Questions tagged [conlang-creation]
For questions about the process of making a conlang.
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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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How to create custom characters
I am creating s conlang and have come across roadblock. I want to use custom characters for a keyboard, but I find paper too unorganized and inconvenient. I have tried keyman before, but that did not ...
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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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1answer
58 views
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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2answers
139 views
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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2answers
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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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1answer
128 views
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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1answer
59 views
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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7answers
158 views
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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1answer
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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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2answers
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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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1answer
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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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3answers
260 views
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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Is is okay that most consonant assimilations result in a phone whose dedicated letter doesn't exist?
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 ...
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Strategies for dealing with limited/simple phonologies
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 ...
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2answers
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Where should I start planning my grammar?
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 ...
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Is it attested for noun classifiers to be coopted for directionality?
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:
...
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1answer
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Words for numbers in a language with bijective numeration
Bijective base-k numeration (or k-adic numeration) is a system of writing numerals such that the digits are 1 through k. Thus counting in bijective base-12 (such as my conlang Atili has) works as ...
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How can I avoid "relexing" punctuation?
I'm trying to design a conscript for my conlang Atili and would like to create punctuation in order to deliminate sentences and transcribe limited prosody. However, I don't just want to create new ...
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1answer
120 views
What to do when my conlang has a word that means something in one of my languages?
This is a bit subjective problem. As a Hungarian who knows English, I have the high ground when it comes to making up words, as I can mush the English and Hungarian words together with some outliers (...
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4answers
145 views
How can I talk about weather without expletives?
In English, it is necessary to use a syntactic expletive ("it") when talking about weather:
It is sun-ny.
EXPL COP.3S sun-ADJ
Pro-drop languages can easily avoid the explicit expletive by ...
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3answers
652 views
How can I name my days of the week?
In my conworld, months are divided into twelve-day weeks. That seems a bit too long (since I recall that people complained that the ten-day weeks of the French Republican calendar were too long), so I'...
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1answer
414 views
How to make names in a conlang?
So, draconic in the setting is used to name places, people, and communication in general. I skipped through most of the phonotactics as I'm using the Hungarian template. So as I filled out entries in ...
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What is reduplication used for in natural languages?
According to WALS Feature 27A, 278/368 languages surveyed have productive full and partial reduplication. Chapter 27 gives the following example of partial reduplication in Pangasinan:
báley "town" -&...
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Should I include morphology in my proto language?
Most, if not all natural languages have some form of morphology, such as noun case or poly-personal agreement. However, these features are usually evolved from prepositions and auxiliary verbs, and ...
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2answers
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How typologically unusual is using postpositions in an otherwise head-initial language?
My conlang is predominately head-initial (SVO, n-adj, mostly suffixing), but has postpositions because I'd though that the noun was the head of an adpositional phrase. Wikipedia, however, says that ...
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1answer
110 views
Is it reasonable for numerals to behave like verbs?
I am aware that adjectives can pattern like verbs in some natural languages. Is it reasonable for numerals to do the same? Thus
Some balls four.
There are four balls.
Fouring the balls were orange.
...
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Is num-det-n-adj-rel a reasonable order for a noun phrase?
In English, noun phrases are det-num-adj-n-rel (e.g. "The five orange balls that John saw"). In Spanish, noun phrases are (mostly) det-num-n-adj-rel (e.g. "Las cinco pelotas naranjas las que Juan vió,"...
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1answer
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Official resource on simlish language
I know that Simlish language is not fully created. It is just a list of words and sentences.
Where can I find the full list (official source)?
P.S I wanna create this language as fully created ...
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102 views
Finnish as if it were English
I am fascinated by Finnish and sound changes. I had an idea for a funny version of Finnish where it has these properties:
Orthographic [k] changes to [q].
[Q] is pronounced /ð/ (voiced TH) before e ...
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3answers
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How can I add irregularities to a morphological paradigm?
So, I'm trying to make something with a naturalistic feel, even though the current phonetic system distinguishes about 38 phonemes... Let's say I'll tackle this later.
I have issues with grammar... I ...
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1answer
64 views
Should languages spoken by two similar races have the same protolanguage, or can they be not related by protolanguage? [closed]
Should languages spoken by two similar races have the same protolanguage, or can they be not related by protolanguage? I guess they should be similar for example in phonetics or in some other ...
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How many words should I create in a conlang?
Question 1: How many words are minimal for a naturalistic conlang? (1000, 1500, 3000 or even more)
Question 2: How many words do the conlangers usually create?
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State-based analogue to distributive case
I am developing conlang that has grammatical cases system for nominals that for each spatial case there is state-based case.
In Finnic languages grammatical cases that denote states occur, examples ...
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What list of words do you use when creating a language? [duplicate]
What word list do you use when creating a language? Is there a conlang word list?
P.S I know that this question is kinda subjective, but I think that it will be quite useful for conlangers.
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5answers
291 views
Good Real World Languages to Base Proto-Lang Vocabulary
I'm working on a conlang that requires a LOT of work, particularly in the sound changes from proto-lang to the current version.
Instead of creating a whole set of words from nothing, I am ...
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1answer
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How do I naturalistically merge two languages without a clear Substrate and Superstrate?
For my latest worldbuilding project I'm trying to create a naturalistic language for a fictional empire I've been creating. This empire was born at the end of the Bronze Age when various kingdoms and ...
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Are there any free online conlang creation tools?
I was wondering if anyone knows of any conlang creation websites that are free to use.
I know this sounds silly but I have little experience to go on as for creating a custom language.
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Where should I start? Want to create a fictional conlang with old English, old Irish, and ancient nordic elements with unique written elements [duplicate]
So I had an idea for a PC game that harkens somewhat to my ancestors... Imagine a fictional world blessed with angels, dragons, elves and fey and lots more, where technology is present but very rare ...
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770 views
Are there any Conlangs using Chinese characters?
The Chinese character system is one that is universal to many Chinese dialects. Two people can pronounce the same character in two different ways, but when writing to each other it is intelligible.
...
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1answer
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Which sounds could a lipless humanoid produce?
In my world, I have a race of humanoids who speak a language called Gé̃kt, which is derived from various Eastern Iranian languages such as Khotanese, Ossetian, Yaghnobi and Bactrian with a dash of ...
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How does one write an easily decipherable language?
I'm writing a book about humans finding alien writing off-planet, which is why I want to know how—without referencing known human languages like the Rosetta Stone does—it may be deciphered.
Does it ...