A few days ago I learned that the Cursed Conlang Circus was happening again this year, and then found out it was too late to submit anything, but I had an idea, so I'm making it anyways, because conlangers don't care what humans think is impossible. (If I add any more to this or update the formatting or anything, that will be at this link.)
Leckna, which can be pronounced /ˈleu̯ŋ.knai̯a̯/ and can be interpreted as "can speak", is an international auxiliary language.
Leckna's consonants are pretty simple:
| Labial | Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | ⟨m⟩ /m/ | ⟨n⟩ /n/ | ||
| Stop | ⟨p⟩ /p/ | ⟨t⟩ /t/ | ⟨k⟩ /k/ | ⟨'⟩ /ʔ/ |
| Fricative | ⟨f⟩ /f/ | ⟨s⟩ /s/ | ⟨h⟩ /x~h/ | |
| Lateral | ⟨l⟩ | |||
⟨l⟩ is the "whatever lambdic", which, depending on what you're comfortable with, can be pronounced /l/, /ʎ/, /ɫ/, /ɺ/, /ɬ/, /ɮ/, /ǁ/, or anything else, as long as it's lateral.
To make things simple, Leckna has a 3-vowel system:
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | e /eu̯~ue̯/ a /ai̯a̯/ o /io̯~oi̯/ | |
| Mid | ||
| Low | ||
Or, in other words:
Since both English and Mandarin Chinese use diphthongs, this should be easy for most people. To make it even easier, in case some diphthong is hard to pronounce, it can be reversed with no change in meaning. For instance, "po", meaning "bee", can be pronounced /poi̯/ or /pio̯/.
Since the language with the most speakers, Mandarin Chinese, has tone, to make it easier for them, Leckna also has tone.
Leckna has two types of tone: level and contour. Level can be high or low, and contour can be rising or falling, depending on what's more comfortable to the speaker and what sounds the best. Contour tone is marked in the spelling with a diacritic; since not everyone has the same keyboard layout, it can be any diacritic, whichever is easiest for you to type.
Leckna's syllable structure is C(C)V(C).
Syllables may start with a single consonant or a cluster of two consonants. Consonant clusters must be different manners of articulation, but otherwise can be any two consonants; this keeps things simple, so speakers don't have to memorize any complicated phonotactics rules. Like with diphthongs, the consonants in a cluster can be swapped without changing the meaning, so e.g. ksá and ská are the same word (both meaning "sky").
The cluster /ks~sk/ can be spelled ⟨x⟩. There is no pattern to when it's spelled that way vs. ⟨ks~sk⟩.
Syllables can end with a consonant or not a consonant. If they end with a consonant, the consonant is unspecified for place of articulation, voicing, and manner of articulation; it can be whatever consonant the speaker finds easiest to pronounce. This unspecified consonant is spelled ⟨c⟩, since that letter can be used for so many different sounds across different languages (and even within one language).
To make it easier for speakers of other languages to learn, all vocabulary is derived from the top one most widely spoken languages. If the majority of the source languages don't agree on something, then all the words are put into a super-secret magical phonetic averaging algorithm; even I don't know how it works. I then try to squeeze it into the phonology and phonotactics of Leckna.
Word order can be any of SOV, OSV, SVO, OVS, VSO, or VOS. Which word is the subject and which is the object are deduced from context. This makes the language easier to learn for speakers of languages with any word order.
Words like fó ("if") and xá ("because") can go before or after the dependent clause, and the dependent clause can go anywhere in the sentence.
Nouns are not marked for case, number, or definiteness, and have no gender, to make thing easier for speakers of languages that don't have those features. Those are derived from context.
Adjectives can be placed before or after the noun they modify. Similarly, genitives can be placed before or after the noun they modify, and there's no extra marking to show that the noun is a genitive.
Pronouns are 'a for anything that includes the first person (including any sort of "we"), 'e for anything that includes the second person (including inclusive "we"), and 'o for anything third person. Pronouns can be omitted if it's clear from context who or what you're talking about.
Verbs are not marked for tense, aspect, mood, or negation. All of those are deduced from context.
That last one, negation not being marked, has an added advantage that in Leckna, it's impossible to lie (and, in fact, this is the meaning of the name: lec = lie, kna = can't, so "can't lie"). Take, for example, the sentence "I have a cat":
'a ha ka
'aI hahave kacat
If it turns out this is false, then that's totally fine, since you could have also said this, which means "I don't have a cat":
'a ha ka
'aI ha-∅have-neg kacat
There is no word for "to be"; just put the noun and noun/adjective/etc. next to each other with no verb in between.
Leckna uses base 10. The digits are as follows:
| 1 | oc |
|---|---|
| 2 | te |
| 3 | flo |
| 4 | flo |
| 5 | fac |
| 6 | ksoc |
| 7 | sefe |
| 8 | oc |
| 9 | nac |
For longer numbers, just put the digits in order. For zero, just say nothing for that position.
And then, the bee movie script excerpt:
According to all known laws of aviation, the bee shouldn't be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.
Pa 'á kno lá flá, po soc kna flá. 'o kné fné smac xá tfa smac poto 'fa flo. Po pfó flá xá fo. Xá po ko hme the kna.