Hello! In this article I will be explaining how to create your very own language, whether for fun or for a book (like Tolkien’s languages).
To start, what is a conlang?
“Conlang” is a portmanteau of the words “constructed” and “language”.
This gives you pretty good gauge of what exactly a conlang is. A conlang is (un-ironically) a constructed language.
In this series, I will be going over how to make one, with easy-to-follow steps. And, for extra clarity, I will be making a conlang as we go along!
So, before anything else, I need to warn you: DO NOT make a conlang before you’ve made a culture for it. If you want, I guess you could make the culture as you go (or choose a real-world culture). For simplicity’s sake, the culture I’ll be choosing will be a culture on a desert island, with no outside-world influence.
Second thing I need to be warning you about, don’t name this culture that you have until the conlang is finished. Similarly, don’t name the conlang until it’s finished.
Also, I would like to mention that I learnt a lot of how to conlang by the YouTuber ‘Biblaridon’. In fact, my making of a conlang while we go along is inspired by him.
If my guide doesn’t make sense, check him out!
What are your goals for this language? To start, I want my language to be a naturalistic language, where the language mimics how actual languages in the real world work, or to be similar to one. This is usually achieved by making a language family, or by adding sound changes (which we’ll cover later) to your language.
Another option is to make an auxiliary language, which is where it is obviously man-made and usually has affixes to simplify it. An example would be Esperanto (which I’ll let you research).
So, I’ll see you next time where we start making the conlang with the most essential part of the process: Phonology.
A Few Notes Before we begin
GOALS