Now every conlang I make will have a word for "finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning"

When coming up with root words, something that I find *exceedingly* helpful is onomatopoeia. Instead of declaring "X word = rock", you could instead try describing the qualities of a rock, phonetically, the way an early speaker of your language might, e.g. "tiku" could mean "rock" by way of your early speakers describing the sound of rocks hitting each other. Similarly, words like "pata" could emulate slashing and therefore mean "water", and "foha" could emulate the sound of wind and therefore mean "sky". There's also the idea of "bouba vs. kiki". Basically, words with lots of P, B, O, and A sounds tend to feel "rounder and softer" when used together, compared to words that have K, T, I, and E sounds, which tend to feel "harder and sharper" when used together. Therefore, "obu" could refer to something large, round, and lethargic, such as a boulder or a tree. Meanwhile, "teki" could refer to something small and sharp, like an animal's claw.

I watched this series once and barely understood anything. Now I'm watching it again while making a conlang myself, the hype I'm getting from just making up words and putting them together is unbelievable

me, doing everything the opposite of biblaridion: Why am i not getting it?

One correction: Latin, while preferring SOV, actually has free word order, like many other synthetic languages. For example, the sentence "Felix loves Julia." can be stated in Latin in any of the following ways, all having pretty much the same meaning: "Felix Iuliam amat." - by far the most common pattern (SOV) "Felix amat Iuliam." - quite common "Amat Felix Iuliam." - very poetic :) "Iuliam Felix amat." - a bit less common, but completely valid (answers the question "Whom does Felix love?") And the two other permutations are possible, though perhaps sounding a bit contrived (still, quite usable in poetry, where rhyme and meter justify not following the usual word order). This is possible because the accusative case suffix -am in "Iuliam" clearly states that she is the direct object of the sentence, while "Felix" is the subject, being in the nominative case. Contrast this with analytic languages, like English, where there are no case endings and changing the order of words completely changes the meaning ("Dog bites man." vs "Man bites dog.").

1:30. They're so rare you needed a fictional language just to represent the first one properly, and presumably couldn't even find three for the last one.

Isn't OSV just how Yoda speaks?

These videos are awesome. I've been trying to create a language for years now and all my attemps were total failures. With these videos I think I finally have all the tools I need to at least get to something decent. I created a fictional world and I'm trying to add a fully fonctional language for the inhabitants of this world. Basically it's for celestial people who live in clouds (similar to angels) and descend to the world beneath the clouds (earth) and expend their territory to an island under their initial city. I chose my sounds, word order, grammar basics....everything but I'm stuck on one simple thing: Root words. I just can't find out how to make simple words that don't look like some already-existing languages and that sound natural for my "angels". For exemple if I want to create the word for "fire", in my mind it feels like it should start with an "F", like many other languages (fire, feuer, feu,...) so I'm stuck on that idea and try to create a word that follows that pattern. Same for water, I have the word "aquatic" in my mind (or aqua, agua, eau... in some languages that I know) and I feel like I have to make a word containing (or starting with) an "A". Or with a "N" for night/nuit/noche/nacht... How do you mix up your letters and decide "that is the word I'll choose for "fire" or "night"" even if it sounds totally different from what your mind is used to for that particular concept?

I’m currently making my language in the object-verb-subject word order. I had absolutely no idea how rare this was, guess I learned something today.

Fun fact: in spanish the order of subject, verb and object doesn't matter. For example with the sentence "The man sees the mountain", we can write it as: SVO: El hombre ve a la montaña. SOV: El hombre a la montaña ve. OSV: La montaña el hombre la ve. OVS: La montaña la ve el hombre. VSO: Ve el hombre a la montaña. VOS: Ve a la montaña el hombre. Hombre = man ve = sees montaña = mountain el/la = the (when before a noun) There are some diferences depending on how you rearange the words, for example, adding the preposition "a" to indicate the object, or adding the pronoun "la" (before the verb).

This is the episode the loses me- the previous two episodes were just right in terms of complexity, but _this_ episode, goodness. A bunch of complicated concepts are suddenly thrown at me like I'm expected to know what everything means already.

1:31 *laughs in czech* In this language, you can use almost all of the possibilities depending on what information is important in the sentence. Člověk (S) vidí (v) zvíře (o) - "default", commonly used order Zvíře (O) vidí (V) člověk (S). - It is important that the man is the one who sees it. Člověk (S) zvíře (O) vidí (V). - It is important that he *sees* it. Zvíře (O) člověk (S) vidí (V). - I'm not really sure how to explain this one. But I personally use it when I'm being sarcastic or trying to correct someone. I just find this interesting.

Wow, you started with some quite complex syntactic structures right away. There are simpler ones that are more natural to start with when creating a new language, like noun phrases (adjective + noun), prepositional phrases (preposition + noun phrase), possessives, plural forms, thinks like that. Verbs and tenses are usually the most complex and most evolved structure in a language. And the subject-predicate structure is like the most top-level one.

Free word order FTW! Greetings from Poland. :D

6:27 technically speaking, Latin is only really rigid in prepositions. SOV is preferred, but look at any Latin literature and you’ll find OVS, SVO, and even VSO pop up, along with too much hyperbatonning. Possession happens through case marking and is treated roughly equally as Adjectives. It’s beautiful.

Pretty much the only thing I've understood thus far is that languages are complicated and that English is ridiculous.

As a turkish native speaker I like that you are always using my language as an example for your videos

My conlangs have words for "finding it hard to get out of bed in the morning". Here they are: Qwiqwiqwëdaq uses "Æt'tli". Môhru uses "Niqq". Rrarrarar uses "Tamalquiqiqnoqiqqnoqiqngq". Ngweni uses "Tld".

I'm forgetting english now.

Russian is really a free word order language. Sometimes if you jumble up the words too much it would sound a bit unnatural or too bookish, but most of the times it really doesn't matter. It could slightly shift the emphasis, but the determining factor is the way you pronounce the sentence.

"Any sentence will consist of three primary roles: the Subject, the Verb, and the Object." Not an intransitive sentence, or a zero-copula sentence. And the distinction between Subject and Object, or between Nouns and Verbs doesn't always follow the way we think about it (see Ergativity, Active-Stative language, zero-copula, using nouns as verbs meaning "to be (a) _" or "to act like a _")

the video: is complicated me: laughing at the word "possessees"

Korean is a neat case here; its default word order is SOV, and as you'd expect its adjectives come before nouns and prepositions after-but it's also transparently clear that the adjectives are verb-like (ignoring compound words/phrases where the initial noun acts as an adjective, they really are just verbs that conjugate somewhat differently) and the postpositions are noun-like (acting kinda like possessees).

1:43, a good example for free word orders is Ancient Greek. This was used, for example, to build tension in a sentence.

Important note to everyone who wants to make their own language/conlang. Consider the nouns' gender and semantic classes before creating root words. I didn't and had a really hard time turning things around. 😭

For my language, I’m having the adjectives be prefixes or suffixes instead of different words. And wether or not it is added to the front or back of the word determines wether it is positive or negative.

I'm gonna say that the historical reason for my language's inconsistencies (SOV that has prepositions and adjectives after nouns) is that its prepositions are derived from nouns and its adjectives were derived from verbs. But it's good to know that languages can be weird and that's ok.

Very, very well-explained!

if this was released at the start of quarantine this would have much more views

the person sees the animal: “Kraqam, ri’atok okar.” Kraqam [kraxam]=Animal ri/ro=me ri’atok=person okar=to see

1:40 Classical Sanskrit also had a free word order for language as a whole but different dialects were bound to different word orders and were still mutually intelligible without any difference.

I did it!!!! default word order: SOV noun-adjective noun-postposition possessee-possessor sample sentence: "the person sees an animal" taro goju meno lit. man animal see sample sentence #2: "the person sees a big animal" taro goju petu meno lit. man animal big see

2:33 the first line in Japanese is actually a sentence, not just the noun phrase, in Japanese, the adjectives work like verbs, so in this line its a subject-predicate sentemce. But the second line is on the other hand, its a typical noun phrase like adj + n. The two example are in different situation so I think that's not a good example in your explanation, you can use 暑い天気/変な人、今日は暑い/この人は変だ in the same sentence structure as comparison, that would be better. But still appreciated you make this series, that helps a lot😆

at 2:52 If adjectives were derived from verbs would that sentence be: "The person the animal bigs sees"?

I'm on this stage i think. Language: Chegz! Fegza cha chef afech echack? Agza, Fa chef afech echack. Fegza cha gzecha chef afech efeck? Agza! Chachegz! Chechagz. English: Hello! Do you have some eggs? Yes, I have some eggs. Do you also have some herbs? Yup! Thank you! You're welcome.

3:33 "Trukish"

I never understood head-final versus head-initial! Thanks!

0:20 In my native language "ālu" means potato and "kīma" means minced meat

I spent about an hour and a half puzzling with the random sounds I had come up with and like and trying to turn them into usable pronouns. Took a while, but DAMN I love the way I did it. Has really sad implications for my world and those that use the language. And now I'm calling it for today as my brain is hurting.

Wow. There are so many options for syntax. I like to think of a kind of flow of action in a sentence. It is reminiscent of sentence diagrams. The SVO pattern and the head initial patterns show flow better. So I would like to go with those. The sample sentence works like this. Person the sees animal big the. The subject comes first, because that is where the action starts. Then the verb comes afterwards, because the action flows through it. Having the subject and verb as two words is the bare minimum for constructing a sentence. It may be a good idea to start out writing sentences like this. Here are some examples. Person sees. Dick plays. Jane runs. It is really bare bones, but one has got to start somewhere. It is possible to have one word sentences in English if they are imperative. There is a subject of you that is implied. Here are two examples. Stop. Run. Getting into imperative may be a bit too complicated for starters, so one should postpone that. Some sentences have objects. The object goes last, because that is where the action ends. Person sees animal. There are two kinds of objects direct and indirect. If both appear, than the direct object goes first. It gets the action before the indirect object. Person watches animal for owner. This sentence has watch. It can mean seeing or babysitting something. The animal is what the person watches. So this is the direct object. Doing an action to or for something makes an indirect noun. The person is directly babysitting the animal, and they are doing that to help the owner. The person is not babysitting the owner. So the owner is an indirect object. Then there are words that modify other words. The nouns and verbs are the main vessels which the action flows through. Pronouns replace nouns entirely. Then the modifying words come later, because they lack the flow. The modifying word comes after the noun, so the proximity indicates a connection. Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns. So they go right afterward. This completes the sentence. Person the sees animal big the. Maybe even articles can come afterward. It is really different than what happens in English. Articles are so short and are used so often that they almost loose thier meaning. So they can go in the back, where they are far removed from the action flow. That is why I put the behind big. Both modify animal. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. They get the same rule of going after the word they modify. I added adverbs to the sentence. Person the sees carefully quite animal big very the. Carefully, quite and very are all adverbs. This gets complicated as there is a chain of modifiers. Sees-carefully-quite is a chain. Carefully modifies sees, which is a verb. In turn quite modifies carefully, which is an adverb. Animal-big-very-the is another chain. Big is a pronoun. It modifies animal, which is a noun. Very is an adverb. It modifies big. The is an adjective. It modifies animal. Very is after big. This indicates it modifies big. It doesnt modify the. Wow. This is getting really different from English. In English the sentence would go like this. The person quite carefully sees the very big animal.

I love this series so much, it's so useful! Would you do a series please on writing ConLangs with culture and people/animal names in mind? So many incredible fantasy series have good people names and dragon names and its so difficult especially if you're making a language from scratch

My language, Aeri, is Head-Initial in that the Verb comes before the Object. Everything else (Adjective-Noun, Noun-Postposition, Possessor-Possessee) is Head-Final. Also, KZfaq is yelling at me for Postpositions and Possessees. I guess the English version of youtube was designed to be used by Head-Initial speakers rather than Head-Final speakers. Also, I just want to say thank you for making these videos, they're really helping me with creating Aeri.

2:22 You can also say 她很漂亮 (Ta hen piaoliang) sorry just a little thing I noticed as I speak quite a lot of mandarin

Latin is somewhat like that (1:33). It has a neutral word order, but two or three other permutations are legitimate to change the emphasis of what is said or written. Since Latin uses words inflected according to case, it's easy, at least in principle, to figure out which words are subject, verb, and object.

I'm now making a conlang I'm calling Puranki. (Pronunciations are the same as the IPA symbols.) It has a VSO word order and follows all of the common head-initial traits. "li" means "see," "puranki" means "person," and "ma-a" means "animal." "li puranki ma-a." (The person sees the animal.) This series has been really helpful for me while I'm creating this language! ^^

looks like youve got some inspiration from tamil - aalu also means person here, and maa means great (or sometimes big too). also, only modern spoken tamil has a default word order of SOV (even that is kind of flexible) - ancient and medieval tamil , the tamil we use in formal occasions or to write, has a extremely flexible word order - SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OSV, OVS all are possible. its just that colloquilly we normally use SOV

This video deserves a superlike

Trukish, the language with postpositions.

2:03 then there is Italian where you can put the adjective wherever you want around the name and it still means the same. Actually it sounds a bit different, just like a difference in the tone would sound different. It's pretty strange. Still, the sentence would mean the same in almost all cases. One could tell something similar about the object, verb and subject order thing, but that's a bit more strict

is it possible for a some amount of the speakers to go from sov to an svo and the language Evolves form there?

1:37 modern Iranian Persian has a free word order too! Originally it’s SOV but if you change their positions (which you can) it slightly changes the meaning.

I chose to opt for basically ignoring possession and instead having possession denoted by word order using the verb "to own". I also use VSO order, and verb-like adjectives, so something like "the big man's little dog sees the blue rock" would become; "see (own man big dog little) rock blue" which in English requires at the very least commas where I've added brackets just to get over how jarring it is to see "[verb] [verb]". Oh also my adpositions are postpositions, so the heads thing... I guess I'm kinda head-initial aside from the adpositions, and technically possession doesn't exist as a distinct concept in my conlang so I guess it's native speakers aren't too concerned with ownership but are really concerned with "things" rather than their variation or manner... World building beforehand might have been a good idea but I'm starting to enjoy accidentally limiting the world through the language which exists within it

I came here with some clarity. Watched this, and now I leave more confused then ever 😂

currently trying to make a conlang based on a few already existing languages, that actually derives from said languages (french, german, a few romance languages)

Yoda has a word order of OSV.

Haven't realised it until this moment but a language I speak, Somali, has a semi free word order, in that the subject always comes first but you can choose what comes next, whether it be the verb or the object.

3:00 how would this work for a language in which the adjectives are derived from verbs rather than nouns? And would the adjective come before or after the object? I'm building a VOS language if that makes any difference.

Oh this is insane from a newcomer's perspective (Newcomer here...uh...hi there) and very complex,...but it looks like a lot of fun once you actually start doing it.

I am actually working on a bird-people-language right now, which don't have noses and therefor can't pronounce nasal sounds. This video really helps ^^ Gha-arr Shet Tsha-ak tarr Gaat. (The animal the big thing the person he sees) (the person sees the big animal.)

farsi has quite interesting word order now. it has SOV as a default, (but not only word order) but does all the other like it is SVO

I love the video, it was very helpful, but I have been trying to find evidence for my school research topic , its on linguistics, and i want to to know where you get your evidence from. Is it from Wikipedia alone?

*considers* How do you decide how to derive syntax for more complicated things like subordinate and relative clauses.

not me deciding on open syllables and imidiatly breaking my own rule by adding a consoant at the end of words in plural

Shouldn't the Mandarin at 2:24 be "她很漂亮(She is very beautiful)"? Because I'm Chinese and never have I seen "她漂亮的" in my life.

My conlang uses SVO SOV OVS OSV VSO and VOS (they are all used for different reasons. The last two are only used in literature)

Avīeš. Eideha ynykka ilhniyya Alex! This is my own language, Ulfian, and this is the Ulfian sentence in English. Hi. My name is Alex!

In my conlang, when you say "The man is slicing bread." You will say "The is slicing man the bread." When words are used to describe something in this language, the words will be before the actual noun. The sentence structure is (Subject Checker), Adjective/Verb, Postpostition/Preposition (in informal cases | formal cases will only have Prepostition), Noun/Possessor, Postposition (only in formal cases), Possesse Also I now have a sentence in my conlang, Ecto shvensko Elo ecta Elavid. (Literal meaning: The look he the her. | Meaning: He looks at her.)

Ever since this video I have sometimes yelled out 'Selemu!' in my head in the morning.

1:22 fun fact about turkish is when we use all combinations, it still means the same thing and a person wouldn't find it that weird while talking. But it is still messy and wrong.

Quick question, so my language follows a OSV pattern. Assuming my adpostions are derived from verbs, would my adpostion still come last in the sentence or would it follow the noun it modifies. Ex. (Rak Pe Kan, "Rock Man Sits.") Would this turn into Rak Kan Pe to mean "The man sits on the rock" or would it still keep the original word order? This is my first conlang and everything else has made sense so far up until this point and I have been unable to get past it now for a few days. I know osv is a horrible option for my first conlang but most everything else i've chosen has been a good call lmao

actually tamil is word order flexible - you can order the words however you want and it will still make sense. but mostly that is only used in old tamil literature and modern tamil uses SOV ( mostly)

1:20 isn't there also the V2 option for languages like German that always put verb second in a sentence, no matter where subject and object are?

3 times watching it and finally got everything down :D

Ieno dhúrfië it-valtafangí eghiar. It means "I need to be the king". In this sentence we have to use a subordinate (I need, [to be the king]). It is introduced by "it-". Ieno means I. Dhúrfië means need. Valta means kingdom and fang means a person, so valtafang means a king. The í is a suffix to definite the word. Eghiar is the infinitive of be. So it gives you in english "I need, to-theking be.". Idk if my explanations were understandable, but that's my language ;) PS : the sentence is pronounced [jɛno ðuːɾfje it valtafaŋiː ɛɡçjɑɾ].

You use a CV notation for your open syllable, but what are the other options? How would we indicate if a coda is allowed, or if only some codas are allowed?

specificity is good too, sometimes you need just one word for one sentence

the noun adposition are like we write/create one by one and his meaning/use? (like on and in) and the verb way are actual verbs wich also work as a adposition? ("the book rests the table")?

Yoda speaks English in OSV

6:25 What would be some of these historical deviations? It seems like that would be a lot to know at this stage in the process.

I guess my confusion lies in how much of this stage should be done before I move on to the next one? I built some root words, including ones that are culturally significant to the people for whom I'm trying to sculpt a language, but I don't know how many I need to be able to effectively start building the grammar of the protolanguage. I have, in total, 20 root words made, 16 if you don't count the suffixes I made, two of which denote a person from an animal, and two of which denote adjectives, one noun-like and one verb-like.

It's surprising VOS is so rare, since it feels like a very intuitive structure to me. Like, first I'm going to tell you what kind of action the sentence is about "Eats..." Next I'm going to give you some more detail about this action "Eats pizza..." And finally, I'm going to tell who's doing this "Eats pizza she."

2:23 Mandarin is not correct. 她漂亮的 is not a complete sentence and can mean something like "her beautiful ...(something)". If you want to say "she is beautiful" you need to say 她很漂亮 (ta hen piao liang) which literally means "she very beautiful". Anyways, really appreciate that you used Mandarin as an example and great video~

How would the process be different if my adjectives were derived from verbs?

Not to long ago, i created a script and sound set for a language, and never got further (originally was just going to overlay it over english sounds) Though I think it works perfectly well to begin developing a conlang instead

japanese is technically free word order, with the exception that any sentence must end with a verb (including state of being)

5:21 Mine is: Verb - Object Noun - Adjectives Ambiposition &∨ Circumposition- Noun - Ambiposition &∨ Circumposition Possessee - Possessor The only complicated thing(s) is/are the adpositions

What about inpositions? Would the adpositions actually just be infixes? Or would the affected noun be wrapped around the adposition? I'd assume both would be possible.

This is goddamn confusing. Lmao.

Aah one of the best thing of being bilingual is that if some of this shit doesn't make sense then I can just speak in my first language and see if it makes sense or not. I first read "the person the animal sees" In English and it sounds so confusing, then I just read it in my mother tongue and it isn't as confusing anymore. (My mother tongue uses SVO but there are different distinct dialects of older versions of my language that I've heard of before that uses SOV)

How can you tell between Adjectives and Possessors? e.g "The man's dog vs the man-like dog" for SOV are they not the same? is it dependent on context to differentiate..??? or like English, is there an extra suffix needed ('s) for it?

SOV for the win!

I’m going to Do What I Want thank you

If a language had noun like adjectives and prepositions, which one would come first?

Do you have to distinguish adpositions from verbs? Instead of saying that at/near is an adposition and evolving that from the verb 'to sit' why don't I just make a separate verb that means 'to be at/near' or even just have the verb 'to sit' have multiple meanings?

1:15 This has probably made my trying to learn Hawaiian quite a bit easier

Spanish has free word order, its more common use "SVO" but you can make sentences with all the other types and keep the meaning of the phrase. Example: (The boy play with the ball) El niño juega con la pelota (SVO) El niño con la pelota juega (SOV) Juega el niño con la pelota (VSO) Juega con la pelota el niño (VOS) Con la pelota juega el niño (OVS) Con la pelota el niño juega (OSV) Subject = El niño (The boy) Verb= Juega (Play) Obejct= la pelota (the ball) I dont know whats the name of "con" on gramatics, but it means "With" if you translate it, conjuction? I think

So far I’m just copying the same sentences but just in my language because I don’t know what I’m doing and it’s best I don’t make my own sentences just yet. Also: what do u do for adpositions based off nouns

How does Latin have adjective before and after nouns? And mandarin has both prepositions and postpositions

1:25 in most cases, Russian doesn't actually distinguish between SOV and SVO. 'Ya tibya lublyu' (lit. I you love) and 'Ya lublyu tibya' (lit. I love you) mean the same thing. also please excuse my transliteration here I've always had problems with Russian transliteration. (also sidetone but most transliterations dont distinguish between 'e' which sort of sounds like 'ie or ye' and 'э' which sounds like the 'e' in enter and it always annoys the heck out of me.)

Im having such a hard time understanding adpositions and how to incorporate it into a conlang. (I use postpositions, that come from verbs, after the noun if that helps).