I'm gonna try out these "scratchpads" that are all the rage among Kids These Days and see how it works out. Going to post what I have working on for my conlang and its associated conworld— Argh, spoken by noble barbarians who sleep on the saddle and drink the rain etc. They are bordered on the north by a jumble of animistic hunter-gatherer tribes, on the south by an old and ~!~Civilized~!~ kingdom called Turenia, with a row of shield mountains between, and on the east and west by nothing in particular. So in other words it's Notmongolia. The idea is to make a conlang/conworld centered around the barbarians, the savages, the orcs, the people who speak uncouth languages, etc. with "Turenia" standing in as the ethnos that would be the protagonists in anyone else's work (with an appropriately stereotypical and pseudo-latinesque name).

Also: realism is nice but not a particularly high priority for me.

Will post on the language in the future. For now, to give a "feel" for the setting I want, here's a little ditty that I wrote in a few minutes on a whim. In-universe I suppose it is a fragment of a work within the genre of a dialogue, of a king of Argh speaking to a journeyman, or some such thing. You can also think of it like an "Arghish Ozymandias". Please forgive the banal prose.

I will tell you of the world north of Turenia.  My country, the land of Argh, spans the vast and beautiful plains beyond the peaks of Karahan, and it is a land most blessed by the gods, though riven by few rivers and barren of much else, for the sons and daughters of the Animal Lords bless us with herds and game most numerous.  Far north of our country, as far as dare go most, is a great tundra filled of hordes of tribal clans.  They are our distant kinsmen, and though savage and unwashed, are learned in the ancient ways, unspoiled by civilized life, and their shamans are the wisest of all men in the holy magics.

Furthest north where may yet be felt the warmth of the sun and be seen the light of its face lie the Kingdoms of Twilight, in lands forever bathed in the purple light of dusk.  There stand the last ruins of the City That Spanned The World, when men were as gods and mighty were their lords.  But the people of Twilight do not build, and neither do they sing nor write—they war, in endless strife over the crumbling ruins of greatness.

Past the Twilight Kingdoms may a man find the lands of the Fire People, the eldest of all human kin.  They dwell deep within the country of night, but live not in darkness, for they are Noble and need the light given by bonfire and torch.  They bear the fire ever with them, suckling from its warmth, and if ever a fire give out, there its people perish.

Beyond those lands lie no human kingdoms, nor ever has there been any tribe, for a man may walk a hundred days and see naught but desolation.  But after the hundred days he enters the land of the Sunless, who are neither human nor beast, and live ever in darkness.  Theirs are empires and nations as many and vast as our own, for they were made in the image of humans, but they have no soul.

Further north still, without the haunts of either Noble or Sunless, is the realm of the Animal Lords—the venerated Fathers and Mothers of the tiger, deer, and other beasts of the earth.  To venture unto them is no man permitted, except he be most holy and clean of spirit.  Beyond their country lies another waste, even vaster than the first, and it reaches even until the end of the world, where the broken icy fingers of earth succumb to the Sunless Sea—the churning bellow in which swim the chaos beasts older than the gods, the endless ocean from whence the Universe was made and in which it shall be consumed.

And on the shore of that Sunless Sea there lies a great monument, made of rock that once grew in the mountains of Karahan and now grows no more.  And upon that rock is borne an inscription in two languages—the last ever to be written in the Ancient tongue, and the first to be carved in the language of my Forefathers—and it reads, “I, Baralar-kun, cut this stone from the heart of Karahan and bore it to the edge of the world.  If any man soever doubt my greatness, let him come and gaze upon it.”

The names "Karahan" and "Baralar-kun" subject to change, as I have not gotten that far yet in the actual making of the language.

Will try to post about the language a bit tomorrow.

EDIT: map

Hell yes this is quality. In the immortal words of McDonald's, "I'm lovin' it."

I'll wait for this.

Ok, more stuff— still not much on the actual language but here's some more background information.

The historical setting is as follows. The barren plains of Arghia were once populated only by the noble savages of the Arghic linguistic group. Then, at some apex of its power, the Turenian empire of the south temporarily occupied an area further from the headwaters in the mountains than usual, and developed the region. Eventually the Arghians drove them out, but by then the damage was done: they had become civilized... or at least, the urbanized ones had. The subsequent Arghish kingdoms in the area thus had a literate chancellory, scholarly and priestly caste, etc. inherited from the Turenian occupation. I imagine there was some point of sensitivity over whether the Arghish kings of this era were "true" to their "roots", much like the successors of Chinggis Qaghan. This is where the attitude from the above minisketch comes from concerning the people to the north, about them preserving the ways of the ancestors. They speak Outer Arghic languages.

SO, the sociolinguistics are this. In the early period the literati just wrote in Turenian. Later they wrote in a standardized version of Arghish based on Old Arghish but with heavy influence from Turenian. However, the Turenian-based writing system was inadequate and writers eventually realized they had been importing pronunciation from the colloquial language (Middle Arghish at this time) but still spelling things as in Old Arghish. So there was a restandardization, which involved spelling words phonetically (and no longer pretending they were still writing Old Arghish) and being more lax about introducing colloquial words into the written standard. Here's a diagram: http://i.imgur.com/Iu35I4a.png

(I'm not really worrying about the Modern Arghish dialects or whatever developments led to them. When I write a "spoken Arghish" example in this post, it's mostly just a comparison of a native inherited form vs. a borrowed literate form, and might not actually match spoken colloquial Middle or Modern Arghish.)

I got the basic idea when reading about Written Oirat. The author wrote that in their belief, Written Oirat represents the Oirats' pronunciation tradition of Classical Mongolian, which they at one point decided to put to writing and to depart from the Classical Mongolian written standard. See, conlangers seem to often want to make "Classical" languages, but I think that's just 'cause it sounds classy and cool. But the actual idea of a "classical" language has a bit more potential, because they often are artificial. So the focus conlang for me is "Neoclassical Arghish"— the restandardized written form I mentioned in the earlier paragraph. I have no idea how much traction I'll get out of this idea, though.

Here's one example of the kind of thing the Neoclassical language would do that the forms of the language less infected by the written form wouldn't. Ordinarily Arghish modifiers follow their head but are in turn followed by a subordinating particle which agrees in noun class with the head of the phrase:

Where -z, -l, and -š agree with hawk/head, mountain, and life respectively. The SUB particle derives from a pronoun— the class suffix in prior stages was suffixed directly to the modifying noun or adjective. It also works for relative clauses.

The Turenian language, however, didn't like this. So, much as Sumerian made Akkadian into an SOV language, Turenian introduced an alternate construction— ungrammatical in colloquial Arghish— into written Arghish based on the modifying particle preceding the modifier. It affected both modified noun phrases:

and relative clauses

Also, subordinating clauses. For example, if-clauses. The native way to do this is to subordinate the clause with an irrealis subordinator followed by the "then, therefore" coordinator:

Turenian used subordinating conjunctions that preceded the subclause. Written Arghish borrowed this subordinator and produced a modified form of an if-clause:

Where both the inflected subordinate particle and the "then, therefore" coordinator may either or both be absent.

The phonaesthetic influences I am trying to draw inspiration from are Black Speech, Classical Mongolian, and Middle Persian.

I like that!

Here's a short description of one kind of semi-irregular verb in Arghish.

Postbases

Some verb lexemes have single-phoneme postbases which are suffixed to the root in the bare form, but which are preceded by certain suffixes in the conjugated form of the verb. These are probably fossilized aspectual suffixes in origin. There are four postbases: the most common postbases are <-z> and <-g>; the postbases <-d/-r> and <-y/-i> are less common.

The postbase follows suffixes like the reflexive <-iši> and is inflected directly to the preceding affix.

Bare form: (<root) "gloss" / Inflected form with <-iši> 'REFL':
gahz (gan-) "cut" / ganišiz
zolg (zol-) "pick up" / zulišig
kaghd (kagh-) "lead" / kawišir
bay (bah-) "touch" / bayši

After the suffixes <-an> (plural subject) and <-um> (past tense), the nasal of the preceding suffix disappears.

Bare form: / Form with <-um>: / Form with <-an>:
gahz / ganuz / ganaz
zolg / zulug / zulag
kaghd / kaghur / kaghar
bay / bawi / bahay

Other suffixes can follow the postbase, such as the singular imperative <-a> and the reciprocal <-ahg>.

Bare form: / Form with <-a>: / Form with <-um> and <-ahg>:
gahz / gazza / ganuzahg
zolg / zolga / zulugahg
kahgd / kaghra / kaghurahg
bay / baya / bawyahg

Some verb lexemes appear to have a postbase in inflected forms, but not in the bare form or in forms where the postbase slot is adjacent to the root.

Bare form "gloss": / With <-a>: / With <-um> and <-ahg>:
ughd "remember" / ughda / ughduzahg
laš "dig" / laša / lašuyahg
khrez "be old" / khreza / khrezugahg

At least one verb appears to have one postbase in the bare form, but another in the inflected forms.

Bare form (Root) "gloss": / With <-um>: / With <-um> and <-ahg>:
mord (mor-) "listen" / muruz / muruzahg

And some verbs, as indicated by comparative evidence with other Arghic languages, have a postbase which has been reanalyzed as part of the root:

Bare form "gloss" / With <-um> / Proto-Arghic etymon:
grar "recite poetry" / grarum / *[something without the -r]
barg "strangle" / bargum / *[something without the -g]


Maybe in the next post I'll give an explanation for how a verb for "to be old" can have a reciprocal form...