Translang

The trans constructed language :3 Help us out at r/transconlang

Table of contents

• Grammar
• Phonetics
• Examples
• Formatting
• Vocabulary
• • Nouns
• • Adjectives
• • Verbs
• • Pronouns
• • Numbers
• • Suffixes
• • Prefixes
• • Conjunctions
• • Interjections
• • Adverbs
• • Prepositions

Common Misunderstandings

ni- vs mo- vs -fe

The difference between the affixes ni- , mo- , and -fe may seem confusing for some people.

A general definition is:

• ni- is used for negation, having exactly the same meaning as non- in english, and thus establishes that the word is specifically not what the rest of it means. It can thus definitively refer to one concrete word (see first example), or be more abstract and refer to a wider array of possible options (see examples two and three). Examples:
  1. nikumi , literal meaning being non-trans, and since the only possibilities in this case are trans and cis, cis
  2. ni[positive] (we don't have words for positive, neutral, and negative), which would literally mean non-positive, and could thus mean negative or neutral
  3. nikase , literal meaning being non-cat, which could mean anything without specific context. Thus, certain combinations with ni- are impractical and should not be used.
• mo- is used for inversion, meaning "the contrary/inverse of", and hence establishes that the word is the contrary of what the rest of it means. It thus always definitively refers to one concrete word, unless there is ambiguity in the interpretation. Examples:
  1. mo[positive] (we don't have words for positive, neutral, and negative), which would literally mean the contrary of positive (negative)
• -fe is used to convey opposition towards something, meaning "opposed to", and thus simply defines opposition towards what the rest of the word means. Examples:
  1. kumife , literal meaning being "opposed to transness", that being "transphobe"

Serialized Language Specification

The language specification lives in the rawspec/ directory. Each JSON file contains an array consisting of entries from single section of the language specification. The sections are as listed in Vocabulary/, and the JSON files are named accordingly. All of them are concatenated into rawspec/0-complete.json, which has every single word. For the entry format, see scripting/types.ts, which explains the type of entry in each file.