Conlang construction kit
From UniLang Wiki
Welcome to the UniLang conlang construction kit!
Here we will teach you a few tips to get you started designing your own constructed language. It takes a bit of time and commitment, but it could give you hours of fun and enjoyment and you may just learn something new about the world around you in the process. We hope you have a wonderful time learning to make a language.
Contents |
Introduction
It is useful to begin your language by listing its core ideals. What do you want it to be? You have full control over the fate of the language. Will it sound rough and guttural? Will it be spoken mainly in the back of the mouth or the front? Will it look like a strange, alien language, or a smooth, comfortable one? All of these questions and more should be answered before you begin doing anything else. Answer all questions about the look, sound, and general feeling people should get when using or hearing your language. Once you have finished this list, proceed on to creating your language's phonology.
Phonology
Writing Systems
There are many already-existent writing systems that you can use for your language. Choosing an existing alphabet, although sometimes not as fun, really makes it easier to transfer your language to the internet and to easily type in it.
Before choosing (or creating) a writing system, you need to decide what type you want to use for your language. Here are the five common categories of the world's writing systems.
- Abjads: Also known as consonant alphabets, abjad writing systems consist mainly of consonants. In some alphabets known as impure abjads, such as the Arabic writing system, vowels are still denoted using diacritics or extra letters. Most modern versions of this alphabet are considered impure. All known abjads were born for use in languages from the Semitic family, which includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, though they were later adaptated for many other languages such as Persian and Judeo-Spanish.
- Abugidas: Abugidas, or alphasyllabaries, are alphabets which contain letters for both consonants and vowels. What differentiates it from a normal alphabet (see the next type), however, is that consonants have inherent vowels. About half of the writing systems in the world are abugidas, including the large Brahmic family of scripts. As each letter has an inherent vowel, the other vowels (or lack thereof) are expressed using either diacritics, extra letters or special derivations from the basic letter.
- Alphabets: Alphabets are sets of letters, each of which represent a certain sound. In some cases, combining letters to form diphthongs can create new sounds, such as the English th, sh, and ch. Alphabets are used extensively throughout Europe and the Americas.
- Syllabaries: A syllabary is a set of symbols which each represent a spoken syllable. A syllable is often made up of a single consonant and vowel, or just a vowel. Cherokee and Japanese's Katakana writing system are both syllabaries.
- Logographies: In a logography, each word is represented by some sort of picture or marking. Logographies are very hard to maintain and standardize - the only known language which is able to maintain a complete logography is Toki Pona, a language with only 120 morphemes and roots al together. Some partial implementations of logographies (which are a mix instead) are the various Chinese scripts and Egyptian.
Creating Your Own Alphabet
If you feel like adding a twist to your conlang, you can always make a new writing system for it. The best way to begin is to write down a specification on two lines of paper and continually revise it until it looks perfect to you.
When constructing a script for your language, it's often useful to have a sound system in mind before creating your script so that you don't end up being limited by your own script when you make your language. It can be useful when creating your script to design some extra letters, too, in case you run out of letters and need to add more sounds.
It's best to not make things too complicated, however. Lots of strokes, dashes, and hand movements make for an impractical script that won't be very easy to use. The look of your script should also reflect your language's culture and sounds. For example, a straight, decisive line segment could represent a fricative or plosive phoneme.
Special Characters
Most alphabets are used across a wide variety of languages, and aren't a one-size-fit-all, so they must be modified with diacritics (å, ó, ü) or have completely letters added/evolved to better fit the phonology of the language (æ, þ, ß). Diacritics are markers that modify a letter to represent a different and sometimes related sound of another letter. English doesn't have any for instance (and its part of the reason for its complex and irregular orthography) but a language like Icelandic might need some for sounds present that aren't represented by the "base" Latin alphabet.
Now you might not want a totally unique script, and wish to just use a modified Latin alphabet like most European languages do. This can be achieved because of Unicode. A list of all Unicode Latin letters can be found here.
Now copying and pasting the special letters might be fine for just setting up grammar, but when you start making up words and sentences having to cut-and-paste every other letter is a pain! There are three options available to you: Don't use special characters, buy and international keyboard, or you can set up your own keyboard layout. To find out how to make your own keyboard layout so you can type special letters, then I suggest you follow this for windows,this for macs and this for linux. Setting up a custom keyboard layout can also allow you to type in other writings systems like the Cyrillic alphabet or the Hebrew abjad.
Grammar
Word Order
Word order is usually the most basic syntax of a language. Most natural languages have a word order, some being stricter than others. Word Order can be broken down into three main parts: Subject, Object, and Verb (shortened S,V,O respectively), the most common word orders being SOV, SVO, and VSO. The English word order is SVO, and is fairly strict. "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog" have different meanings in English because of their placement in a sentence. Other languages such as Latin use a case system, indicating which part of a sentence is what; so "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog" can mean the same thing. Despite this free structure, a language will still have a preferred word order that it is spoken in.
Esperanto uses this case system, signifying objects by appending "n" to nouns, and provides a good example:
La hundo amas la katon.
- The dog (subject) loves (verb) the cat (object)
Amas la katon la hundo.
- Loves (verb) the cat (object) the dog (subject)
Because of this case system, Esperanto speakers can easily understand the meaning of sentences, no matter what word order is used. If you are intending to make an auxiliary language, this system is nice to follow, because it simplifies the learning process for those who don't speak a major European (SVO) language natively.
Even languages with strict word order can sometimes stray from their usual pattern. Music and poetry are good examples where word order is usually used more liberally than in everyday speech. Some languages change their word order depending on your meaning, like asking a question. English can do this, as you can say "Have you a pencil?" (VSO) and it still be understood.
Word order is important because not only does it provide a flow and order to your language, but it can also dictate other grammatical areas, such as adjectives and adverbs. In English you say "the brown dog", but in other languages you say "the dog brown". This can be (but is not necessarily the sole cause) decided by word order.
Building the Lexicon
Once you have the foundation of your language configured, it's time to begin creating the building blocks for your conlang: the words. Ensure that you create words in a logical order. This is especially important if your language relies on word roots. For example, you should create the word fire before to make fire, and question before to ask. As shown, it is probably best (depending on your language's structure) to create nouns before verbs, and verbs before adjectives and adverbs.
It is strongly recommended that you create your lexicon using a computer so that it can be easily organized and navigated. A popular tool used by the conlangers at UniLang is Lexique Pro. Interlex is a simpler alternative that some prefer, however. Whatever the case, it is important that you keep your lexicon well-organized and clean. Once your language is very large, it can be a daunting task to manage a messy dictionary.
It is also a good idea to keep backups of your lexicon. Setting up a service like Dropbox to synchronize your lexicon with a remote source is a very good idea and can protect you from losing your very precious work. This will also allow you to work on your dictionary from several different computers without having to manually synchronize them.
