Xoq

General information

Xoq (/ʃɒŋ/, clipped from xotlaq /ʃɒtlaŋ/ 'short language') is a personal conlang and my attempt at creating an as concise and unambiguous a posteriori language as possible without the need to memorise a large vocabulary. That means it strives to keep word length at 3-to-4-to-5-tops letters. It's still on the tweaking stage. Putting it on this site is intended to encourage me to put more work into it.

History, influences

I've always been finding fault with natural languages, felt the need to improve them. Every time i saw a feature of one language that wasn't present in the ones i knew i realised all the good traits could be brought into one perfect language. Well, it didn't turn out that easy.

Chinese was a huge influence. Both its word length and traits such as static verbs were very inspiring. I liked its conciseness and its isolatingness. I also like its morphology but i don't find a closed vocabulary very practical and am not up to making up my lang's vocab. Chinese made me realise how word categories are just convention and thus how an adjective in one language can be a verb in another etc.

French was the source of the idea of Xoq's phonotactics in how it allows to pronounce 'Je ne sais pas' as /ʒnə sɛ pɑ/ or /jən sɛ pɑ/. Plus languages like Italian and Chinese that don't like consonant clusters often add epenthetic vowels in foreign words that have them.

My other conlang attempts focused on the syllable structre CV-only but the resulting words proved unbearingly long. Also, i tried to make an a priori language. i got discouraged by the amount of time and effort involved, as well as the fact observing natural languages lead me to realise how arbitrary their vocabulary is. Borrowing words from other languages earns English words a lot of conciseness. But I'm aware of how neat Chinese morphology looks (fire+arrow=rocket, walk+star=planet), if it weren't for its morphemes' ambiguity.

Phonology

Xolq's sounds are not the main objective of its creation. The basic sounds allowing to read the language cover the 26 letters of the English alphabet. I'll try and add as many sounds expressed by digraphs as possible to further shorten the pronounciation, but first i need to figure out which letter combinations are going to appear the most in practice.

The basic sounds are as follows:

grapheme	phoneme
a	a
b	b
c	ʝ
d	d
e	ɛ
f	f
g	g
h	x
i	ɪ
j	ʒ
k	k
l	l
m	m
n	n
o	ɒ
p	p
q	ŋ
r	ɹ
s	s
t	t
u	ʊ
v	v
w	w
x	ʃ
y	j
z	z

Orthography

Xoq's orthography is 100% phonemic. There are no capital letters. The phonotactics design is intended to allow for reading acronyms as you would regular words.

Phonotactics

There are no limits in Xoq's phonotactics. There are two epenthetic sounds used to make any combination of sounds pronounceable: /ə/ between consonants and /ʔ/ between vowels. Words are stressed on the first syllable. /ə/ is not stressed unless, if need be, in a consonant-only word like wt /'wət/ 'what. Digraphs, like 'aa', may be pronounced either separately using their basic sound quality (/a(ʔ)a/), or, if available for a specific digraph, as a special sound (in aa's case it's /ɑ/).

Possible pronunciations:

Digraph	Pronunciation
Vn	◌̃
ks	ɧ
rn	ɳ
sr	ʂ
hy	ç
zy	ʑ
sy	ɕ
ky	c
tr	ʈ

wn ('when') is pronounced /wən/ or /wə̃/.

Morphology

Xolq's morphology is based on that of English. All grammatical particles listed here are isolating and precede what they modify. The spelling's changed. In practice it's simplified for conciseness's sake wherever no ambiguity arises, in other words, diphthongs are only used to disambiguate words whose simplified form would make them homographs. This means 'consise' is rendered as ksas /ksʌs/ (the morpheme 'con-' is simplified tok-) as there are no words like 'consuss', 'consarse', 'consass' or 'consouse' in English to mistake it for. Compound words can be written together since each of them must contain one vowel.

English phoneme	Xoq rendition	Xoq pronunciation	Xoq simplified
/ʌ/	a	/ʌ/	a
/ɑ:/	aa	/ɑ/	a
/æ/	ae	/æ/	a
/aɪ/	ai	/a/	a
/aʊ/	au	/ɯ/	a
/ɛ/	e	/ɛ/	e
/ɛə/	ea	/ɶ/	e
/eɪ/	ei	/e/	e
/ɜ:/	eu	/ø/	e
/ɪ/	i	/ɪ/	i
/i:/	ii	/i/	i
/ɪə/	ie	/ɨ/	i
/ɒ/	o	/ɒ/	o
/ɔ:/	oo	/o/	o
/oʊ/	ou	/u/	o
/ʊ/	u	/ʊ/	u
/ʊə/	ue	/y/	u
/ju:/	ui	/ʏ/	u
/u:/	uu	/ʉ/	u

Words are pruned of unnecessary sounds and letters preserving (most of) the stem morpheme (must contain a vowel) while limiting the affixes to ideally 1 consonant, eg. 'unify' becomes unf /ʊn(ə)f/, 'important' becomesmpotn /mpɒtn/ (frequently used words will surely be further shortened; i'd have no trouble rememberingmportn as just mpo). Glides, nasals and liquids may be elided if there's no ambiguity, eg. 'venerable' is venb(elided 'r').

Basic elision patterns:

Cluster	Elided	Example
/kt/	k	cactus > kaks
/mp/	m	temperature > temc
/mb/	m	ambiguous > amg
/ng/	q	finger > fiq
/nd/	n	surround > sran
/kw/	k	equal > ikl
/st/	s	wrist > ris
/stɹ/	sr	structure > srac

Morpheme	Elided	Example
-able	-b	credible > kedb
con-	k-	construe > ksru
-ent	-n	benevolent > bvoln
-ence	-s	excellence > sels
-ity	-t	community > kmunt
-ment	-m	argument > agm
para-	p-	paradagm > pdam
-tive	-v	attributive > tribv

Grammar

Adjectives and adverbs form a modifier category and they respectively follow nouns and verbs.

Nouns

General marker: m.

Optional plural marker: j.

Pronouns

In isolation pronounced /kə/, /ŋə/ etc.

English	Xoq
I	k
you	q
she	z
he	h
he or she	hux
it	l
we	s
you	g
they	d

k like Dutch ik, q similar to Chinese ni, z like German sie, h like he, l like Latin ille, s like us, g like old englishge, d like Swedish de

• possessives add v-, eg. doot vk /'dɔtə vək/ = 'my daughter'.

Prepositions

English preposition	Xoq preposition
accusative	aa
vocative	ae
at	at
about	bt
above	bv
according to	kt
across	kr
after	af
against	gs
along	lq
amid	md
among	mq
apart	pt
around	rn
as (functioning as)	az
as (being)	be
as for	zf
away	ve
because of	kv
before	bf
behind	bh
below	bl
beneath	bn
beside	bs
between	bi
beyond	by
by	ba
concerning	kq
considering	kd
despite	dp
during	jq
for	fo
from	fm
ever since ..., ...	es ... dn ...
except	xt
if not for	inf
in	in
inside	is
instead of	id
into (illative)	it
into (translative)	bm ('become')
in terms of	tv
like	lk
named	nm
near	ni
next to	nx
of	v
off	of
on	on
onto	ot
opposite	op
out	au
out of	av
over	ov
since	sn
than	vn
through	fu
to	tu
towards	tw
under	un
unlike	nl
until	ti
whether	wr
with (comitative)	wf
with (instrumental)	uz ('use')
within	wv
without	va

Prepositions and adjectives act like verbs. They may be preceded by w or a tense/mood particle.

He's similar to his brother.

h w sim bro vh.

/xəw sɪm bɹɒ vəx/

Adjectives and adverbs

General marker: y.

Comparison

Level	Suffix
comparative	f
superlative	x

Verb

General marker:

active	passive
w	b

Adjectives and participles act as verbs.

Tense/mood	Particle
past	a
present	o
future	e
conditional	u
imperative	i

• perfective: t
• progressive: r

She's been seeing my teacher for months.

z tr sii ticr vk fo j manf.

/zə ʈə si tɪʝɹ vək fɒʒ mʌ̃f/

Her cousin was doing her homework.

kanz vz ta du homk.

/'kʌ̃z vəzə tʌ 'dʊ 'hɒmk/

Participles

tense	adjectival
present	c
past	p

The man believed to have been killed in the fire was seen alive yesterday.

man p bliv (eu) p a kil in fae b sii laiv yde.

/'mʌn pə 'blɪv (ø) pʌ 'kɪl ɪn 'fæ bə si 'lav jə'dɛ/

gerund	hy

We admired the choir's singing.

s a mai hy siq v kai.

/'sʌ maç 'sɪŋ əv 'ka/

GRID	what sort of - ws	this -ds	that -dt	some -sa	no -no	every - er	any -an	subordinate
person	hu	ds	dt	sy	ny	ey	ay	cp
thing	wt	ds	dt	sf	nf	ef	af	cf
place	we	hi	de	sw	nw	ew	aw	cw
time	wn	nuu	dn	st	nv	et	at	ct
manner	ha	ld (like this)	lt (like that)	sh	nh	eh	ah	ch
quantity	hm	dm	tm				am	cm

interrogative 'which'	subordinate 'which'
wc	cy

Which of them will come?

wc v d e kam.

/'wəʝ əv dɛ kʌm/

I don't know which of them to choose.

k n no cuz cy v d.

/kə̃ 'nɒ 'ʝʊz 'ʝəjvəd/

Questions

The question particle ui is used to form open questions.

Example.

Do you like cars?

q lak kaa ui.

/ŋə lʌk kɑ ʏ/

it can be expressed by a '?'. Wh-questions preserve the basic word order.

What did they want from you?

d a won wt fm q.

/'dʌ wɒn 'wət fəm əŋ/

Numerals

Number	Xoq
0	lu
1	ye
2	tu
3	di
4	vo
5	fa
6	su
7	ze
8	ho
9	na
10	qu

Number	Xoq	Suffix
-teen		-r
10	qa	-q
100	hu	-h
1000	mi	-m
10,000	nu	-n
100,000	xe	-x
1000,000	la	-l
-th		-f
-ion		-y
-fold		-w
point	pn

billion: tuy, trillion: diy etc.

Vocabulary

English	Xoq
and	en
not	n
in order to	pe
which	c
that	eu
this	ds
that	dt
be	zy
good	gu
much/many	mu
may	me
might	ma
can	ke
times	ta
give	gi
get	ge
have	he
have to	ht
should	xd
but	bu
though	do
such/so	so
only	oy
unless	le
let's	ls
let him	lh
let her	lz
let it	ll
always	ow
enough	ng
ever	ev
rather	rd
rather than	rv
such as	sz
also	os
almost	om
already	or
or	oo
for example	fz
still	si (can be anywhere in the clause after the subject)
yes	ya
no	ne
even	iv
each other	ca
if ... then ...	... tn ...
... if ...	... if ...
both	bd (German 'beide')
o'clock	kl
really	ri
be x years old	ed ('age-old')
be supposed to	sp
yet	yt (can be anywhere in the clause after the subject)
so (conj.)	zo
so that	zeu
also known as	onz
as long as	zl
just	js
just as	jz
no (det.)	no
then (thereafter)	df
and then	nn
forward	fw
backward	bw
down	da
up	ap
aside	ts ('to side')
and or	eo
because	bz

If you like this house, buy it.

q lak ds has tn i bai l.

/ŋə 'lʌk dəs 'hʌst nɪ 'bal/

I'll see you at 3 pm tomorrow.

k sii q at far kl tmo. (24h time base)

/ksiŋ ʌt fʌɹ kəlt mɒ/

I'm 25 years old.

k ed tuqfa yi.

/kɛd tʊŋfʌ jɪ/