Conlang

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

Hey everyone. I’m trying to do research on creating languages (whether for fiction or just for personal reasons). I’ve realized it’s genuinely very complicated. How does one creates their own Conlang?

 

[dickson]

Most of us wouldn’t go to the extremes that Tolkein did. In my WIP novel, I took phrases and words from Mandarin (which I studied at one point in my life) and mangled the Pinyin enough to disguise the origin.

In Oddjobs, the five volume Lovecraftian apocalyptic farce by Goode and Grant, the insane gods known as the Venislarn have a language, of which many examples abound. After a while, the reader picks up on a few things. Mostly, obscene insults. I’m not sure how much of the rest has any meaning, but it looks pretty alien on the page.

 

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

Most of us wouldn’t go to the extremes that Tolkein did. In my WIP novel, I took phrases and words from Mandarin (which I studied at one point in my life) and mangled the Pinyin enough to disguise the origin.

In Oddjobs, the five volume Lovecraftian apocalyptic farce by Goode and Grant, the insane gods known as the Venislarn have a language, of which many examples abound. After a while, the reader picks up on a few things. Mostly, obscene insults. I’m not sure how much of the rest has any meaning, but it looks pretty alien on the page.

That could definitely work. However, I thought about going the Tolkien route. Not going to be as comprehensive. But close enough.

 

[Lundgren]

I've been sketching a bit on a conlang for one of my stories, and I began with thinking a bit on the sounds and structure of the language. I went for a tonal language, which makes it an information dense language. Then I decided on the basic grammar. Different languages have different orders for verb, subject, and object. In this language, subject and object is decided by a prefix, so it can be put in any order. Emphasis is made by putting something earlier in the sentence. I also decided to go with it having almost no inflections.

I have only created words so far for conjunctions and the particles/prefixes for subjects, objects, and verbs.

My idea is that the language will have "stem-words" and "compound words". Say that wet and air might be stem-words, but combining them in the right order, wet-air, would mean fog.

I'm not saying what I'm doing is good or recommended, but there is a lot more to a language than just the words.

When it comes to Tolkien, as I understand it, he made Elvish by taking Finnish and replaced the words. Finnish grammar is very different to the majority of the European languages, so a lot of the heavy lifting were already done.

 

[Unimportant]

Tolkien also had sufficient education and expertise in philology that he held an Oxford professorship in the field.

 

[Brightdreamer]

An article on the creation of Belter creole for The Expanse (based on the books, but expanded for the show). IIRC, the authors were inspired by similar creoles that developed in places like the Mediterranean, where sailors from many different countries/languages would cobble together a middle-ground way of communicating with each other when they met on the sea.

If you've ever studied a second language, you realize just how complex your first language really is, even though you don't really think about it from "inside" the language. True conlangs are very, very tough to get right; it's more common to come up with a few key terms or phrases and leave the rest a bit vague.

Be aware that, like so many aspects of worldbuilding, conlangs can easily become a trap/excuse not to actually write the story that goes with the language...

 

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

Tolkien also had sufficient education and expertise in philology that he held an Oxford professorship in the field.

That is very true.

 

[lpetrich]

This may be good: The Language Construction Kit and The LCK Print Version Mark Rosenfelder goes through a lot of features that a (natural) language will have.

To keep it simple, you may start with a "naming language", because names are usually relatively simple: noun phrases where some words or word parts are very commonly used, like "-ville" or "town" or "city". You still have some decisions to make about grammar. Will your names be compound ones or separate words? Will they have adjective-noun or noun-adjective order? For noun-noun, will they have some counterpart of "of" or "the"?

North America - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - like many other Wiktionary entities, it has many translations. Here are some examples:

• German: Nordamerika - Northamerica (compound)
• Russian: Се́верная Аме́рика (Sévernaja Amérika) - Northern America
• Polish: Ameryka Północna - Northern America (reverse order)
• French: Amérique du Nord - America of the North

 

[Dead-Head-Ghost-2088]

This may be good: The Language Construction Kit and The LCK Print Version Mark Rosenfelder goes through a lot of features that a (natural) language will have.

To keep it simple, you may start with a "naming language", because names are usually relatively simple: noun phrases where some words or word parts are very commonly used, like "-ville" or "town" or "city". You still have some decisions to make about grammar. Will your names be compound ones or separate words? Will they have adjective-noun or noun-adjective order? For noun-noun, will they have some counterpart of "of" or "the"?

North America - Wiktionary, the free dictionary - like many other Wiktionary entities, it has many translations. Here are some examples:

• German: Nordamerika - Northamerica (compound)
• Russian: Се́верная Аме́рика (Sévernaja Amérika) - Northern America
• Polish: Ameryka Północna - Northern America (reverse order)
• French: Amérique du Nord - America of the North

Thank you

I’ll check them out

 

[kaitie]

I'm just going to add on that an important part of language is the culture behind it. What are the greetings and why? What do they say about the people who speak it? How does one apologize? Are there levels of politeness depending on who you are talking to? What kind of sayings or idioms would they have? To me these are some of the really fun parts that go beyond structure and vocabulary.