Language Goals (The Kyol Language Family, Part 2)

After I finished discussing the broad idea of triconsonantal roots in the last post, I wanted to show how I’m going to start constructing them in my conlang. But as I tried, it became clear that, even with the background of my last post, a lot of my motivations for what I’m doing with this language are still pretty unclear. So let’s establish some goals. 

For me, the primary goals are features I know I want to have in my language. These are: Semitic-style root and pattern morphology, grammatical gender, grammatical honorific speech, and complex consonant clusters. Let’s examine each of these in more detail:

Semitic-style root and pattern morphology. Given the subject of my last post, this one shouldn’t be much of a surprise. I think they’re cool and can work with some of my other ideas.

Grammatical gender. This comes less from my ideas about the language itself and more from my ideas about Kyol culture. Kyol society is heavily based around gender roles. In particular, it’s matriarchal both in organization and in worldview, to a degree not seen in any human culture on Earth. (I’ll discuss this in its own post later.) Grammatical feminine-masculine-neuter distinctions seem like a good way to show this in the language.

Honorific speech. Again, this idea comes mostly from my ideas about Kyol culture. Not only does Kyol culture place emphasis on hierarchy, but it also highly values propriety and politeness. While all languages have registers of some kind, I want this language to have a more complex and grammatical register system like Korean. 

Complex consonant clusters. I want the phonotactics to be really loose, with lots of syllable-initial and syllable-final clusters, as well as a lot of syllabic consonants. In addition to the obvious syllabic sonorants¹Nasals, laterals, and the trilled [r̩] – which I was worried about being unnaturalistic except it occurs in a bunch of Slavic languages., there’s also syllabic voiced fricatives. 

I’ve learned in my early drafts that a language isn’t as interesting as a root-pattern language when most of the vowels are gone entirely. However, it does make a really good middle stage for a language developing triconsonantal roots. I’m currently labeling this stage ‘Old Kyol’, as I think it’s a good language for the ancient Kyol Allegiance. Then, various forms of epenthesis (inserting vowels to make the word easier to pronounce) will come in, making more obvious root pattern morphology.

In addition to these basic goals, there are two considerations that I want to keep in mind when making this language. These aren’t exactly goals, but more guidelines that I want to be working within.

Not too similar to a Semitic language. Triconsonantal roots already are very indicative of a Semitic language, and I’m already straying into this territory with some of my other goals. On the phonology side, clusters and a lot of dorsal fricatives already give the language a kind of Arabic-like sound. On the grammar side, I know I want verb agreement (that only references the subject), agreement with regards to gender, and a derived stem system like Semitic languages. Thus I want to make other parts of the language different from Semitic languages where possible. But I don’t want to be adding features that feel like they’re layered on for no reason, so I’m going to have to be careful with what I’m doing in the future. I’ll revisit this idea when we get to some of the grammatical ideas.

“Snarl-like” phonaesthetic. See the consonant clusters, and also a dorsal-heavy phonology. Normally I try to make my phonaesthetics more distinctive than this one. This phonaesthetic is a common signifier for a “warlike” or “savage” culture. See Orcish, or Lovecraft’s weird chant-language. This isn’t only racist if you do it wrong but also not particularly interesting. It’s a very cliche way of showing certain societal traits.

The reason why I like it here is that Kyol culture is an exact opposite of these stereotypes. Kyol culture places great emphasis on propriety and respectability. Violence is taboo to even discuss, and overt aggression is frowned upon. Like a lot of Kyol culture, the symbolism here is running a bit counter to the cultural traits it’s expressing, but I think it’s an interesting challenge to reconcile the contrast in the reader’s mind.

For Kyol, a large part of this will come from the Kyolite operatic and literary traditions. Despite what I post about on my blog, I am actually mostly a composer and not a linguist or anthropologist. So I’d like to write some vocal music in this language! And I don’t want it to all sound like war songs – I want to attempt to write genuinely lyrical and beautiful music in this language. The weirdness of the phonaesthetic provides both a unique challenge and a unique sound that I’m looking forward to getting to work with.

So, with my goals set and some guidelines established, I’m going to start getting into the conlanging itself!