Influenced from a wide variety of languages (Southeast Asian, East Asian, Germanic, and Romance), Melanian is a conlang I've been working on for at least three months. My past attempts to produce this language were failed, most likely because of my lack of knowledge in linguistics back then.

My friend and I were supposed to create this language together, but we both created totally different versions of it, so mine came out as Scandinavian Melanian while his turned into Romanian Melanian (we couldn't think of any better names). My Melanian is considered Scandinavian because it's mainly based on Swedish and Finnish. However, this is subject to change, considering I tend to insert some Latinish words here and there and throw in a couple of Asian.

Well, I'm excited to share this ^_^

Is the grammar all finnish and Swedish with just words borrowed from Latin and Asian(?)?

Pretty much, but it's not just Latin and Asian. There are words borrowed from Germanic and Scandinavian languages too.

Well, here are the first bits of it:

The Alphabet

Aa - /a/
Ãã - /ã/
Ąą – /ɔ̃/
Ää – /æ/
Bb - /b/
Бб – /p/
Cc - /ɕ/
Ćć - /ʨʰ/
Čč – /ʨ/
Dd - /d/
Đđ - /dz/
Ee - /ɛ/
Ęę – /y/, /ɯ/
Ff - /f/
Gg - /g/
Hh - /x/
Ii - /i/
Jj - /j/
Kk - /kʰ/
Ǩǩ - /k/
Ll - /l/
Łł - /w/
Mm - /m/
Nn - /n/
Oo - /o/
Õõ - /õ/
Öö - /ø/
Pp - /pʰ/
Rr - /r/
Ŗŗ - /ɹ/
Ss - /s/
Tt - /tʰ/
Ŧŧ - /t/
Uu - /u/
Vv - /v/
Xx - /ks/
Yy – /y/, /ɯ/, /ɨ/
Zz - /z/
Źź - /ʦ/


Letter Combinations

- Lj, Gj, and Đj - /j/
- Cj, Ćj, and Čj - /ɕ/
- Hj and Xj - /xj/
- Ji - /i/


Rules of Sound

Vowels
- Diphthongs: any two vowel combination you can think of.

- Vowel combinations of more than two are rare.

Consonants
- Consonant combinations of more than two do not exist, except in loan words and foreign names.

- Consonants with similar sounds almost never go together

- Ć, K, P and T also sound like /ʨ/, /k/, /p/ and /t/, respectively, when they appear in unstressed syllables of a word.

Words
- Words with two to three syllables are almost always stressed on the first syllable.

- Toning is very flexible, so the way a word is toned doesn’t change its meaning.

- Double lettering is a minor feature in the Melanian language, sort of like Finnish. That means “kina”, “kiina”, “kinna”, “kinaa”, “kiinaa”, “kiinna”, “kinnaa” and “kiinnaa” all have different meanings (although I didn’t assign any meanings to each of the words yet).

- Individual letters can be counted as syllables, so instead of having “Me-lan-je” or “Me-la-nje”, you can have “Me-la-n-je” or even “M-e-l-a-n-j-e”. However, this depends on the speaker and can only be used on nasal letters.


I’m not sure where to start from here, so I guess I shall start with pronouns and verb conjugation.

Pronouns

Subjective Pronouns

I – Jak
I (if you’re a boy, optional) – Pom
I (if you’re a girl, optional) – Ćan
I (if you’re older than the listener) – Pang
I (if you’re younger than the listener) – On
You – Dau
You (if the listener is a boy, optional) – Poi
You (if the listener is a girl, optional) – Kui
You (if the listener is older) – Nii
You (if the listener is younger) – Nuu
He – Kat
She – Ket
He/She – Hän
It – Dät
We (including you) – Nos
We (excluding you) – Vi
You (pl) – Vos
He (pl) – Kata
She (pl) – Keta
They – Dam

Objective Pronouns

They’re the same as the subjective pronouns. So “I” and “me” would be “jak” in both situations.

Possessive Pronouns

My/mine – Man
Your/yours – Dan
His – Kan
Her(s) – Ken
His/Hers – Häns
Its – Dän
Ours (including yours) – Nosan
Ours (excluding you) – Visan
Your (plural) – Vosan
Theirs – Daman


Verb Conjugation

Infinitive – All end in either (aa), (ea), (ia), (oa), or (ua).

Present Tense – remove the (a) at the end of the infinitive and add…

Pronoun | Ending
Jak, Pom, Ćan, Pang, On | -n
Dau, Poi, Kui, Nii, Nuu | -t
Kat, Ket, Hän, Dät | -u
Nos, Vi | -mmi
Vos | -tti
Kata, Keta, Dam | -kki

Past Tense – take present tense and add (-de), (-te) for second person.

Future Tense – take present tense and add (-sa).

Conditional Form – take present tense and add (-isin) for first and second person, (-sin) for the rest.

Imperative Form – remove (a) at the end of infinitive.

More later (: Please let me know if there is anything I need to change

First of all, several of the vowel letters have multiple values (e.g. /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for y). Your "rules of sound" should explain under what conditions one of these values is used and not the other. By the way, I'm not even sure if these value represent distinct phonemes or only allophones. (And if you don't know what those terms mean, you should look them up.) The convention is that letters between /slashes/ represent phonemes and those between [brackets] are phones, but in your post you use slashes for the unreleased allophones of ć, k, p, and t.

Second, the alphabet in general seems geared to making maximum use of diacritics rather than ease of use. Why, for instance, ł for /w/ when w is free? The reason ł represents /w/ in Polish is that up until a very recent sound change, this letter was pronounced [ɫ] (a velarized alveolar lateral approximant)--and, in any case, w was already in use for [v].

Third, you need to tighten up your rules for geminates (double sounds). It beggars belief that every sound in your inventory can be both long and short. Take ŗŗ, for instance. I've never heard of any language that contrasts /ɹ/ and /ɹ:/. On the other hand, it's very common for a contrast of /r/ and /r:/ to be realised in some other way than [r] vs. [r:]. Many languages (e.g. Spanish, Basque, Albanian) have [ɾ] (an alveolar tap) vs. [r] (a trill), for instance. With that in mind, r /ɹ/ vs. rr /r/ makes a great deal more sense than what you have (and dispenses with another pesky diacritic!).

Fourth, you need to take more about syllable structure. You say that complex consonant clusters don't exist, but you don't mention if there are any restrictions on where the two-consonant combinations occur, let alone what consonants they involve. For instance, is ktorr a possible word in your language? What about člogđ? Nothing in your rules as written forbids these.

That's probably enough for now. Let me know if you have any questions.

1. The /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for Y are allophones. I haven't decided the conditions where one of the values are used and not the other, yet.

2. Ł is used for /w/ instead of W because I choose to have it that way. W is only used in loanwords.

3. Every sound in my inventory can be both long and short (except for H, I just realized it wouldn't make sense to have H be both long and short). Look at the Finnish and Japanese language, most of their letters (or sounds I should say in the case of the Japanese) can be long and short.

4. C, Ć, Č, Đ, H, X, and Ź aren't allowed in two-consonant combinations.

In that case, it would be clearer to adhere to the convention of using brackets for the allophones and slashes for the phonemes. Pick one value--say /y/--to represent the phoneme and then only mention [ɯ] and [ɨ] once you've set the conditions under which they occur.


Is there a historical reason for this or is it completely arbitrary?


Okay, first of all you need to stop talking in terms of "letters". Forget about them for the moment; orthography is not integral to language.

Second, you're dead wrong about Japanese. None of the voiced sounds can be geminated except /n/ and /m/. In particular, the flap ([ɺ] before back vowels, [ɾi] before front) is never geminate. The statement is more accurate when it comes to Finnish, but even here there are exceptions, e.g. voiced obstruents (e.g. /d/, /v/) and semivowels (/j/).

But in case you haven't noticed, your language has an entirely different phoneme inventory than either Finnish or Japanese. So there's no reason to assume that the same rules would apply to the segments of Melanian as apply in those languages anyway.


So *člogđ is not permissible, but ktorr still is?

Why would you Pronounce each letter individually? I'd think people would pronounce words are shortly as possible un less you are exaggerating a word. Also /l/ isn't a nasal.

So learn a little about the languages of the world. In this case, I suggest starting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_pronouns.

Oh, sorry. I meant European languages. Since her conlangs grammar is based off of Finnish, I was just wondering about the pronouns.

I already knew about those types of pronouns in Japanese, but not in Vietnamese, so thanks telling me about that.