The 11th speedlang challenge took place from March 18th to April 3rd, 2022. I hosted it on the CDN, r/conlangs and a few other Discord servers. I skipped number 10 because Mareck hosted a challenge with that number.
The phonology had to include diphthongs (and discuss why that was the right way to analyze them) and had to have at least one phoneme with a grammatically restricted distribution. The languages also had to make use of root-template morphology, mark evidentiality, and have a class of discourse markers. There was a Script DLC, where if you create a script you get to skip one of the other requirements. There were also a few nonsense prompts generated by an AI. You can read the whole prompt here.
I received a lucky thirteen submissions this round! Here they are:
- Saĭtehi by Sandwich The first submission I received nearly a week early! An alien language with a ton of interesting copula forms marking the position of information in discourse.
- Q’łin by Tryddle Posing as Dr. Thomas Satner-Ecke, a fictional linguist, Tryddle documents his Q’łin language (which is apparently also the subject of a forthcoming paper by R. P. Boy…better get on it!) Complete with competing analyses of the data, plenty of real and imagined citations, and no shortage of shade on other fictional linguists, it reads like a real mid-century ling paper.
- Speedlang 11 by Miacomet My own submission. I got sick the second week and lost the energy to finish everything I had planned, but I still got some grammar that met the prompts, so here it is. I liked how the auxiliaries turned out, especially the distinction between the two past tenses.
- Nineis by Formor This speedlang has a cool system involving reduplication and infixation that starts to look like consonantal roots while still being derivable from individual processes. Formor also scanned in a very cool native script!
- Awd by Ironic This might be the first speedlang I’ve gotten with the phoneme /ю/. I enjoyed the specific form for mocking speech as well as the wealth of particles, especially the expletive particles (although I was hoping for a section on swearing when I saw that header).
- Ŋ!odzäsä by ImpishDullahan and PastTheStarryVoids The second collaborative speedlang I’ve received, this typologically unusual language (clicks with a high degree of synthesis!) made use of a lot of the AI-generated prompts in a pretty fun way. (vocabulary, Reddit post)
- Speed by CaoimhinOg The longest submission this round, CaoimhinOg’s provisionally named Speed has centering diphthongs, decorative morphology (prepositions that mean nothing!), and lots and lots of derivation. Check out the excerpt of a play translated at the tail end. (Reddit post)
- Gathay (Gaθɛ́ɛ) by Astianthus In spite of budgetary constraints and a mysteriously missing cartographer, Gathay is beautifully documented. Asti gets bonus points for cleverly taking inspiration from the AI prompts with constructions like the story beginning formula. I thought that every bit of the language fit together very nicely.
- Wätere by Camel From the title page to the examples you can see Camel’s brushed script. Wätere has triconsonantal roots and a romanization that’s just deep enough to go swimming in.
- Kísu by Mareck If I were an ocelot, I’d eat a rabbit too. Mareck has a very professionally made semisyllabary that shows up all throughout the document. The syntax todo’s also made me smile.
- Tùñí by Ratsawn Little is known about them, but Ratsawn is writing to make more known! Looks like they discovered that tone carries a very heavy functional load and that there’s an interesting first-person effect with the visual evidential. (Reddit post)
- Rehoboth Cordgrass by Tsolee Wow, a language spoken by grass! I’m really impressed with the phonolo- ahem, psithurismal creativity shown here. Especially how you get dipthongs when you’re a blade of grass swaying in the wind. I’m convinced!
There was one submission that was after the deadline:
- Ghila by Lord Norjam Even though this one was a bit late, it did meet all the criteria. It also has a well-written and natural-feeling dialogue!
And one submission that wasn’t quite done:
- Gansang by Karch This submission was not finished, but the examples show the requirements. The link is live, so it might get fleshed out later!