#conlang advice

[thoughtfulfoxllama]

Hey fellow Conlangers

I was hoping to get some feedback on a Conlang I was working on

So, the basic premise involves a Symbolic Alphabet (an evolution from the Phonecian Alphabet), and 2-Letter Roots

The Words are created by the combination of the Letters (as an example, ʔ has the meaning of a Creator, and L has the meaning of Balance, so ʔL is to word for a God, which I admit is blatantly stolen from Semitic)

The Although I said above 2-Letter Roots are the Basis, many of the Words are 3-Letter Roots

This is because the 3-Letter Roots grow out of the 2-Letter Roots

Now, for the crazy part of my Conlang, I want the expansion to tell a story. So, if you expand ʃ-W, it would tell a story like this:

ʃ-W-ʔ: Death/Destruction

ʃ-W-B: Return/Restore

ʃ-W-D: Lord

ʃ-W-H: Judgement/Balace

ʃ-W-χ: To Sink Down

ʃ-W-T: Whip/Lash/Scourge/Punish

ʃ-W-L: Uncover/Expose

ʃ-W-L-L: Prisoner/Naked

ʃ-W-M: To Stink

ʃ-W-N: To Be Quiet

ʃ-W-ʕ: To become Rich/Freed from Distress

ʃ-W-ʕ-L: Fox or Jackel

ʃ-W-ʕ-R: Door Keeper

ʃ-W-P: Lie in Wait

ʃ-W-Q: To Run

ʃ-W-R: To Journey/To Be Strong

I made this myth as a prototypical Dying-and-Rising Story. The Lord dies, and seeks to restore Life. They suffer, until a moment of Quiet. They then pass the Door Keeper (I was using Egyptian Myth as an inspiration, so Anubis, the Jackal) back into Mortality. They then run to their Followers (you can't be a Lord without Followers), and teach them the Journey they made, so they can follow it when they die

But, these 3-Letter Roots have influence from both sides

Lets take K-L-B (Dog). It's a combination of the Primary Root (K-L, meaning All or Every), and the Secondary (L-B, meaning Heart, as the Core of Being, or as the Physical Organ). K-L-B therefore means the Heart of Everything (which, in the Faith of this hypothetical people, is Sirius, the Dog Star, so it grew to mean Dog, as they associated this Star with Dogs)

And finally, there are 5 Vowels, and they change the meaning of the Word

Lets take M-N

Man: Archetypal Human

Men: Humanity

Min: People/Nation/Culture

Mon: Clan/Tribe

Mun: Family

[katrinafaire]

How long does it take to complete a conlang? /r/conlangs answers.

So I was looking through my emails before bed the other night (I'm chucking this in my queue when I'm done so suffice to say it's been a minute) and there was a really interesting question on conlanging, found here:

The question was essentially "I've spent months working on this conlang, how soon will I be done?" And there were a variety of answers that I found both interesting and surprisingly encouraging. I highly suggest reading the thread but I'll share some highlights.

Being "done" depends wholly on what your purpose of the language is. If it's a naming language and literally all you need are names -- be they characters, things or places -- it will take much, much less time than creating a whole grammar and a hefty lexicon. That much I knew. It also follows that creating a "professional" language on command, such as ones found in movies, shows, and books that have deadlines to be done by, would be longer but still be cut shorter.

Both have room to continue. Personal languages, personal projects with no enforced deadline, where your goal is to just create something living that can be written or spoken coherently... that's going to take time. Years. Decades. A lifetime, if you're willing.

Tolkien comes to mind, the original linguistics georg, a famous linguist and with good reason. Did you know that to actually be conversational beyond given phrases, his languages have been fleshed out by his fans? Did you know various Elvish languages are missing bits of grammar? Not-me, more advanced conlangers have long been aware of this and yet the conlangs are beloved, are worked on tirelessly and meticulously by fans even in his absence.

The point here is that conlangs can take as long as you're willing to give them. But another point was made that really made me feel much better about that. The point that was made was that, many of us aim to create languages that would have been spoken by whole civilizations over their duration. In real life, these languages would take centuries, if not millennia, to develop naturally. We are fast tracking by multitudes.

Spending weeks-months-years even decades makes sense when you consider the magnitude of what you're asking of yourself. Conlanging as a hobby is a long game; it will take time. One Reddit user said spending at least a year to make it start to breathe, to look how you want it to look, was a reasonable benchmark.

I can't speak from experience, of course, I'm just dabbling at the moment, still ironing out my sound systems. But I found that encouraging, and I found it to be a healthy mindset adjuster for me. Just because I can write 100K in six months doesn't mean a whole language will come together so fast. And that's okay.

I hope you all found it motivational too. (Seriously, though, check out the link.)

[ijosijen]

i've got zero clue how hot a take this is

but over the years i've become more and more convinced that starting a conlang's sound system with a phoneme inventory is the wrong approach. there's too much emphasis on some kind of systematic approach to language phonemes.

that's the hot take: don't do this. phonemes aren't so immediately important when it comes to designing a language's sounds. start off with your phonotactic rules. abstract the "exact" value of the phoneme away (and the word "exact" is incoherent when it comes to phonemic analysis) and instead focus on dealing with broad classes of sounds. it's these features that you're actually trying to express anyway when you make a sound system, right?

there's definitely a strain of conlangery where you want to have a specific phoneme or two in your language and that's cool, honestly. flair is important. but often i see people trying to go for a feel with how their language sounds. and when you want to design a feel, it's best to start with the broad abstractions and then zero in on the surface realisation from there, imo.

how i go about things

start with syllable structure ofc. consonants and vowels. your classic CVC stuff. Or maybe CV. or maybe you want to start off with insane clusters off the bat - don't worry about it, you can always change it later via sound shifts or other tinkering.

also important here is word stress. this is personal feelings advice but unless you're planning to do smth specific with stress then you don't need to go out of your way to define "how" stress works. just put it on the same syllable of every word for now if you wanna. maybe say some vowels are strong/weak and steal or can't take stress or smth.

you don't need to specify the exact vowel right now, that's the whole point of this post. you can abstract your features until you've built your foundation to that point.

for consonants it's about the same. be as broad and vague as possible before zeroing in on closer values. don't choose consonants like they're discrete phonemes that go in certain places on a chart. treat the chart like one big consonant space that you're going to chop up into distinct segments.

this is the true value of the IPA, in that it can tell you the ways that real humans like to distinguish things. but the IPA is designed to make as many cuts as possible, to highlight every single distinction that every known language makes at the same time. no language makes that much distinction.

like, for example: english doesn't care about the difference between the alveolar and retroflex places of articulation, not really. if you hit someone with a retroflex stop in english, the language and its speakers will interpret that as its "front area of the mouth stop," which generally defaults to alveolar and/or dental because those are the ones that require the least effort.

this isn't really "grouping together" different phonemes, this is not drawing a border between two phonetic qualities. a slightly different thing. at least to start, your language has one consonant (C) and one vowel (V). zero borders whatsoever. start drawing distinctions, your phonemes will naturally emerge like a sculpture cut from stone. if you'd really like a retroflex series - make a cut in that "front area of the mouth" ! add a distinction between "tongue straight" and "tongue curled" or smth. and that's that.

once you've made your cuts and have the vowel and consonant charts diced up into distinguishing sections, you can pick a phoneme from each one to "represent" the space. maybe the most common one, maybe something else if you wanna have a little fun. and then you can add that phoneme or two you really personally wanted into the thing.

whoever might have told you that phonemic inventories "needed" to be as balanced as possible has no idea what they're on about. natlangs only loosely adhere to that kind of "balance," and whatever is there is an emergent consequence of the fact that the cuts you made among various phonetic features are sort of naturally straight lines. if you're distinguishing the fricative manner from the approximant manner, of course you're going to have a "fricative series" and an "approximant" series.

and all of these are just approximations. sounds can enter and leave for any reason at any time. a bit of chaos is always good.

moving back to the phonotactics - remember how you did this before starting on your phonemic inventory? that's 'cause you can update this to be more specific as you get more specific with your conlang's sounds. maybe you've made a cut in vowel space and you want it to correspond to vowel harmony, maybe you've made a weird consonant cut (glides/nasals/approximants are famous for this) might have weird effects/placements on the syllabic level.

ultimately, phonotactics probably has a bigger effect on how your language sounds than the exact phoneme classes you carve out. my last bit of advice is to take biblaridion's advice and start with a proto-lang. for phonotactics, what that means is: if you want a bunch of consonant clusters, then start with a ton of small open CV syllables and begin the vowel loss. If you want the opposite, start with a bunch of consonant clusters and then reduce the ever-living daylights out of them.

it'll take like 10-20 sound changes at the absolute most to end up with a sound system that was the opposite of how you started. make your sound changes broad and abstract. again, think in groups, distinguishable by a common set of cuts, not individual phonemes. do this well, and you'll find that along the way you've ended up with a gloriously chaotic and slightly funky system that's lost the sense of human artifice that a fiat-declared sound system has.

this is all phonetics advice and i'm not even an ijo phonetics. but that last bit applies very broadly. if you work on your language in stages and evolve it over in-universe time, it'll build up a whole host of fun naturalistic irregularities. protos are good. but in fairness that's advice for "naturalistic" conlanging, another incoherent term. natlangs do whatever they want, there's no one single vibe.

even if you're not doing that kind of artlang - i feel like the steps outlined here are a slightly better picture of what languages actually do, at least compared to the mad-libs sound inventory nonsense that the IPA might dupe you into thinking is accurate.

or, rather, mad-libs sound inventory nonsense is not what the IPA is for. the IPA is for quickly notating as many sound distinctions as possible. even the close/"phonetic" [t] is just a broad representation of a common phonological distinction. IPA is a messy system.

a "phoneme" is just a collection of distinctive traits being pronounced "at once." a "syllable" is a slightly bigger and often more abstract collection of distinctive traits. so start with the abstract. work your way down into the concrete. all art starts with a feeling that you want to nail down; make sure you're not nailing at random out the gate.

[riotcowgrrl]

chat should i use a Hangul style system in my conlang or should i fully commit to smth like Chinese

[thecrazyworldbuilder]

Another lifehack for Vulgarlang.

1

Open Vulgarlang and enable Advanced Word Structure.

The only thing interesting you should be the S category.

2

Open Awkwords.

Here, make any sort of a syllable generator. Might it be a mock-off of Japanese, or else. Use IPA notation, not English.

3

Copy generated syllables and paste them in the S category in the Vulgarlang tab.

Results:

a /a/ pron. I, me, mine

ailoa /ˈai̯loa̯/ v. join, tie, marry

ale /ˈale/ v. solve, figure out, deduce

anfosshon /anˈfosʃon/ n. law

ansine /anˈsine/ n. grandmother

ar /ar/ v. row

asshan /ˈasʃan/ v. accompany

dai /dai̯/ adj. naked, nude

darthoepos /darˈθoe̯pos/ adj. black, blue, purple, green

denyae /ˈdenjae̯/ v. cough

des /des/ n. energy (strength, stamina)

die /die̯/ n. excuse

dio /dio̯/ pron. nothing

dirfe /ˈdirfe/ n. flavor

diteloi /diˈteloi̯/ prep. except, besides

doelta /doˈelta/ n. skeleton

dueiral /duˈei̯ral/ v. dream

duseomin /duˈseo̯min/ v. suggest

e /e/ pron. he, him, his, it (masc), its (masc)

eaon /ˈea̯on/ v. drag, pull

efeslo /eˈfeslo/ v. permit, approve

eivalur /ei̯ˈvalur/ n. hope

elrashoe /eˈlraʃoe̯/ adj. flat

entafae /enˈtafae̯/ n. life (living organism)

eonshi /eˈonʃi/ v. pull, yank

esnirpen /esˈnirpen/ prep. above

evea /ˈevea̯/ n. vagina

falsilur /falˈsilur/ n. cause

fasther /ˈfasθer/ n. place

felfel /ˈfelfel/ v. emphasize

fer /fer/ v. study, learn, examine

fieninyo /fie̯ˈninjo/ n. horizon

finur /ˈfinur/ n. division

fipao /ˈfipao̯/ n. dog

fis /fis/ n. mask, veil

foishol /ˈfoi̯ʃol/ adj. funny, absurd

fonsas /ˈfonsas/ v. call (refer to by name)

fospas /ˈfospas/ n. beer

iakal /iˈakal/ n. matter (substance, material)

ila /ˈila/ n. cat

inosdis /iˈnosdis/ adj. short, low

irnonelab /ˌirnoˈnelab/ adv. simply

isvin mia /ˈisvin mia̯/ n. ancestor

kalas /ˈkalas/ n. sleep

karfe /ˈkarfe/ n. issue, concern

kei /kei̯/ n. ass

kerab /ˈkerab/ adv. finally

kiesholsia /kie̯ˈʃolsia̯/ n. hole, ditch, well

kirvos /ˈkirvos/ adj. easy

koepoi /ˈkoe̯poi̯/ n. officer

kormae /ˈkormae̯/ v. slip

kotilkol /koˈtilkol/ n. vocabulary

lal /lal/ v. destroy

laosfas /laˈosfas/ adj. plain

larpan /ˈlarpan/ v. chase

layeakal /laˈjea̯kal/ n. mathematics

leme /ˈleme/ v. know (be acquainted with)

lenseslan /lenˈseslan/ v. criticize

lernansos /lerˈnansos/ v. save, rescue, liberate

lia /lia̯/ adj. major

lilshaimel /lilˈʃai̯mel/ n. top (clothing)

liskolpea /lisˈkolpea̯/ n. chance, odds

lokal /ˈlokal/ n. note

lor /lor/ n. clothes, clothing, garment

lothalsor /loˈθalsor/ n. rule (law, regulation), condition (requirement, stipulation)

malae /ˈmalae̯/ v. swallow

mar /mar/ adv. also, as well

marten /ˈmarten/ adj. green, sick, fresh, raw

mei /mei̯/ n. color, hue, paint

melva /ˈmelva/ n. journey, trip, voyage

mer /mer/ n. right, entitlement

miaoi /ˈmia̯oi̯/ v. review, analyze, scrutinize

minvinze /minˈvinze/ prep. between

mo /mo/ v. sail

moivermai /moi̯ˈvermai̯/ n. period (duration of time), season (quarter of the year)

morai /ˈmorai̯/ n. needle, pin

moryesvas /moˈrjesvas/ n. report

nae /nae̯/ n. respect

nalsipie /nalˈsipie̯/ n. peace, harmony

nar /nar/ det. whose

nasyeieb /naˈsjei̯eb/ n. detention

nedanval /neˈdanval/ adj. tired (needing sleep), tired (needing rest)

nenoe /ˈnenoe̯/ n. example

nerteo /ˈnerteo̯/ n. eye, eyeball

nethakoe /neˈθakoe̯/ prep. upon

ninao /ˈninao̯/ n. whore

ninteoso thiethar /ninˈteo̯so ˈθie̯θar/ n. foil

niyei /ˈnijei̯/ v. ride

nonshiozia /nonˈʃio̯zia̯/ n. rod, shaft, bar, axle

norvaofeo /norˈvao̯feo̯/ adv. up

o /o/ det. her

oeken /ˈoe̯ken/ v. surprise, astonish, startle

okasror /oˈkasror/ n. shame, stigma

or /or/ adj. dark

os /os/ n. foot

osmanfi /osˈmanfi/ n. will

pa /pa/ conj. although, though

pao /pao̯/ n. boy

pator /ˈpator/ v. imagine, devise, assume

peo /peo̯/ n. hill, mound

pi /pi/ v. ask (request), request

pilkei /ˈpilkei̯/ n. bug

pirsei /ˈpirsei̯/ v. set

podelkea /poˈdelkea̯/ v. move, come

pon /pon/ v. like, love, admire

pontei /ˈpontei̯/ n. snow

poszaipei /posˈzai̯pei̯/ v. grow, evolve

ralia /ˈralia̯/ v. run, work (function)

rarpol /ˈrarpol/ v. cry, weep, mourn

rayavin /raˈjavin/ v. consider

relkaidis /relˈkai̯dis/ n. valley

reomia /ˈreo̯mia̯/ n. cart, wagon

ri /ri/ n. oil, grease

rioet /ˈrio̯et/ adj. medical

ro /ro/ adv. here

roise /ˈroi̯se/ v. should

ronvaithos /ronˈvai̯θos/ n. fog, mist

sae /sae̯/ interj. well

saopoet /sao̯ˈpoet/ adj. natural

seizoe /ˈsei̯zoe̯/ n. top, mountain, lid

senro /ˈsenro/ adj. big, great (very large), heavy

ses /ses/ n. front, facade

shai /ʃai̯/ det. enough

shandesoa /ʃanˈdesoa̯/ n. wound, trauma

sharthia /ˈʃarθia̯/ adj. last (previous), previous

shei /ʃei̯/ pron. everyone

sheoyerlos /ʃeo̯ˈjerlos/ v. drift

shialiapil /ʃia̯ˈlia̯pil/ conj. and

shilosfor /ʃiˈlosfor/ n. present, gift, souvenir

shio /ʃio̯/ v. create, invent

shisraliur /ˌʃisraˈliur/ n. pressure

shoekio /ˈʃoe̯kio̯/ n. star, celebrity

shoithol /ˈʃoi̯θol/ n. evening

sholpos /ˈʃolpos/ v. catch, capture, seize

shonlinil /ʃoˈnlinil/ v. register, book

shosfepar /ʃosˈfepar/ n. phone

si /si/ det. their

siennirpir /ˌsienˈnirpir/ adj. friendly

silpei /ˈsilpei̯/ v. sink, descend

sirenoe /siˈrenoe̯/ adj. fashionable

siur /ˈsiur/ n. explanation

soe /soe̯/ n. base

sol /sol/ n. task, chore

sos /sos/ n. corpse

tadoro /taˈdoro/ v. touch, feel (sense by touch)

taltolsheo /talˈtolʃeo̯/ v. understand, ponder, meditate, grasp

taovia /ˈtao̯via̯/ n. hood

tazio /ˈtazio̯/ n. pain

teifoapil /tei̯ˈfoa̯pil/ v. trade

teles /ˈteles/ n. nose, point, nostril

tenyeipis /teˈnjei̯pis/ n. snake

tepinvan /teˈpinvan/ n. dealer

teshiapes /teˈʃia̯pes/ n. visitor

teteldopis /ˌtetelˈdopis/ n. florist

tevesa /teˈvesa/ n. killer

thaidi /ˈθai̯di/ n. site

thapia /ˈθapia̯/ v. care

thathiken /θaˈθiken/ n. uncle

thenshoe /ˈθenʃoe̯/ n. committee

thes /θes/ v. say

thiethar /ˈθie̯θar/ n. paper

thimaltha /θiˈmalθa/ adv. however

thira /ˈθira/ n. thunder

thoefeadi /θoe̯ˈfea̯di/ n. race (ethnicity), ethnicity

tholla /ˈθolla/ n. sun, day

thonlirzo /θoˈnlirzo/ num. six

thoror /ˈθoror/ n. angle, direction (way)

thosfao /ˈθosfao̯/ n. crown

ti /ti/ n. recognition

tinvervon /tinˈvervon/ v. embrace

to /to/ v. need (lack), lack

tol /tol/ v. serve, provide, cater, deliver, treat

tosshispon /tosˈʃispon/ v. hate

va /va/ n. stem

vai /vai̯/ prep. like

vainershon /vai̯ˈnerʃon/ v. tear, rip

valal denfoa /ˈvalal ˈdenfoa̯/ n. pubic hair

varlao /ˈvarlao̯/ n. tin

vatoskan /vaˈtoskan/ n. expert

veothis /ˈveo̯θis/ n. course (direction of travel), life (lifetime)

vethi fe /ˈveθi fe/ n. tomorrow

vilminthir /vilˈminθir/ n. condition (state)

vinyi /ˈvinji/ n. tomb

voaeb /ˈvoa̯eb/ n. certificate

vol /vol/ adv. where

volthiryei /volˈθirjei̯/ n. boot

womoinai /woˈmoi̯nai̯/ n. grocer

yaipafol /jai̯ˈpafol/ v. thank

yao /jao̯/ n. amount, quantity

yaslio /ˈjaslio̯/ v. enjoy, appreciate

yeikalnei /jei̯ˈkalnei̯/ n. partner

yeolilnal /jeo̯ˈlilnal/ adj. attractive

yi /ji/ v. prepare

yio /jio̯/ n. plague

yirdia /ˈjirdia̯/ prep. for (a period of time or length of distance)

yiur /ˈjiur/ n. preparation

yolei /ˈjolei̯/ n. room (space)

yosnaodoa /josˈnao̯doa̯/ v. mix, combine, join

zairanil /zai̯ˈranil/ v. laugh

zalso zir /ˈzalso zir/ n. lower class

zasdinthos /zasˈdinθos/ adj. ancient, antique

zelshalo /zelˈʃalo/ adj. sudden, abrupt

zerrar /ˈzerrar/ n. race (competition)

zia /zia̯/ n. body, corpse

zillia /ˈzillia̯/ v. reach, achieve, accomplish

ziofie mer /ˈzio̯fie̯ mer/ n. copyright

ziski /ˈziski/ adj. round

zoelkei /zoˈelkei̯/ n. success, profit

zore /ˈzore/ n. match (game), contest

zozimal /zoˈzimal/ n. storm

[dedicatedfollower467]

Tbqh i'm really tired of the "humans are weird" posts with alien character names like Ch'kafjhw and X'tllle'aof'nfkka or whatever the fuck y'all are naming your fake aliens here's an idea please for the love of GOD don't use apostrophes in your fake alien languages they look so bullshit and cliche. like. what phoneme are you trying to denote with an apostrophe, and why did you choose an apostrophe for it?????? if you look at your alien name and can't even THEORETICALLY tell me how it WOULD be pronounced, please, for the love of all that is holy, don't use that name!!!!!! i know you're trying to make it look alien and you'd like to claim that a human mouth can't make the alien noises but that makes it literally impossible for me to read and comprehend the name! I swear it is possible to make alien names that don't look like keyboard smashes!!!!!!!!

[dedicatedfollower467]

okay so folks i may have gotten a little salty and carried away on my most recent post but seriously i am not an expert at conlangs by any means but i've been playing around with languages for nearly ten years now and i have a lot of advice based on both my own personal experience and what the experts who've written books about conlanging have told me so