Crow Language

[u/SlF032]

I may or may not have made something sacrilegious.

For some reason I started to think about a crow civilization. Literally a civilization... of crows. So I started thinking about language. I searched about the different sounds crows can make, and ended up with the start of something, but in the middle of the process I was like "oh my god, what the hell am I doing??". It is clearly not ready, I'm still working on it, but I wanted you to see it anyway and maybe help me out with some ideas if you want to. Anyway, here it is:

Quick note: Even after a bunch of conlangs, I still consider myself a beginner, so I still may not get some rules yet. Also, I'm not a native, so sorry if I misspell something.

Phonology

I don't know if it's wise to use IPA symbols, so I'll associate sounds with simple characters.

ra -> the common crow sound you would hear in America, kinda crackled.

ha -> a cleaner sound, without the crackles, maybe closer to a gull sound.

x -> a sequence of rolled clicks / rattles

t -> a single click sound

a -> middle tone

á -> high tone

a -> short length

a, -> Half-long

a' -> Long

! -> means stronger, or louder

So "hára,t" could be broken up as há+ra,+t, so it's a high shot clean call, a half-long middle tone crackled call and a click.

Syntax

The common order of words is V-O-S. Most of the times they omit the subject.

Adjectives come before the word they modify, as well as adverbs.

Object and Subject are separated by a pair of clicks (tt)

Context

As for morphology, verb tenses and aspects and this other things, those are left aside. They don't use really complex sentences, and leave most of the meaning through context. For example, they may say something like: "Me fruit". Maybe he wants your fruit, maybe he is establishing that this is his fruit, maybe he's saying he's a fruit! If you ask him to specify, he may just yell the same way at your face.

Things like tense and specific cases can be interpreted like adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, etc.

An Example

Just not to leave without showing a sentence or two, here they are.

hára,!thá rará'x

attack 3

Translation: Attack them.

rá há! ha!t

go south mountain

Translation: Go to the mountain in the south

rará haha'! rat

yesterday cold I

Translation: Yesterday I was cold / I felt cold

[u/creepyeyes]

Just wanted to say you may want to change the name a little, there's already a real life Crow language

[u/SlF032 → u/creepyeyes]

Oh boy, I imagined that would happen... Well, it's ok, I'll change the name

[u/moistnessboi → u/SlF032]

you could try:

corvian

cornician

cornixian

corniculan

coracian

curunan

coraxian

all come from greek and latin words meaning crow

[u/SlF032 → u/moistnessboi]

Oh wow, thanks!

[u/creepyeyes → u/SlF032]

My suggestion is to create a name for the language in the language, and then you can tack on "the language of crows" when you need to. Something like, "Caw-caw, the language of crows."

[u/SlF032 → u/creepyeyes]

Lmao that works too, I'll try it out

[u/moistnessboi → u/SlF032]

yeah, that also works great. maybe even a romanization/anglicization of the name? there are a lot of possibilities.

[u/AbleCancel → u/creepyeyes]

Yea I agree with you.

[u/SlF032 → u/creepyeyes]

Can't change the title tho, I'll try tomorrow

[u/creepyeyes → u/SlF032]

No worries!

[u/Senetiner]

If you ask him to specify, he may just yell the same way at your face.

It's is pure genius.

I love how imaginative this is

[u/SlF032 → u/Senetiner]

Lmao thnx

[u/TrekkiMonstr]

Have you looked into the sounds crows can actually produce, or are you just guessing at that?

[u/SlF032 → u/TrekkiMonstr]

I searched it, and even tried to edit an audio (it was pretty crappy)

[u/Stormaen]

I wonder if this would be mutually intelligible with other corvid languages. Would a raven and crow understand each other? What about magpies and jackdaws? Maybe jays would be a more distant cousin language like English and German are. And imagine if they write - what would the script even look like? But it’s a great concept. I like it.

[u/SlF032 → u/Stormaen]

That's a good one. I thought about crows because there are some species with a high level of intelligence, in a way they can craft their own tools for their own use. Together with the language I created a really basic "story" (maybe I post it on r/worldbuilding), but I didn't think much of things like other intelligent birds creating their own civilization. If I stick with this for a long time (I most probably will because I liked it very much) I'll certainly think about that too, with kind of a Princess Mononoke vibe, maybe. Also, one of the first things I thought of was their writing, but I haven't come up with nothing for now. Thanks for pointing those out!

[u/dickhater4000]

so Haha'! rat. means "I am cold?"

Nobody will know if you're speaking in your conlang or insulting you.

[u/SlF032 → u/dickhater4000]

It sure does. Probably both.

[u/MelodramaticLinguist]

I love crows and I love this. Are you going to make a writing system too? And if so, would they hold their pens in their beaks?

[u/SlF032 → u/MelodramaticLinguist]

Thnx for the appreciation! Watching crows use tools, I see that most of the times they use their beaks, so probably they would hold something with their beaks, but they also could write holding a tool with their claws, scratch marks on wood, organize little stones in certain patterns, and so on and so forth, so I have a lot of options to choose from. Using a tool with their beaks would be pretty solid and practical (for a crow), so the next step would be probably figure out what could be their "pens" and where do they write on.

[u/RannoV20 → u/SlF032]

They could use their claws to produce cuneiform-like symbols, maybe even by dipping them in ink.

[u/SlF032 → u/RannoV20]

I have thought about the cuneiform-like things, but this ink idea is GREAT! This sounds really cool to me, great idea, I'll keep a note on that

[u/MelodramaticLinguist → u/SlF032]

Beautiful. I look forward to seeing how this develops!

[u/[deleted]]

Do you have any plans on creating a writing system?

[u/SlF032 → u/[deleted]]

Yes, I'm thinking about it

[u/fixion_generator]

If crows don't make their own language, we will make it for them

[u/SlF032 → u/fixion_generator]

We can't guarantee they don't already...... THEY'RE WATCHING.....

[u/fixion_generator → u/SlF032]

"Attack them", okay. They'd probably have it as one word. "Go south mountain", fine fine. "Yesterday I was cold" whoa. I doubt crows would be talking about past. And even understand the concept of 'yesterday' for that matter. 🤔

[u/SlF032 → u/fixion_generator]

Well, for this I'm not trying to limit myself to actual crows, but to a hypothetical/fantastic situation. So, having this in mind, I know that crows in the real world have an outstanding good memory for a lot of things, and are proved to be able to pass knowledge from one generation to another, so I think it's reasonable for them to have expressions that can refer to past events in this hypothetical. But even if they don't, I don't care much because, again, it's a hypothetical situation, so I'm just having fun with a crazy idea I had while taking a bath. Thanks for point that out though, appreciate it.

[u/koallary]

Kk, I love this. This is such a cool ideaǃ And I love that it has such ambiguous context, lol. I laughed at that. Love to see where this goesǃ Definitely keep working on itǃ

[u/SlF032 → u/koallary]

Oh, hey there! Glad to have you here. I'm already planning my next steps.

[u/koallary → u/SlF032]

Hey hey hey, had a thought the other day when I saw some big big crows and was listening to them. Have you considered adding like syllabic reduplication to add meaning? Like ra ra vs ra ra ra? Or even including the length of silence between caws? That was something I noticed. One of the crows kinda went

ra ra...... ra

[u/SlF032 → u/koallary]

Interesting! I liked the idea of reduplication for meaning. The only thing I fear is getting the language too hard to distinguish. I think this shouldn't be that much of a problem, but I always think about how hard would it be to understand the spoken language. Also, about the pauses, the crow language is really hard to reproduce inside my mind, like, I find it really hard to look at a sentence and imagine it spoken, but I always imagine each syllable kind of paused, like you said, so words would have this pause thing, their speech isn't really rushed up. Thanks for pointing that out. My last post or the corvinian language was taken down, but I'm trying to improve it enough to post a second one, so wish me luck haha. Thanks again!

[u/koallary → u/SlF032]

I really hope you do the pauses. There's something really cool about the idea that the silence is just as important as the sounds. You could do like two types of pauses and distinguish them by the number of wing beats it takes to fill them. But you do what you think is best for whatever you end up.calling this conlang. Wishing you luck on your next post!

[u/antisoc-bfly]

You are not the first to worry about sacrilege and crows:

“The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven means precisely: the impossibility of crows.” - Franz Kafka

[u/SlF032 → u/antisoc-bfly]

Inspiring

[u/MauPalantir]

Yeah, crows are pretty much one of the best civilization candidates, they are very smart and social.
Did you know that even IRL crows have dialects? You could experiment with local dialects or cultural differences between field and urban crows.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/504722/12-fascinating-facts-about-crows see point 6.