FREE WORD ORDER in OA | ft Biblaridion

[@Alice-gr1kb]

11:19 ASL does this! It’s word order is Time-Topic-Comment-Question, like “TOMMOROW STORE YOU GO WHEN?” Where STORE is the topic. Question auxiliaries can be placed in the middle of a sentence for rhetorical questions, like in a sentence “you’re going to the store for cheese?” “STORE YOU GO WHY? CHEESE WANT?”

[@_some3_917]

yoda cheese want, reverse it is not

[@VerrouSuo]

Emeraldstar_14 my first conlang Taiçu did something similar, but it was phrased like: “REQUEST (unknown quantity time) you (transit) to STORE (quantity time); PURPOSE = CHEESE (unkown)”. Or, you could also phrase it: REQUEST (unknown quantity time) you (transit with purpose: CHEESE property unknown) to STORE (quantity time)”. Both ask when cheese will be purchased; they’re interchangeable, but one comes of more vague. The first asks if cheese is the purpose, the other insists that the purpose could be cheese, and asks for verification. Taiçu was cool, I should keep promoting it. Hype phonology and orthography too; just the syntax was a bit awkward. By “a bit” I mean really awkward. Well, it was never meant to be naturalistic in the first place; It’s basically a spoken object-based logic system.

[@br2485]

@Haley Halcyon - Gaming Channel Dunno anything about ASL grammar, but it's descended from French Sign. So there's not much connecting it to English in the first place.

[@raelur1651]

I was about to say "what an idiotic order" when it hit me that Romanian is capable of similar things. Even the last part, which can be written both "Cheese want? "(Brânză vrei?) and "Want cheese?" (Vrei brânză?) based on context.

[@disembodiednarrator]

Tfw you discover sign language isn’t just a relex

[@flameshade7601]

As a German speaker I have to point out that we wouldn't say "Ich GEHE mit dem Auto in die Stadt" but "Ich FAHRE mit dem Auto in die Stadt". "fahren" is German for "drive". We tend to use that for denoting "traveling by vehicle" instead of using the general "go" like in English.

[@codenamelambda]

But his pronounciation is eerily accurate

[@kasane1337]

@@codenamelambda Yeah, his pronounciation is *really* good.

[@MrRyanholder]

You seem pretty fahr out dude. I'll go now. But seriously I'll leave.

[@danieldoel6216]

"in" is a dative preposition so shouldn't it be "in der Stadt"

[@codenamelambda]

@@danieldoel6216 depends on what you want to say: "ich fahre in der Stadt" = "I'm driving in the city" "ich fahre in die Stadt" = "I'm driving to the city" I can't tell you why exactly this is the case though, I mostly just have intuition there, being a native speaker.

[@SolarLingua]

7:37 German here: Another feature in German is that we take "gehen" very literally. You don't "go" by car, you "drive". So the correct sentence would be: "Ich fahre morgen mit dem Auto in die Stadt." :)

[@-arche-7926]

"...adult humans, and lightning." "Haha, lol! That is delightful!" *compleately serious* "Yes. Yes, it is."

[@macaroon_nuggets8008]

you are the 69th comment.

[@pewp_tickalar]

Biblaridion's love for Navajo is endearing

[@drsuqi]

Artifexian: [sæŋwɪt͡ʃ] jan miseli: [sæŋmæn] Explanation. Now.

[@lipamanka]

ummmmmm it sounds cool?

[@lipamanka]

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 I personally say [sæɪmwɪtʃ͡]

[@eskipotato]

@@wilhelmseleorningcniht9410 American here who says [sẽə̯̃n.dwɪtʃ]

[@zozzy4630]

Song + hangman = sangman. Either that or a very, very, verrry subtle shout-out; knowing jan Misali though, either way is equally likely lol. (And to be fair, Mitch and I have almost the exact same dialectal pronunciation of "hangman," with a higher first vowel: /heŋmæn/.)

[@humanmusic6409]

I'm pretty sure I say [sẽə̯̃w̃ɪ̃t͡ʃ].

[@osotanuki3359]

I thought the title was "free world order in oa" like a transcription of some political literature

[@dangerdawgz6072]

lmao

[@radioactiveseaotter]

lmoa

[@T.h.e.T.i.n.o]

oaml

[@darknessdescending6695]

omal

[@harrycook9041]

Did Bib introduce himself with Edun? Unfortunately I don't speak it!

[@mrelephant2283]

@Some Kind of Master Yeah, speaking Edun seems like absolutely cursed

[@thejulycutout4037]

Love it when my favorite KZbinrs have a crossover episode!

[@snoogy5277]

And you get two crossovers (=

[@droscow]

12:15 jan Misali: Why the heck would people start saying /ji/?

[@k.umquat8604]

For the memes

[@atamija]

ok but what tempted you to include the bilabial thrill, was it the devil himself?

[@KyrieFortune]

The fact that it's an easy phonem

[@Conankun66YT]

@@KyrieFortune its easiness does not erase its obscene ugliness. one of the ugliest sounds in the entirety of the IPA (together with the bilabial click)

[@dzetaredfang7352]

Conankun66 I mean that’s your opinion. It’s a highly subjective thing. For instance I disagree with you, especially in regards to the bilabial click, because I subjectively find them to sound just fine.

[@NathanTAK]

Conankun66 I dunno, that seems kinda racist to me

[@JustAnthon]

I like the bilabial trill, it has a better sound than /br/ or anything like it

[@yetetheyoutubewatcher1910]

Why did you not say "links in the duu bee doo"?... Kinda sad tho...

[@danieldoel6216]

IKR

[@FaoladhTV]

I believe that there should be a liquid in that second syllable: blee.

[@sophiejones7727]

Other people have started saying it. It's not cool anymore. Gotta keep ahead of the curve :)

[@mimikal7548]

I only noticed that my native language, Polish, implies definitiveness by where the noun is in the clause when you said that Russian does this. Thank you for enlightening me once again! In Polish, definite nouns come before the verb while indefinite (newly introduced) nouns come after the verb. This is often obscured because since Polish agrees verbs with the subject, definite subjects are usually missed out and can be inferred. For example, when talking about your dog, you would say "lubi jeść kości" [lit. "likes (3rd person singular) to eat bones"] because the listener knows that you are talking about your dog. However, the definitiveness implication is evident in some cases, for example: The default word order is SVO so without any context you would say "Jan wszedł do pokoju" ["John went into room (locative)"] However, if you are currently talking about the room, like describing it, you would say "Do pokoju wszedł Jan" ["Into the room (locative) went John"], showing that John is a newly introduced noun. It would be OK but slightly confusing to put it the other way round because it would seem like going off topic. And when John is the topic of the conversation (which happens more often), it is the room that needs to be introduced so is put at the end, even if it were the subject of the verb: "Jana zaskoczył pokój" [lit. "John (accusative) surprised room (nominative)", fully translated: "A room surprised John" or "John was surprised by a room"]. If "pokój" [room] came before the verb, it would be translated as definitive: "The room surprised John".

[@FoilHatGuy]

About Russian: There are no strict word order, it can be said both "Пошел Иван в лес"[went Ivan to the forest] and "Иван пошел в лес"[Ivan went to the forest], it will both mean "Ivan went to the forest", bit the first one is usually common while narrations or tales. Also it can vary if we need to state that Verb and object are more important than a subject: "собаку вылечил доктор"[lit. The dog(acc.) healed the doctor(nom.)] and "Доктор вылечил собаку"[doctor healed the dog], that's similar to Polish and other Slavic languages. The object is in non-nominative cases depending on the relations to the verb with according ending while subject is mostly in nominative. However, in most sentences SVO is most common, despite the possibility of variations. (like was it done using something or you directly interacted with something) EDIT: watched till the end, it's almost what was decribed in the video The numerals-noun order affects whether we want to state definite number or appreoximate: "пять яблок"[five apples] - there were exactly five apples "яблок пять"[apples five] - i don't know exactly but it feels like there were around five apples

[@aloysiuskurnia7643]

On a barely related note, shout out to Polish for retaining its complex case system!

[@Djefer69]

First time I heard about those "BAGS adjectives" in French ...

[@Sovairu]

Yeah, SAM BAGS: seul, autre, même, beauty, age, goodness, size. Those adjectives are always supposed to precede the noun. Though, there are also some adjectives which can come on either side of the noun, but have a more literal meaning after the noun, and a more metaphorical meaning before it, like ancien.

[@nicolasglemot6760]

Native french speaker and same...

[@Sovairu]

@@nicolasglemot6760 Well, my understanding is that acronyms like SAM BAGS and DR. and MRS. P. VANDERTRAMP are usually teaching tools for foreign learners, and even then, only some classes will use them.

[@peterparker8462]

@@Sovairu yep, just to try to reduce our suffering a bit😉

[@pierreabbat6157]

@@Sovairu ma propre chemise propre

[@alexishansen1333]

Thanks Artifexian and also Biblaridion for this massively interesting video, I am developing a language family of Bantu conlangs and you two gave me a great idea on how to make them slightly different from one another. Many thanks to you both for the inspiration!

[@sophiusdynami3401]

I just realized my mother tongue is a free association language!

[@matheussandbakk9959]

While I understand very little of what you say, it's still very entertaining

[@Yotanido]

I had no idea the Japanese word for "goat" is 山羊. That is hilarious!

[@ppenmudera4687]

Gotta love the mountain sheep

[@TaiFerret]

I thought it was yagi.

[@Sam-cs6hu]

It stays true in Chinese.

[@さゆぬ-x7i]

@@TaiFerret Written 山羊, read yagi. This kind of kanji reading is called 熟字訓.

[@prezentoappr1171]

​@@さゆぬ-x7i煙草moment vs 空耳and手紙

[@edmund-osborne]

oa really felt like it was turning into a kitchen sink conlang the longer this video went on.

[@stekeln]

3:05 Is this what the scandinavian languages did? En katt ("A cat"), Ett hus ("A house") Katten ("The cat"), Huset ("The house") Notice how the indefinite basically just moves to the end in the definite case.

[@BlackM3sh]

It's actually «et hus - huset» in Danish and Norwegian. Though sadly for Norwegian feminine nouns it's «ei jente - jenta» which kinda seems to break the pattern.

[@Saturinus]

Yes to what the video said, no to your question. The suffixes -en, -et come from the demonstratives den, det.

[@stekeln]

@@BlackM3sh Considering what @Saturinus said about the demonstratives, what demonstrative is used before Norwegian ”jente”? In Swedish it would be ”den” as in ”en jänta - jäntan - den jäntan - den jänta som ...”. All traditionally feminine nouns in Swedish use neuter ”den”.

[@BlackM3sh]

​@@stekeln Same in Norwegian expect «den» is masculine, not neuter. Den gutten - That boy Den jenta - That girl Det huset - That house

[@sleepiestgf]

The only conlang I've made that got far enough for me to make grammar was a topic prominent language and it was messy as hell

[@oz_jones]

But it was YOUR mess. And now you know a bit more, so next time it will be better and/or easier.

[@Sovairu]

@M Green You don't necessarily need to scrap it entirely. You can keep it alive in a simple state as a test language, just to see how the obviative system works for you, and then refine it for a different conlang. Some conlangers do that all the time; make a tiny test language to experiment with a feature, and then use that knowledge in a different, more complete conlang.

[@Sovairu]

@M Green Fair enough.

[@tompatterson1548]

probs better than my default of "whichever matters more" for adjectives!

[@incoherentproductions992]

I seriously doubt I've ever been this early for a non-premiere video.

[@КинТацу]

About the russian example of word order conveying definiteness. While it's true (and wow, i never thought of it as a russian native speaker, that's pretty cool!) it is ALSO about the topic, especially in the first sentence. Like, yes, it's THE boy, but if this is a sentence from a novel, for example, it's also probably the boy whom the last several sentences were about, hence - the topic. And just like in basque, if you have a conversation about bones in russian, you can actually say "Кости едят собаки" ("Bones eat dogs") - as for the bones, dogs eat them. Those two things probably overlap a lot though, since the topic usually is the definite information, and other nouns could very well be the newly introduced concepts - just like in that example.

[@obviativ123]

I understand that free word order is very fascinating for English speakers, and when I learnt Latin I liked it, but now I like personally grammatical word order because extra markers are more inefficient. It's more useful to mark topic and focus if necessary.

[@SchmulKrieger]

Usually they cannot be inefficient, because changing the word order actually almost means to nuance a statement, those versions have different meaning slightly.

[@seandarling1438]

At the beginning when you said 'Bib'to refer to Biblaridion I thought you said 'babe' I'm crying

[@SchmulKrieger]

Love the fact that my first mother tongue is mentioned that often and obviously apply for a lot of features mentioned here - German.

[@WadelDee]

"Ich gehe morgen mit dem Auto in die Stadt" sounds weird in German. They prefer to say "Ich fahre morgen mit dem Auto in die Stadt" which means "Tomorrow, I drive by car to the city". The English verb "to go" can mean many things but the German verb "gehen" strictly means to walk. If you want an equivalent you should try "sich begeben" which means "to move". The sentence would then be: "Ich begebe mich morgen mit dem Auto in die Stadt". But that's very formal!

[@SchmulKrieger]

gehen also means to function.

[@NikolajLepka]

I know this has already been addressed, but: sangwidge

[@talideon]

Labiovelars and reanalysis! [sænd.wɪt͡ʃ] > [sæn.gwɪt͡ʃ] > [sæŋ.wɪt͡ʃ].

[@reinatheomni-panda7028]

Tickled to see a few of my recent favorite languages on display as examples. 'Specially Lakhota, since it doesn't get enough attention in my opinion. Been one of my faves recently. Quick note, as an aside about that bit about Focus is that Focus can also kind of directly interface with case grammar and be a kind of underspecified case of its own. That might sound confusing, but I'll show you what I mean: In Tagalog, NP arguments of a verb are marked with either "ang" or "ng" (pronounce like /naŋ/), which are called the "direct" and "indirect" respectively. By themselves they don't tell you what the role of their NPs are in a sentence, though; they need to get that information from the verb itself. So for the verb root "kain" (eat), you can put into the Actor-Focus (read also, Subject-Focus) or the Object-Focus form, and that form tells you what the Direct (the one with "ang") is marking, with the Indirect filling the other one. Kumain ang kuneho ng cake. = The rabbit(Focus) ate cake. Kinain ng kuneho ang cake. = The rabbit ate cake(Focus). These are all in the same order, but there is another order you can put these into where the Direct gets fronted and followed by a particle "ay". Ang kuneho ay kumain ng cake. Ang cake ay kinain ng kuneho. Now, the exact use of these I don't fully understand yet, and a native Tagalog speaker can correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it is used kind of for emphasis and also to be more or less specific about what you're talking about. Kumain ako (I ate) doesn't need a direct object to be a complete sentence but it could have one. Kinain ko (I ate...) on the other hand usually DOES need a direct object to be a complete sentence. Again, native Tagalog speakers, correct me if I got anything wrong here, and I know there's a whole lot more to it than that.. I think your language is pretty cool and wanna learn more. May this serve as good inspiration to the conlangers out there. :)

[@markschultz2897]

8:13 In the literal translation it says "morning" instead of "tomorrow".

[@WatermelonEnthusiast9]

My language can be pre or post-positional with adjectives and sov and osv are both allowed You can actually drop the object, verb and subject markers if you are always speaking in that order and not changing He(sub marker) she(obj marker) loves(ver marker) and she(obj marker) he(sub marker) loves(ver marker) are both accepted

[@aycc-nbh7289]

3:05 Isn’t this exactly what Russian does? They lack words for “a” and “the”, so they either attach suffixes to indicate the article or use “one” and “this” for definite articles, I guess depending on the dialect.

[@jh3q]

No, I don’t think that Russian use words один (1) and это (this) like articles, cuz articles must be used every time when noun appears, but Russian allows nouns be without words like один or это. I can agree that word это can be some sort of “article”: эта машина - the car (but correct translation is “this car”). But word один is NEVER used like “article”. For me, native Russian speaker, articles are one of the hardest parts of English, cuz Russian haven’t them and I can’t understand why you need them. Articles for me are like evidentiality for Indo-European speakers I hope I didn’t make many mistakes)

[@glibberynus1337]

Where do you do research for your conlang videos? I think your videos always have really good research, but when I try to find stuff about word order, phonetic inventories etc., I find almost nothing relevant, especially for more exotic languages. Could you do us, as other people probably also have problems with this, a favor and link up more of your sources, or even tell us in a video? Thanks a lot!

[@gabelevin820]

2:20 this also occurs in Hebrew: pa'am = time achat = one pa'am achat = once shta'im = two pil'pel = pepper shta'im pil'pelim = two peppers

[@Liggliluff]

(3:40) Swedish (and other Scandinavian languages) have the definite article as a suffix, being -n or -t (with a vowel inserted when complicated consonant clusters would occur). So "Hoa ngo" could evolve into "Hoang" as a definite inflection?

[@peterparker8462]

I love the system that they use! It's just so neat and tidy (Danish "speaker" here!)

[@joeradford1055]

Although this is far outside your heavily scientific style, I would quite enjoy seeing you design a magic system.

[@GoofballPaul]

2:00 in the basque sentence, shouldn’t it be “child this see I”? Since the person carrying out the action is implied by dut, not ikusten.

[@SotraEngine4]

Each of there little things deserves its own video

[@MrRhombus]

Can you do colours for oa?

[@centoe5537]

What's your personal favorite consonant and vowel? Mine are /q/ and /y/

[@beetletoes8940]

I'm always a fan of dental fricatives and /a/

[@wos_liwet]

/ʙ/ and /ɤ/ 🤤🤤

[@sineNonymus]

Mine are [r] and [o̞]

[@sneakyturtle5425]

Lateral click [upside down e]

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

mine are /ɕ/ and /ø/

[@nia5032]

/ʙ , ʙ̥/ are easy to pronounce. my only problem with it is that speakers may go overkill with it, essentially entertaining themselves rather than communicating

[@djxt3385]

Can you make a Conlanging video about interrogatives and yes/no questions? Or about questions in general... I’m having trouble forming them in my Conlang :(

[@tldoesntlikebread]

SO idk if this language is gonna be spoken any faster. I hope when it's done we can hear a proper expressive sentence from it. during that -n suffix in that Oa sentence, if I tried to speak faster than the speaking pace in this video, I personally found it sorta tongue-twisty when trying to speak with two different nasals (n and ng) right next to each other in Zalolon ngo (exception being mn). Maybe that's just me.

[@kadenvanciel9335]

I wonder if the Oa glyphs are still the same as when they were made.

[@hanngallifrey8314]

I don't know why, but when you speak irish it sounds to my ear like you're speaking american accented english, except I'm not listening close enough to understand the words. this was very fascinating and fun to realize what a mess english really is as you construct something new that's actually more structured than it is!

[@junolee8826]

i read this title (sideways, to be fair, and having just woken up) as "free wood order in oa". i could only wonder why you were buying lumber and then not paying for it in your conlang.

[@the_linguist_ll]

VSO / VOS depending on topic proninence is my go-to.

[@spogob2228]

4:12 read the the first sentence again to see the second “the”

[@tophat665]

Brilliant. Y'all are like the conlang version of Lennon an Macartney. Aside: have you ever considered taking a short clip of each of the vids you appear in and stringing them together to show your change over time? It strikes me more than you, as I may watch two of your vids back to back when you created them years apart .

[@IbrahimAli-tf4ej]

Actually, in Polish, slowly appearing indefinite article comes from some (np. jakiś facet do ciebie dzwonił - some guy just called you), and it starts to be a bit common, so it isn't always from one.

[@jantala3243]

What software do you use for conlanging?

[@sineNonymus]

His mind

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

@@sineNonymus liar

[@adrianroed2178]

PowerPoint can do all they show

[@ElGringoCastellano]

Do you use any software for conlanging?

[@sineNonymus]

His mind

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

@@sineNonymus liar

[@sineNonymus]

@@yeetyeet-jb6nc seriously

[@yangkong7935]

Excel, i guess, for his spreadsheets.

[@centoe5537]

Father you back

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

many of these features remind me of some languages I know a thing or two about. indefinite articles preceding the noun and definite coming after is like old Norse ("ein skipr" one/a boat vs "skipinn" the boat). adjectives coming after nouns despite an SOV word order is a lot like ancient Gaulish, which through its history went from being more SOV to SVO, though its word order was pretty free until the last couple centuries of its existence ("sceiton rodon" red shield)

[@SchmulKrieger]

How is it ›skipr‹? Does neuter nouns get the -r prefix for nominatives?

[@deadmanomegagaming4061]

This was very useful as I've been having trouble with the world order of my conlang titaneyan

[@sharksuperiority9736]

So if a languages creators and users have access to coloured mediums would it make sense so Mark a words importance and use was marked by colour? So as an example, As for the goat, it is eating a sandwich. The goat would be red, and the sandwich would be blue, then adjectives would be marked with green. So as for the goat, it is eating a tasty sandwhich, well, you get it

[@Sovairu]

That would simply be an aesthetic decision after the fact for writing. People don't actually speak in colors, so it makes no sense to rely solely on colors to indicate the syntactic or discourse relationships of the words in a sentence. Now, if you have the inks or paints to fancy up a written document, then by all means, color the words accordingly, but they will also have spoken and written differences in the grammar.

[@JayFolipurba]

My adjective is inside my noun... I'm figuring it out as I go along. I'm now looking for inspiration as to where my verb should go

[@ericsmith1517]

free word order would be great for poems and rhymes

[@Sovairu]

Well, poetry and song will typically move the word order around and play with the grammar as it sees fit, since it's just art with words, but, yes, a free word order in normal, everyday speech does make poetry a little easier.

[@oiervitoria9821]

It feels so strange to actually think of this orders so naturally, other Basque speakers will agree.

[@محمدأحمد-ت5ر3ف]

Arabic does not use 1 & 2 as numerals to count a noun, If so, they're treated as adjectives, that's why they come after nouns, in most - or all of the - Arabic dialects

[@WadelDee]

Last time, you said "big" is "ɹa". Now, it's "ɹo".

[@anitaheubel3228]

in my language the word order is determined by 1) what one wishes to say; and 2) to reduce the number of words used. My language is flexible in this respect. My main maxim is “The more complex the language, the less Empathic the society”. I hold this maxim dearly to my heart, however my language does have 26 single consonants, 9 pure vowels, and numerous diphthongs and tripthongs as required. It is a Functional, Conceptual, Logical and Associative language, and tho it is very flexible, it does have Detail in order to get the message across. For example: welcome = hai’ait farewell = hai’tai The only difference is the ‘ait’ and ‘tai’. Welcome indicates no further motion so the consonant stops further vowel activity. Farewell send the person of their way so the vowels continue to be sounded longer than the consonant. Logic. One aspect of logic anyway. ‘hai’ is breathy and pleasant. ‘h’ denotes breath and therefore Life. When ‘ai’ is sounded, automatically the mouth and face forms into a smile…….you see the picture?

[@ondrikb]

That sounds very interesting indeed! Have you published a reference grammar of your language somewhere? I'd love to read it.

[@anitaheubel3228]

@@ondrikb No. I don’t know how to do this and anyway no one has shown any interest. Thus I have it at home in a box waiting to be thrown away when I die. Still, it is a personal achievement so I don’t worry about that. But to give an idea of how it works, take the words / concepts of ‘welcome’ and ‘farewell’. In English there is no similarity in spelling and sounding tho there is certainly a relationship between meanings. In my language the words themselves are related: Welcome = hai’ait where the consonant ‘t’ stops any further action of the vowel ‘ai’, meaning ‘good / well arrived’ Farewell = hai’tai where the active vowel ‘ai’ is allowed to continue on its way, so to speak. I = u Personal = th male = y female = w therefore I = u; you = thu; he = yu; she = wu……..etc possessive case = nun, un, nu, unu; thus his = yun; her / hers = wun……..etc Does this explain some of it? As ‘th’ denotes the ‘personal’, it also means ‘selfhood’ so that: himself = yuth his = yun herself = wuth myself = uth ……..

[@jesterglee1319]

Brilliant!!

[@cdshop1301]

The Topic-Focus distinction is wrongly explained, because it's the Focus that is the emphasized part of the sentence. The Topic being highlighted in red suggests that it's more "important" than the Focus in Topic-Prominent languages, when it can actually be the opposite. The Basque example from Wikipedia is also wrong, because the 2nd sentences means "it is DOGS who eat the bones", emphasis on the dogs as the focus. In topic-comment structures, the topic is old news, and the focus/comment is new information being added onto it. In Japanese, which explicitly marks the topic, the topic is often dropped entirely, being obvious from context.

[@cboneperlstone9661]

15:25 Is that like in English how you should say You and I/Me rather than the informal Me and You? I always assumed it was for politeness, but now it makes even more sense.

[@LucyRoseLuna]

damn, your german pronunciation is impressively good greetings from germany

[@napoleonbonaparte1472]

The words order of my conlang is actually crazy 😂, there are lots of variations and particolarities

[@xooxu]

I think english does do topic first with the syntax of "Bones: dogs eat them," or "The sandwich: the goat ate it." Or probably more casually "Bones. Dogs eat them." I'm not sure if that's a true topic-first syntax, since we still need to add a pronoun for it to make sense in english, but I'm thinking of so many news anchors announcing the main topic of a segment. "Bones. Do dogs eat them? We'll take a look tonight at 5..."

[@Sovairu]

That is equivalent to a topic prominent sentence, but it is VERY marked. English speakers don't typically converse that way, so English is still not a topic prominent language.

[@Tolgalafci]

In Turkish, you can say; Ben çantayı aldım Ben aldım çantayı Çantayı aldım ben Çantayı ben aldım Aldım ben çantayı Aldım çantayı ben And they all mean:I grabbed the bag.

[@Myzelfa]

How is it that you say "sandwich" in German but not English?

[@aro4cinglife]

16:39 I thought you were gonna say "in the dooblydoo"

[@petroglyph888mcgregor2]

At 16:19, impressive phoneme there. Edgar, sir, I thought you weren't able to trill an "r". What was that then, if not a trilled "r"? If that's really /B/, you could've fooled me. I listened several times, and that's /rr/, not /B/, unless I'm crazy.

[@petroglyph888mcgregor2]

@Kürious For a uvular R, the point of friction is strictly near the uvula. I'm hearing tongue movement at the roof of the mouth. That's what I hear, anyway

[@Vininn126]

I am learning Irish and this confounding language is a beast. Why did you say /kuiɟ/ and not /xuiɟ/ in the Irish example?

[@talideon]

I assuming you're referring to 'chuaigh', the past tense of 'téigh'. If that's the case, it's because in Old Irish, the past tense was marked with a particle/clitic, 'do', which triggered lenition (i.e., essentially the deletion of fricatives and the softening of stops to fricatives; consider intervocalic stops in Spanish: same basic process). It still hangs around in front of verbs that start with vowels, but was lost in front of those starting with consonants, with the only remnant being the the lenition it triggered, which is why 'chuaigh' starts with a 'ch' (pronounced [x] or [ç], depending on whether it's velarised or palatalised) and not a 'c' (pronounced [k] or [c], depending on the same). All past tense verbs starting with a consonant are lenited. Verbs in Irish are dead simple though: hardly any irregular verbs, just a few quirks based around phonological considerations, and it's only the likes of the imperfect and conditional that have anything that really requires a bit of learning. The real funkiness in the verbal system has to do with verbal nouns, as they might _look_ like participles and gerunds, but they're _very_ much not. You'll probably be banging your head off the wall trying to understand something related to them, but every bit of confusion you'll have will be down to you forgetting that they're really just nouns.

[@Sovairu]

@@talideon It's at 7:47. Vininn126 apparently heard the word "chuid" in that sentence being pronounced as /kuiɟ/ INSTEAD OF /xuiɟ/, even though it is clearly written with a lenited consonant . That's what they were asking about. They were NOT, it seems, asking about lenition in general.

[@talideon]

@@Sovairu Ok, that's simpler: he mispronounced 'chuid'. It's meant to be lenited, but there's no ambiguity in this case, so no biggie.

[@talideon]

Also, a better transcription would be /kɪdʲ/. The /k/ is realised as [kʷ] and there's no /u/; the /dʲ/ isn't a [ɟ] (that's how /gʲ/ ends up sounding), though you sometimes get people pronouncing it as [d͡ʒ]. I was confused because /xuiɟ/ is one of the ways people pronounce 'chuaigh'. My bad.

[@Vininn126]

This thread is helpful and yes, I was asking about the mispronunciation of ch, but also a palatalized d makes more sense. Cheers

[@GlaceonStudios]

I feel like if you put the object first, it could be interpreted as a passive sentence. "The goat ate the sandwich" vs. "The sandwich was eaten by the goat."

[@the_linguist_ll]

That's how it would work in English, but not in languages with free word order

[@anubia-bastet8825]

I have a question regarding multiple verbs in a free word order sentence. The basic structure is topic-subject/object-verb. There is a suffix marking the subject. My problem is when multiple verbs appear along with a direct object, for example take the SVO sentence "The bat fell and hit Bob" Using my topic-based structure with the bat as the topic it would be "The bat-a Bob, fell and hit" My frustration comes from the two verbs. Even with a clear subject marker it still feels as though one could not understand how the verbs play out in the sentence and whether the direct object is also doing something. It could be interpreted as "the bat hit Bob who fell" which is not what I want. Could someone help me figure this out?

[@blueastronaut4944]

Hmm, in Russian we haven't such a problem because all verbs have specific affixes which link theirs verbs with needed noun. Like bat-a on the Bob fell-a and hit-a. But this brilliant system sometimes crashing, when both nouns have one type of affixes. Bob (he) has male-type affixes, bat (she) has female-type affixes so it works, but cat (he) has also male-type affixes. Sooo when the cat fells on the Bob and hits him, this unregular word order can be confusing. Oh, fan-fact. Bat in Russian literally sounds like "flying mouse".

[@renerpho]

7:34 (German native speaker here) What's that supposed to mean? Do you have a toy car that you plan to carry to the city in your pocket? That sentence could mean quite a few things, all of which are strange. It can, however, not mean that you go to the city by car. That would be "ich fahre morgen mit dem Auto in die Stadt". :-)

[@angeldude101]

[11:00] So THAT's what that means! I so often hear "watashi wa" in anime and I knew that "watashi" was a form of "I," but I had no idea what the "wa" meant. Now I know that it's a topic marker. Thank you, very much for that bit of information.

[@NoLongerBreathedIn]

Arabic's not the only language that puts numbers before the noun except one. Hebrew does it too.

[@kadenvanciel9335]

What do those Edun glyphs translate to?

[@Dragrath1]

Have you ever looked into the calls of Carolina Chickadees? They are interesting as they have the most complex calls of the Tit(Paridae) a family of song birds the only nonhuman animals with documented compositional syntax and grammar. I'm not super aware of linguistics but it might be interesting to try and get a nonhuman animal as an independent comparison for fantasy species. Their biological ability to make two different sounds at once could lead to interesting results

[@WatermelonEnthusiast9]

My language named Feipģözü the word order is SOV or OSV, with Object and Subject markers so you know She loves him, not he loves her

[@Namse21]

3:43 what is the difference between possesives and genetives???

[@FieldLing639]

The genitive is broad and just shows that the noun in the genitive case is modifying the head noun in some way, and can mean all kinds of things. It just happens that possession is a common use for that.

[@WadelDee]

The goat eats the sandwich. The sandwich is eaten by the goat. Pretty easy to translate into English, if you ask me!

[@squidheadss7105]

>bib says hello in edun

[@VulcanTrekkie45]

When I think free word order, I think Latin. And one of the few things I know in Latin is "Carthago delenda est." How would you say that in Oa?

[@braxybby]

At 4:30 does the adverb have to?

[@declup]

Are there any common prosodic tendencies among nonconfigurational languages?

[@kadenvanciel9335]

What’s with all the goat references in your Oa videos lately?

[@tompatterson1548]

would it be incorrect to say that english passive voice is a form of topic promenance?

[@Sennahoj_DE_RLP]

The German rule is just the predicate Is at the second position

[@cadr003]

Still kinda confused about the difference between topic vs focus.

[@JoelFeila]

it is hard for English example two doctors are talking about a tumor. the first time it is mentioned it will be described, then after that theycan call it the tumor. using the this way marks it as older information, aka the topic. this why topic prominent language rarely use articles. but to can also result in double subjects. the tree (topic), leaves (subject) are green. see that sentence it looks like two subjects.

[@xavierreichel8254]

The topic is what the conversation is about, the focus is what the sentence tells you about the topic. If we were having a discussion about my friend John, and all the crazy stuff he gets up to, he's the _topic_ of conversation. If I say something like, "John did *this* last week," then whatever John did is the _focus_ - that's the new information the sentence is providing _about_ the topic.

[@kadenvanciel9335]

The final video we have of Oa so far. I wonder if the phonology could be evolved...

[@fern8606]

in this conlang could you do something like combine animate and ordinal numberings such as Ngaʔoalo hoa tam to mean the 2nd goat, in a group of 3? i might have that wrong i dont really understand a lot of the words here

[@uhcantbesayingmyname5609]

I have all word orders without case-marking, verb agreement or any default order.

[@trickvro]

Now I'm hungry for a sangwidge.

[@declup]

Are there any standard classifications of possible nonconfigurational languages? For example, can nonconfigurationality be achieved with either head marking or dependent marking? With either verb marking or noun marking? Are there any statistical commonalities among nonconfigurational languages? Do most have noun-verb agreement or head-dependent agreement? Do most have elaborate systems of nominal gender? Do any mark both heads and dependents? Are there any languages with _partial_ nonconfigurationality?

[@Sovairu]

Uh, I'll phrase it this way: a language is more likely to be nonconfigurational, if it has a high degree of argument marking and agreement patterns; a language is more likely to have a strict word order, if there is very little morphology for argument marking and agreement. As far as specific trends for each of your other questions, I'm not sure if any of those are more or less likely to result in nonconfiruationality. I mean, Ancient Greek was very much nonconfigurational and very much dependent marking, with its agreement patterns for case, number, and gender on nouns and their constituents. However, Classical Nahuatl was apparently also nonconfigurational, but was very much head marking, mostly on the verb. As long as there is some way to determine the syntax of any one phrase in a clause as well as the clause as a whole, WITHOUT relying only on word order, then the language is more likely to become nonconfigurational. However, it is only MORE LIKELY to happen; it's not like a set destiny.

[@vigilantsycamore8750]

So if my first language (Polish) stopped being a self-respecting Slavic language and suddenly developed articles, they'd be something like jed (pronounced "yed") - indefinite, from "jeden" tyn (pronounced "tin") - definite, from "ten" ?

[@Sovairu]

Maaaybe. They could simplify as you've demonstrated, or, they could keep any and all gender, number, and case agreement, or there may be a bit of both. The language would probably keep "jeden" as the numeral, as well, but may find a way to replace "ten (I assume that it is a demonstrative of some kind)." This is literally how the Romance languages developed their indefinite and definite articles.

[@kadenvanciel9335]

How do I know whether or not Jan has seen this video?

[@jenniferdavis907]

What about when you have multiple objects for ditransitive (and tritransitive?) verbs. How do you decide the order of those elements?

[@Sovairu]

What on earth would a tritransitive verb be? Anyway, in ditransitive verbs, at least, the recipient can be moved around just like any other argument in this video. So, like, put them first if they are focused, or keep them closer to the other animate arguments, or whatnot like that. You could also treat the recipient as the direct object, and the theme as an oblique argument. English has some different word orders based on adpositions used or verbs used: I gave a book to him, I gave him a book, I endowed him with a book.

[@tompatterson1548]

what if word order marked tense?

[@ksavierkrajewski716]

I love your videos