User:Rnifnuf

Rnifnuf (/ɑɹˈnɪf.nəf/, most commonly stylized in lowercase, as rnifnuf) is a hobby conlanger, creative writer, and gamer who studied linguistics at University of Washington, Seattle.

Conlangs

Current projects

Syzkyn

The Syzkyn Language (/ˈsɪz.kən/, сызқынҟы/სჷზქჷნყჷ [ˈsɘzˌkʰʲəɴ.qʹə]) is an artling designed by rnifnuf. Development has been ongoing since 2017, making it rnifnuf's longest-running conlang project and flagship conlang overall.

In-universe, this language is spoken by the Syzkyn people, descendants of the Nordic Rus' whose dialect of Old Norse became heavily influenced by Georgian, Abkhaz, and the various Circassian languages.

Completed projects

Owie

Owie (/a.wi/, Aąââ [ʔã.wə.jə]) is a jokelang entered into Agma Schwa's Cursed Conlang Circus in 2022. Owie's design philosophy is to maximize pain with a small but cursed phonology, polysynthetic and fully non-concatenative morphology based on triliteral and quadriliteral roots which can be nested within each other and have their components reordered, mandatory marking of pain level on verbs, and making pleasant concepts difficult or inconvenient to express. Its pseudo-logographic "Analytic Orthography" is designed to elucidate the hierarchical, tree-like structure of an Owie word.

Although not a top 3 contender, the language proved popular with the contest judges, Agma Schwa and Ætérnal, as well as with audiences. The Owie section of the Cursed Conlang Circus can be found at the timestamp 3:04:46.

Dondurmaca

Dondurmaca (English: /doʊn.dɚˈmɑ.ʤə/, Turkish /don.dur.mɑˈʤɑ/) is a jokelang entered into the Cursed Conlang Circus 2, hosted by Agma Schwa in 2023. It is a language communicated through the medium of ice cream dishes, with each dish acting as a single morpheme. A notable feature of Dondurmaca syntax is Mandatory Alternating Direction (MAD), which mandates the head direction of phrases to be the opposite of the maximal projection of the head it modifies (i.e. adjuncts in a head-final phrase are head-initial and vice-versa).

The syntax three for a sentence that ended up taking the shape of a banana appeared to cause significant psychic damage to Ætérnal. As such, the language placed fifth out of 120 entries, earning 98.583 points out of a possible 100.

Natural Languages

Spoken by rnifnuf

• English (Native)
• Spanish (B1)
• Japanese (A2-B1)

Most Fascinating or Inspirational to rnifnuf

• Japanese
• Georgian
• Abkhaz
• Irish
• Finnish
• Gothic
• Tibeto-Burman

Other Projects

TBA