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Should not the title be changed to "Constructed Languages"? – kiamlaluno May 2 '11 at 1:29

I would strongly suggest the title be "constructed languages". "Planned languages" are a very specific (esoteric, even) subset of conlangs overall. – Sai May 22 '11 at 20:48

I strongly agree with Sai that the title should be changed. "Planned language" is a very obscure term, with the wrong connotations. – Tsela May 24 '11 at 7:26

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This proposal is now in the Commitment phase — example questions are locked!

48 Example Questions (9 closed)

active oldest votes

up vote 20 down vote

added by MatthewMartin Jul 9 '10 at 21:45

	This question was taken directly from the linguistics site proposal. Few professional linguistics do anything with planned languages as there isn't hardly any money in it, except for the movie languages, like Klingon or Na'vi. – MatthewMartin Jul 9 '10 at 21:55
	Typo: should be Sindarin. – arj May 25 '11 at 14:34

up vote 20 down vote

added by Ben Gartner Jul 12 '10 at 22:32

Wouldn't this be more appropriate for area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/13148/…? – blueberryfields Dec 8 '10 at 21:58

imo that proposal should simply be merged with this one. – eMansipater Apr 13 '11 at 13:50

up vote 20 down vote

added by rejistania Aug 4 '10 at 17:31

up vote 20 down vote

added by James Tauber Aug 6 '10 at 16:51

I'm out of votes, but this is a good example of an on-topic question. – Karen Terry Aug 6 '10 at 17:10

If you think this is better than something else you voted up, you can change it (I think...) – kitukwfyer Aug 10 '10 at 21:18

Answer: Yes, awkwords. awkwords.wsr3.net – Peter Olson May 12 '11 at 3:44

up vote 19 down vote

added by nik Jul 10 '10 at 13:01

	Context: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loxian, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language – nik Jul 10 '10 at 13:02
	I like the question, despite some other famous sites (um, SO) that think legal questions should rigorously segregated. – MatthewMartin Jul 10 '10 at 13:44
	Yet, someone finds its not a good example and wants to give not reasons for doing so. – nik Aug 8 '10 at 3:07
	I think the number of legal questions in conlanging are pretty limited; this is the only real one that I know of. I think it's good. – Sai May 23 '11 at 19:02

up vote 16 down vote

added by James Tauber Aug 6 '10 at 17:44

	this is my attempt to reword another question here to make it a better on-topic example – James Tauber Aug 11 '10 at 2:29
	@Olivier the purpose is not to answer the questions; just give examples of on-topic and off-topic questions – James Tauber May 24 '11 at 14:41

up vote 12 down vote

added by Juliet Jul 12 '10 at 4:09

up vote 9 down vote

added by rejistania Jul 28 '10 at 20:08

	I wanted to ask a typical conlang creator question here to have y'all defeine whether it is a place for conlang-creation related questions. – rejistania Jul 28 '10 at 20:10
	I'd vote it up if I had any left. :P – Sai May 27 '11 at 23:24

up vote 8 down vote

added by James Tauber Aug 6 '10 at 16:50

	This is of course an important question but almost impossible to answer. – rejistania Aug 28 '10 at 21:14
	why impossible? phoneme inventories across natural languages have been studied typologically and from the perspective of universals. That sort of information would be useful to discuss in response to a question like this. – James Tauber Aug 29 '10 at 3:41
	What is realistic is defined (to a point) but creation of these is AFAICT still something to argue about... – rejistania Oct 17 '10 at 19:31

up vote 8 down vote

added by James Tauber Aug 6 '10 at 16:51

	my only concern about this question is its wording would allow the answer "yes" :-) – James Tauber Aug 11 '10 at 2:29
	Or a more detailled 'no'. Heck... it inspires me to write a bit about languages for novels in my blog... – rejistania Aug 28 '10 at 21:13
	well, a detailed 'no' would be fine. It's a single yes/no answer I'm trying to avoid – James Tauber Aug 29 '10 at 3:40

up vote 7 down vote

added by MatthewMartin Jul 9 '10 at 21:47

This seems on topic to me because new languages often don't have comprehensive dictionaries so identifying a suitable phrase or compound word is a technical challenge. – MatthewMartin Jul 9 '10 at 21:48

up vote 6 down vote

added by Juliet Jul 12 '10 at 4:25

I'm not against this question but I don't think it's a representative question so voting "not a good example" – James Tauber Aug 6 '10 at 17:44

up vote 5 down vote

added by MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 16:22

up vote 3 down vote

added by PaulRein Feb 13 '11 at 7:47

closed as off topic by Johan, Dori, kiamlaluno, Olivier Simon, Asym May 23 '11 at 21:43

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

	This seems plenty on-topic to me. The part of speech system is a fundamental choice for any conlanger, and examples from other languages, whether nat- or con-, are always instructive. – arj May 24 '11 at 11:50
	I think this is on-topic but opinion seems clearly divided. Can some off-topic voters say way they think it's off-topic? Given the divide, I'm surprised it has no "not a good example" votes :-) – James Tauber May 24 '11 at 15:19
	It's more a linguistic question. It's actually not a question about Klingon. – Traroth May 26 '11 at 9:30

up vote 3 down vote

added by PaulRein Feb 13 '11 at 7:53

up vote 3 down vote

added by MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 15:41

up vote 3 down vote

added by MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 15:44

up vote 3 down vote

added by Tsela May 23 '11 at 23:23

I thought this was a great on-topic example. Nobody thinks so? – Tsela May 24 '11 at 7:18

I do, but all my votes are used up. Mind, people: only bother voting for things with <20 votes and/or without a 4:1 majority winner. – Sai May 25 '11 at 22:23

up vote 2 down vote

added by J.T. Hurley May 12 '11 at 3:47

up vote 1 down vote

added by Remo.D Dec 5 '10 at 20:50

Question in lojban about lojban grammar – Remo.D Dec 5 '10 at 20:51

pe'i na go'i vau zo'o – Zifre Jan 3 '11 at 21:41

My problem with this type of question is that any language would then be used to ask a question. This includes languages that are stuck in the imagination of one person: The asker. They would be able to ask, "Wiutu lklaiue fl ieiotk?" How could we distinguish between junk like this and valid questions? – MrHen Apr 18 '11 at 20:48

I'm pretty sure that if anyone would fake a language, the question would be closed very quickly. Or, in doubt, it will languish forever and ever .. – Remo.D Apr 26 '11 at 15:35

@Remo: But that's the problem; on this site, there isn't a fake language. At what point do we pull the plug? If at least 5 people over 3k rep haven't heard of the language? – MrHen Apr 28 '11 at 20:11

show 4 more comments

up vote 1 down vote

added by MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 16:26

Hm. Why is this not a good example? Can I fix it to make it more obviously on or off topic? – MrHen May 2 '11 at 19:29

up vote 1 down vote

added by J.T. Hurley May 12 '11 at 3:50

up vote 1 down vote

added by Peter Olson May 12 '11 at 3:54

@Oliver Can you vote for this as either an on-topic or off-topic question? – Peter Olson May 23 '11 at 13:22

up vote 1 down vote

added by Sai May 22 '11 at 21:39

up vote 1 down vote

added by kaleissin May 24 '11 at 13:18

up vote 0 down vote

added by PaulRein Feb 13 '11 at 8:17

up vote 0 down vote

added by MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 15:52

Ambiguous whether this is a good example. Per Tolkien et al, language is inseparable from culture… but worldbuilding per se is probably a different topic. – Sai May 22 '11 at 20:50

up vote 0 down vote

added by J.T. Hurley May 12 '11 at 3:41

Make small translations on your own... Experience makes the master... – Olivier Simon May 23 '11 at 7:59

up vote 0 down vote

added by J.T. Hurley May 12 '11 at 3:42

That question is a bit vague. Good first language for doing what with? Studying? Learning? Being inspired by? Even if this were specified, it would be difficult to answer it more specifically than “it depends”. – arj May 23 '11 at 10:00

up vote 0 down vote

added by J.T. Hurley May 12 '11 at 3:50

Should be flagged as "subjective" – Sai May 22 '11 at 20:49

up vote 0 down vote

added by Sai May 22 '11 at 21:33

up vote 0 down vote

added by Sai May 23 '11 at 0:04

closed as off topic by arj, Peter Olson, neilfein, kaleissin, user38291 May 25 '11 at 14:43

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

up vote 0 down vote

added by arj May 23 '11 at 9:37

This seems meta; the question would be edited to something like "what are active fora for conlang design?". – Sai May 23 '11 at 18:59

up vote 0 down vote

added by Traroth May 26 '11 at 9:27

up vote 0 down vote

added by Olivier Simon May 26 '11 at 17:01

Potential flamebait… – Sai May 27 '11 at 21:05

up vote -1 down vote

added by Blake Jul 14 '10 at 0:22

closed as off topic by MatthewMartin, Jon Purdy, warren, Edgar, blueberryfields Dec 8 '10 at 21:59

This question does not relate to the topic of the proposal.
It was closed as part of an automated migration of off-topic to close votes on September 29, 2011.

Two off-topic votes? How is this off-topic? – Juliet Jul 18 '10 at 15:37

This is where I wish there were more options instead of on/off/not. imho, it's because Q&A is a poor fit for crowdsourced dictionary lookups or collaborative translation. Other language centric proposal seem to also be striking these down because they feel like they are soliciting trivia that they don't really care about. This question could be re-worked as on topic if it was a question about imperatives, hortatives and optatives. – MatthewMartin Jul 19 '10 at 12:32

Ok, I can understand and agree with that reasoning -- Q&A != dictionary. Just a quickie question: there are lots of idiomatic expressions and figures of speech which aren't translatable verbatim to a target language? – Juliet Jul 19 '10 at 14:32

If the target language didn't use the same metaphor for the abstraction, if the culture of the language is primitive or advanced (Na'vi/Klingon) and the vocabulary for technology doesn't match up with something for answering machines, if there is a question on using the derivational morphology of a language to build the word, then I guess it would be more on topic, more interesting questions. – MatthewMartin Jul 20 '10 at 17:12

I think of "How to say carrot in Klingon" is on-topic then this is as well. I say either both are on topic, or both or off topic. The questions are simply too similar, and the answer to both could be "There isn't a way." – Karen Terry Aug 4 '10 at 18:18

show 1 more comment

up vote -1 down vote

added by arj May 23 '11 at 9:21

While this question is not overtly related to constructed languages, getting informed about how natural languages change can be helpful when creating a naturalistic artistic language. – arj May 23 '11 at 9:30

I think this would be much better suited to linguistics.SE – Peter Olson May 23 '11 at 18:56

Yes, if such an SE existed. Maybe I haven't looked well enough, but I couldn't find it. – arj May 24 '11 at 11:41

So if the question had been "I need to shrink the number of vowels in my conlang, what are some ways that a language can lose a vowel?", that would have been ok? Pff – kaleissin May 24 '11 at 13:15

arj: area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6673/… – Sai May 27 '11 at 23:21

up vote -1 down vote

added by Peter Olson May 23 '11 at 19:44

Duplicate of two extant equivalents. – Sai May 27 '11 at 23:19

up vote -1 down vote

added by kaleissin May 24 '11 at 13:32

	Meant as an off-topic example – kaleissin May 24 '11 at 13:33
	How could someone possibly think this belongs on this site? Not a good example, because it doesn't help to define the limits of the site. – Traroth May 26 '11 at 9:24
	FWIW, "Yet Another English Pronunciation Thread" (YAEPT) is common enough on CONLANG-L to have a known and well used acronym. – Sai May 27 '11 at 21:06