All Questions

The accepted translation of Lovecraft's "Cthulhu fhtagn" seems to be "Cthulhu dreams". How would one conjugate "fhtagn" to get the word derivations "dream", "dreamer", "dreaming". This answer had a ...

What are some real world data (e.g., from census data, membership data, visitors of conlang related events, other estimates) on active speakers of constructed languages?

I want my language, Syn, to be as precise, efficient, unambiguous, and aesthetic as humanely possible. To do that, I think even the texture, dynamics, rhythm, and the likes should be accounted for. ...

ROILA (RObot Interaction LAnguage), a constructed language for communication between robots and between robots and humans, comes with a 5 vowel system. the vowels are written a e i o u but their sound ...

I'm constructing an auxlang/artlang (temporarily named Syn). The Syn is (being) designed to interface with any known human language, with a wildly uniform set of simplistic, unambiguous symbols. I ...

Looking for information on the International Auxiliary languages Interglossa and Glosa again, I stumbled over these sample texts in Glosa. I am astonished, how slavishly Glosa copies the English ...

This question is different than the previous one titled “Which features make a language easier to learn?” in that I'm not interested in making it easy for L1 learners. For them learning the language ...

Esperanto has a literature (both original and translated) including criminal stories. Criminals are often portrayed as speaking some slang, so my question is: How does criminal slang looks like in ...

Info My conlang uses verb conjugations only in the present tense. To indicate other tenses (preterite/past imperfect/subjunctive/future/etc) I use the combined phrase "sona," meaning "in (the) time (...

All natlangs have both consonants and vowels, but it's not immediately obvious why a human language couldn't be made from only vowels. Has anyone theorised about why natlangs always have consonants? ...

What are examples of International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) created and promoted in the 21st century? I am aware that many people think that Esperanto and Interlingua are in some sense "the last ...

I want to design a mildly weird phonology with the following features Not particularly difficult to pronounce for speakers of average European languages Feeling somewhat unnatural or weird The ...

I am looking for examples real or con, of two foreign symbolic scripts being made into a hybrid language/script. In my case I wish to see about making a hybrid 15th century Aztec-Chinese Hybrid ...

A lot of languages, both natural and constructed, mark things like part of speech, gender/noun class, tense, and what not with suffixes. But what about prefixes? I think that would make more sense ...

Additionally, are there any such things as hierarchies, where if I want to include one sound, I should also include another?

I have a human culture that gradually develops an underwater civilisation. They still require mouth and nose breathing and will be living in air bubbles, retaining traditional phonemes. They do spend ...

My constructed language has 26 English letters and 30 special characters (plus four different accent marks.) The characters are slightly abstract. The closest I've gotten to producing them is with ...

As title states; how to name extraterrestrial fauna/flora to human languages, would reffering to animals similar to cows as to cows and to plant that bears round red fruits as to apple be linguisticly ...

In English, there is a little dot over small letters of i and j. I am not sure what that dot signifies to - pronunciation or sound. In Gujarati, Hindi and Sanskrit languages, there happens to be dot ...

By design (looking at the 16 rules of Esperanto) there is no verbal aspect in the Esperanto grammar. However, one can see an incohative aspect in the prefix ek- (e.g., mi ekridas "I burst out laughing"...

I have found a conlang, Klyran, which has a rather interesting feature: multiple imperative moods. Quoting from the documentation: For imperative mood there are number of suffixes that correspond ...

I was looking through Wikipedia's Swadesh Lists recently and wondered if there was anything like a Swadesh list for verb infinitives, similar to how Spanish verbs work (to be, to want, to eat, to know,...

I want to draw a map of a fictional world resembling Europe in climate and basic geographic features (so there are rivers and lakes, alpine mountains, mittelgebirge, marsh lands and bogs, some plains ...

I believe I've mentioned before on here how I struggle to come up with forms for letters. I've tried to solve this by looking at other systems. Despite the diversity in our world, I've found it ...

In many natlangs a grammatical distinction is made between alienable and inalienable possession. Inalienable possession is used for things which are in some way conceptualised as being inseparable ...

Belter Creole is a conlang creole spoken in the novel series The Expanse by James S. A. Corey. When the novel was adapted into a TV series they got linguist Nick Farmer to develop the language. Are ...

Every language (I know of) needs a context or a mark of reference for understanding a lot of the expressed message. I'm refering about concepts like I, you, this, there, tomorrow... I'd bet there is ...

Auxiliary constructed languages are meant to be learnt faster than natural languages. Are there convincing examples that auxiliary constructed languages are in fact easier to learn than natural ...

It seems that people generally use constructed languages in very limited circumstances, or within small communities that speak the language. Thus it seems to me unlikely that one of these languages ...

Is there an order in which you write the strokes making up a letter belonging to the Klingon alphabet (apart from the Latin alphabet)? Are letters from Klingon alphabets intended to be written ...

There seem to be dialects of Klingon, as stated here, Maltz speaks the Rumaiy dialect while Saavik speaks the Kumburan dialect. Is there something known about the differences between the Klingon ...

IALA Interlingua is a naturalistic romance-based conlang. There are six control languages (primary: English, French, Italian, and Spanish/Portuguese counted as one language "Iberian"; secondary: ...

As something of a follow-on to my question about “naturalizing” conlangs, I’m looking for any information - actual tools would be nice, too, if available - for “borrowing”...

Is there a name for words that exist purely for syntactic reasons and carry no lexical meaning? Reason: Some forms of sentence in my language don't have verbs, but information such as tense and mood ...

Real languages I am aware of several types of writing systems. The first one would be left to right and a prime example is English and also most of other languages, no matter if they use letters or ...

There is even a Wikipedia article on Free word building in Interlingua stating that it is feasible to apply derivational affixes in Interlingua productively even when none of the so-called control ...

Are there any modern accounts (either of personal experiences of individuals on this forum, or in general) of an individual creating their own language and teaching it to their child(ren)/family?

Volapük was designed back in the 1800s to be a 'world language', but at first glance, it appears to the layman (me) to just be a mixing of Romance languages, English, and maybe High German. Are there ...

The Wikipedia article on Ido states that there have been almost no official changes to the Ido language since 1922. But Ido has a small speech community, and therefore there may be unofficial changes ...

Is there any coding/program that can be used in raspberry pi for creating a language? Like the ability to create a dictionary with sounds? Or an interactive creative process to start making words and ...

For the film Black Panther production designer Hannah Beachler created a Wakandan writing system partially based on real African writing systems. Well that's what this and other news articles say, but ...

Is there any evidence that a ‘natural’ language that exists today was created by somebody a thousand (or two) years ago. And that it evolved till today?

I want to create a fantasy world with Elves speaking their own language. In order to avoid unwanted associations with works of other authors, the Elves should speak a newly invented language. What ...

The Esperanto word for 'Finland' is Finnlando. What does the doubled consonant specify? The Esperanto alphabet is phonemic. Why are there two consonants? Is it gemination (which doesn't appear often ...

Esperanto is by design based on European languages, so every similarity to European languages is in fact intended. But I want to know how Standard Average European (SAE criteria listed by @Sparksbet) ...

I have noticed some artifacts from Russian in published earlier manuscripts of Tolkiens works, e.g., The figure named Beorn in The Hobbit was named Medwed in earlier manuscripts In Early Quenya, ...

What are reasons to construct a language? Why do people construct languages? For example, auxlangs are created for global (or regional) 'compatibility'. Why do people construct artlangs, altlangs, ...

Which features make a language easier to learn for children learning a constructed language as L1? Are children learning a language with these features able to learn the language faster than a natural,...

Is a naturalistic language without count nouns possible, thus having only mass nouns? This would mean having many words for things with water: a sea, an ocean, a bottle of water, a puddle, etc. What ...

I want two languages to share a root but I want them to look unrecognizable written down (with the original language having a written form, so not independently created writing systems). Are there any ...