Re: [tied] Re: Constructed or natural?

A linguist (except the kind who has never studied anything but English) will usually know what lots of natural languages look like and will recognise them without applying any theoretical criteria. I can see at a glance, for example, that your language number one is Malagasy; number two looks like Madurese to me (though I have no Madurese dictionary at hand to make sure, but it's something Javanese-like anyway). I don't recognise number three, and therefore I conclude it MIGHT be artificial, especially as there is something vaguely IE, Uralic and/or Altaic about the structrure of its words, and "conlang" creators often can't help making their products sound like something they are familiar with. I can be wrong, however, since the sample is small and no grammatical information is offered. If I had some grammatical paradigms to examine, I suppose I would know for sure.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----

From: Håkan Lindgren

To: Cybalist

Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2000 11:02 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Constructed or natural?

Thomas wrote - I expected the respons I got here, and I'm sorry it provoked you.

I'm not provoked over here... It was interesting - and it wasn't too easy to point out exactly why M. feels like a constructed language (something about the way it sounds, and the grammar looks like a mix of traits from several language families, traits that would never meet in a natural language - 16 cases like in Finno-Ugric, consonant roots with interchangeable vowels as in Arabic, definite article suffix as in the Scandinavian languages etc.).

I'd like to go back to your question - "Are there any features that are typical for constructed languages?" Take a look at the following three samples. Which one is the constructed language and what features reveal it as a conlang? Or perhaps all three of them are artificial? Or maybe they're all real languages?

Aza anontaniana izay anton'izao

Fanginako lalina ary feno tomany!

Aza anontaniana, satria fantatrao

Fa fakatsia rovana no anton'izany

Tsaroako ny tsikin'ny androko omaly,

Izay manjary aloka foana, indrisy!

Tsaroako! Antsoiko ta tsy mba mamaly

Ary toa manadino, ary toa tsy mba nisy.

E dimma bhai bada bengko se elabbhoenana dhibiqna,

ngotjaq dhilloe barija: pada salamet, tanto katebhanan

salamma dhibiqna, nangeng lamon tadag, salamma

dhibiqna abalija pole ka dhibiqna. Mondhoek e bengko

djaroewa, ngakan ban ngenom sabharang apa se

esoghoewaghi biq oreng djaroewa, karana oreng se

alako patot olle opa, addjkaq le-ngalle pamondhoegkan.

Koi na koiboi ni sem attuvan erkonak, os ettu mon deorvan

esko. Od po tassutak emen a sinema si a Coke nem lettuan.

- Ni sed sauda po mattuvan, atto.

- Skarma. Loudu dau internet no.

- Ha, i patsotak passo nem gelago!

- Gelo da hottu.

Si mon sauda de koibilan.

Hakan