conlangs
If you just want to learn the words, without any philosophy, view the Language of Items Dictionary
This is a new conlang I’m making. It is based off of the idea of speach purely from holding Minecraft items in your hands.
Let’s start by define some basic concepts: namely we want something called the natural roots of existence.
Terra: Physical Existence, mountains, plains, oceans, gravity
Vivair: Life, mobs, entities
Numel: The player, consciousness, emotion, sense of self
Otrillo: Logic, Philosophy
Povisa: Control, Power (is generally scalar)
Solto: Magic, Science
All together: Terra, Vivair, Numel, Otrillo, Povisa, Solto
This is the language of items, so we should assign each concept a root block
Terra: Grass Block minecraft:grass_block
Vivair: Leafs minecraft:oak_leaves
Numel: Glass minecraft:glass
Otrillo: Redstone Block minecraft:redstone_block
Povisa: Dirt minecraft:dirt
Solto: Obsidian minecraft:obsidian
Super! We can now speak (no we can’t). Everything should be able to fit inside these categories. The world around us to souls, spirits, and myths can all fit into a natural root of existence (or multiple). Want to talk about the nether? Try terra + solto. Okey, this is great, but what if we want to talk more in-depth about things like these. A negator could help a lot tbh.
And so we have
Bez–
Borrowed from Russian, we can now negate these core concepts.
Bezterra, Bezvivair, Beznumel, Bezotrillo, Bezpovisa, Bezsolto
Now we’re in business. Albeit we need some way to signal bez using items.
Bez: Offhand Flint and Steel f<minecraft:flint_and_steel
The nether could now be Terra + Solto + Bezvivair (or maybe not, y’know, piglins, hoglins, etc). We are off to a great start. The issue now is, we can describe things (albeit in a very rudimentary way), but we are sans a way to describe what these things are doing. Say, it’d be noice if English had a word for such a type of word, something like verb. Yes, that’d suit the concept well. This language requires verbs!
Arguably the most important verb, the copula. To be or not to be, that is the question. And the copula is how we say that.
It is very important to form r/truths. And without truths we can’t make lies.
Khumni/Kumni: Being as a verb
Sourced as a mixture between Imnida (korean) and Khue (thai), we can now state what things are. Or can we? (vsause music starts playing). We need to define a word order, if not for our language, then for the normalised version of it.
Ultimately, verbs are generally considered the most important part of a sentence. I can know that x did something to y, but without the verb, I don’t know what actually happened. The cow does something to grass. What does it do to the grass?!
SOV
Many languages use SOV. Think of it like this: Because of the cow, the grass is being eaten. Because of S, the O is having V done to it. Useful, innit. Or is it. Yes, now we are one step closer to speaking. In fact, we already can.
Try terra solvo kumni on for size.
The land is magic (or the land births magic, idk). We’ll have a more complex system for adjectives later, don’t worry. But now we can actually say shit! Okey, since this is the language of items, it’d be great to be able to speak about, well, items!
Svred–
(from Reditus + Obratnaya svyaz)
This will be used to talk about items. That is, return a word back to item form.
Svred: Offhand Wooden Sword f<minecraft:wooden_sword
I picked a stick for this as it seems to be a very default item, that is also commonly used in datapacks as a dummy item.(no it’s fucking not) Additionally, there is the debug stick, which exists.
I used to pick a stick, though I think it could be suited for a different use (palisa), so I picked a sword instead. I think it does a good job as a default item.
But, if the sword in the offhand turns items into their actual item form, it wouldn’t be too much of a leap to say that in the main hand it could represent just some item.
Svred: Woo—
No no no no NO. Svred— is a prefix. We should make a similar, but different word to it.
Ensvredil: Item
And thus
Ensvredil: Wooden Sword minecraft:wooden_sword
Brilliant! Except I forgot to give an item to Khumni when I made it. Whoops. Anyways here it is.
Khumni: Apple minecraft:apple
Also while on the topic, I will also add another verb, we can be, but we can’t do. Let’s make a verb for generic doing!
Bovasa: Trying, Doing
(from Probovat’ + alasa)
And its item equivalent:
Bovasa: Wooden Pickaxe minecraft:wooden_pickaxe
We have done a lot by now. If we try to speak, we can somewhat manage.
f<minecraft:wooden_sword, minecraft:diamond, f> minecraft:apple
This roughly (and I mean very roughly) means diamonds exist.
00M04 (maybe)