I love a good conlang. This one feels like an interesting start, though I’ll be upfront and say I don’t think this is a bottleneck on anything AI related.
Some thoughts and questions, in no particular order:
“Here’s how words are made” is a start. What’s the grammar like? I think that’s where a lot of ambiguity creeps in to language.
Am I allowed to stop an encoding partway? For instance, am I allowed to say kakasu meti su to just mean noun, it’s a fruiting plant in the Rosaceae family, or do I have to keep going to be grammatically correct?
I kind of like the idea of a tree structure that gets more specific as you go. Five phonemes seems too few though- I like what you’re doing with the consonant/vowel setup, but extra options seem very useful for compactness and there’s more options.
Related- do you mind doing the IPA for the phonemes? I’m curious whether for instance “ti” is pronounced like “tired” (tɑɪəd) or like “tin” (tɪn) or “me” is pronounced like “meet” (mit) or “met” (mɛt)
How do pronouns work?
It’s reasonable not to have answers for these yet, I don’t know what stage of conlang creation you’re on.
Hey, Thanks so much for diving into Kamelo, you’ve nailed exactly the kind of questions I’m wrestling with.
Grammar & Ambiguity
You’re totally right — grammar is where ambiguity really enters. Right now, Kamelo doesn’t have a fixed grammar yet. But the idea is:
Word order is generally SVO (subject-verb-object), like English.
Modifiers (adjectives, adverbs) follow what they modify.
Punctuation-like tokens may act as “semantic closers” to end a branch of a conceptual tree.
Stopping Mid-Structure
Yes! You can stop mid-encoding. That’s a key principle: Kamelo is compressible based on shared context, like how we say “the fruit” instead of “a Rosaceae angiosperm of genus Malus”. The idea is to transmit enough meaning for the moment, and go deeper if needed.
That’s why a base like kakasu meti su (“noun, fruiting plant, [Rosaceae]”) could be totally valid in conversation, and even shorten further in high-context.
Phoneme Clarification (IPA)
This is still flexible, but currently considering:
Syllable
IPA
Notes
ka
/ka/
like “car”
me
/me/
like “meh”
ti
/ti/
like “tea”
su
/su/
like “soo”
lo
/lo/
like “low”
The goal is max distinctiveness across modalities — so these sounds are spread in mouth shape, tongue placement, and timing (good for speech-to-sign or tactile mapping later).
Pronouns
Pronouns aren’t fixed “words” like in English. Instead, they act like references. For example:
ka → “living entity”
Then you can say lo after that in the same convo to refer back to that entity.
So something like: ka ti = “the dog” lo me = “it is happy” (Assuming me = happy or emotive state)
They behave more like pointing mechanisms in programming, and are scope-bound to context.
Final Thoughts
You’re spot on: 5 syllables is limiting — Kamelo is intentionally extreme, like a design provocation. It pushes me to see how much abstraction and compression can be done before the system collapses. Future iterations might have 12–20 syllables for balance.
I love a good conlang. This one feels like an interesting start, though I’ll be upfront and say I don’t think this is a bottleneck on anything AI related.
Some thoughts and questions, in no particular order:
“Here’s how words are made” is a start. What’s the grammar like? I think that’s where a lot of ambiguity creeps in to language.
Am I allowed to stop an encoding partway? For instance, am I allowed to say
kakasu meti suto just mean noun, it’s a fruiting plant in the Rosaceae family, or do I have to keep going to be grammatically correct?I kind of like the idea of a tree structure that gets more specific as you go. Five phonemes seems too few though- I like what you’re doing with the consonant/vowel setup, but extra options seem very useful for compactness and there’s more options.
Related- do you mind doing the IPA for the phonemes? I’m curious whether for instance “ti” is pronounced like “tired” (tɑɪəd) or like “tin” (tɪn) or “me” is pronounced like “meet” (mit) or “met” (mɛt)
How do pronouns work?
It’s reasonable not to have answers for these yet, I don’t know what stage of conlang creation you’re on.
Hey, Thanks so much for diving into Kamelo, you’ve nailed exactly the kind of questions I’m wrestling with.
Grammar & Ambiguity
You’re totally right — grammar is where ambiguity really enters. Right now, Kamelo doesn’t have a fixed grammar yet. But the idea is:
Word order is generally SVO (subject-verb-object), like English.
Modifiers (adjectives, adverbs) follow what they modify.
Punctuation-like tokens may act as “semantic closers” to end a branch of a conceptual tree.
Stopping Mid-Structure
Yes! You can stop mid-encoding. That’s a key principle: Kamelo is compressible based on shared context, like how we say “the fruit” instead of “a Rosaceae angiosperm of genus Malus”. The idea is to transmit enough meaning for the moment, and go deeper if needed.
That’s why a base like
kakasu meti su(“noun, fruiting plant, [Rosaceae]”)
could be totally valid in conversation, and even shorten further in high-context.
Phoneme Clarification (IPA)
This is still flexible, but currently considering:
The goal is max distinctiveness across modalities — so these sounds are spread in mouth shape, tongue placement, and timing (good for speech-to-sign or tactile mapping later).
Pronouns
Pronouns aren’t fixed “words” like in English. Instead, they act like references. For example:
ka→ “living entity”Then you can say
loafter that in the same convo to refer back to that entity.So something like:
ka ti= “the dog”lo me= “it is happy”(Assuming me = happy or emotive state)
They behave more like pointing mechanisms in programming, and are scope-bound to context.
Final Thoughts
You’re spot on: 5 syllables is limiting — Kamelo is intentionally extreme, like a design provocation. It pushes me to see how much abstraction and compression can be done before the system collapses. Future iterations might have 12–20 syllables for balance.