Natlang Features That Feel Like Auxlang Features

July 25, 2025 - Published

You ever see a picture of something in real life and go, "Wow, that looks just like a video game render," or see a painting that looks more realistic than real life?

This is a weirdly specific feeling I get now when I see features of natural languages. I've felt for a while now that I've only "really" started to learn languages after I learned constructed languages -- this is because constructed languages tend to be simpler and easier to learn, and by being able to truly engage with those languages (as opposed to my pretty surface-level interaction with Japanese and mediocre school-based education in Spanish), I got to see what it actually felt like to learn and interact with a new language.

However, this ALSO meant that I was now viewing every language with a similar lens to my experience with learning conlangs. In the same way that a child growing up with video games might see parts of real life in video game terms, I've been so used to seeing specific auxlang features as "neat and practical but unnatural" (since they're languages specifically designed to be easy to learn and pick up) that seeing them have direct equivalents in real life is bizarre to me.

#1: No plurals, no articles

Let's start with a simple one that's actually pretty common.

In English, I can refer to one rock, or multiple rocks. I can also specify an unspecific rock, or THE rock. The words "a" and "the" are called articles, and they don't actually exist in a lot of languages (e.g. Chinese, Russian, Finnish, etc.). Similarly, there are some languages that don't mark plurality by default in the same way that English would require you to say "rocks" when there's more than one rock. The latter might not be too surprising (English does it with "sheep" and "deer"), but the former can be difficult for people to wrap their heads around. An easy example for a language lacking both of these? Japanese!

Ever wonder why it sounds weird when people say "Pokémons"? Sometimes, "sushis" and "ninjas" too? Japanese doesn't mark plurality by default. "Apple" is リンゴ (ringo) and "apples" is also リンゴ (ringo). In order to mark plurality, you usually pair it with a word like "many" or "few" (e.g. "many apples"), or specify the exact number, but I really don't want to get into counters right now.

This works basically exactly the same as many minimalistic auxlangs, but also a few others like Globasa, because it simplifies sentences and requires less details from the speaker. Notably, Globasa uses a specific word "plu" to mean "multiple," so you can say "plu mahi" to say "multiple fish." That seems like a pretty unnatural way to just express "fishes," but that's exactly how Filipino works! "Fish" is "isda," and multiple fish would be "mga isda." Huh!

#2: Three pronoun system

In terms of the main pronouns (there are many pronouns even before talking about stuff like neopronouns -- even "what" can be a pronoun), they're usually separated into first, second, and third person pronouns. "Me" and "we" are first person, "you" and "y'all" are second person, "he" and "she" and "they" are third person. This specific set is pretty standard for a lot of European languages, and you might notice that they can't be derived from each other. Sure, in English you can turn "you" into "y'all" because "y'all" is just a shortened version of "you all," but you can't say "him all" to refer to multiple male people in the third person.

However, when I learned toki pona (which technically isn't an auxlang, but Mini is an auxlang and has the same system, so I'm taking this technicality), the main pronouns were "mi," "sina," and "ona." In order to make them plural, you just use "mute" which means "many" -- "mi mute," "sina mute," "ona mute." But... doesn't this feel kind of unnatural?

I can agree with "you (many)" to refer to multiple people you're speaking to, and "them (many)" to refer to multiple people you're speaking about. However, personally, "me (many)" sounds a lot like you're just talking about multiple versions of yourself, as if you were cloned or something? Like "say hi to me, and now say hi to the other me's!" Either way, it felt weird for me to see "me (plural)" as being the exact equivalent of "we."

...Then it turned out there was a real-life language that worked exactly this way! Mandarin Chinese has the pronouns 我 (wǒ), 你 (nǐ), and 他 (tā), being the first, second, and third person pronouns. Then, to make them plural, you just add 们 (men), so that "I" becomes "we" (我们 wǒmen), "you" becomes "you (plural)" (你们 nǐmen), and "he" becomes "they" (他们 tāmen). Honestly, pretty convenient!

#3: Optional Case Marker

Globasa has a few features that really stuck out to me as feeling really unnatural, including an optional direct object marker. Object markers aren't uncommon between languages (even languages without a direct object particle might have a case inflection -- English technically has this where "he" becomes "him" if it's the object of the sentence like in "he likes him"), but having the marker only appear when you want to change word order felt very unnatural to me. This was just a made-up feature of Globasa to make the language prefer a specific word order, but allow other word orders if speakers prefer, right?

However, this is a feature that's also present in Filipino. The default word order usually puts the verb up front, so a sentence like "The child is singing" would be "Kumakanta ang bata" (lit. "singing the child"). To change the word order, you can use the particle "ay" which comes after the subject. That would change the sentence to: "Ang bata ay kumakanta" (lit. "the child singing"). This is a really specific and linguistic example, but I hope it makes sense!

I see a lot of criticism in auxlang discussions about certain auxlangs being too unnatural, but how often is that really true? I feel that how "natural" a language is tends to be very subjective, and a lot of the time they can be pointed towards real life examples. Even if it's harder to do that, who says a language couldn't work like that, and would naturalism really get in the way of how easy or appealing a language is to learn?

Either way, it really is wearing these lenses that have somehow created more interest in me for learning languages. I love when language features defy my expectations, either to converge onto something weirdly intuitive, or even to just persist as a strange exotic piece of a unique culture.

• Vecderg