Ggbààne

Ggbààne, my very own submission to the 21st Speedlang Contest from the r/conlangs subreddit, is with absolute certainty one of my most fleshed out conlangs. It is interesting how much a deadline can force you to get the most done in a small amount of time (here 2 weeks).

This 21st Speedlang contest was for sure stimulating. Not in the way it was presented, like for the 19th one, but in the requirements needed. Indeed, how would I have ever thought about nominal TAM, let alone propositional nominal TAM? Behind that scary name lies a simple meaning; the nominal clause is inflected for some degree of Tense - Aspect - or Mood of the sentence. In Ggbààne, for example, this is true for Volition and Optative contrasts, which all gave a good amount of suffixes when we know that the boundaries are blurred enough for one suffix alone to inflect Volition, Optative Mood, Grammatical Number, one of the six Classes, and one of the four Cases. At least I didn't go with my original idea of adding a Past/Non-Past distinction on top of that, or I would have gone mad.

Another requirement worth looking at of this Speedlang Contest was to learn and write about emotions. This seemed easy enough. Though what are emotions? To be honest, the correct term used in the Contest was "cognitive-based feelings". Why that long word? Well, languages and cultures categorize emotions and feelings quite differently (some don't even show any contrast like this). To put it simply, what was wanted here was to explain emotions, yes, but also feelings that are based on our mind, not the body. For example, yes to the "feeling of shame", but no to the "feeling of hungriness".

In summary, a very interesting Speedlang Contest with interesting requirements, to make, I hope, a conlang equally interesting.