Robbie A, Conlanger @Alamantus@polyglot.city
Linguistics enthusiast, conlang creator, and builder & maintainer of http://lexicon.ga
Main account: @Alamantus
Joined Aug 2018
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Ah damn it, my old Nook simple touch e-reader doesn't support Unicode and thus can't render Japanese π
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
has anyone created an instance where you can only post in #tokipona?
(in my opinion, the rules would be that:
* you can only post words that work under toki pona's phonotactic rules, with the exceptions of "n", "sutopatikuna" and "yupekosi"
* words in (parentheses), [brackets] or "quotes" are not subject to this restriction
* neither are links to other pages or #hashtags
Hoo boy, some of the books I've looked at in the #HumbleBundle Japanese Culture & Language bundle are stupid as hell so far with exactly the inane garbage I was expecting about the language and writing. I'm hoping I'll end up with enough worthwhile books to outweigh the bad ones.
At least most of the money went to charity.
A conlang in a conworld that's just an existing natural language
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Crazy English/American units
The word "furlong" comes from Old English "furh", meaning "furrow", and "lang", meaning "long'. It literally means a furrow's length. It's the distance a team of oxen could pull a plow through soil without resting. This was important because it's a PITA to turn a team of oxen around when they're pulling a plow, so a plot of land shorter than this would not be very useful.
Gonna start making "evil" the antonym for "compassion" in all my conlangs
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
π 
expression just dropped: "fixing a pothole with a sinkhole"
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Determine the Future of Lexiconga! - After casting your vote (if you're in the US), go cast a much lower-stakes vote and help decide whether #Lexiconga should have paid features in the future!
Full Post: https://blog.lexicon.ga/post/633790865994891264/determine-the-future-of-lexiconga
Determine the Future of Lexiconga! - After casting your vote (if you're in the US), go cast a much lower-stakes vote and help decide whether #Lexiconga should have paid features in the future!
Full Post: https://blog.lexicon.ga/post/633790865994891264/determine-the-future-of-lexiconga
Ok, so I've decided that starting today, I'm going to dedicate a minimum of half an hour every day to studying Japanese. That half hour is Japanese Time. If I have more time available after that, I can go for an hour, but if not, that's ok because I've had Japanese Time.
I don't trust myself to be able to stick to it, but I really want to do it and prove myself wrong!
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
@Alamantus It can depend on the font. Shavian is often made quite narrow to highlight its βefficiencyβ as a selling point. But I have made a font that tries to capture that classical beauty of Garamond which is a bit more generously proportioned: see Doolittle Garamond at https://www.shavian.info/shavian_fonts/
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Saw the post saying that "innit" is British for "desu"
And I will add the obvious, "eh" is Canadian for "innit"
I hate that I'm so interested in conlangs and alternate writing systems that I try to learn about those instead of working on learning Japanese. Japanese would be so much more helpful to know, but here I am fussing over toki pona and Shavian and better writing systems and whatnot. Meh.
Oh well, at least it's fun.
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
So I really like the #Shavian writing system for English (https://www.shavian.info/) but I can't help but feel like the characters are too narrow. It's nice that they're completely different than the regular Latin alphabet, but I feel like it needs rounder symbols to help make it easier to pick out individual letters.
I got a spark of inspiration for my ehw #conlang tonight and I ended up adding a new vowel (/i/ with orthography <ie>) and some additional utility markers: "nie" /ni/ ties an adjective to a noun to create a new noun rather than just describing the noun, and "in" /Ιͺn/ as the present-participial adjective marker to pair with the pre-existing "ed" that behaved as a past-participial adjective!
I also brainstormed a writing system, but it's not quite ready yet.
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
More Mastodon instances need custom favicons!
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Hmmmm I should repurpose one of my "backup" Mastodon accounts into a place where I post about reading... which would be better for that? toot.cafe or wandering.shop? I'd prefer not to make yet another Mastodon account because I already have kind of a lot now.
I kept seeing "Shavian" on various conlanging forums, and I finally decided to look into it. I've got to say, it's pretty inspiring, and it makes me want to come up with my own alphabet using the phonemes for it.
Robbie A, Conlanger
boosted
Linguistics enthusiast, conlang creator, and builder & maintainer of http://lexicon.ga
Main account: @Alamantus
Joined Aug 2018
