Getting Started

There are many reasons behind constructing a language. Most commonly a conlang is created to make a world feel more complete. There are five important bits of information you need to consider before getting started on a language. If you don’t your language will be flat and unrealistic.

How intelligent is my speaker?

If your speakers are a bunch of cavemen who've just crawled from the primordial ooze, it's very unlikely that they will be speaking in prose and debating about subordinate clauses.

How old is my language?

The older a language is, the more complex it becomes (especially if there is a written component). Age gives way to strange symbols that are rarely used, taken from words long gone and combinations of letters that don’t make sense anymore - like ph making an f sound.

What sounds can my speaker make?

Do your speakers have mouths. A mouth makes this a lot easier but it certainly isn’t necessary. How about tusks? Lips? Uvulas? Vocal cords that vibrate? Tongues? Or how about those pesky lungs we all have. Not having those can be tricky to say the least. All of these things are incredibly important and it’s good to get this sorted out right now.

Does my environment make certain sounds hard to use or hear?

Are your speakers an underwater race? That certainly changes things up. Is the air full of argon or helium? Forget tonal languages.

Is my speaker capable of making symbols?

Are your speakers also writers? Do they have cloven hooves, incapable of holding a pen? Do they have long claws but lack opposable thumbs? Writing is an integral part to any civilized culture.

Phonetics for Dummies

Now that you’ve completed the initial five steps and committed that information to memory we can start building. You don’t have to have a firm grasp of phonetics for this, but it definitely helps. There are three main categories of sound that the human mouth can create:

Consonants

Consonants are produced when air moving through the mouth is stopped in some fashion by the tongue or lips. For example, the consonant p is produced by momentarily stopping the stream of air from the lungs by closing the lips, whereas the consonant d is produced by pressing the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge behind the teeth to stop the airstream.

Vowels

Vowels are produced by changing the flow of air through the mouth, but never stopping it. Stop the flow and you’ve got a consonant. Different vowels are produced by moving the jaw, the lips and the tongue. Produce the a in pay by placing the tongue on the bottom of the mouth. Round the lips and tongue and it changes to the o in toe.

Clicks

Clicks are consonants, but I differentiate them because they do no require any airflow. They are used mainly in areas of Africa and Tatooine. I’ll be honest I don’t know much about them and generally avoid them (but that doesn’t mean you should).

Crazy Things for Over-Achievers.

Maybe your speakers have an extra thingamabob in their mouth or throat that helps them cluck like a chicken or purr like a kitten. Good luck with that.

Selecting Phonemes

Okay, if you’ve never seen phonetic symbols, don’t freak out. It’s not as confusing as it looks. (Plus, the chart has cheat words underneath each symbol). The symbols in this chart represent many of the consonant and vowel sounds the human mouth is capable of.

Pick your sounds.

Pick a bunch, pick a few, whatever tickles your fancy. Pick the sounds that you think fit your culture. Soft sounds for a soft culture, harsh for harsh, etc. The less sounds you have, the longer your words may end up (think Hawaiian).

Consider how you’ll put them together.

You can play around with the sounds you’ve chosen until your language has it’s own distinct sound. For example, in English putting a g before an n sounds ghastly, but in many other languages it’s perfectly acceptable.

Suggestion

If you choose not to write your sounds in the phonetic alphabet and just use English letters I strongly suggest using a cheat word. Instead of just saying a = such and such you should say cat = such and such. There are multiple sounds that could be attributed to the English a (cat, fall, stay). It can get tricky to keep track of them all with English characters.

Writing It Down

If your speakers have a written system, making up the symbols to communicate visually is the next step. There are a few things you should keep in mind.

Literacy

Who is capable of writing? Is it everyone, religious folk, or maybe only the rich? If it’s a language written by only a select group it could remain unchanged for longer periods of time. If it’s only older boring stiffs then there won’t be hip youngsters to create slang.

Form

Is there a symbol for each sound, like an alphabet, or are there symbols for whole ideas? For example, English uses symbols for each sound (a, e, d, j), whereas Mandarin uses symbols to express ideas (tree, woman, child).

Tools

Are your speakers using ink and pen? Do they have claws that make scratching symbols a better option? This affects the look of your symbols and what they are written on. Pen and paper — smooth and artistic symbols on pretty much any surface. Claws — simple and rough symbols on thick durable surfaces like planks of wood.

Complexity

How complex are your symbols? Remember the time constraints and artistry levels of your speakers. Swirly patterns are pretty and all, but it doesn’t always fit the culture. Keep that in mind.

Scripts

How many scripts are there? One, two, seven? A form for peasants and a form for the wealthy? In English we have print and cursive. Print for daily use and cursive for formal paperwork (yes, I know we don’t use that system anymore).

Get Into It

You’ve picked out your sounds and and you think you’ve settled on some symbols. GREAT. Now roll up your sleeves and put on your thinkin’ cap. It’s time to get funky.

In languages all across the galaxy, putting a letter by itself is all well and good until you pair it with another letter and then BAM it’s all going downhill and everyone is confused. Most of these strange rules come from language evolution and integration of words from other languages. They’ve been throwing people off for centuries.

Example 1: Take the word sit. Now add a pesky e on the end. You’d think it would be pronounced city (sit-e), but no. The i saw that e and had a mid-life crisis.

Example 2: The word now. Along comes a k. Now the o sounds different, and that sneaky little k doesn’t even make a sound.

To make a language feel, look, and sound real, it’s probably a good idea to make up a bunch of rules and then screw them up sometimes. Unless your speakers are super people who never ever ever mess up and are perfect in every way (cough, unlikely).

Grammar

Grammar is a subject I hated in school. I still hate it. It confines my sentences and makes me look dumb when I get it wrong. However, we are making languages here. Grammar is a necessary evil.

Every bit of this section is optional. Pick and choose. Make up your own. It’s whatever you want. Go crazy or be really strict, but as always keep your speaker’s culture in mind.

Syntax

Adverbs, Nouns, Adjectives, prepositions, interjections. In your language you can put them in any order you like. You’re the boss. English generally places its adjectives before nouns, the Spanish put them after. Latin and Old English had completely ambiguous placements for the whole damn sentence — word type was determined by word endings. Make your prepositions postpositions. Make your suffixes and prefixes into infixes. Live dangerously, nerd people.

Marks

Almost all languages have periods (full stops) because we need to know where one idea ends and the next begins. Exclamation points and question marks give us information we might not get otherwise. The Spanish language is so into punctuation it does it twice. Consider punctuation; whether you need it or if it’s a waste of of time. Imagine the glory of a world without apostrophe problems.