#bad conlanging ideas

[badconlangingideas]

#541

A conlang where the words for west, east, north, and south are derived from the words for "left-wing", "right-wing", "authoritarian", and "libertarian".

#conlang #conlangs #conlanging #bad conlanging ideas

[bobbydhopp53]

Bad Conlanging ideas:

A language where all adverbs are also adjective.

#bad conlanging ideas

[twentydaysofmay]

Tried fusing Thandian and Kay(f)bop(t), which might've been a mistake.

Despite how chaotic the character may look at first glance, a lot of elements in their design have a reason behind them. All details are explained under the cut!

Since Thandian was Biblaridion's first conlang, and one that is now considered by the creator to be "very bad", I thought that giving the fusion the appearance of a "bad OC" would be very fitting. Those are usually made either by inexperienced character designers and writers who haven't learned the principles in their interests yet, or are deliberately made "bad" by people trying to mock said OCs. The former has an aspect of genuine lack of necessary knowledge - quite like the younger Bib who didn't know about things like the IPA back then - while the latter has an element of trying to be bad on purpose, just like Kay(f)bop(t).

One common part of the designs of "bad ocs" is needless complexity, which fits very well with both the kitchen-sink nature of Thandian and the chaoticity of Kay(f)bop(t). Biblaridion tried to cram everything he thought was cool into Thandian without thinking about cohesion at all, while Daniel Swanson probably looked at this blog full of humorous conlanging ideas and decided it would be fun to try to combine as many of them as possible. Having lots of random elements in this design being chosen just for the sake of "being cool" was, in my mind at least, a perfect idea for combining these two languages.

The top hat, the baseball cap, and the turkey are quite obvious references to Kay(f)bop(t)'s phonemic hats. However, I decided to split the fedora into a pork pie hat and a bavarian hat (the idea of which came from this post) just for the sake of greater complexity.

The sheep, the penguin, and the wombat are all references to a specific type of marking in Kay(f)bop(t), namely being the three animals included in the "manner of death" suffixes.

And speaking of the penguin, the cyan markings on the arm holding it represent <%>, the glyph used for the percussive bimanual stop (or, in simpler terms, a "clap"), used only in morphemes related to penguins.

And speaking of the weird non-pulmonic consonants, since and <*> represent the sinistral and dextral lateral clicks ("left click" and "right click") respectively, they are positioned on the left and right sides of the character's body. The <@> on the belt represents the faciomanual click ("facepalm"), and while it is neither on the face nor the palm, it is still in the body's center.

The weapons on their belt are a "battle-ax" and a sledgehammer, both mentioned in the "manner of death" suffixes.

From the viewer's perspective, the two horns on their head spell out "KB" in the Thandian script.

The purple shoe (called a "buskin") and the angel wing are both references to Thandian's past as a relex of Latin - the former having an association with ancient Rome, and the latter having an association with Christianity.

However, everything else that isn't a visual component taken from Thandian or Kay(f)bop(t)'s designs by Elemenopi was either chosen because I found it cool, or it was taken from some of the results for "bad OC" on google or videos about "how not to make OCs" on Youtube.

#prolangs #kayfbopt #thandian #fusion #eyestrain #bad conlanging ideas #my art #icosameron

[tachvintlogic]

Bad Conlang Idea

Two languages where every word in Language A is a false friend of a word in Language B and vice versa.

A speaker of Language A can have a conversation with a speaker of Language B without either of them realizing they're speaking different languages, and they will come away believing the conversation was about wildly different topics.

#conlang #conlanging #constructed language #bad conlanging ideas

[vivplayseverything]

BAD CONLANG IDEA:

Language where verbs are marked for evidentiality, but all inate markings are logical fallacies. The default marking roughly translates to a yo mama joke.

#bad conlanging ideas

[yeli-renrong]

#bad conlanging ideas

[velaraffricate]

the horror of realizing that writing a story means writing

#i think im technically a decent writer but man am i rusty #im really bad at writing descriptions and i dont think im great at dialogues either but well guess i just gotta practice #i have like a really good story idea actually but i havent properly outlined it chapter to chapter so #i should probably do that. really its just an excuse to show off the magic system and my conlangs #but im also actually trying to do Themes and Analogies and shit so thats exciting #ramblings

[junadeo]

horrific conlang idea:

no true verbs (main and auxiliary)

all tenses and aspects are assigned to nouns and pronouns

pronouns are marked for definitiveness

five-way person distinction (first-, second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-person)

utterly impossible for people to speak

This is just basically Technocratic all over again lmao

#conlang #conlanging idea #horrible bad terrible disgusting ideas #idk #thing #post #163

[strixcattus]

Little voice in my head that gives me bad ideas just told me I should alphabetize the list of gods on my WorldAnvil world by in-universe alphabetical order instead of English alphabetical order and I don't have an argument against it

#little voice in my head that gives me bad ideas is also the reason yvelse has a P sound and three irregular verbs #complete impulse conlanging. #that reminds me I should get back on posting about that conlang #after worldember. I've... neglected that. #by which I mean I have 3000 words written all of them from the first couple days

[cyansconlangs]

Cursed English spelling reform where every sound is either a diacritic letter or a digraph

Ckûßth ihngğlihhš ßppéllihng řëphõmn vvéé éwwëřee ßaevvpndh ihzs eeðë ë dhaejjëckřihthihck lléthë õ řë dhaeğřaeph, ëvv jjéé ëpn ihth'c phëpnéthick

#english #conlang #conscript #writing systems #bad idea

[flaxen-phoenix]

Conlang with evidentiality particles, but the evidentiality particle is a referral link and if you click it then both you and the person who was talking to you get a $50 referral bonus

#bad conlang idea #conlanging #conlangs #awful conlang ideas

[badconlangingideas]

#540

A future dialect of English where "69" is grammaticalized into an affix marking a reciprocal verb.

#conlanging #bad conlanging ideas #conlang #conlangs

[rohirric-hunter]

Also the first time I played Portal 2 I flailed through the escape, died multiple times during The Part Where He Kills You, took about 20 minutes at the boss fight before I figured out even how to attach cores, and just generally sucked at the game, which is my usual state of being for video games more complicated than point-and-shooters, but during the last few moments of the game when the roof caved in and the moon appeared I instantly knew what to do and I’m super proud of myself for that.

#'portal 2 sucks because their playtesters were getting frustrated with the puzzles and so they made them easier' cope #it is the job of the video game designer to design puzzles that make their players feel smart not stupid #if the puzzles make you feel stupid then its a bad video game end of story #although it would have been cool if theyd released the original puzzles as dlc or something #but yeah overall when people pull out that complaint i end the conversation immediately #wanting a video game dev to make a game that is so hard no one can figure it out #is like wanting an author to write a book using only a made up language that only they know #so the conlang nerds can work it out #which would be fun #but like. obviously thats an absurd idea #and also an objectively bad idea no matter how much it appeals to a small subset of nerds with no lives #you see what im getting at

[elbiotipo]

What are like good AIs for making up inspirations for writing and such? I was trying to make ChatGPT fulfill this function, and like it's good at coming up with names or riddles but actual stories or setting ideas are bad. Not even bad as in nonsensical or lack human touch, bad as in they look like the most generic thing possible

Well, before AIs there was this website, with all sorts of generators for names, NPCs, even random maps and solar systems and more for different settings. It even has a free Markov Name Generator where you can just put a list of names or words and it generates random names from them! I still use it for generating names when I feel lazy (I'm not a good conlanger)

But my favorite right now is one you can find here, @statsbot by @reachartwork. You can add the bot on Discord and ask them for a lot of commands, like creating you a statblock for NPCs or characters (I asked them for example for stats for the Daft Punk guys in a Cyberpunk campaign), a skeleton of an adventure or dungeon with random encounters, random monsters for all kinds of systems, descriptions of settings and places, or my VERY favorite, /elaborate, where you send them a little worldbuilding prompt (for example, "a kobold merchant republic", "a pantheon of fire deities") and it gives you a whole worldbuilding blurb that you can use as you want.

This is one of my favorite outputs:

The outputs are very interesting and creative, I don't even play RPGs that much, I just feed it prompts and see what it comes up with. I think the author is working on a solo version which can remember previous prompts which could be very useful if you are building a setting and want to develop some stuff but don't know how. Do give them a tip if you use it!

[yersina]

a linguist plays chants of sennaar (pt 5)

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4]

the home stretch!!

disclaimer: can't promise that i'll have any insights that a layperson wouldn't have, this is kinda just me thinking through the grammar of the language out loud haha.

this post covers the fifth and last language in chants of sennaar and will contain spoilers for both the language and the endgame! it also assumes you know what the symbols mean already.

i.... to be completely honest with you, i did not enjoy this language 😂 i think the experience of deciphering it got lost in favor of the storyline, which isn't necessarily a bad thing for everyone, but hey, i am the one going through each of these languages like a linguistic bloodhound here lol. because of that, i'm not as familiar with these words as i am with the other languages.

before we get into anything else, and also because i imagine that this will be a shorter post because the game itself tells you what patterns to look for, i do want to say that this language strikes me as being incredibly artificial. which is a good thing! it emulates the digital apocalypse vibe that exile gives. but a language that leans so heavily into being constructed and recombined and modulated so easily really gives me the impression that it was created and not organically developed. the only other irl example that comes to mind at the moment is korean hangeul, which was purposefully created by king sejong and is an alphabet, not a logography. like, this is a language that i would make for fun in high school (which is to say, it gives a kind of overly grammatically strict, awkwardly too regular vibe?).

it's kind of funny that this language is where i'm starting to get reminded of conlangs, especially when, well, everything in this game is a conlang. but if we take each of the radicals in this language as affixes/morphemes when they're being combined into one character, then this actually reminds me of a specific conlang (ithkuil, i think?) where you can convey incredibly complex ideas through very few words.

the language of the anchorites isn't quite this complex, but hopefully the comparison gets my point across?

i’m curious if only certain elements can be combined with each other or if there’s a certain order to them, but it’s hard to tell when there’s such limited evidence in the game. interestingly, i believe the anchorites’ language is the only one in this game that makes a distinction between “die” and “death/dead” by combining the noun with the verb “go”. not sure why the developers suddenly made that decision haha.

this language, like most in the game, is an SVO language, which we can see below:

but i think also they (the developers) were trying to convey more complex sentence structures than their language was designed to communicate??? so then you end up w smth like below:

which, if you translated literally, would actually be “you man i wait”. again, super interesting bc i think an actual, more accurate anchorite sentence should be “i wait you man”. they have a more complex sentence here bc of the predicate (“you’re the one”) and the dative (“for”), but really the sense that they’re trying to go for is “i was awaiting the one [who is you]”. i guess it’s possible that different grammatical cases are treated differently in this language, or that, like english, word order is occasionally variable (even tho that option seems iffy bc we haven’t really seen evidence of it before), but tbh i suspect that really it’s that the developers wrote the dialogue and then brute forced it into the anchorite language haha. no shade! (and also impossible to confirm either way lol) just kinda amusing and also it makes sense when it’s p obvious their focus shifted from the language to the story.

this trend continues throughout all of the anchorite dialogue (imo) and makes it kinda slow and awkward to read if you don’t have all of the characters translated. in my opinion, the way that the language functions in the last part of this game makes it pretty clear that the developers meant for you to rely on the given translations during this potion of the game, especially when the translation mechanic is mostly through the matching terminals in exile, rather than speaking with people.

annoyingly, the anchorites’ language is also the only one in the game that doesn’t have words for the other people/cultures in the game (demonyms), which also doesn’t give much to work off of in terms of cultural context, relationships, etc.

again, i’ve decided not to get into an in-depth orthographic analysis of this particular language bc the game itself introduces you to them. one that i noticed that wasn’t specifically addressed in-game is the similarity between “open” and “key”, which is something that i actually also noted before in the devotees’ language. i’m sure there are others, but i’m also sure you can find them yourself!

all in all, a strange ending to this game. if you’ve made it this far in all of my posts—thanks for hanging around! hope you were able to learn smth new :)

#sina rambles #sina plays chants of sennaar #chants of sennaar #linguistics #language

[da-mous]

How did you get the motivation to make games? Or the discipline and determination to actually go all the way thru?

I am just a bad developer, but i have some nice ideas and i actually write them down so I don't forget, like a mix of tunic and minecraft, but with a actual conlang for you to learn and not a english cypher

following through is actually something I really really struggled with for years, but I'm much more productive than I used to be, and I have a few strats that help

1: Structure!! The structure that works for me is working on weekdays (even if it takes time to get going!) and strictly taking weekends off, even if it means not working when I really want to. I don't have strict hours during weekdays, but I try to start early enough in the day so that I can work for 6-8 hours before I get sleepy. I always end up filling the time I give myself! Time tends to fly after the first hour or so

My weekends off are super important, too. I think periodically forcing myself *not* to work on my projects makes me enjoy working on them that much more. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I really feel that in how much I tend to spend my Saturdays, surprisingly, wishing I could be working!! It also helps prevent burnout and offers guilt-free time to play other games, do other hobbies, take care of household chores, etc

2: Thinking time!! It's important to give your mind time to wander, undistracted. That's when inspiration will strike and you'll do your best thinking and planning. I think that's why "shower thoughts" are a thing. Showers are good for this, but they're short! I take daily walks that are between 40 and 120 minutes during which I only listen to music with no words in it--especially music that fits the vibe of my current project! I don't actively try to force my thought process to go anywhere in particular, but it often wanders excitedly to my projects anyway (By the way, I also listen to the same music while I'm working! It's the perfect way to get in, and stay in, the right mindset)

3: Deadlines!! Even soft ones! My roguelike is coming out in 2026. The more I work by then (without overworking myself!), the better the final product will be! The desire to make something really good really drives me

4: Making something you want to play!! Playing my own game is one of the most important parts of my process. The first thing I do every day when I sit down to work is play the game. This naturally drives me toward finding areas I can improve and polish, coming up with features I want, and being motivated to implement those things. The ideal is to feel like a fan of my own work, eagerly awaiting every little update. The more I play, the more I'll tailor the game to my own tastes. This leads to me enjoying it more, so I'll be even more motivated to improve and add to it!

My current project is actually perfect for this, because it's a roguelike (highly replayable, a genre I know I can enjoy for a long time. Binding of Isaac is one of my most played games ever) platformer (one of my favorite genres in general. immediately kinetically satisfying) with a high level of randomization and variety, meaning even I can be surprised by my own game!

The strategies that work for you will likely differ from mine (especially if you have a day job or something!) but hopefully that helps :)