Tatari Faran
From Langmaker
| Conlang | Tatari Faran |
| Author | H. S. Teoh |
| Year Began | 2004 |
| Language Type | fictional language |
| Lexicon Size | 982 |
| Etymologies | No |
| Grammar | Yes |
| Sample Texts | Yes |
| Primer | No |
Tatari Faran is a fictional language. It was created by H. S. Teoh.
Language sources
- Hawai'ian, for the small phonetic inventory and phonemic glottal stop;
- Korean, for its pitch-accent patterns;
- Malay (or Austronesian languages in general) for the general 'sound' of its words;
- Japanese for its tendency to repeat nouns rather than use pronouns;
- Sinitic languages for the general isolating tendencies;
- and many others.
Unique features
- Tatari Faran's complements are a class of words that have no equivalents in any natural language (as far as I know). In spite of this, they still "feel" intuitive. They serve as end-of-clause or end-of-sentence markers, and are matched with the main verb in the clause, giving the main verb a sense of conclusion or reinforcement. Their absence often gives a clause the feeling of non-closure; this is exploited in subjunctives, if-then constructs, and cause-and-effect statements.
- The typology is unlike any natural language, yet it is intuitive once one has learned it. It is similar to a reduced form of Ebisédian's case system. There is no subject or object, but a 3-case system where noun cases are assigned semantically.
- The use of adverbs of manner to express concepts such as "to start to do something", "to try to do something", etc., rather than having verbs for "to do", "to try", etc., plus an infinitive.
- Two ways of marking the same set of cases on nouns; one way is used in the main clause, and the other in relative clauses.
- Second-person pronouns double as vocative markers, and 3rd person pronouns double as demonstratives.
Design principles
I started out aiming for minimal phonetic inventory (although it turned out to be not as minimal as Hawai'ian), which collapsed /r/ and /d/ in the initial set I had, and later caused the discarding of /l/ altogether. Nevertheless, euphony was still much of a consideration, and so Tatari Faran has quite a number of mutation rules to maintain euphony.
Also, I had a particular sound flavor in mind, vaguely Austronesian. Not only was the phonetic inventory modelled after Hawai'ian; every word is carefully crafted to 'sound right'. David Peterson believes I was quite successful in this area.
Another design principle is that it will be very isolating rather than inflecting. So noun case (at least in the main clause) is marked by postclitics, which may be separated from the head noun by adjectives, genitives, or even entire relative clauses; verbal aspect, tense, etc. are marked by modifiers, etc.. In relative clauses, however, inflections are used.
There is also a tendency towards onomapoiea in the vocabulary, among which are words such as:
- ako' for "chicken";
- aku' "to be hit on the head";
- boha au'au for "to bark";
- tsuinit for "songbird";
- sisita for "to chatter";
to name a few.
Besides this, Tatari Faran being spoken in a highly volcanically-active land, there are a large number of words for volcanism-related phenomena, including several different words for volcanoes of different types, several words for different eruptions, several words for lava (ala Hawai'ian), etc.
Interest of others
A number of people on CONLANG have expressed interest in it.
- "It is so original!"—Sally Caves.
- "I enjoyed it very much"—David Peterson.
