❄️Do you wanna build a language~?

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Few weeks back discovered the rabbit hole of conlang - constructed language. You design grammar, vocals, letters, numbers, tense, everything from scratch.

So I watched a few tutorials on it and it seems pretty fun so Imma try to build a conlang for one of my stories. An essential in conlang is to know your world; culture, technology, mistakes, foreigners, and many other things all influence language. I got that part done for my story so I think I can jump into conlanging.

Anyone else here interested in conlangs?

 

[mochi]

I was in the past, but never actively, as it's a huge time sink (building the lexicon, then learning it), for little to no gain (pretty much nobody else will learn it, and a language without speakers is meaningless). Honestly, I would recommend you to drop out before you lose much time. At the end of the day, it's not the language that matters, but what you say with it. Unless you can find a way to build a language that fixes the fundamental flaws of natural languages (most notably, the fact that you can't really describe things as a picture does, ie a human face), there's not going to be any advantage to writing in X rather than Y.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@mochi It's just a side project for me to do until my writer's block is gone, plus I might get interesting plot points to add to my stories. Besides, no one will read anything I create anyway if I never feel confident enough in my plot to finish the stories so I don't see how conlanging and writing can be too different for me.

 

[Tamerlane]

Partially, but if I were to do it, I'd probably still it after Latin because that's the most effective way to organize it.

For instance, a noun has five main forms-Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, and Ablative-that each correspond to its place in a sentence. It has one of each for both singular and plural forms.
Nominative-Subject
Genitive-Possessive
Dative-to/for a person or object to show intention or purpose OR as an indirect object
Accusative-direct object
Ablative-prepositions

These each follow a pattern of endings based on declensions (though irregulars exist) and will have a methodical process of the gender of the object (Masculine, Feminine, or Neuter) and will have consistent endings for each.

There's another form, vocative, but it is exclusively used for calling out to a person when speaking or talking and typically isn't included because of its specific nature and doesn't vary as much as the other forms do.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane My gosh I'm still at the top of the rabbit hole

 

[Tamerlane]

Grammar only gets more complicated.

Latin doesn't have articles, like other languages like Japanese. If they were, they'd have to match gender, case and number like all adjectives.

Not to mention, you need to have different endings to distinguish them from the nouns.

Want to see how this gets worse? Verbs will have to do the same thing with their own endings as participles, which will have special forms that also change depending on case and number if you need them as adjectives. Gerundives also abide by this principle

Latin is also still less complicated than other languages. Welcome to the dark side, my friend @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN

 

[Hounder]

One thing about languages is that they are a cultural thing. To do this, one will have to step into the lives and viewpoints of the individuals that use it. You get the basics just from what exists currently. Example, what type of environment do they live in and what could be construed as important aspects? The Inuit for example, live in a a part of the world that is naturally cold and icy for much of the year, so they have many terms and so on that is related to the cold and other related aspects (like snow). On the other hand, there was at one time some cultures that didn't have any word for snow, as they never came into contact with it, or with a culture that did. Another example, where one group may simply say that a color is green, another may have multiple words, each covering the different shades and hues, as the color may be of cultural significance.

Grammar-wise, how do they look at the world will still be important. Just look at how different languages do "subject-verb" stuff. That alone can get complicated as you have to determine where in a phrase or sentence each of these would be located. Won;t go into this one, as simply looking at the differences between English/Western-based languages and Japanese/Korean/Chinese alone will suffice.

Yep, it can get extremely complex.

 

[Teddy]

Or just completely butcher the language: No tenses no cases.

John is the owner of the dog and used to take it for walks before he became frail.

Man own dog. Past man dog walk . Present man weak. Present man dog no walk.

The later people who used this language will definitely improve the languages themselves anyways cause its a pain to use in this form, so technically you don't have to worry too much.

You still have to make new words for nouns, adjectives and verbs though. Simplest would probs go and draw everything then simplify and simplify the drawings til they bare almost no relation to the orignal item so you can add drawings together to mean different things and then finally break them down to different strokes to be a type of alphabet. Similar to Asian langauges. Hardest part of that language will probs entirely new concepts that you can't draw example: (mental health problems)-> "relating to heart problems" (direct chinese translation.). Which can be solved by making an alphabet first then forcing everything in the world to be expressed by the that alphabet. But this is more difficult.

Or imo take the best of both worlds. Draw everything, then reduced everything into different strokes, then alter them into letters, make each phonetic, reclassing everything to be spelt with the new langauge and tada new language born.

(I am aware there are so many problems with this approach; but want someone to tell me more flaws with this plan that I didn't think of)

 

[421cookies]

It already killing my brain just to remember madoka runes for Magireco so, hell no.

 

[mochi]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN if you are really serious about giving it a try, you should study some linguistics, particularly typological linguistics (which compares languages among each others), otherwise you'll just end up with an english clone (or whatever language you know) with different words. Also remember that grammar is just one side of the coin; learning how the lexicon works is equally important.
Some great resources are "The Oxford handbook of linguistic typology" and "Basic linguistic theory" (Dixon).

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

Wow thanks for the advice. I'll definitely use all of these. And about studying linguistics, I think I'm just gonna watch conlang videos and jump in then learn from my mistakes as I go on. It's not fun to get a headache in order to have fun.

As for the letters, I wanna loosely base it from Korean Hangul, that's the plan at least. My projects always go a different way whenever I come up with better ideas along the way. The reason I want Hangul is cause it looks complicated to an outsider like Mandarin but in reality it's closer to the English alphabet than it is to Chinese Han Zi. (Disclaimer: idk any Korean). Also, I feel bad for Chinese and Japanese who have to learn hundreds of alphabets for every vocal and I don't want to submit my characters to that. Probably.

Also, recently saw this video and was pretty mindblown so I wanna loosely base my number system on this too.

 

[mochi]

@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN Point is, if you don't have a solid, if basic, understanding of how language works, you'll be completely lost. You'll waste much more time struggling than what it takes to read one solid introductory linguistics book (which by the way should be fun if you like language enough to want to make your own).

By the way, if you're stumped with writing because of plots, you could try some plot-less writing form, like a slice of life fictional diary; it would be excellent training for scene-writing and character development.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@mochi I don't really like writing plotless stuffs tho, oh and I'll be sure to keep your references in mind by the time I don't know where to go anymore so don't worry.

 

[Tamerlane]

Also, if you're approaching linguistics from a more historical setting, remember languages go through a process very similar to evolution where they'll share a common ancestor and then split apart as they interact and change.

For instance, Indo-European languages have similar words and roots to a ridiculous degree, but one thing that they don't share is words for things that they discovered AFTER they all broke apart, for instance Iron is something that varies between India, Rome, and the Germanic languages

If writing fictional settings, try to have places that shared an origin or place have similar descendants or roots.
(I.e. Dark Elves, High Elves, Woodland Elves, etc would all have similar words for things that are slightly different but still could be understood like with Denmark, Sweden and Norway.)

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane I don't need to worry about that cause the world I want to make a language for is that Herpes Isekai (yeah I liked the concept to the point that I've made the backbone for a series.) Because of plot mumbo jumbo everyone in the world spoke a language with only a few hundred words only for specific necessities because the god who made this world doesn't care about it, for spoilery mumbo jumbo reasons. And the "beginning words" are so disjointed and unnatural to begin with that seeing it develop over the series' time into something great should be a treat.

The culture has a religion that thinks that god is the manifestation of progress and I had the plot points all laid out but not connected and yeah everything is a mess.

Basically I plan to make not only the technology and magic progress super fast (thanks to using religious pressure as a lore excuse) but also the language as well. So characters would come up with new terminologies by mixing familiar ones together like how we get afternoon in English from after and noon. That's another reason why I wanna make the letters like Hangul. And also it makes it so that my inexperience and probably horrible word designs will be cannon by making it a "beginning word"

So essentially this series is a way for me to imagine what humans would do if they have magic and every being on Earth craves for progress as if their lives depends on it. It's also a plot excuse for me to not have to worry about outside culture because there's none.

Back to the topic of language, yeah I do plan to keep time as a variable in my language. Important places will have names that stay unchanged for a long time, accents will form as countries form, different people will have different ideas about writing so the same language has many written forms, the resurrection of old words when a country that progressed more collides with a country that progressed less. Stuffs like that.

I can talk more about it if you're interested. I mean, I can only provide talk since I haven't developed anything at all yet but at least there's that.

 

[Teddy]

Honestly I feel like if that got released in the west it would either be "cells at work" educational or isekai trash tier. And in the west it would be controversial and trigger people for downplaying the importance of sex-ed and stds/normalising sex

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Teddy Lol I forgot herpes was in everyone's minds when they read the title. In the story I wrote, the diseases are so anthropomorphized and used their brains more than their disease abilities that I forgot about that. The series is more seinen than adutainment tho. If anyone wanna pick up where I left off I can pm you a copy of my work.

 

[Tamerlane]

The manifestation of progress you say?

I think I know why the world went to shit if this guy is running it.

 

[DANDAN_THE_DANDAN]

@Tamerlane what is that

 

[Tamerlane]

Tzeentch, the Chaos God of Change, Hope, Ambition, Plotting/Scheming, Sorcery, Mutation and Evolution, and Knowledge.

He is known as the Archeit of Fate and has ever-increasingly complex plans and plots that exist merely for the sake of scheming and plotting, with progress and change as the forefront. (Chaos Gods are feed by human emotions and sustain themselves on such and so his plots are meant to maximize his own profit usually, though as the God of trickery he's a bit of a prankster that doesn't even care for his own minions if it serves his plan)

Essentially, imagine the stereotypical villain who screams "JUST AS PLANNED!" and who has insane and ever-increasing knowledge of how to make things go his way and ramp that up to 100. That's Tzeentch.
@DANDAN_THE_DANDAN