How to Make a Language - Part 8: Writing Systems

In this final episode, we discuss how to create a conlang's writing system, from choosing an instrument and medium for the script to evolving the modern system from a proto-script.
For further viewing, I cannot recommend Thoth's Pill highly enough; one of the best overviews of the history of writing on the internet: • Thoth's Pill - an Anim...
Music by Fearofdark: fearofdark.ban...

[@violet_broregarde]

I didn't realize writing had only been independently developed 5 times. That's crazy.

[@magiv4205]

Yeah, humanity is very inventive but humans are lazy. If there's something we can borrow instead of having to invent ourselves, then we'll always go for that. The wheel for example has also only been invented a few seperate times, and spread through trade and contact.

[@ineednochannelyoutube5384]

Significant populations very rarely lived in isolation, and cultural osmosis took care of the rest. I do wonder if runic scripts evolved from somethingnor are native to present day Russia though.

[@alicewyan]

@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 if you mean Northern European runes, they derive from Old Italic, through contact with early Romans

[@pickleneck526]

@@magiv4205 so... no need to reinvent the wheel? ba dum tshhh*

[@magiv4205]

@@pickleneck526 exactly lol

[@seanswalling1343]

This was the best conlang series I have seen. No one really goes into as much depth of language evolution as you did. This was fantastic and is surely making my language come out better. Thank You.

[@Biblaridion]

Thanks very much! I hope you find it useful.

[@trial5269]

I second that, I've been in love with conlangs (and regular languages) for about a year now but I've had difficulty actually making one until I watched through this series. Thank you!

[@MisterSketch4]

I wholeheartedly agree. This was so helpful in conlanging.

[@draco5991rep]

I can recommend Artifexian as a addition to this series. I think he has some cool additions to this Series.

[@walmarp]

I'm about 800 followers away from 1000 followers but I think it can be done

[@kovi567]

8:14 Aaaam... I think from bottom to top is more probable in this case. You don't want to climb a tree, just because you don't know how much space you will need (pretty common problem), and it may be easier to read as well, as you won't need to strain your neck too much. It also makes it easier for the elderly, who probably teach the language, to read from bottom up (they can sit, and it's not a problem if they are hunchback), and also for the young, who probably learn the language, because their short stature is not a problem, especially with short scripts.

[@NicoNoFace]

Also, it would be historical/cultural logical (I'm not quite sure if you can say it like this in English, my bad) because it implies the growth of plants, which are pretty important in the whole language itself.

[@naolucille1579]

@@NicoNoFace Aw... now I want to change my writing system...

[@simonw.3920]

Personally, I like the idea that others can potentially modify or add to the sentence as the tree grows. I think that makes things pretty interesting. I'm not sure it's intended, but that was immediately what I thought of when I heard the top -> down structure

[@NotMeButAnother]

I respectfully disagree. The point is valid, but it seems most likely that people would naturally begin writing at eye height and then downwards as the easiest direction. I can see starting at the bottom only if these trees grew extremely fast.

[@Okaiako]

@@NicoNoFace my writing system is bottom to top for this reason, it's based on how things grow: up vertically... and I also have it going right to left (based on Sun's rise and set sequence East to West)

[@ObliviAce]

"Basicly every european writing system has the latin alphabet with their own moderation" Greek alphabet: *am i a joke to you?*

[@Mr.Nichan]

Also all the Cyrillic writing systems, which are not derived from the Latin alphabet.

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

@@Mr.Nichan Cyrillic is derived from greek ,which is also the ancestor of latin.

[@niceColdWuhta]

Latin alphabet *in general/Western Europe*

[@akbas58]

@president camacho that's not how language works

[@marchesadigroenlandia3487]

president camacho no, that’s just not how language families work. Phoenician had no common origin with Latin or Greek, how could they be from the same family? Romans, Greeks, Phrygians, Etruscans, Turks, Hungarians (and many more) just developed their alphabets from someone else’s, that doesn’t make their languages related in any way.

[@garretthayden6355]

When developing my conlang, I gained the interest in making folk songs in the language. I hope to share it with everyone sometime!

[@sunset_Ruby]

please do!

[@PC_Simo]

I’m looking forward to it 👍🏻.

[@derikduley7806]

That would be great! I also found it a fun and easy way to progress my language by working on folk songs.

[@finnishgermans]

Yes.

[@senG_boi]

I would like to read/listen to them

[@deldarel]

"It's no use to anyone if your romanisation system is just as weird as your spelling system" Romanisation:"Why can't you just be normal?" Hanyu Pinyin: *Zhqreamzh*

[@TaiFerret]

@@nexusanphans3813 And q is weird to everyone except the Chinese themselves.

[@user-jr7ww2gf1h]

Or my language: Kgugh

[@FakeGuthix01]

@@TaiFerret q is intuitive for Albanians. It's a voiceless palatal non-sibilant affricate, which is close enough to the voiceless *aspirated* palatal sibiliant fricative in Mandarin, especially considering pinyin tends to use conventionally voiced letters to represent unaspirated consonants and voiceless letters to represent aspirated consonants.

[@creamofthecrop4339]

之前热啊某种

[@user-ck1kx5ie6t]

TaiFerret You can think of q as a variant of k. q was the same phoneme as k in Old Mandarin, but later on gets palatalized before the /j/ glide. The same goes for j (developed from g) and x (from h, which is interestingly itself /x/ in IPA).

[@CommonCommiestudios]

3:00 Be aware that this is not the Modern Standard Russian alphabet, it appears to be a mash-up of different Cyrillic-script alphabets, including Russian, Belarusian and Serbian

[@tuerculosisgaming6307]

Exactly When I saw this cyrylic i just shaked my head and facepalmed

[@lauzwojwec8764]

Serbian dž and ch transform to ð þ. Why?

[@CommonCommiestudios]

@@lauzwojwec8764 No idea honestly, this was such a bad chart that Thandian facepalmed

[@lauzwojwec8764]

@@CommonCommiestudios Ладно.

[@zafusca]

Ukrainian Macedonia slovakia

[@mv2173]

The script you made looks very nice

[@Biblaridion]

Thanks, I'm glad you think so. I still kind of hate it (I really rushed through it to meet my self-imposed deadline) .

[@kieronbrown73]

@@Biblaridion Thanks for this I created a language for my made up country on this

[@kieronbrown73]

For my language I used Latin letters but with a strase s:"ß"

[@bonbonpony]

It looks nice, but I think it may be also hard to read, because all the characters look very similar to each other (basically some squiggles). There either has to be some key to them, or mnemonics, or another reform is needed - this time of the writing system :J (similar to the one Chinese Hanzhi went through).

[@OrangeC7]

@@bonbonpony Perhaps the lower class overthrows the upper class and then, since there's still a bunch of illiterates in the lower class, teaches a much better writing system to them, which then becomes the default? Perhaps even better, the two writing systems evolve alongside one another, and the old "upper class" writing system is used in very formal situations, where the "lower class" system is used in more informal situations. This would be similar to the reason why, in English, the words for meats are different to the words for the animals. ("Pork", "mutton", "beef", etc. came from the word the upper class used, who rarely came in contact with the animal themselves, and "pig", "sheep", "cow", etc. came from the word the lower class used, who was basically always in contact with the animals.)

[@User-xh5zu]

I just spent like an hour an half binge watching a series about conlangs while building a house in Minecraft at 1 am instead of getting sleep or studying I love my life

[@ParadoxPandox]

After watching videos from you, Artifexian, and Xidnaf, as well as reading some of the Language Creation Toolkit by Mark Rosenfelder, I've ended up realizing just how much some of the early languages I've made are lacking in some things. Even one conlang that is my pride and joy has no proto-language to speak of. It may be back to the drawing board, but this has helped immensely in finding out what I need to do to make a naturalistic language.

[@girv98]

I just wanna say that it's perfectly ok and valid to not have a protolang.

[@Alice-gr1kb]

You don’t need a protolanguage

[@Jeffrey6978]

Maybe that conlang could be the proto-language for a new conlang that you evolve out of it?

[@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus]

Unpopular opinion, but I don't think that protolanguages are relevant for most conlangers. They help with having a realistic phonology and writing system, sure, but you can have all those things without one just as well. The effort spent on a protolanguage is much greater than the additional effort you need to put in for naturalism without one.

[@quinnwilson6201]

you certainly don''t have to go back to the drawing board. Turning your conlang into your protolang would help make the process much faster and simpler.

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

7:23 Actually, I would say that scripts carved in wood would give characters that are mainly composed of straight lines in any direction except along the grain, since these will become almost invisible. Nordic runes have almost only vertical and diagonal lines and were written on sticks so the grain would be horizontal.

[@yangkong7935]

Stein Gauslaa Strindhaug I think you could widen the instrument meant to carve the scripts. Like if you used a knife to carve it parallel to the ground and perpendicular to the direction you look at it.

[@GhostOfJulesVerne]

To be fair you wouldn't think that ア and 鬱 come from the same language, but they're both Japanese.

[@W_Qimuel]

Instead of “language,” he should have said “writing system.”

[@tldoesntlikebread]

Well Kanji is indeed Chinese and it's true that they look very different. Though if they looked closer to each other, Japanese writing may take longer to read.

[@niceColdWuhta]

This is why Japanese is harder than Chinese

[@tibethatguy]

@@niceColdWuhta Well, the different system mean you don't have to have spaces between the words. Compare '今日は歯医者に行くのを忘れました。' to 'きょうははいしゃにいくのをわすれました。' In the first sentence, you can clearly see that the words are meant to be: '今日 は 歯医者 に 行く の を 忘れました。' However, in the second sentence, you can't see that.

[@niceColdWuhta]

@@tibethatguy Good point

[@SchmulKrieger]

Japanese is a good example how a mixed writing system works. The nouns often written in Kanji (logographs) and the rest in Hiragana (Katakana) (syllable symbols).

[@ThatBooRadley]

I'm sad that this is the final episode in the series, but I do have a suggestion and a question: 1. Have you thought of making a series for more "seasoned" conlangers. As you expressed in your first video, you wanted to help people "start their conlanging journey". I'm not saying this isn't helpful towards people with more experience, but I'm wanting to see just how much I can add to make my languages even better. 2. How did you make those special characters? Is there some kind of software that you can use? Nonetheless, thanks for this amazing series. I hope I can get just as amazing content in the future!

[@Biblaridion]

1. Indeed I have. This was the main series I wanted to get done, but now that it's finished and proven to be at least somewhat successful, I've got a whole load of stuff in the pipeline. 2. You mean the characters for the conscript? In this case I was really lazy and just drew them freehand, but for my other scripts I sometimes use FontForge, which lets you create and code your own fonts (and it's free!): fontforge.github.io/en-US/ Thanks very much!

[@YouBathtubDoners]

@@Biblaridion what do I do? I’m on phone

[@Ghost_PM11]

I find the abugida to be the most intiutive and elegant. I will use it for my conlang.

[@EHMM]

My First abugida's 1 to 10: CHIMA CHI-IMA CHIAMA CHUMAG FUSA CHUMAF DEGCSH DEGSCSHAMA FUSGIMUCHIMUTIPLAH ERGA

[@jolonghthong5377]

I used an abugida wioithout even knowing it until I saw this video and I’m proud of myself. I called it an alphabet, but that’s just some eraser marks and I’ll be good.

[@6i6itjeruk]

I use abugida too tbh, although a lot of the writing was took from Jawi Abjad which is an Abjad. I did inspired from thaana script.

[@amberlee787]

Honestly, I find so too. It just feels right to have a base shape with modifications. Easy to learn, needs medium complexity but not high one so it looks good.

[@naolucillerandom5280]

Same, I made one conlang with an abugida script, and now I'm making another.

[@Woodledude]

So I've had this idea of an artificial alien language floating around in my head for a while. The idea being that some random person from a different, incredibly advanced culture, basically left their people behind and tried to "create the perfect lifeform". And so they ended up constructing a highly efficient totalitarian society of organic robots designed to exterminate and replace all other life in the universe. Y'know... As you do. Weekend projects, amirite? All joking aside, I wanted to play with the artificial, rigorous nature of the culture for more "efficient" vocal communication, and an extremely durable and versatile written language. And possibly have different languages for different settings - On a loud battlefield, or when speaking over a crowd or making an announcement, only vowels and the most sonorous consonants are used, whereas plosives and similar less sonorous sounds are used during stealth, for covert meetings, etcetera. Though I'm not overly concerned with the sounds being easy for humans to pronounce, I'd have to actually work on it to see how practical that would be in general.

[@40watt53]

4 years late ayo but hey howd this turn out

[@1Thunderfire]

Getting MTG Phyrexian vibes here!

[@AgglomeratiProduzioni]

WOW, I watched all the eight parts and I must say this is real true *Quality.* I really don't think there is on KZbin (or even professionally or academically, in such a short time) another course on the same topic that explains it *so well* and goes *so deep* into pretty complex linguistics matters making them appear easy and, I have to say, even funny. I would like to say Thanks, I would like to say Bravo, I would like to say a thousand things, but I'm afraid the English language can't _really_ express the true meaning of what I deeply want to tell you. But I could start creating my own language so that it will allow me to express deep gratitude and intense commendation in a handful but appealing way: after all, that should now be way easier, thanks to you.

[@maddockemerson4603]

"It's no use to anyone if your Romanization system is just as weird as your spelling system." Oof. That's one of the main problems I had when I tried to make a conlang in high school. It was so bad I don't even have the basic notes for it anymore, but then same goes for the novel I was developing it for.

[@dumupad3-da241]

But you can and probably should have a separate Romanisation system to express the spelling, too - then it's called transliteration.

[@brokenursa9986]

This series made me want to get back to work on a conlang I started about two years ago and never finished. The weird thing with this conlang is that, in the world I'm building it for, it's the language used by the gods to speak to each other and by mortals to speak to the gods. As such, it's actually very resistant to changes. The gods would speak the original version of the language, called Elderspeak by mortals or Llyrrshpykh [ɬɪr.ʃpɪx] (literally, "god tongue") by the gods who speak it, while mortals speak a modified version that has a few minor simplifications. Due to its resistance to change, I was originally planning to build Elderspeak up to the proto-language stage of your conlanging method and stop there, but then I realized that the elves and orcs of my world speak languages directly descended from Elderspeak, so I get to try my hand at seeing what kinds of sound changes and conjugation systems arise from sending Elderspeak on a trip through time for 10,000 years or so. tl;dr: This series made me want to start conlanging again and testing out what I've learned.

[@sunset_Ruby]

any updates?

[@brokenursa9986]

@@sunset_Ruby I am a chronic procrastinator, so no.

[@sunset_Ruby]

@@brokenursa9986 sadge, it seems really interesting as an idea nonetheless

[@Othorius]

@@brokenursa9986 lmao I can definitely relate to that

[@doctordestructo3360]

Old comment, but my conlang has a similar thing, but mine's a language created as a collaboration between gods and mortals so that the mortals can communicate with the gods. I decided mine was also very resistant to change, so that's neat that you landed on that as well. I have also procrastinated on it for a couple years and am recently getting back into it lol

[@_uxxn3287]

I love the jadba system. It's where you only have symbols for vowels and you infer the consonants.

[@MGDrzyzga]

I still fondly remember the Bionicle script favoring circles with straight lines and/or smaller circles entirely contained within - and then a single line through the center denoting words. The idea of using a line rather than space to denote words sticks with me. Not coming from a naturalistic place, but I like the idea of an alphabet that has a commonality of vowels containing a vertical line, and within words, it becomes a single curving figure that snakes through all the vowels.

[@junirenjana]

This series is the most beautiful thing I have watched on KZbin. Subscribed.

[@Shiroiji]

I've made a hybrid writing system with logographic character (like chinese hanzi) and an alphabet. My idea was that the letters of common words (want, will, And, with) get compressed into a single character and then further simplified for convenience, the same way the latin "et" became "&".

[@dbneptune]

This was awesome! I made my first conlang (I call it Pona Fanaloka, meaning our language) using this, here’s “I had fun!” Na tsati thokasho!

[@SaxophoneDog]

This tought me how to create a language a year ago and now I have created one full language. I can’t thank you enough for teaching me how to do this.

[@borg286]

You didn't account for Korean, in that some leader tried to make a featural writing system which ties letter shape to physiological form in the mouth. This would encourage consistency across time.

[@AgglomeratiProduzioni]

Maybe he meant those times the concept of writing itself was invented, not just any writing system. Before the Mesoamericans first invented writing, they didn't know writing was a thing; when the Korean script was invented, they were kinda like "We don't want the Chinese writing system any more, let's invent a new one for us". In fact, at 4:43 he did write "Every script in the world is descended or influenced from one of these" (meaning he should have included Hangul), but in the audio track he says "Writing has only been invented independently about five times" (meaning he should only list those that, in fact, he did). Just a little distraction that led to ambiguity.

[@aleksandrnestrato]

So, Sejong the Great is "some leader" for you, which ''tried to make"... King Sejong or Sejong the Great, 7 May 1397 - 8 April 1450, was the fourth king of the Joseon dynasty of Korea. He established a royal research institute - Hall of Worthies, or Jiphyeonjeon. He and the Institute made an enormous job which resulted in Korean writing system - "a featural writing system", as you called it. The formal publication date of this writing system is October 9, 1446. The name of this "featural writing system" is Hangul.

[@crimson5719]

Aleksandr Nestrato Who pissed in your cereal, man?

[@aleksandrnestrato]

@@crimson5719 No, I'm ok Thanx for asking:)

[@aleksandrnestrato]

@@desolategaming1970 Wow, wow! "pissed off at people"😄 There's just one guy up there in the comments, dude! How many people do you see in one guy? ;) I'm not pissed off, I'm calm and relaxed. These are not "details", those facts are important periods of history. Just think about it: we're on the Internet here, we have stuff like Wikipedia and alike. It's so easy to spend some---really little---time reading about anything... The information is sooo close you just can't hide behind a childish excuse "I didn't know". Several minutes of searching and reading---and voila, you know it. I like to leave comments on the KZbin, but I never let myself show ignorance and laziness. Cause I know I'm not two inches from facts. 🤷‍♂️

[@FfE8]

My original idea was to just make a new writing system for English, then it turned to English with some sounds taken off of it, and now I'm creating a whole new language. The writing system is basically an alphabet, but words are written in the shape of a square (they're fairly short most of the time). It came to be when I wanted to just make an alphabet, and then I was inspired by Chinese Hanzi but didn't want to make whole new symbols.

[@NicketyWicketyCW]

Threats pretty cool

[@NicketyWicketyCW]

*thats

[@mimikal7548]

For carving into trees I would say bottom-to-top would be a more logical direction. If you start from the top and go down you might underestimate the space you have and reach the ground before you've finished, which is a problem (maybe it would then wrap around the tree to the left or right). Since trees are very tall, you can start from the bottom and always be sure that you'll have enough space above, you just might need something to act as an impromptu ladder to go higher and higher.

[@wintergray1221]

Top-to-bottom and word-wrapped in a clockwise direction seems logical to me. That would lead to the East Asian format of vertical RtL when they switched to paper.

[@bonbonpony]

Step 9: Create binary encoding for Simātsan characters :D As for ideas for future episodes, though: I'd like to see some more about coming up with the root system.

[@NikodAnimations]

SIMASCII

[@paolob.5667]

About the Latin capital letters: the reason why they are so blocky it's mostly because they were the ones that survived, but rustic capitals and Roman cursive were a thing,and really common

[@didack1419]

Didn't Roman cursive develop into modern lower-case letters? Legitly asking.

[@Alice-gr1kb]

I agree with Artifexian about proto-Langs. Only make them if you’re doing a family of related languages, otherwise it is just too much work. For historic spelling you only need a few of these changes, not a whole timeline

[@tonio103683]

No, you can also make them if you find it fun to do them and/or if you really want to have a wacky irregular language. I'm skeptical if you can have such results without a proto-lang. Also, If you're, let's say, building a single civilisation across many centuries you'd probably want to have historical stages of the language. However I did agree with him that it's not an absolute necessity. I have succeeded in creating a pretty naturalistic language without a proto-lang myself.

[@Alice-gr1kb]

tonio103683 I found my old comment and I’m looking back thinking that it’s more fun to do a proto Lang

[@brunorocha4675]

@@tonio103683 I think you can actually manage to make a very naturalistic language without a proto-lang if you know what to do. I mean, most of the reasons to create a proto-lang is to evolve the phonology and grammar to your language, but if you already have and idea of how you language have evolved from, i think it's ok to just start for the action and the coolest parts that is the modern grammar and spelling. But, of course, evolving a language since the start obviously will gonna make your language much closer to a real spoken language, so it depends of your goals in your language. (sorry for bad English)

[@sachacendra3187]

@@brunorocha4675 Of course yeah, I agree, except I'm not so sure that the modern grammar is necessarily the "coolest" part IMHO. For me it's etymology and giving the illusion of History. To each their own I guess.

[@dumupad3-da241]

Yep. The main argument for proto-langs was to make your proper lang naturalistic instead of just making it up, but your proto-lang should be naturalistic, too, and yet you're just making it up anyway! You could perfectly well stick to the proto-lang that Biblaridion made here and use it as your actual conlang. I'd only make an earlier form of a conlang if I actually plan to use it directly.

[@intuithue]

This is a very involved/studious + phonology-centered way of crafting an organic writing system (in other words, for anyone reading, not at all the only way, nor necessarily the most helpful way, especially for anyone without a linguistics background), but the quality of education here is very high nonetheless. Lots of options and ideas presented here! Really nice content :')

[@Biblaridion]

Thanks! Yeah, it all depends on your goals. The process I use is for those who are aiming for a high degree of naturalism. If that's not you're goal, then you're free to not go into as much detail.

[@livedandletdie]

Ideographic/logographic languages are very involved, this is child's play in comparison.

[@livedandletdie]

And I'm ashamed to say it but I prefer making writing systems compared to making languages... It's just so easy. Although I have the same restrictions on my systems as if I had a language to begin with, syntax is really important for writing systems too.

[@SpiderLingual]

Wow, this series is really great! I've been I guess conlanging as a vague side hobby since I was about 15, and my first language I accidentally made easier for myself by making the history of the language be that it was created by a government as a generalized language whose education was regulated and enforced. Having always loved foreign languages and had some exposure to systems very different from my native language (namely the East Asian ones as I am ethnically Asian, but nationally American), I managed to avoid a couple of the worst pitfalls you mention early conlangers doing, but it was still pretty tough to muddle along on my own, and there are still things I'm fighting with in it. Recently, however, I've started trying to develop a naturalistic language, and boy am I glad I stumbled upon these videos before getting too deep into that, since there are a lot of proto-elements I wouldn't have thought of, particularly this specific video about writing systems, since my strongest foreign languages are Japanese and Korean, both of which have strong histories of much more recent phonetic alphabets, having previously used the Chinese writing system. Even knowing their histories, because those are what I'm comfortable with, I found myself gravitating towards a very structured phonetic alphabet that I realize now are not exactly likely to have developed organically. I love the new perspective these videos have given me! Thanks for making them!

[@hydricbluen8498]

hello, biblaridion! I have been making my conlang in about an entire day, the language's excel sheet is somewhat messy(sorry for that this is my first full-fledged conlang!), I used your tutorial on how to make words and different vowels and consonants sound good together. I also used the tutorial from Artefexian. You guys have taught me a lot about making conlangs and for a 14-year-old it's a lot to take in. I showed what I had already gotten done the four hours I worked before coming to school. I had pretty much the basic concept of the language itself, but I didn't finish some of the subject pronouns. Which I quickly finished in Spanish class. I made sure that the language started in a proto stage, where the [tʃ] sound was written tch, [dʒ] was dzh, [x] didn't exist, [ɲ] didn't exist, and the only diacritic I had was for the schwa. The language was extremely hard to read and pronounce, was of my words being ngadzh /ŋadʒ/, eventually, I thought to myself and said... this is too hard to read and pronounce, so I took all of the long vowels I had made and gave them the appropriate diacritic(macron) and then introduced some new sounds, [x] and [ɲ] these ideas in my head sparked from the languages Swedish(i think) and Spanish as I am currently learning Spanish and pretty much everyone can pronounce those sounds, so ngadzh changed into, ñaj /ɲadʒ/ the changes I made to the language made it so much clearer to read and pronounce and I wanted to thank you for the great knowledge you have given me. The language's name is klauī btw! Heres the Google Drive link for the excel spreadsheet, in wondrous colors: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YrC-s4bOqsqhhn9eoGUAPO1G8U7PlasWlVngHFEt9cc/edit?usp=sharing

[@amehak1922]

Major moment in the history of writing!

[@user-vm9xz4kv9z]

Actually arabic does write the second (and on it we write diacritics and fourth vowel is a letter etc) vowels as letters. Ex: لَيْسَ (Laysa) The first vowel is 'A' and it's written in its diacritic form instead of its literal form Is the second (semi)vowel representin ي The 'Y' sound and it's written in its literal form. Writting the literal form of a vowel after its diacritic form to create long vowels لَا (Laa)

[@thomascampbell127]

บา่พา่อา่ (báphádá) is the language I created from this tutorial. I used the Thai script for this language. Some fun facts are: The script is an abugida The script is read top-bottom then left-right The language is agglutinative The language has a complex Yin and Yang system The language uses vowel harmony which applies to the tones.

[@KnufWons]

I think you’re being a little unfair to Irish Gaelic. Sure, they use the Latin alphabet in a highly different manner than other languages, but they have straightforward, rarely broken rules in writing which makes the written language follow the spoken language quite closely.

[@tudorsike736]

I was about to say the same thing. It's easy to look at Irish orthography and assume that it's full of obsolete historical spelling like we find in English. In fact there is very little of that going on; instead, the weird, unintuitive spelling is the result of a complex system of sound mutations that reflect grammatical and syntactical processes. Now, whether or not that system could be simplified in writing, is a totally different matter... Btw, NativeLang has a really good video on Irish Gaelic mutations, if anyone's interested.

[@Ynysmydwr]

Precisely -- except that I would change "a little unfair" to "very unfair"! The spelling of Irish is *far* more regular and systematic than that of English (< now THERE'S the place to look for a language that's written with an enormous number of historical and (often pseudo-) etymological distortions). Irish even underwent an official spelling reform in the 1940s-50s: something that has never happened in English.

[@RaghnaidAnnaNicGaraidh]

Thank-you all three of you! Even though to my mind that 50s Irish spelling reform was a bit sparodic and random, they have actually kept the writing system fairly close to the pronunciation. I speak the language's Scottish cousin, which has had fewer spelling reforms, and live in a diaspora community where we ignore the last reform or two *did* have, so I'm used to a much more conservative spelling system with a lot more "invisible" sounds... and even then it's much more regular than English. Pretty much all of the letters English-speakers think are redundant *do* actually serve a purpose.

[@thiskidneedstobemoist1289]

If it has a pattern, there's no necessity to complain.

[@thasa-thirumanau]

Ćohaan

[@ObeyBunny]

You beautiful sexy man who talks about languages, my hand- of it's own will- just swung over to your subscription box and clicked! I've been looking for someone who talks about conlangs and grammar systems without just pointing at someone's first constructed language and laughing. This is EXACTLY what I needed for my world building. Thank you! You just earned a subscriber, my good man!

[@Dominik-lc4pl]

He did such a video too

[@ookaookaooka]

In one of the conlangs I’m currently working on, it’s spoken by dragons and has to be clearly understood while flying, so nearly all unvoiced consonants have been dropped/didn’t evolve in the first place. It ended up having a cool buzzy sound to it that I really liked. In addition to the spoken/roared language, they also have a way of encoding their words into infrasound rumbles, which they use to communicate over long distances, similar to the whistle code of La Gomera.

[@Daryavahush]

that's cool as hell actually, i wanna know if you've written down your conlang somewhere where you can share it?

[@GeneSch]

3:02 that's not cleaf Russian alphabet. There are two Serbian letters and one Belorussian letter. And 3 real Russian letters are gone. I know because my native language is Russian and I fond of Slavic languages.)

[@Biblaridion]

Well, that's what I get for not knowing cyrillic well enough...

[@livedandletdie]

Let me help you then. It's a fantastic script after all. Ё-[jo] , Й-[ij] , Ц-[ts] , У-[u] , К-[k] , Е-[je] , Н-[n] , Г-[g] , Ш-[sh] , Щ-[shj] , З-[z] , Х-[kh] , Ъ-[hard sign] , Ф-[f] , Ы-[i] , В-[v] , А-[a] , П-[p] , Р-[r] , О-[o] , Л-[l] , Д-[d] , Ж-[zh] , Э-[e] , Я-[ja] , Ч-[ch] , С-[s] , М-[m] , И-[ji] , Т-[t] , Ь-[soft sign] , Б-[b] , Ю-[ju]

[@GeneSch]

@@livedandletdie er, but my NATIVE LANGUAGE is RUSSIAN, so I don't understand why you are telling it me.

[@captainclark2337]

@@GeneSch I am not European, but I am fond of European languages. When I was watching the video, and I came across the "Russian Alphabet," I immediately noticed the Serbian characters. If this comment did not exist, I would have wrote one myself. Nothing against the creator, of course, just a simple misunderstanding.

[@Ynysmydwr]

@@GeneSch He was telling Biblaridion.

[@YourBoyAlex]

102 likes and ZERO DISLIKES!!! You have done a great job!

[@johnhooyer3101]

Don't look now, but there is a singular dislike. It wouldn't be a proper KZbin video without it.

[@YourBoyAlex]

@@johnhooyer3101 Hmmmm....maybe you are correct!

[@yeetyeet-jb6nc]

3k likes and 23 dislikes now.

[@whycantihaveaproperusernam9384]

There's 33 actually

[@cursedalien]

I think that for a writing system, I'd want to take a cue from writing systems developed more recently, many of which were never logographic. Like the invention of the Cherokee syllabary, or the many scripts that have been popping up in West Africa for the last ~200 years.

[@alflp2159]

Thank you so much. I've tried so hard to invent a conlang over months but it just didn't work but with your videos on conlanging it's got so much easier and I have the feeling I can finish my conlang for the first time without throwing it away.

[@user-pm1gb2eo1s]

1:51 Just pointing this out, bit the sample of runes you had there were the Anglo-Frisian runes used to write, among others, Old English. Old Norse used the Younger Futhark. Sorry for the nitpick, otherwise, awesome video!

[@tritankista8976]

What language do you use in your name?

[@EnigmaM1]

ᚼᛁᛚ᛫ᚢᚦᛁᚾ᛫ᛒᚱᚢᚦᛦ

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Pictography is the first writing to evolve. Logography comes as it becomes more and more common and the drawings more and more simplified.

[@cubanabanana9165]

This series was amazing. Thanks a lot! I feel like this is what I'll come back to when I need a refresher.

[@0Aquamelon]

Can we take a moment to appreciate how pretty the Simatsan script is, even though it was just a conlang meant as a demonstration? Like: I REALLY find it pretty and am inspired to use a similar style in one of my conlangs, and it's not even meant to be a part of a big conlanging project! it's just there to help *us*

[@oogaboogabe3464]

This series has been really helpful for me as I make my first ever company. Its probably a bit sloppy and amateurish, but im proud of it so far! Thanks for this resource

[@fentogk6509]

My writing system is the IPAs symbols for pronunciation,I decide on the script or writing system first so I know what I'll be using make it easier to set up and make sentences

[@matthewparker9276]

I like using the IPA as the latinisation system, as it removes ambiguity about how words are pronounced, and work on the language using that, developing the true script later.

[@valhatan3907]

01:17 I'm actually surprised you mentioning Sundanese and Lontara script in this video, i've seen very little appearance of this writing system from my country in any other conglang videos. A random tidbit, if you tired of using Rune letterform in your fantasy setting, try to _Ulu_ script from South Sumatra. It also similar with Lontara.

[@kitdubhran2968]

Rebus! Omg thank you! I’ve been having class marked on nouns and their modified friends for almost the entirety of the language I’m working on. At the front of the word, which doesn’t quite match, and I kind of couldn’t figure out why. It’s because they were rebus/determinative characters used to clarify what the noun and adj, etc were, and what the verb was talking about. Yay! So happy to figure that out! Now to finish the sound changes. And grammar evolution. And a timeline of those things. And to figure out where my syllabary turns into an alphasyllabary. Thank you as always!

[@DTux5249]

Great video and agree thoth's pill is great.

[@impishDullahan]

If we want to talk about quirks, my second not scrapped conlang uses a somewhat featural reverse alphasyllabary as it's writing system. The proto-language had strictly VC syllables so the writing system is a series of glyphs to represent a vowel and with a diacritic whose shape determines the coda's method of articulation and another whose orientation determines the place of articulation. I'm still quite chuffed with the system. Also whilst I might consider myself much more seasoned than the intended audience, I've never started form a proto-language. I've always worked backwards from what I want to determine what I haven't figured out yet. I'm definitely going to have to refactor some of my less artsy conlangs with these brilliant new insights.

[@lingoteen]

This series helped me make my first actual conlang. Thanks.

[@LadyDeirdre]

I think that broadly speaking, once people start working with ink, the most likely writing directions would be either top-to-bottom then left-to-right (classical Chinese) or left-to-right then top-to-bottom (any language using Latin or Cyrillic) for one simple reason: these two methods minimize the frequency and severity of smudges.

[@Alice-gr1kb]

LadyDeirdre unless of course your left handed (like me) where in that case it doesn't matter. Smudges always come about

[@W_Qimuel]

Except i believe claassical Chinese was top to bottom, right to left.

[@tldoesntlikebread]

idk about Chinese but Japanese write top-to-bottom then right-to-left and I would've assumed Chinese and Japanese have the same wiritng direction considering Japanese got their writing system from Chinese.

[@KineticManiac]

I know I'm not the first person to say it, but Classical Chinese should be top-to-bottom, right-to-left if I remember correctly.

[@JazzyWaffles]

3:20 you wrote かきくけこ out of order because English orders the vowels as AEIOU and that is going to bother me for the rest of eternity now.

[@joshuajeffrey4848]

Jazzy Waffles yes because that’s just how English does it, Japanese does it ‘aiueo’ not ‘aeiou’

[@JazzyWaffles]

@@joshuajeffrey4848 Um... Yes. I said that already, lol

[@joshuajeffrey4848]

Jazzy Waffles ah sorry misunderstood your comment. seems like my brain corrected their order in my head and I read them かきくけこ not realising they were out of order 🤦🏼‍♂️

[@namkedi]

So sorry From someone in Hong Kong

[@russellbaker7026]

yes, but japanese isn't english. DUH

[@element1192]

4:43 Other writing systems have been independently developed such as Linear A, the Luwian hieroglyphs, the Cretan hieroglyphs, and Harappan (all of which, like Rongorongo, are undeciphered.) As far as I know, only the Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Hanzi lineages have survived from that period, with other lineages either emerging much later or dying out. The only one of the two that has survived in a form recognizably similar to its original ancestor is modern Hanzi. Most of the other most commonly spoken languages use writing systems descended from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, most notably Latin, Arabic, Devanagari, Bengali, and Cyrillic.

[@user-zs3vd5np2s]

Thank you very much for the series! They very helped me in the build of my Conlang. If I had a problem, so its the fact you didn't talked about grammatical jender, which exists in the Semitic and European languages.

[@lethalbloom2147]

This was incredibly useful for me, I recently got into conlanging to add more immersion to my D&D games, and I managed to finish my first language very recently, it’s based off of dragons and is a sorta stand in for all otherworldly creatures that might speak a rough or ridged language

[@calvin311222913]

This is one of most under-seen video series of all time.

[@inkfromthebrain]

Excellent series!! I learned how to fix everything I was doing wrong the last time I tried this in one sitting.

[@WhoTookGum]

i never thought i'd hear fearofdark in a conlang video

[@leafMontilla]

I loved this video series! What I would give to watch a similar one that focused on non-oral languages, particularly sign languages, but maybe even languages for cuttlefish or chamaleons who can communicate by changing skin colors and patterns 🤩

[@gcewing]

Fascinating series! It's made me think about revisiting one of my own very feeble attempts at conlanging I did for a short story. It was supposed to be a language for an alien species. To give it an exotic look I decided it would have no vowels, with the role of vowels played by non-stop consonants. I only created two words, both of them character names: Wxlvf (male, approximately) and Jwrmn (female, approximately). I wasn't intending to take it much further than that, but now I'm thinking it could be a fun project to flesh it out. Although to do it justice to the standard presented here, I may have to take a step back and work out the physics of the alien vocal tract, so I can justify why I'm picking particular sounds. And then come up with an alien culture so I know what metaphors they use to form words. I may have to install an imagination upgrade...

[@GlaceonStudios]

Could be an abjad.

[@petrus9067]

Your series is very good, one of the best I believe. Specially this video, I have now a bunch of ideas of my writing system could have evolved and etc. And I think I'll be going back to these videos to figure out other aspects of my conlang :)

[@gaborzoltai6965]

Thank you for this series. My first concept for a conlang is a proto-language of hunter-gatherers, in the very earliest stage of development. I wanted it to be logical, although there is no reason such a language should have logical consistency. For my own aesthetic enjoyment, I made each vowel denote a category of concepts: affectionate, rebuking/warning, begging, cautionary/significant and neutral/abstract. So, for example, both the root words for place and time, being abstract, have the U vowel: "dru" and "gru". The words for chief, "kro" and weapon, "dzo", have O to signify they are things to be cautious with. Threatening things have E: "dze" means to kill, and "dre" means beast. The word order is free, with the most important information going first. For my first step in this, I am happy with the results. gra dida ditroda bu! gi bro ditroda kru! /thanks this-one this-other-one towards! good work this-other-one with!/ I thank you! Your work is good! :)

[@chloesmith5915]

This conlang series was so very helpful, I have already managed to make four languages, two of which I had already created from just mashing words together and what not but nowthat I have actually thought of their histories and creation and evolution and understanding of phonology ,which I had no clue about until your vids, they sound and look so much better. From my main Language that profited from this series, Ikar, has three sister languages, like you suggested in your last video. It was so very helpful and inspiring. Thank you so much :)

[@Asodym]

this series has been the biggest help to me making my conlang Lohsmik. ponna ta pohyen! (thank you)

[@VicMetEenK]

thysm for making this, i didnt know where to begin when i was making multiple fictional languages for my game. But because of these videos. I finally know how to make a conlang.

[@kirilvelinov7774]

Seven types of writing systems Alphabet(Greek) Abjad(Hebrew) Abugida(Hindi) Syllabary(Katakana) Logography(Kanji) Korean(combined) Emoji(card suits,flags)

[@MGDrzyzga]

Idea to revisit: Alphasyllabary derived from a syllabary with a constellation theme. So different constellations initially represented different syllables, and then alterations to the "stars" become a coding mechanism to denote alterations and connections in the sounds. So a writing system heavy on diacritics, which take the form of using existing circular structures in the writing and distinguishing open vs filled vs broken vs vertically crossed vs horizontally crossed vs doubly crossed circles. Wow. That's sounding like an opportunity to code a lot with diacritics. Perhaps to the point that, say, affixes could be denoted by diacritics rather than distinct characters. Or that an unpronounced character denoting meaning could be captured in diacritics.

[@spinn4ntier487]

My work in progress conlang is going to be used for a fictional group of speakers, it will have a romanised form for general conversation, and a form written with alphabetic runes in a hexagonal system with three axes. The first axis for time, the second axis for conditional (if/then) statements and the third for some other grammatical feature I haven't decided on yet. Also there are no verbs, adjectives, nouns etc, all standard words are nouns unless affixed, denoting a verb, adjective or adverb. Other than that it's meant to resemble an Indo-European language, I'm even deriving some words from Sanskrit

[@jevg.8072]

3:02 that's not the Russian Alphabet.

[@penelope.nschfr]

Best conlang series I ever seen !!

[@GreenNotebookGaming]

I made a logography, and my symbols basically arbitrary (Besides fish, give, take, i/me, person, animal, etc.) except for the fact that the tense and plural are encoded in the symbol with lines. Past not recent is a line above the logograph, past recent is a line below, future one line of the left and one on the right, and plural is a triangle without the bottom line over the logograph.

[@gav1233]

This language sounds like Hawaiian mixed with Maori and sprinkled with Malay. It looks like Lao. It's spoken in a place with characteristics similar to Samoa and Easter Island. #That'sprettygood

[@BryceOsborne23]

In my conlang, “The strange man eats an apple” translate to “peh r̊oth vuh tir`’ih suh`zhhah” pretty proud of it

[@kiapet286]

Something I would love to see is a look at how languages influence each other- like how English has both Germanic and Romantic derivations, the whole concept of loan words, or creoles.

[@scptime1188]

Hey biblaridion, i just wanted to say that these videos have been such a great help to me and probably other conlangers! Keep creating amazing videos. Edit: I know this vid was made a year ago, but it doesn't change how amazing and helpful it is :)

[@thomasmcdonach9985]

This series has been ever so helpful and has helped me so much with my conlang and I just want to say thank you

[@sophiat7459]

I'm curious - how common is it for a language to have multiple writing systems? I'm making a conlang for a culture with a strong poetic tradition, and I'm thinking of giving it two writing systems - a simple one for everyday use, and a more complex, "aesthetically pleasing" one for writing down songs and poems.

[@chesspiece4257]

You could go with something like cursive and print, which is pretty common

[@kirby_tardigrade]

Japanese has two syllabaries and a logography, so I think you're good!

[@harry.tallbelt6707]

It is weird how you people noticed that it is not Russian alphabet at 3:00, but didn't do any investigtion into what it actually is (or I just did not find it, sorry). 'Cause it's no Serbian, and no nothing Slavic, for that matter, 'cause it has letters for voiced and unvoiced TH. I pulled some of my detective skills out of hat and found out that that thing is actually called Renglish and it's a constructed system to write English using Cyrillic script. Here's a link, which is about all I could find about it: www.omniglot.com/conscripts/renglish.htm Also, I wanted to copy this comment and write it in Renglish, but the rules on that page are a bit too complicated for my brain's gray matter density. Aslo also, I genuinely thought this was an easter egg or something. You had to be pretty unlucky to just stumble upon it. Or lucky. Depends how you look at it, 'cause you've got a free easter egg in the end :D

[@stayinawesum]

3:26 yes we modify the consonants by replacing the base vowel "short - a" of the consonants with another vowel (because it is impossible to separate consonant with vowel - at least for most of them, i haven't checked) but we do have letters for pure vowels too in our scripts not just abugidas

[@BeneathTheBrightSky]

I like the way you talked about Romanization. In my language Aeri, there are three "rolled" letters, coming from L, B, and R, which I decided to represent as the same characters, but with a wiggly line on the bottom to represent the wiggling of the uvula. For Romanization, I decided to go with the ~ symbol, leading to L~, B~, and R~. These look pretty natural, and are also the only instances of Romanization that I had to use. Me being an American-English speaker, I didn't want to mess about with too many sounds outside of the English Alphabet.

[@sscgoatprodz]

You should make a new episode of giving us word ideas

[@varganyamuvek]

For some reason, I have been obsessed with writing systems in the last few semesters.

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

The only times a script is purely logographic and not phonetic at all is when it was designed that way. Like trafic signs which need to be instantly recognised at long distance.

[@LeviGarrettMonroe]

I made my own language that is almost like an abjad, but the only difference is that abjads pronounce the vowels based off of context, my language pronounces the vowels based off of what position the consonants are on or bellow horizontal lines. So basically I made my own writing genre called positionad.

[@cerberaodollam]

Inuit writing kinda does that with directions.

[@wintergray1221]

Like musical notation? Neat.

[@christopherfilip6949]

I haven't quite realised how up-to-date Czech spelling actually is. Since the modern spelling was basically developed in late 18th century and has been updating relitvely regularly, we actually do read (almost) everything as it is written, and even when a non-native person reads everything as written, it isn't considered a mistake, since it's such a marginal thing

[@torspedia]

Just finished watching the series. Quite a lot to think about. Have you done a video on borrowing words from one or more conlangs and how to adapt them? As an example, if you're creating several different proto-langs, to flesh out the con-world!

[@mokshambaghela4902]

I made a language. Then I made a dialect continuum. And it feels really good. ata-m-asta bao va. pingada-m-astankho . Atsa-m-anza mao va. pingal anzango. Atz mao va-r-anz Pingal anzango. Uz mao va-r-anz. Pingel anzago. Top form is the original form and properly formed as a language. The lower forms are the proposed dialects , moving in a particular direction (on the imaginary land). Btw I don't even know why the hell am I making conlangs. This is literally useless for me . But I am hooked to this fucked up hobby (read addiction) of conlanging purposelessly. I really want to quit, but simply cannot. And yeah the sentences meant Literally: "You are very good. Keep being happy" Proper English translation: "You're great. Stay happy"

[@benw9949]

Writing materials or surfaces: Besides wood and stone, there are leather, vellum, parchment from animal skins; wood and plant materials give us wooden planks, tree bark such as birch bark, leaves of several plants, papyrus from plaited or matted reeds, rice paper, and plant fiber pulp such azs rags or cotton fibers or wood pulp, all used in various kinds of "paper." (Plus who knows what else might be invented.) -- Modern things include plastic sheets, for instance. -- Clay (wet or dried and then baked, or reused), Wax tablets. -- Knotted cords were also used to track things (Native American quipus, but there may have been Old World cultures who did things like that too.) -- And sandstone would be a different carving material than limestone or marble, for instance. -- Feather quills and reed pens, metal pen nibs, brushes, little nails for writing cuneiform, or other styluses, charcoal, stick-based pigment, pencils and pens, fountain pens, chalk, and so on, for writing implements (hey, fingerpainting!). -- If you can make symbols on a surface, you can get a writing system. How they developed is pretty unusual, if you read up on the history of writing. Neat stuff.

[@afraboi]

I watched this series and artifexians conlang playlist and i learend most of everything in a day(im not even kidding)

[@jeffersonrose9888]

I'm thinking about a script derived from ancient people pressing broken bits of human rib bone into wet clay. Im justifying this as only the priests of the ancient civilization had access to bones of the dead and knowledge of writing. By breaking and sharpening the tips of cross sections of these stylus you could get many interesting shapes. Arches ∩,angles∧, lines ∣, points ∴, ovals (albeit angular ovals later simplified to circles.) I'm thinking each ancient characters would be combinations of no more than two imprints from a rib stylus and a writing kit had four two ended ribs. The trouble for me is I'm having trouble constructing the modified handwriting descendant of this cuneiform into non-Roman alphabet letters that can easily be written in cursive. Thoughts?

[@Burrick]

Jefferson Rose Patent this. Now. I'm trying to create a unique system of my own..

[@gordonbarnes7005]

Ok that's just awesome.

[@ewellynn122]

I'm making a conlang for a species in another dimension, and it's main goal is that it could be spoken very fast, because they can think fast, but also because their enviroment is very dangerous. They have come into contact with our culture in the past, and can read others minds (although it's very impolite in their culture, and they only do it to close family members or in case of emergency). They are somewhat technologically advanced, but their methods of construction are very basic, and they don't really care about aestetics. They probably only use writing to keep track of resources and methods of production, so only the middle to lower class, deemed unfit for fighting would use it. Later they would maybe write down methods of fighting too. Their written language would include just numbers and pictures of resources at first, then some symbols indicating different methods, probably using pictures of tools. Maybe then they start copying our writing system for different kinds of communication, like writing names from our dimension.

[@matterhorn731]

So this is almost entirely off topic, but is the Egyptian word for cat (at 11:49) really "miw"? Like, transparently onomatopoeic similar to an English speaker's "meow"? That's... kind of adorable! Anyways, love the series! I feel like you really nailed the level of depth for this sort of introductory tutorial.

[@Asymmetrization]

chinese for cat is māo

[@aro4cinglife]

Thank you for making this wonderful series and getting us out of mediocracy in conlanging

[@AeliosArt]

Great content, brotha. Maybe some ideas for future videos? I'd like to see vidoes like this illustrating different phenomena like how/why vowel harmony develops and maybe how that might work in a conlang. What kind of inconsistencies occur in phonological evolution (not sure if this is the best example, but "though", "through", "enough", "cough", etc. All have similar spellings that once were theoretically meant to represent real pronunciation but somehow differ dramatically in pronunciation; are there other examples of words that originally had similar pronunciations but somehow split? I also speak Japanese fluently and I am curious about a few things that would help me in my own similar conlang (I haven't been able to answer these so far studying Old Japanese). For example, why do all verbs end in -u (suru 'to do', taberu 'to eat', iku 'to go', etc.) And then where different verb base forms come from, which are imperative to conjugation (e.g. realis, irrealis, terminative, attributive, etc.) Did these also come from independent words? Most indicate what can be affixed to it, but don't carry much or any meaning by themselves. I guess some other ideas would be things like mood and aspect. It seems difficult to see how to accomplish these sorts of things by starting with simply mashing words together without making words impossibly long and their histories impossibly complex. Maybe some ideas for future videos?

[@SuperSonic9000IsHere]

I'm making my own language, it's basically a mix of french and dutch, its name is beljak (yes it's like an official language to belgum) Grammar (mainly a mix of french and dutch grammar): Beljak is a moderately inflected language. Nouns and most pronouns are inflected for number (singular or plural, though in most nouns the plural is pronounced the same as the singular even if spelled differently); adjectives, for number and gender (masculine or feminine) of their nouns; personal pronouns and a few other pronouns, for person, number, gender, and case; and verbs, for tense, aspect, mood, and the person and number of their subjects. Case is primarily marked using word order and prepositions, while certain verb features are marked using auxiliary verbs. According to the Beljak lexicogrammatical system, Beljak has a rank-scale hierarchy with clause as the top rank, which is followed by group rank, word rank, and morpheme rank. A Beljak clause is made up of groups, groups are made up of words, and lastly, words are made up of morphemes.[109] Beljak grammar shares several notable features with most other Romance languages, including the loss of Latin declensions the loss of the neuter gender the development of grammatical articles from Latin demonstratives the loss of certain Latin tenses and the creation of new tenses from auxiliaries. Verbs(same as dutch grammar): When grouped according to their conjugational class, beljak has four main verb types: weak verbs, strong verbs, irregular verbs and mixed verbs. Weak verbs are most numerous, constituting about 60% of all verbs. In these, the past tense and past participle are formed with a dental suffix: Weak verbs with past in -de Weak verbs with past in -te Strong verbs are the second most numerous verb group. This group is characterised by a vowel alternation of the stem in the past tense and perfect participle. Dutch distinguishes between 7 classes, comprising almost all strong verbs, with some internal variants. Dutch has many 'half strong verbs': these have a weak past tense and a strong participle or a strong past tense and a weak participle. The following table shows the vowel alternations in more detail. It also shows the number of roots (bare verbs) that belong to each class, variants with a prefix are excluded. Genders and cases: As in English, the case system of beljak and the subjunctive have largely fallen out of use, and the system has generalised the dative over the accusative case for certain pronouns (NL: me, je; EN: me, you; LI: mi, di vs. DE: mich/mir, dich/dir). While standard Dutch has three grammatical genders, this has few consequences and the masculine and feminine gender are usually merged into a common gender. Modern beljak has mostly lost its case system. However, certain idioms and expressions continue to include now archaic case declensions. The article has just two forms, de and het, more complex than English, which has only the. The use of the older inflected form den in the dative and accusative, as well as use of der in the dative, is restricted to numerous set phrases, surnames and toponyms. But some dialects still use both, particularly "der" is often used instead of "haar" (her). Beljak word order is generally with the V2 word order restriction and also with the SOV word order restriction for main clauses. For yes-no questions, exclamations, and wishes, the finite verb always has the first position. In subordinate clauses, the verb occurs at the very end. Beljak requires a verbal element (main verb or auxiliary verb) to appear second in the sentence. The verb is preceded by the topic of the sentence. The element in focus appears at the end of the sentence. For a sentence without an auxiliary. The position of a noun in a German sentence has no bearing on its being a subject, an object or another argument. In a declarative sentence in English, if the subject does not occur before the predicate, the sentence could well be misunderstood. Alphabet:A Â B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U Ü V W Y Z Other letters:Ê Î Ô