All Questions

Many languages have sounds that are very hard to pronounce to certain speakers. For example the french "R" sound is hard for English speakers. What if we have a language that accepts many ...

If the creation of languages ​​is called language invention what is the creation of writing systems called? I don't think it's called Lettering because when I search for that on the net, I see that ...

For years now, I've been building and rebuilding an alternate Earth dense with geography, geology and wildlife. Among them is this world's equivalent of humans, Draculodon silvius, the "elf"...

How would one go about "Showcasing" a conlang, other than by works of fiction, like Tolkien? I want to have a way to share my language to the world in full, with outlined grammar and ...

What would the minimum number of words needed for a conlang, while still being able to speak with about the same level of information passed as a natural language?

Whilst worldbuilding, I decided to make a conlang. It's named Leksah. Leksah is heavily influenced by the programming language Haskell. As such, Leksah has only 3 parts of speech: Literals, which ...

If we look at world history—I am speaking a little vaguely, since it is not possible to be completely accurate. The human race began from a single region, as you can see in the bottom image. What ...

The Kēlen alphabet as given on https://www.terjemar.net/kelen/writing.php shows variants for some letters. Here is an example: Are there rules on when to pick which form?

I'm creating a language where the stress is on the third to last syllable and I have a sound change where an unstressed short vowel at the beginning of a word is deleted. (so in 'a.ta.ra. the word vs ...

We all know that natural languages can be whispered and we use whispering for several purposes, e.g., to avoid someone unwanted listening, or in order not to disturb a larger audience. But are there ...

This is my first visit here. I have been writing machine/computer languages for about 8 years now. I am completely self taught and use my own tools. I have many languages that I have completed that ...

for my conlang, I am trying to think of how to do the subordinating conjunction 'as,' 'even,' 'while' (and related: 'even though,' etc.). In the languages that I know well enough to use these words (...

When creating syllables we basically require an onset, nucleus, and a coda. Now, usually, all language have an onset, and the coda is fairly optional. Before creating a phonetic system, we first ...

English has a few determiners and determiner-like things that express universal quantification including all and every. How naturalistic is it to have different sets of quantifiers based on features ...

As a writer, I am trying to write a language so that I can name places more originally, how can I start writing a bare bones language for my story?

At the end of this question I will provide a link to the grammar in question. I have created an Auxlang that I call Ulimi (because ulimi porridge is simple. It's a stupid pun). I have also got a ...

What are some strategies for making affirmative and negative sentences as distinct as possible? The motivation for this question is an annoying pair of words in English: can and can't. They frequently ...

I am working on the pronoun system for my conlang. The table below illustrates what I have ended up with so far. I am looking for suggestions on how - if even needed - to implement a plural form that ...

I'm developing a heavily prefixing language, and I'm trying to work out a lemma/citation form for my verbs. However, nearly all forms of the verb have a prefix. For example, the verb "to go" ...

I wonder if other people have thoughts and experience on this topic from the conlanging perspective. Have people with lots of translation experience found the distinction between (for example) 'aha' ...

It is regulated directively by authorities even more strictly than programming languages! E.g. During the reform of 1918 they just forbade letter Ъ аnd removed all those letters! In some cases letter ...

In the book Always Coming Home, by Ursula K. Le Guin, the author created the future Kesh language and Aiha alphabet. Does anyone with an anthropological or etymological background and experience with ...

The Lingua scinter is an ideolanguage created in 1931 by Gaetano Viveros. It is the abbreviation for "International scientific lingua based on Latin and Greek". www.europalingua.eu Here is ...

The great Phoible 2.0 has exclusive list of segment usages based on "Languages", but since some languages such as Lak are only used by handful of people, it won't make any sense if I employ ...

What are some examples of mathematical conlangs? I'm curious as to if there are any full existing conlangs that allow you to do arithmetic or mathematical manipulations from a conlang perspective. The ...

I am trying to implement a conlang and am confused how we as humans are able to distinguish nouns, verbs, adjectives, particles, etc. in a sentence. I get that word order is a factor, as well as the ...

I hope this isn't too redundant of a question... I was hoping somebody could briefly summarize what general features languages descended from proto-Germanic tend to have? I understand all the ...

I am developing 4 conlangs (sparish, old sparish, elvian and barrish (need a new name)) for a story which is used by humans of Spar, Northern Sparian, Elves/Aspian, Barrians of south respectively. I ...

Whilst worldbuilding, I decided to make a conlang. A lot of consonant assimilations happen in this language. This language is supposed to be spoken by angels. My native language is Korean, btw. Korean ...

Cyrillic for English - (Сарилик фоьр Иңглиш) is an adapted Cyrillic orthography to write English using ь as schwa, so 'sofa' would be written 'соьфь'. Does ь make sense as a schwa or is ъ better? The ...

Probably already been asked before but here goes. Stevefan has traveled through some sort of trans-dimensional breach made of handwavium to another dimension where the inhabitants don't speak English. ...

What problems arise when creating a language with an extremely simple phonology and what are some good strategies for dealing with them? I'm calling this type of phonology extremely simple for the ...

I'm trying to create a new language, but I need some advice. How do you determine what a new letter sounds like? Is there a pattern, or do I just make it up?

Interlingua's official site claims that speakers of all Romance languages will immediately understand the language on paper when first exposed to it. Is this true? Can I really understand Spanish, ...

The book "Always Coming Home" by Ursula K Le Guin is an anthropological account of the Kesh, a people that "might be going to have lived" in future California. It includes short ...

I'm about creating my first conlang grammar, I know a few general characteristics yet I don't truly know where or how I should start to outline it. I only have messy pieces of informations about. From ...

A noun classifier marks on the verb some information about the form of one of its arguments. For example, Atili has a handful of "stationary" classifiers that produce semantic distinctions: ...

I saw a post on twitter about creating a "Japanized" version of toki pona. Has anyone done that? toki pona certainly seems to be influenced at least a little bit by Japanese anyway (word ...

Coming up with new kinds of pragmatics is sort of fun, but it's hard to tell when an idea is incompatible with how people work psychologically. For instance, what are the limits or universals around ...

What are some alternative direction systems besides egocentric direction systems (left, right, &c)? Some natural languages use {north, south, east, west} like Guugu Yimithirr and Tzeltal (Maya) (...

I'm interested in the idea of a conlang which could be used to create extremely information dense statements - such that, for example, a single word could be built up from morphemes to express a ...

I and other people are making a collaborative conlang. It features mood/evidentiality contrast. There are 4 moods: Indicative Imperative Optative Conditional There are also 6 evidentials: Direct ...

I'm thinking of a system where all fricatives look similar to each other, all plosives look similar, etc; the same base shape could be used for similar sounds using the dots placed above/below letters ...

I believe or assume that Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, and Klingon each have at least a few translations of important literature such as the Bible or Hamlet. What other ...

I feel less and less comfortable with the incoherence of natural languages, so I'm looking for a constructed language that suits me. semantically close words must share a common affix (not like ...

How could a language evolve such that the vowels are biphonic (like in throat singing)? Note: Biphonicity is when two notes/tones are sung simultaneously. There are languages that are whistled or ...

English uses an independent verb to encode desiderative meaning, namely want. It normally takes an infinitival complement, although I can take a direct object as well if the subject of the infinitival ...

Most people will be familiar with the idea that naturalistic spelling can be tricky. Some examples of natlangs with annoying spelling that come to mind are English ("ough" can be pronounced /...

Renglish/Рэнглиш (not mine) is an adaptation of Cyrillic for English. Most of the sounds seem ok, but how would you normally differentiate [i] in bit from the [iː] in beet using Cyrillic or would they ...

I have not encountered many con-scripts encoding information in knots, rather than by marking flat media. I imagine that many conlangers would enjoy the inspiration of Andean khipus, which, going back ...