Archive/Featured Conlang/July & August Votings

Ancient Qâêr

• Con: There's a major flaw in the fact he has both a genitive and a possessive case. It's not so much that he has both cases, as one can be used for static and the other for passive possessions, but his "possessive case" seems more of a prefix for possessive adjectives than it does an actual case. The orthography, too, is almost non-existant, which I found pretty shallow for a language LctrGzmn 03:57, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
  • Why does the text matter? It can be easily romanized. Why is it a good thing for a conlang to use the latin alphabet? —Preceding signed comment added by TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 15:42, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
  • ... I never said anything about whatever alphabet you're using. I just mentioned that you're explanation of the language's orthography isn't very good. All you do is point out the corresponding letter next to the IPA symbol next to non-latin characters, and that seems a bit messy as it is. LctrGzmn 00:36, July 21, 2010 (UTC)
    • Why is it a flaw that I have both Genitive and Possessive, they are used for completely different things. Firstly, the Possessive case is a suffix, not a prefix. the Possessive is used to indicate direct Possession of physical objects between two nouns, i.e The House of Man. The Steering Wheel of the Car, whereas genitive is used to describe an attribute or non-physical characteristic of a noun or object, e.g "A Man of Virtue. and e.c.t. I haven;t posted the Orthography on the wiki yet as 1) I thought the grammar and phonetics/phonology was more important in the context of the wiki, and 2) I'm too busy fixing up moods and my system of Path Verbs and the Absolute Spatial reference system. However thank you for the criticism and I'll try to update the Orthography as soon as possible. vii 1:18 AM, August 26, 2010 (UTC)
    • You don't get it. The big flaw is that the possessive is not a case. If you look into it, the usage of it being called is a case is redunant and inaccurate. Why is it not a case? Because it is a form of an adjective. You could say the house of Martha or Martha's house, yes? How about if we put that into the dative -- I went to the house of Martha would be a correct usage of the genitive, while in the sentence I went to Martha's House , while still grammatically correct, has a different structure than you think. In I went to Martha's house, martha's has to be declined, because it is an adjective -- assuming you decline adjectives at all, if not, it would still be incorrect to call it a possessive case, but merely a possessive afix, not a case -- it must agree with whatever noun it describes. Now, i've noticed you've changed your argument/conlang up a little, so I'll also point out that the technical term for that is static possessive and active possessive. Just an insight into the usage of such "possessive" cases. Secondly, you're overlooking phonology, which is the first step of a language. Sure you have your sounds, but how to write them? No explicit rules or explanations? We all might as well be illiterate. Anyway, I'm not trying to sound mean at all if you get offended or anything, these are just my two cents. LctrGzmn 00:25, August 26, 2010 (UTC)
    • I'm not getting ofeended so don't worry, I just don't agree with you that Possessive is not a case. Maybe in some languages like English the Possesive behaves in this way and therefore shouldn't be called a proper case (e.g in english it is definately NOT a case, however in my language it acts, or i believe it to act and wnat it to, like any other case.) In your example I went to the house of Martha , I would have put Martha in the possessive case, (it becoming basically - I go[past] [defined]house[dative] Martha[possessive]), not the genitive, in my conalng. In relation to Phonology and orthography, in my script for my language I have one symbol for all the ohonemes you see on my Phonology table, however i have not created this script into a font yet and therefore i mus use romanisation (my own style unfortunately) which is why i don't have one letter for every sound because i am restricted to the latin alphabet and didnt want to use funny random symbols because this makes for hard typing and also people who know what these symbols mean then get annoyed at me for using them falsely. vii 3:07 AM, August 26, 2010 (UTC)
    • You know that's basically the genitive case, right? I know what you mean, though. It would be helpful for you to explicitly state the controversies, and define the possessive case as a stative genitive, while the genitive is a passive genitive, because there are a terribly high number of mislead people who think the possessive case is a case of its own. Kudos to you on distinguishing the difference between static and passive possession. One doesn't see that very much! Secondly, might I suggest you use digraphs? It's not painful to have letters with diacritics, but you know as well as I do that there's a limit. Perhaps digraphs for most sounds and then diacritics for specific consonants, like Polish? Digraphs usually complicate a language's orthography, which I find to be a real bonus. I myself have been debating getting rid of the most common diacritic š, č, ž, etc. Personally, I'm for digraphs. It shapes a language and gives its orthography that certain look, don't you think? And of course, you could just use letters with diacritics on those that are universally known, like š for [ʃ], etc LctrGzmn 02:47, August 26, 2010 (UTC)
    • Well i wnated to have static and passive possessive but i mustn't have made it obvious so I'll go back and change that and thanks for making that clear :D. I have accented consonants instead of digraphs, not because i dislike digraphs rather because I thought accented consonants were cool, e.g for my letter for /p/ in my script, i have the same letter with two dots underneath to represent q, and i have an accented /s/ for a double and longer /s/ sound. I think thats what you mean anyway. I really have to get around to putting up a better image file of my alphabet. vii 2:04 PM, August 26, 2010 (UTC)

Kti

• Apart from that the page is a bit "messy", probably because the thick borders of the tables don't really look professional, this language has a well documented grammar. The only thing that I see as a real "question mark" is the use of the letter ash ("æ"). It doesn't really seem to fit the language. --OuWTB^sjrief-mich 11:39, August 26, 2010 (UTC)
  • I admit, I have some tables that don't fit in, but they are from the time when I didn't know how to make those sleek class=wikitable ones. Also, the "ash" letter/"æ" represents a vowel. I admit it doesn't really look fitting, but it is functional.
    • Well, tha tables could easily be fixed. I know it respresents a vowel, but I'd consider using another letter for it :) --OuWTB^sjrief-mich 08:23, August 27, 2010 (UTC)
      • What letter? Accented one? Umalut? Rostov-na-don 12:34, August 27, 2010 (UTC)
        • Perhaps you could use "y"? --OuWTB^sjrief-mich 09:29, August 28, 2010 (UTC)
          • Maybe it's just me, but doesn't an "A"-like sound contrast with "Y" ?Rostov-na-don 17:49, August 28, 2010 (UTC)

Bengedian

• Pro: As much as I wanted to vote neutral -- or even con -- for this language, the pros outweighed the cons. It's moderately well constructed and organized quite well. One thing that bugged me, however, was the lack of anything... well, interesting. Bengedian does a good job of doing what other languages do, except it's missing that something that screams Bengedian, rather than a jumble of grammar and vocabulary. I reckon this language isn't too far from completion, however, I do advise whoever created it to not make it so... generic, for lack of a better word. Cheers. LctrGzmn 04:06, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

Zxoaame

• The language has potential, I say that, but has some structuring and organisational problems that make finding stuff hard. I'd vote neutralRostov-na-don 20:22, August 17, 2010 (UTC)

Vuén Nabóştï

• Con: As much as I loathe voting negative, it seems that I have little to no choice. The language is, shortly said, a mess. It has huge amounts of potential, but you clearly lack user-friendliness, and compared to some other languages, your language is an organisational nightmare. Fear not, thy follower of the way of Conlang, not all hope is lost: I think that you are not nearly done with the language, as you have yet to explain the é, ó, ï sounds, work around the mess, and other problems, so if you want, I might help you with those, the same offer applies to ZxoaameRostov-na-don 20:22, August 17, 2010 (UTC)
• Con: Romanization should not contain such unneeded things as umlaut just because it is at the end of a word, if its in your own writting it can be good or whatnot but not in romanization The Emperor Zelos 10:04, August 19, 2010 (UTC)
• Con: it's like vietnamese, take a look at a few seconds and you become overaccented. --OuWTB^sjrief-mich 11:41, August 26, 2010 (UTC)

Count:

Kti: 0

Ancient Qâêr: -1

Bengedian: 1

Zxoaame: 0

Vuén Nabóştï: -3