Conlanging!

[Direlda† 0]

Out of curiosity, how many of you here have done any conlanging before? In other words, how many of you have made up a language, be it fully developed or only partially, for whatever reason?

I have several languages I am working on, though only two are far enough along to be worth mentioning. One is Taipii, a language for an indie MMORPG by Right Brain Games, since I have assisted in its development (but only assisted, as Jeff came up with it and Tettix and others have also made significant contributions). The other is one of several languages for my fantasy world.

I'm still working on the transliteration of that language into English because it doesn't have all of the same phonology and clicks and ejectives pose interesting puzzles for mapping into Latinate script. But I may share some of it with you at some point.

 

This thread should be more for talking about conlanging, sharing tips, and briefly mentioning any conlangs you have worked on. If you want to go in depth on one of your conlangs, then feel free to create a new thread for it in the Writing and Books section of the Art Cave.

[foxbunny† 1]

I've played with it a bit. Usually it was a way to dig into a different way of thinking for alien characters.

Language is cultural and physical, so I would come up with concepts that had to do with what was important to the characters' cultures and fit with their physical abilities. Big rodent teeth or a long muzzle would affect how sounds are pronounced.

[Hybrilynx† 0]

I use to make, I guess, an alien alphabet. Simply because I love Metroid, and I wanted to use cool looking characters instead of English in a Metroid game. I use to make metroid game ideas. 

[Cody Lucario† 0]

I've developed three languages for a friend of mine's story series called "Furred Traditions"; Foxen, Huskanee, and Wolven. In his story, all anthro and feral animals are able to communicate with each other by speaking their respective languages, which every member of the species knows instinctively. As you may have guessed, Foxen is the language of foxes, Huskanee of huskies, and Wolven of wolves. 

 

Developing languages for his story is a lot of fun! His stories are full of different languages, including the three above, English, and Dakota.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Cody Lucario

[James SilverWolf† 1]

I don't know if it counts, but as a minor hobby I make ciphers, "replacement" ciphers most specifically, although some have certain rules, none of them are the mathmatical number-based nightmare stuff the CIA etc. or computer encryption uses, thus not usable by computers... I'm talking more like things along the lines of "theban", "ogham" or the script used for the voynich manuscript , y'know the fun stuff. (I am far from cooking up something as extensive as say, "quenya", however.)

[Ralvz† 0]

Most certainly indeed. 

 

I have been working on several for the past few months. 

Samanese, my most developed. Daalsking, my second most developed. As well as Kuraphi, Tasoullen, Apastinian, and Cheleshian.

 

For each language I dallied in several other real life languages to get a feel of how they worked. 

Samanese for example was highly inspired by Asian languages. And retains a mixture of grammatical rules from Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. As well as a few made up rules. 

 

To keep things simple, the languages are spoken by "anthrozoa" a term for the anthropomorphic races in my story. 

Samanese - Largest spoken language, traditionally from Shang Lao on Geobia. A world of anthropomorphic cats.

Daalsking - Second largest spoken language. The origins remain uncertain, but it's spoken by the wolf anthrozoa.

Kuraphi - A language from the Desert of Iskirad on Geobia II, another feline anthrozoadiac language. (Considered indigenous)

Tasoullen - This actually evolved on earth but shares no relation to human languages. Spoken by the fox anthrozoa, it's said to sound like Finnish.

Apastinian - Entirely different story, but is for a lion race called the Leopani. Based off of Greek in sound. But no where near related in grammar.

Cheleshian - Slavic based. Spoken by boring ol' humans.

 

If anyone is interested in any, or would like to share their language with me. Just message, and I'll get back when I can!

 

Solu Yohona, Rỳttja! (Ree-tch-Ya!), Яҗeкара (Ya-je-kara), Asinkää masoullen, Thesisfagi, and Spasi.

 

Guess I could mention those all mean, "Thank you"

Edited December 24, 2014 by Ralvz

[SuperKuddlor† 0]

I used to make those as a kid. I am excellent in grammar both Croatian and English. I might make a few languages for my game by simply replacing all expressions with random words and then re-parsing them into expressions made out of other expressions and into words. Grammar will be my own. I guess I'll need help with the words.

 

If there's somewhere that I need to collaborate in return, I will. I'm mostly interested in languages with inversion of words where I'm not constrained to SVO or any other word order. I like as less conflicts as possible and phonetic languages. Nominative shouldn't be modified, only concatenated on, in other cases. Otherwise it will be too hard for me.

 

My languages should be like Croatian, English and a generic Slavic language, but in a parallel universe/galaxy like my planet Zemlia. That means they should be similar to them, but with different expressions, alphabets, scripts and a slight grammar change.

[James SilverWolf† 1]

I would also like to toss this in here: http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/fictional.htm it might be useful for some folks with creative sparks.  Personally I like what was done with Tolkien's stuff (Note that his most ancient "writing system" for the elves, Sarati is basically like a mix of arabic and sanskrit, turned on-end, even the name might be a bit of an in-joke, given it sounds like a hindi type of name, and as we know, sanskrit is the language hindi is typically written in.), but also what was done with D'ni, (I am someone who played and liked the myst games up until Myst 4)mainly because it is a very "pretty" script to me, less so the actual language.

[Direlda† 0]

The Omniglot website in general is just overall useful for conglanging because you are able to see all the writing systems in use by languages. It is a rather great place to go for inspiration. \^o^/

[Geoffrey von Westtal† 0]

I will so be in this thread later. This is win.

[Geoffrey von Westtal† 0]

I have conlanged a few times. I have a thing for kobolds, so I'm trying and make a language that sounds almost like gibberish (but isn't) for them.

 

Right now my conglanging efforts are going into the languages for my secondary worlds. Right now I'm building a language tree so I can track language how languages developed in the world, which will explain how the current languages are built.

[SuperKuddlor† 0]

Bump! Does someone do conlanging? I'd like some help with that.