Extreme Conlang Ideas

[Senlozan]

I can't find any really weird unimplemented conlang ideas, so, uh...

Post yours here!!!

[lurker]

Commonthroat inflects nouns for deixis, almost completely lacks pronouns of any kind, vowels have phonemic length, tone AND volume, and it uses dreaming dog noises as phonemes. I'd say that's pretty extreme.

[Znex]

I'm always tempted to try out making a whistle language, except for the fact that I can't really whistle very well. Whistle languages aren't especially different from spoken languages grammatically (a lot are whistled versions of a particular spoken language), but the limited sound inventory and techniques in conveying the same information as spoken has fascinated me for a long time.

[lsd]

indeed,
non-written usages (ultra-developed in conlang) are interesting implementations to pursue...
in addition to a real oral usage (other than IPA-based) to be developed,
we have a step above signed usages,
and whistled usages...

[Creyeditor]

Well, I guess Ook and my reverse engelang should go in here.

[Omzinesý]

I once had an attempt for a lang that conveys two messages simultaneously.

An example in pseudo-English:

iYeOaUt DmRuIfNfK iCnOsLA

[Visions1]

Spoiler:

EXTREME, LANGUAGES, BRO!
EXTREME!
CONLANGING ON TOP OF MOUNT LHOTSE WHILE SNOW BOARDING
EXTREME![/b
CHOMSKY VS EVERETT WRESTLING WHILE DEBATING THEIR OPINIONS ON> LIVE TV
XTREEM!!!!
CREATING IAU TYPE MORPHOLOGY IN A VIET-MUONG AUXLANG BY CARVING THE WORDS ONTO THE TABLE WITH A CHAINSAW POWERED BY LIGHTNING
EXTEME!
PHONOLOGIES BASED ON THE SOUNDS OF DIRT BIKES, BEING PHYLOGENIGALLY RELATED TO THOSE OF MONSTER TRUCKS
!XREME!!
DINASOUR LANGUAGE DEATH METAL!!!!
'EXTREEEEME!!!!!!

What the heck did I just write. Also, I am going to give real suggestions tomorrow.

[Visions1]

...Anyways:
- The whole vowels-prominent consonants-marginal idea
- A language in which there is basically one consonant (or vowel, cough cough Nuxalk cough cough), but such severe allophony that it looks like there are 100 or something.
- Or a language with no consonants, but an inane number of tones (for extra points, make them all contour) and/or phonations for vowels.
- A language with no person and/or deixis and/or temporal morphology
- A language for time travellers, in which there are tenses for "this will happen to this object/person later from there perspective, but because time travel it objectively happened like two years ago," and other such permutations (read about the idea in a novel).
- Language communicated through numbers. Like √3 happen to be applied to pineapples for some reason. And sentences are just agglutinative equations.
- A werewolf gloss/sociolect/cant of English that they use when necessary, because come on, do you honestly expect a monster wolf to be able to pronounce human phonemes?
- Evolving an OSV language with V2 word order.
- A language with literally no metaphors, and everything must be described as exactly as possible.
- A monosyllabic language with OV word order
- A language that obligatorily marks TAM on nouns also
- Fully evolving 30 something languages in a single family into the space age (or for me, any space-age conlanging)

[kiwikami]

I feel like the "featural palindromes" concept I've been toying with for V4.1 is definitely "extreme" in several ways. tl;dr: (1) All constituents are discontinuous, combining through a process of "looming" with strictly-defined parts of speech, (2) all roots are of some mirrored structure (F3)(F2)F1|F1(F2)(F3) where F is any floating feature or set thereof (been calling 'em "floatremes") that mandatorily combine with previous elements.

Example:
to see, watch, look at: ʰb[]bʰ /[+asp]([+cons][+lab]).../
first person: ᵛ[]ᵛ /[+cont].../
second person u[]u /([-cons][+high][+back]).../
agent role: í[]í /([-cons][+high][+h. tone]).../
theme role: F[]F /[+front].../

"I see you."

1. Verb "frames" (the []) contain roles, role frames contain nouns; word order is free within each frame:
    ‣ see[ agent[ 1[]1 ]agent theme[ 3[]3 ]theme ]see
    ‣ ʰb[ í[ ᵛ[]ᵛ ]í F[ u[]u ]F ]bʰ
2. Roles are loomed; "interior" element remains, "exterior" element and all contained components are moved outside of verb:
    ‣ agent 1[]1 see[ ]agent theme[ ]see 3[]3 ]theme
    ‣ í[ ᵛ[]ᵛ ʰb[ ]í F[ ]bʰ u[]u ]F
3. Nouns and pronouns are loomed; "interior" element remains, "exterior" element is moved outside the role.
    ‣ 1[ agent ]1 see[ ]agent theme[ ]see 3[ ]theme ]3
    ‣ ᵛ[ í[ ]ᵛ ʰb[ ]í F[ ]bʰ u[ ]F ]u
4. "Floatremes" are collapsed leftwards, without breaking established sets, to a maximum of four per segment; where a floatreme cannot collapse, a new segment [X] begins, which is [+cons] if not specified as such:
    ‣ ᵛ í ᵛ ʰ b í F b ʰ u F u
    ‣ [X][+cont] ([-cons][+high][+h. tone]) [+cont][+asp]([+cons][+lab]) ([-cons][+high][+h. tone])[+front] ([+cons][+lab])[+asp] [X]([-cons][+high][+back]) [X][+front] [X]([-cons][+high][+back])
5. Unspecified features are filled in, typically as [-], to produce something... pronounceable. Some finicky things happen here, don't worry about where the [d] and [t] come from (and later [θ]). The result is grouped into (C)V(C) clusters, with some semivowels appearing to enforce this and avoiding consonants in codas where possible.
    ‣ d ɨ́ ɸʰ í p ɯ e ɯ --> dɨ́ ɸʰí pɰeɰ
6. Orthography in-progress, but the result would look something like:
    ‣ Dɨ́ fí pueu. - "I see you."
    
7. ...'Course, given the free "word" order, you could instead have:
    ‣ see[ theme[ 3[]3 ]theme agent[ 1[]1 ]agent ]see
    ‣ 3[ theme ]3 see[ ]theme agent[ ]see 1[ ]agent ]1
    ‣ u[ F[ ]u ʰb[ ]F í[ ]bʰ ᵛ[ ]í ]ᵛ
    ‣ ([-cons][+high][+back]) [X][+front] ([-cons][+high][+back]) [+asp]([+cons][+lab]) [+front]([-cons][+high][+h. tone]) ([+cons][+lab])[+asp][+cont] ([-cons][+high][+h. tone]) [X][+cont]
    ‣ ɯ e ɯ p í ɸ ɨ́ θ --> ɯeɯ pí ɸɨ́θ
    ‣ Ueu pí fɨ́þ. - "I see you."

I want to develop it more, particularly since I do still have tons of notes for V4's grammar and it shouldn't be hard to adapt, except that by its nature this idea is heavily, heavily phonology-focused... and phonology is honestly my least favorite part of conlanging. (Always has been, though I'm a phonetician in real life - I do love the P-side of linguistics, I just don't tend to enjoy it as a creative medium!) I think it might be a good excuse to get more invested in con-phonology, though, and tackle it as a project to stretch my wings a bit in that area.

Of course, Problem #1 is deciding on a phonology to begin with, which in V4.1's case means coming up with an array of features. There are many proposals to draw from, and I personally have always thought that phonological features are... well, they're fun, but giant arrays mapping phonemes to features definitely fall more on the "useful model" side of things compared to the "accurate description of how language works" side, such that trying to fit various languages into them can be awkward. How best to define, categorize, describe, and present features differs from language-to-language to the extent that any idea of a universal set of them rather non-useful (at least, compared to something like the IPA) - just look at [±ATR]. Doesn't mean they're not useful! Just means they're messy and hard to implement in a conlang.

I think it'd be fun to have some things, like VOT, handled as a continuum; rather than [-voice] or [+aspirated] being a floatreme, we might have [+VOT]. One application of [+VOT] might produce a tenuis consonant; two might produce an aspirated one. I've got [+asp] acting this way at the moment, but I need to mess with it a bit.

This is V4.1, but "V1" actually had that time-travel tense mechanic mentioned below; tenses were "conjugated" based on the perspective of the person they were relevant to, so one could discuss "my future, your past" or such things. I'd love to do the same with V4.1. When I get there. Eventually.

[LinguoFranco]

Doubt it's possible or naturalistic, but I am toying with making a conlang without verbs. Instead, verbs are expressed via cases. M

Thus, to say "I eat food," could be expressed as "Food mouth.allative case" or "Food bring to my mouth."

[_Just_A_Sketch]

- Language communicated through numbers. Like √3 happen to be applied to pineapples for some reason. And sentences are just agglutinative equations.

Kinda reminds me of this video I saw a while back

[Visions1]

Kinda reminds me of this video I saw a while back

I was thinking of that too. But his is more "Let's use matrices to make a sinolinguistic Roko's Basilisk" than just agglutinating the equation, which was my idea.
But honestly, math is very big, and linguistics is to a degree math based, so there's got to be a hundred ways about it.

[Visions1]

Doubt it's possible or naturalistic, but I am toying with making a conlang without verbs. Instead, verbs are expressed via cases. M

Thus, to say "I eat food," could be expressed as "Food mouth.allative case" or "Food bring to my mouth."

I think I've seen stuff like this in West Semitic. Maybe do that plus literally every case you can get your hands on, and we might be cooking.
Though, I have a feeling that in doing so, some nouns and cases will take on more verb-like functions than others, and others noun-like functions.

[Creyeditor]

- A language for time travellers, in which there are tenses for "this will happen to this object/person later from there perspective, but because time travel it objectively happened like two years ago," and other such permutations (read about the idea in a novel).

Kiwikami did this in his Dr. Who fanlang, IINM.

- A monosyllabic language with OV word order

Why would that be extreme?

[Salmoneus]

My conlang, U, departs from normal linguistic (Saussurean) expectations by not using signs that represent things or ideas. [at least, not at the heart of the language; there are some functional gestures that could be seen, I guess, as symbolic]. I never got too far into it, though (partly because I got bored making diagrams).

[it's also a sign language used by sentient nautiluses, but that's not the interesting bit]

[Khemehekis]

Kiwikami did this in her Dr. Who fanlang, IINM.

Just so you know, Kiwikami has since transitioned FtM.

[Arayaz]

- A language for time travellers, in which there are tenses for "this will happen to this object/person later from there perspective, but because time travel it objectively happened like two years ago," and other such permutations (read about the idea in a novel).

Kiwikami did this in her Dr. Who fanlang, IINM.

Kiwikami does a lot of "extreme" engelangs, and would be a good person for OP to talk to.

[Visions1]

Why would that be extreme?

I've tried finding head-final (it was on the tip of my tongue when I wrote the post...) analytic languages, the truth is I've had a hard time finding them, apparently because at some point head-final languages become more affixy due to their syntax. So Im wondering if there would be some way to keep the syntax, but keep the language analytic also, and somehow make it make sense.

But you're right, really. It's not very crazy.

[Ælfwine]

Spoiler:

EXTREME, LANGUAGES, BRO!
EXTREME!
CONLANGING ON TOP OF MOUNT LHOTSE WHILE SNOW BOARDING
EXTREME![/b
CHOMSKY VS EVERETT WRESTLING WHILE DEBATING THEIR OPINIONS ON> LIVE TV
XTREEM!!!!
CREATING IAU TYPE MORPHOLOGY IN A VIET-MUONG AUXLANG BY CARVING THE WORDS ONTO THE TABLE WITH A CHAINSAW POWERED BY LIGHTNING
EXTEME!
PHONOLOGIES BASED ON THE SOUNDS OF DIRT BIKES, BEING PHYLOGENIGALLY RELATED TO THOSE OF MONSTER TRUCKS
!XREME!!
DINASOUR LANGUAGE DEATH METAL!!!!
'EXTREEEEME!!!!!!

What the heck did I just write. Also, I am going to give real suggestions tomorrow.

We'll save you the seat, but you'll only need THE EDGE.

[Glenn]

I've tried finding head-final (it was on the tip of my tongue when I wrote the post...) analytic languages, the truth is I've had a hard time finding them, apparently because at some point head-final languages become more affixy due to their syntax. So Im wondering if there would be some way to keep the syntax, but keep the language analytic also, and somehow make it make sense.

It's a conlang, not a natlang, but Uyseʔ by Mark Rosenfelder (Zompist) may be close to what you are looking for; it is highly analytical, head-final, and SOV. It does have some affixes, although few if any are syntactic in nature. It does, however, have a topical particle that helps disambiguate changes to the standard word order if the object or other elements are topicalized by fronting them.