Normallang

Normallang, known to its speakers as Bulendi (lit. goodness/conformity tongue), is an artlang. It is a modified version of the natural language of the Vrejjo people, whose culture became more and more obsessed with conformity until sweeping language forms were instated and voluntarily adopted. Through this reform, the Vrejjo became the Bulendish, literally calling themselves "the people of conformity." Created to conform to the most common options for as many categories as possible on WALS and Phoible, Normallang is rigidly designed to fall in with the cross-linguistic crowd on everything, even if it means attempting to reconcile two seemingly contradictory features. Though some question why the Vrejjo would do it by language when it could be done by population, in Bulendish culture each language is conceived as a separate social community, and conforming with groups is prized by the Buldenish above all. In addition, its vocabulary is heavily biased towards conformity and oneness; there are several words to highlight different types of conformity and social groups, and there is just one word that encompasses both the meanings of "bad" and "different from the group." The one area in which Bulendi prioritizes conformity of its culture over the world's is, oddly enough, vocabulary. Bulendi's vocabulary is entirely unrelated to that of any other language, and there are almost no borrowings. This is because the Bulendish people fear foreigners being able to understand anything they say to each other, as in their eyes it would compromise the fidelity of the Bulendish in-group.

Consonants
In order to have an average-sized consonant inventory according to WALS, Normallang needed to have between 19 and 25 consonants. Although 22 would be ideal, at 19 its least common consonant was /ʃ/, used by only 38% of the world's languages. This number was already much lower than the Bulandish people were comfortable with, and the next most likely contenders were /z/ and /v/, which would go against the fact that having contrastive voicing in plosives but not fricatives was the most common option cross-linguistically. Therefore, just 19 consonants were adopted.

Vowels
The five vowel system with no length or tone contrasts was clearly the most normal choice across the world's languages.

Phonotactics
The Normallang syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C). Though any single consonant (including /ŋ/, as per WALS) can occur in the onset, there are only a few complex onsets that can occur. There are no diphthongs or sequential vowels.

Orthography
As the most common orthography worldwide, the Latin alphabet is used to write Bulendi. Four digraphs are used: ⟨ny⟩ for /ɲ/, ⟨ng⟩ for /ŋ/, ⟨ch⟩ for /t͡ʃ/, and ⟨sh⟩ for /ʃ/. The letter ⟨c⟩ is not used alone, while ⟨j⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨v⟩, ⟨x⟩, and ⟨z⟩ are not used at all. In addition, the apostrophe is used to write the glottal stop. Before /k/ the velar nasal is write as ⟨n⟩, and before /t͡ʃ/ and /ʃ/ the palatal nasal is also written as ⟨n⟩. The cluster /ŋg/, however, is written as ⟨ngg⟩. As there are no geminate consonants in Bulendi, this does not cause ambiguity.

Features
Before discussing the vocabulary and grammar of the languages in specific, each WALS feature the influenced the language will be enumerated here. In the beginning of Bulendi's design, there was a debate.
 * 1) On WALS, having the velar nasal is less common. Phoible, however, states that 63% of languages have the velar nasal. In this case, the velar nasal was chosen and it was allowed initially, as is most common in languages that have the velar nasal.
 * 2) Fixed Stress Locations state that 220 languages have no weighted stress. Weight-Sensitive Stress, however, states that fixed stress occurs in 281 languages. Therefore, fixed stress was chosen and the most common fixed stress option, penultimate, was taken.
 * 3) The most common option, neither indefinite nor definite, conflicts with 37. As a result, the next most common option is chosen.
 * 4) Bulendi must choose this option as it has already been established not to have case.
 * 5) The most dominant order on WALS is clearly VOX. As a result, sentence without an oblique are SOV while sentence with an oblique are SVOX.