All Questions

I'd like to hear from anyone who has built a dialect continuum, in which innovations spreading from different centres affect overlapping subsets of the range (see wave theory). How do you model it? ...

In my new language, I use tones, such as those in Mandarin and Cantonese, to diversify my words. When I try to make a dictionary, I do not know how to describe these tones. I have tried using parts ...

How is the acronym ANADEW pronounced among conlang enthusiasts. I have seen it only in print so far and I want to know whether the letters are spelled out or whether it is pronounced as if it were an ...

The language I am creating is derived from East Norse and heavily influenced by Slavic. It has a quite complex grammatical structure - for example, it has not only taken over the two additional cases ...

The acronym ANADEW is quite popular among conlang enthusiats, but what does it mean? For an answer, I'd like to see not only an expansion of the acronym, but also some good usage examples.

The relatively high degree of mutual intercomprehensibility of the Slavic languages has fascinated a lot of people for a long time. It was also a motivation in the design of zonal constructed ...

Sorry, my title is slightly misleading; what I'm after is more like a written language that doesn't have its roots in spoken language, and has no definitive translation into speech, but is none-the-...

Other than making words easier to pronounce, is there any purpose to having the letters divided like this? Should they or a similar concept be added to a constructed language?

A little background before my question: I am an amateur in mid-development of a logographic writing system, not necessarily a whole language with phonetics. As I develop, I don't so much care about ...

A really simple but effective method to create an unintelligble language from a given language is applying a substitution cipher to the vocabulary. In order to be pronouncable, vowels should be ...

Human beatbox is an art form producing percussion sounds with the mouth only. It uses techniques and sounds that are rare or entirely absent in natural languages. Are the constructed languages that ...

Auxlangs are meant to be easily learnt/understood by the entire populace of the world, no matter their native language. So, they are constructed to be unambiguous and it's reference should have a one-...

I am well-aware of the fact that some people use Klingon in conversions at special conventions and events. Is there an estimate about the number of Klingon speakers and how many of them are there?

What are examples of grammatical cases that are not attested in natural languages, but occur in some conlang? To qualify here, the conlang should have at least some bit of flesh (e.g., a few ...

Of all the criticisms you see of Volapuk, one the most pervasive is that it can be difficult to parse some of the longer compound words. Which is pretty obvious. With all words being CVCVCVCV... and ...

There are well-known and notable differences in speed for natural languages: While a fast language like Spanish is spoken at a speed of about 6–7 syllables per second, a slow language like German, ...

As any linguist (and anyone who knows unrelated languages, probably), not all languages express things the same way. Worse yet, its not possible to express everything logically, so all languages are ...

In a previous question about making a language easy to learn as a second language I suggested that grammatical genders have very little usefulness. A couple of people, however, suggested that ...

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 phones. They do spend a ...

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: ...