Questions tagged [conlang-creation]
For questions about the process of making a conlang.
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Is there a general strategy to build vocabulary for chemical elements?
I continued building vocabulary for my conlang, and now I'm trying to name chemical elements.
Here's the concept: The major speakers of this conlang are angels, and some of them have lived for a long ...
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How to romanize velarization, palatalization, and labialization?
I started a conlang inspired by Marshallese and Navajo, and have taken several labialized, palatalized, and velarized consonants from them. However, I am unsure how to romanize these consonants.
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When basing a conlang on an existing language, how can I keep the essence of that language while making it unrecognisable?
I wanted the names in my fantasy world to sound like they came from a coherent language, so I found a language that on paper (via Google translate) looks how I want my language to sound. When I wanted ...
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What phonotactical constraints are commonly used by conlangers?
I'm continuing development of Der Spracherfinder (to help you fellow conlangers), and I want to know which phonotactical constraints are most common and helpful to conlangers. For example: forbid ...
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Are there best practices for creating a lexicon or dictionary spreadsheet?
Mine has evolved over years and I'm sure I can still learn more about how to organize it. This might be an even more helpful question for folks starting out.
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What steps in the conlang process am I missing?
My currently known process for conlanging is 1) set goals, 2) define phonology, 3) Romanize, 4) phonotactics, 5) define word order, 6) define morphosyntactic alignment, 7) define morphology type, 8) ...
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Treat the gerund and/or infinitive as a case
Basic questions:
Do we know of any property of a gerund or infinitive which prevents it being treated totally like a type of noun?
Do we know any language which expresses gerunds or infinitives as a ...
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Do you make a word then give it meaning, or do you think of a meaning and assign a word to it?
I wonder which is more effective, creating a list of conwords then giving definitions or, creating a list of definitions then assigning conwords?
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Roadmap for effective construction of a novel language
I have trivially dabbled in Esperanto, Klingon, and a few other languages. Now I want to build one, and not a distorted copy of an existing one. I want to make a non-junk constructed language.
Is ...
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How should I define the lexicographic order for my conlang?
Though I've had a tough time choosing the phonology and the orthography of my conlang, I think I've finally confirmed it: 12 consonants, 10 vowels, Cyrillic script.
The consonants are:
Пп for [p]
Тт ...
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What words would naturally evolve tri-consonantal roots?
I determined to create a conlang with tri-consonantal roots (I call them tri-cons for short). My question then arose, "what words would naturally have a tri-con?" Verbs and the nouns derived ...
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How large must my consonant inventory be in order for nonconcatenative morphology to work?
In my quest to create a language for some fictional characters of mine, I came across nonconcatenative morphology like triconsonantal roots. If I wanted to employ this in my conlang, how many ...
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How can my conlang say "hot/cold" without ambiguity?
I'm creating a conlang for worldbuilding, and I'm building vocabulary for basic physical adjectives such as "long/short", "heavy/light", and "hot/cold". The major ...
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Can a lone superorganism develop an internal language?
I'm imagining a hypothetical lone organism on a planet. Something like Avatar, the movie's Eywa. I am envisioning it as a massive organism covering the entire surface of the planet but biologically ...
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Two different symbols representinɡ a phoneme
How would I represent multiple transliterations for one phoneme in a chart?
I was thinking something like this:
⟨k~q⟩ /k/
It might work, though it doesn't make the most sense, and I would prefer to ...
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What uncommon letters are there? [closed]
I have made an alphabet, but I think that I need to add more letters. I don't want to invent random letters.
Is there a letter that doesn't exist in most other languages?
My language's alphabet has 16 ...
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Are there any languages with a vertical consonant distinction?
Are there any languages which distinguish consonants exclusively by manner of articulation instead of place of articulation and such, akin to a vertical vowel system?
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Creating a language for intelligent, sapient creatures that resemble large cats
In my world, there is a race of intelligent, sapient creatures that resemble large cats. They have fur, tails, and whiskers, and can purr and meow like regular cats, but they can also walk upright on ...
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How does one go about designing phonotactics for a conlang?
Most every conlanger has heard of phonotactics. However, I have yet to encounter resources about how should one go about the design of a conlang's phonotactics. How should one go about creating a ...
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How do trade languages form?
I’ve read books (mainly Star Wars) that tend to have a species language (e.g. cheunh for chiss) and then trade languages that the greater part of a region also speaks (e.g. Minniesiat and Sy Binsti). ...
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For a whistling language, what other keys could be used to represent tones/tone actions
I already have used ~,<,>,’,=,-,^, and v for trills, rising tones, falling tones, glottal stops, chord tones, neutral tones, rising/falling tone, and falling/rising tone. This language is ...
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Are there set example sentences used when developing a conlang?
When working on fonts, it's typical to use a pangram to show how it handles letters, like so:
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Is there an equivalent set of sentences for testing how a conlang ...
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I want to build a language that expresses the maximum amount of information with minimal words spoken
I'm trying to come up with a conlang for a setting where spoken word casts magic etc. In this case, a group of wizards, etc. Develop arcadian, which functions to give the most information with the ...
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How to create realistic intonation?
How would one approach creating a conlang with a system of intonation, like English? Specifically for a naturalistic a priori conlang.
Some sub-queries I have are
What resources are there, if any, on ...
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What is the word-grammar transcription thing called?
What is the thing used under a sentence in a conlang that looks sort of like this: NOM-he.F-PAST said.F-PAST called?
I know I probably used it completely wrong in that example, but what is this called,...
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How to decay (remove) vowel harmony system by conlang evolution?
So I have a Back vowel harmony system in my conlang, where front and back vowel cannot occur in the same word. Now that I am evolving my conlang, How can I decay the harmony system giving space to ...
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Do I need to start with a phonology when creating a new conlang?
The few conlangs I've read about/watched being developed in videos (such as those by Biblaridion) either started with phonology, or the description begins that way.
Whether that's a representative ...
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Is it possible to have consonant followed by Uvular sound
I am thinking of creating a language that has a sound system a little similar to Latin, with a guttural feel like German. The people who are going to speak this language are harsh and sound annoyed at ...
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How to prevent pronoun dropping in my language?
I have an idea for a language I am toying with where sentences have a fairly rigid structure, unfortunately I get the feeling that if I were to start with a precursor protolang (as part of me ...
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What CompSci concepts have been used in conlanging?
I am looking for things in the vein of the use of run-length encoding in representing arbitrarily large integers in a Haskell-based conlang.
An example might be tree data structure based punctuation ...
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How to go about making a simple to speak (for English speakers) conlang?
I am new to conlanging, and would like to create a language which English speakers can easily learn. How would you suggest I go about optimizing it for English speakers? Which features should I choose ...
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Setting a signature Phonetics
A year ago, I became fascinated by conlanging. So I set out to create one for my soon-to-be-completed world, but no matter what I came up with, the words sounded like English. It feels like I am just ...
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First-timer questions for developing language families, been trying out Vulgarlang
I'm currently working on a project of mine, an overhaul modification for the game Victoria 3 and I'm digging deeper into the phase for making unique languages to represent portions of every continent/...
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Considering that my elves are anatomically different from humans, what sorts of phonemes, vowels and consonants could they be capable of speaking?
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"...
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What is the minimum number of words needed for a conlang?
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?
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How should my conlang enable arbitrarily large integers to be said?
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 ...
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History of world language
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 ...
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Has anyone made image based languages?
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 ...
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Do we know languages which think about subordinate conjunctions (like 'as,' 'even,' 'while') differently than English does?
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 (...
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Syllabic restriction/word boundaries set by IPA? Or it is decided by language creator
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 ...
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Naturalness of different universal quantifiers based on the size of the domain you're quantifying over
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 ...
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I am a writer, and am trying to write a language for my story, how should I start as a complete beginner of language? [duplicate]
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?
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Does My Conlang, After Looking At My Grammar, Meet the Qualifications For a Legitimate IAL? [closed]
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 ...
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Maximizing the distinction between affirmative and negative sentences
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 ...
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Inventing A Plural Form For First And Second Person
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 ...
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Lemmata in a prefixing language
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" ...
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How many different interjections like 'aha,' 'oh' would you make up for a conlang?
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' ...
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List of segment usage based on how many people use it?
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 ...
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What are some examples of mathematical conlangs?
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 ...
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Is there any general rule for constructing a word? Example: "q" or "w" should not end a word, something like this
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 ...
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