• Natlang loglangs? A discussion with And Rosta. #2 #3
• Revisiting the artlang/engelang distinction #2 #3 Exolanging Kēlen #2
• Conlang fans vs. conworld fans #2 #3
• Natlanginess of Esperanto - arguably the conlang that comes closest to natlangs in having actual parole and not just langue.
• Juvenalia once again.
• Re-conlangs - are reconstructed languages conlangs? #2
• How to decide when language documentation is done?
• The essence of diachronic conlanging #2
• Conlang confusion - what if the thing is so realistic that people mistake it for a natlang?
• Design Perameters for Romanization
• Roman letter syllabaries #2 #3 Featural abugidas and other scriptorial matters Syllabaries & abugidas #2 #3
• Do artlangers dislike auxlangers? #2 #3 #4
• New Year's Thoughts - how old is our art? #2 #3

Linguistics

• Long-range protolinguistics
• Etruscana - is Etruscan related to Indo-European?
• Nostratic #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8
• The Monovocalic PIE Myth
• Celtic languages? Also, lost languages of western Europe.
• Dubious historical linguistics
• Distant linguistic relationships
• Afroasiatic, Eurasiatic, etc.
• Celtic and Afro-Asiatic? A substratum theory discussed. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
• Historical Linguistics Question Comments on some crackpot theories.
• Indo-European family tree #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10
• Interesting pre-Greek article Discussion of Etruscan and other matters.
• Standard Average European #2
• Old European-contact conlang. What do we know about the languages of pre-Indo-European Europe? #2 #3
• Neanderthal and PIE - why these have nothing to do with each other. #2 #3 #4
• Origin of human language
• Linguistic diversity in prehistoric Europe #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8
• Universal Grammar #2
• Some speculations on prehistoric European languages #2 #3
• Universality of discreteness - discussion with Sai Emrys. #2 #3 #4
• Pre-Greek - what little we know: discussion with Ray Brown. #2 #3 PIE glottalic theory
• Language evolution - can parent languages of families continue to exist unchanged?
• Origin of PIE ablaut #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8
• Click genesis
• Why there was no British Romlang
• Evolution of language: discussion with various list members. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9
• Celtic #2 #3 #4 #5
• Fairly controversial protolanguages - Uralo-Siberian, Indo-Uralic and others.
• Etruscan - poorly understood, unknown origin, unknown affiliation. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 Isolates Methodology in historical linguistics
• Are right-branching languages easier to parse? Also, the difference between "parsing" and "understanding". #2 Quantum physics and the mind Human vs.programming languages
• Affricates - do they pattern like places of articulation, or like manners?
• Celticity? Celtic & other myths #2 #3
• Which came first, the word for "chicken" or the word for "egg"? On language evolution. #2
• Ablaut diachronics - the question of the origin of PIE ablaut, once again.
• SAE - what is "Standard Average European?"
• Grammatical gender #2

My conlangs

The Albic project

• Degrees of volition in active languages. First post about Nur-ellen. #2
• Nur-ellen - what later was to become Albic.
• Animacy in active languages such as Nur-ellen. #2
• Nur-ellen universes #2 #3
• Nur-ellen in the world of Brithenig - the beginning of an ill-fated affair. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10
• Nur-ellen takes on Greenberg's universals
• ELVES - why I call my conculture that. #2 #3 #4 #5
• Elves and Ill Bethisad - why it failed to work out. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7
• Some Proto-"Quendic" grammar, i.e. early Albic grammar #2 #3 #4
• Cases, again. Comparing case marking of locative NPs in Greek and Old Albic.
• Nostratic, Tech and Albic #2 #3 #4 #5
• A sketch of Old Albic: Phonology Nominals Verbs Syntax
  Partly out of date as several bits (e.g., the noun cases) have been revised since then.
• Some Old Albic conculture More
• Degrees of volition in Old Albic
• The Babel text in Old Albic My 500th post; now, however, out of date.
• Some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
• Fluid-S pivot in Old Albic #2 #3 #4
• Numerals in Old Albic and their etymology
• Old Albic Update: An autosegmental view of the vowel features #2
• Old Albic and the quest for the essence of Elvishness - a discussion between me and Andreas Johansson what makes a language "Elvish".
• Bronze age British languages - summary of my thoughts on prehistoric languages in the British Isles and western Europe.
• Deriving vowel harmony diachronically in Old Albic and Eric Christopherson's conlang.
• Some Old Albic historical phonology presented on occasion of my 1000th post.
• Old Albic update: Syntax of the verbal noun #2
• Atlantis and how it may tie in with Albic. #2 #3
• Old Albic update: Some notes on vowel phonology #2 #3
• Naming systems - naming conventions in Old Albic.
• Two Albic-related ATLs
• Development of pronouns from Indo-Uralic to Albic
• Conlang/-culture personal naming practices Naming customs of the Elves.
• Marking Roles Instead of Case - case marking in Old Albic, once again.
• Babel Text in Old Albic - new version.

Roman Germanech

• First strokes of Germanech
• The Grand Master Plan for Germanech, version 1.0 #2
• Sketch of Germanech: Introduction Phonology Nominals Verbs Syntax Partly out of date by now, especially the syntax section.

Comments on other people's conlangs

J. R. R. Tolkien's conlangs

• Proto-Quendian (and PIE) phonology

Boreanesian (Kristian Jensen)

• Some Boreanesian Phonological History #2 #3

Silindion (Elliott Lash)

• Silindion verb conjugation #2 #3
• "To Be" In Silindion, Observations Comments and comparison with Old Albic. #2
• Silindion Relative Clauses Comments and comparison with Old Albic. #2
• Development of Silindion verbal inflection

Tokana (Matthew Pearson)

• Tokana: active? A comparison with Nur-ellen.

C'ali (Tom Wier)

• C'ali update: Split-S cross-referencing, agentive pivot
• C'ali update: tonal phonology
• C'ali update: desinences; gender

Plan B (Jeff Prothero) and derivatives thereof

• Plan B phonology Discussion with Ray Brown about Jeff Prothero's sketch. #2 #3
• brz, or Plan B revisited Discussion of Ray Brown's "Plan B"-derived conlang. #2 #3
• brz reloaded! Putting together the results of the discussion on "brz". Later to become X-1. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
• No vowels? (in Plan B, that is) #2 #3 Phonology of Plan B #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9
• Plan B variations, such as my own X-1. #2 #3

Briefscript (R. A. Brown)

• Comments on Piashi #2 #3 #4 #5
• Brx syllabary - Ray disambandons his project. #2 #3
• More on Brx #2
• Roman letter syllabary problems #2

TAKE (R. A. Brown)

• Joseph Peanou RIP - Ray Brown says farewell to an alternative timeline.
• TAKE Romanization? and other design issues of Ray Brown's Greek without inflections. #2 #3 #4

Stack-based languages

• Discussion of stack-based syntax #2 #3 #4 #5
• Stack-based human languages? #2
• LIFO languages #2 #3
• Right-branching vs. Left-branching, actually about stack languages. Why we don't speak them.
• Fith and Lojban - unspeakable? #2 #3 #4 #5 Enough of this

Others

• Q Comment on Danny Wier's (huge) phoneme inventory, with a comparison to Nur-ellen.
• Q (again) Discussion with Danny Wier about Elves, glottalic theory, and vowel systems.
• Elvish ideas... Comments on Andreas Johansson's Meghean.
• The Glyphica Arcana: Distinction - discussion of Jefferson Wilson's graphical language, with a syntactic parallel to Old Albic.
• Austronesian style Latin - discussion of a romlang phonology by Barry Garcia
• Terkunan Comments on Henrik Theiling's conlang. #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
• Prevli Comments on Roger Mills's conlang.
• Analyzing Ayeri's syntactic and voice alignment with comparisons to Old Albic.
• Comments on Benct Philip Jonsson's Kijeb #2
• Vowels in BPJ's Sohlob (and Albic)
• Coping with Lojban - an unlearnable language?
• Gender Origin and Evolution in J.Burke's conlang and elsewhere. #2 #3
• Lojban langue and parole
• Proto-Terzemian: You can't get there from here - a diachronic problem in Paul Bennett's conlang. #2

Miscellaneous

• My first post to CONLANG (OK, not of lasting value. But it was my first!)
• Conlang Typology Survey - data on Germanech and what was to become Old Albic. Correction
• Vowel harmony Discussion with Rob Haden; some stuff on early Albic ("Q") vowel phonology. #2
• Elvish ideas... Comments on Andreas Johansson's Meghean.
• The League of Lost Languages How it all began. More
• Machine translation interlinguae Maybe Old Albic is good for that purpose?
• Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir
• My answers on the 2005 Lunatic Survey
• On nerds and dreamers
• Loglang syntax Also, problems with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and "philosophical" languages.
• Weird case marking patterns
• Defining "Language"
• My answers on the 2008 conlang fluency survey
• Langmaker and FrathWiki #2 #3 #4 #5 #6
• Comments on a non-human language ;-) Transcription
• Survival of minority languages - why Albic did not die out.
• "Conlang" and "Artlang" in German Translation issues. #2 #3 #4
• Phaistos Disk - a fake, an Atlantean artifact, or what? My stance on Atlantis, by the way.
• A posteriori conlangs; specifically, Gallo-Hellenic. #2
• Sidhe language and elflangs in general. #2 #3 #4 #5 Quenya #2 Elflangs #2
• Natlang plausibility in artlanging. Comments on thoughts of Benct Philip Jonsson.
• Prepositional phrases as attributes
• How do you give reality to an a priori conlang?
• Vocab Building Tricks #2
• Diachronic conlanging and diachronic linguistics
• Oh, noes! Endangered languages! Why conlangers cannot save endangered languages, but it is also not our fault that languages die.
• Avoiding unhandled features #2 #3
• Your first conlangs - what I did when I was younger.
• Alternative timelines: join three projects? #2
• Proper Names in a Soundless Language
• How to make a mess of an ATL - comments on Ill Bethisad and similar projects. #2 #3 #4 #5
• Reconstructing a "lost" language - ideas for a clichéd crackpot-style Atlantean language. #2 #3
• Arabic without Islam #2
• What would happen to an oligosynthetic language? If subjected to naturalistic language change, that is.
• Conlang canons #2
• Voynich-like manuscript - an idea for a conlang riddle.
• Con-culture/religion etc. Do non-human sapients have religion? Also, some notes on Albic religion. #2 Repugnant concultures Non-human intelligence
• Form of Documentation of your Conlang - why the simplest solutions are usually the best.
• Broad or narrow usage of "phonology"? - there's more to it than just the phoneme inventory.
• Fantasy conlang universals
• Sources for vowel quantity distinctions?
• Why I conlang
• Language adaptation to the environment #2 #3
• The colour of Elven blood and other Elven matters. #2 #3 #4
• Volapük - why it failed.
• Euroclones #2
• Genealogical classification of conlangs #2 #3 #4 #5 #6

© 2009-2012 Jörg Rhiemeier
Last update: 2012-01-11