Jotadiego

Welcome to Jotadiego's user page on Linguifex!

Hi guys! I'm Jotadiego (people from the Facebook groups may know me as J Diego; I've also gone by the nicknames Taimunozhan and Squirrelwug).

I've been creating languages since I was 14 or so (2008-ish), after getting interested in Esperanto and Tolkien's languages. My first conlangs where rather uncouth (Spaele, which was an unholy mix of words from a dozen sources, and Mëntinlan and Calacalá, both of which attempted in some way or other to be logical languages) but, as years went by, I managed to create better conlangs (nonetheless, I've decided to keep those early languages rather than getting rid of them; my reluctance to abandon old conlangs is one of the key elements which have lead me to hoard dozens and dozens of conlangs of my own).

Although I'm not a linguist (nor have I pursued a career in linguistics) I'm passionate about languages. As it's the case for many conlangers, my interest is not as much about 'learning' languages (I'm only conversational in English, other than my native tongue [Uruguayan Rioplatense] Spanish) but about the quirks of different languages in their grammars, phonologies and history. I'm particularly interested on language evolution and comparative linguistics (something that has influenced me as a conlanger: I'll often make language families or try to work out relations between my conlangs). I just love the idea of seeing different behaviour evolve from a common ancestor and tracking down seemingly unrelated words to the same etymology (like Hittite 𒂊𒌍𒄯 ‎(ēšḫar, blood) actually being a cognate to English iron).

My conlangs usually fit the artlang category; I don't really intend to get people to speak them (I do not make much of an effort to learn them either); I'd just rather make them interesting to me. Sometimes, I'll make conlangs to explore some concept (Lynn, for instance, was born out of pondering what Spanish would look like if it had underwent a sound change like Grimm's law in Germanic languages; Dongh, a latter conlang, was the opposite: my attempt to make a Germanic language where those sound changes had been undone resulting in words like /puːd/ which actually comes from Old English fōt but which may looks closer to PIE *pṓds). I'd like imagining that some of my conlangs would be spoken by different groups of fictional folks (which further motivates me to make them naturalistic) though I don't normally go too deep in the conworld element. Many of my conlangs (between a third and a half of them, I think) have scripts of their own though I'll often stick with their more convenient romanizations (out of laziness, that is).

I've worked both on a priori and a posteriori languages; I don't have a clear preference for either, though I'm most commonly seen using Efenol (particularly its western dialect, Efenol del'Oth), an a posteriori language based on Spanish (my first language). Although I'm indeed fond of Efenol, it's actually not my favourite (my apparent preference for using it mostly stems from it being really easy for me to derive Efenol words and phrases by applying the appropriate rules; it is the only conlang that I'd be able to speak confidently enough). While I wouldn't claim to have a favourite either, I can say that both Tengoko and Lisnäit occupy a special place for me (though there are other conlangs I've made which are probably much more interesting in terms of grammar, history, etc).

I've got a certain tendency to make a new conlang every time I get what I deem to be an interesting idea. This, along with the facts that I'll seldom abandon an old conlang and that I like working with language families (which often results in new daughter/mother/sister languages) has effected the current situation where I've got a ton of conlangs most of which are, unfortunately, underdeveloped. From time to time I'll try to revisit an old conlang I hadn't worked on for a long time (which most often results in reforming the language), but my long sought goal of properly documenting each of my conlangs has remained elusive.

Other than conlangs and linguistics, my interests are science, maths, IT and programming (I've somehow ended studying computer engineering), geography (and cartography!) among others. My favourite books include His Dark Materials trilogy (by Philip Pullman) and stuff by Asimov (I like The End of Eternity better than the Foundation series but I think that his best works are actually his short stories like Nightfall, The Gentle Vultures or The Last Question). I've developed a liking for animé with FMA Brotherhood, Durarara, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the little known Shinsekai Yori being my favourites. As for music, I'm mostly into rock and pop though I listen to a wide range of genres (there are only a few kinds of music I don't really like including some kinds of tropical music which, much to my dislike, seem to be way too popular where I live u_u).

By the way, I'm an admin and a founding member of Conlangs (Español), a Spanish-language Facebook group for talking about conlangs and related stuff. If you hablas español, make sure to check it out! ;)

Languages

INCOMPLETE LIST

I've got quite a few conlangs (the length of this list may prove that to be an understatement) though, unfortunately, most of them are underdeveloped (some are hardly more than sketches). While I'm certainly not developing all of them at a time most (if not all) could be said to be active in the sense that, from time to time, I'll review them and translate a thing or two (this has become specially the case in 2015, when I imposed myself the goal of coining a word each day alternating between my conlangs).

I plan to add examples and, eventually, articles of their own for each conlang but that is going to take quite a time.

Early conlangs

My first experience at conlanging was creating an Esperantido which is now lost (I only thing I remember is that it had the genitive/possessive suffix -esa). My first serious attempts, however, where Mëntinlan, Spaele and Calacalá (Mëntinlan being the first though I had worked with something which my be thought of as a precursor to Spaele before, so Spaele could also claim that title). Other than beginning as rather unrefined conlangs (due to my lack of experience and linguistic knowledge at the time) they do not share much, though I'll often treat them as a group just out of nostalgia (Efanyó, my fourth conlang, could also be included in here on a similar basis).

Mëntinlan

Non-diachronic a posterirori.

Mëntinlan (originally spelled Meantinlan) is a language with agglutinative word formation and otherwise analytic grammar. Its lexical roots are mostly derived from English (though often "volapukized" to a less recognizable form); for instance Mëntinlan used* to mean 'symbolic language' and was formed by joining "mëntin" (symbol, itself from "mën", from English mean and "tin", from English thing) and "lan" (language).

The language's head directionality was changed so now 'symbolic language' would be "Lantinmën". The old form of name, however, was kept unchanged.

Constructed scripts: Mëntinpiky (logographic)

Spaele

Non-diachronic a posterirori.

Spaele (also Spaëlë) is an agglutinative language with a lexicon drawn from several natural languages (featuring most prominently English, Esperanto, German, Spanish and Latin). Nouns and adjectives are declined for two numbers and four genders (feminine, masculine, neutral and mixed) which can be determined from word terminations and accept a large number of case suffixes. Verbs may be conjugated to indicate both their subjects and direct objects.

Constructed scripts: Runei (in two variants, Runei proper and Runei Noviei or new Runei; featural), Piumafonte (alphabetic)

Calacalá

A priori.

Calacalá (which may be Anglicised as "Chalachalah") is a logical language following a concept similar to that of Ro: each letter defines a category which can be further refined with additional letters (da for descriptions, dac for colours, dacaz for blue, dacazav for bluish indigo, etc). However, one feature that sets Calacalá apart of Ro is that only consonants count in this regard (the previous examples could be thought as D, DC, DCZ and DCZV respectively) while vowels are only auxiliary (they may help telling apart words with similar consonants). There exist two vocalization schemes (fixed set of rules determining which vowels to add to a consonant string) which account for what could be said to be two Calacalá dialects: Caladá and Çelçeli.

Constructed scripts: Calasifal (an abjad though, due to the peculiarities of Calacalá, it could also be though as a full alphabet).

Neo-Hispanic

There was a period where I experimented on conlangs based on Spanish (my native language). I collectively refer to them as Neo-Hispanic, as if they were their own sub-branch of Romance. Neo-Hispanic would be further divided in two major branches: the Germanic-ish Lynnic branch (which experienced a sound change analogous to Grimm's law) and the so-called Efanic branch (which shares some sound changes like /sp/ -> /f/).

Many of those conlangs follow the "language X evolved to look like language Y" which can be found in conlangs by other authors. At the time I did specially like Þrjótrunn, which was basically "Latin evolved to look Icelandic" (resulting in one of the best conlangs I've seen; which further motivated me to try that approach).

Efanyó

A posterirori: Indoeuropean, Romance, Neo-Hispanic, Efanic

Efanyó was my attempt to foresee a possible future Spanish. It simplifies many consonant clusters, reduces (and loses) some syllables and it incorporates a phenomenon which is basically identical to French Liaison (some final consonants are only realized if followed by a vowel-initial word).