#conlang resources

[starcaptainslangs]

Day 35 - MyLang, Sound Changes part ??

Today's prompt is about finalizing and ordering the sound changes. I think over the weekend I was able to get that pinned down pretty well.

@quothalinguist did include a cool resource recommendation: Lexurgy!!! I have used the Zompist sound change applier in the past, but Lexurgy seems a bit clearer to me about how to write and understand the rules.

It's definitely closer to coding than I am used to, but I wanna learn something new and add this tool to my tool kit - a major goal of this year.

Also, it's been 35 days!!!! Whaaaat?!?

[tepat-side]

Payne, Thomas E. “Toward a Balanced Grammatical Description”

Nice short read about writing a grammar. Discusses the various, sometimes conflicting considerations of writing a grammar of a language, such as technical accuracy vs. understandability, etc. Ends with an example table of contents for a linguistic grammar, including both a grammar organized by structure, and a grammar organized by function.

Another link if the first one dies:

Here's just the example table of contents:

[mandoxember]

Conlanger’s Thesaurus

by William S. Annis

A Conlanger’s Thesaurus is a basic wordlist which has been annotated with notes on common paths of grammaticalization, cross-linguistic polysemy and other information mostly from the work of lexical and semantic typologists. The collection itself isn’t innovative in any way, but rather collects this information in a convenient format. Its intended use is to act as a guard against relexing your native tongue in your conlang.

[amaiguri]

I also recommend Wrdz! It's very similar to Awkwords (rest in peace)

Desperate due to Awkwords being abandonware so I delved into some alternatives.

Scriboly Fake Language Generator Closer to a cryptolang than an actual conlang-generator. Through some testing determined that the site uses some internalized rules to decide how to translate words into encoded versions of themselves. The number of syllables (which are AWFULLY miscalled "phonemes" here) alters the results of the translation, and the translation is stable regardless of what the text is or tab session. Neat, keeping it for sure.

LanguaGen Might be the perfect fit actually. Though sadly, it is still in development, and aims to cover all the functionality of Awkwords (as said in the About), which is superb. Saving.

sca2 A Zompist sound change applier. Very fancy, will use for cryptolanging most probably.

[indictivity-mu]

some silly little tp resources

feel free to help me add more! replys (or rbs) w/ more info will be added to the list!

Lessons

lipu sona pona

twelve days of toki pona / toki pona lessons

lipu lili pona

toki pona cheat sheet

o pilin e toki pona

lipu sona mi pi toki pona

jan Kekan San

Main Writing Systems

Sitelen pona (1, 2,)

Sitelen Sitelen (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Dictionaries

lipu Linku

Wiktionary

The Other Website

lipu sona pona

Other

Wikipedia page

lipu Wikipesija

toki kala

nasin tempo pona

Translators

Toki Pona Interpreter

English / Toki Pona Translator

Other Resource Lists

Ankiweb

lipu sona pona

lipu sona mi pi toki pona

mun la

[slayingfiction]

Creating Your Fictional Language AKA Conlang

Hi Everyone!

As I am working currently on a conlang for my WIP, I thought I might post about the steps for anyone else thinking of going above and beyond in their world building to create an entirely new language.

First: if you don’t want to create your own language but need one for your WIP, there are many online generators that will do it for you. My favourite is vulgarlang.com and it comes with a free demo version.

Before we begin:

IPA: learn all about the International Phonetic Alphabet. This is when you will be deciding which sounds will be present in your language.

Study existing languages to get an idea of all the ways you can design your alphabet and language. This will give you an idea for grammar, punctuation, sentence structure etc.

Getting Started:

Name your language.

Make your alphabet. This can mean creating your own drawings for sound, or using an alphabet that already exists. You can make an alphabet, each symbol representing a particular sound (up to about 50 usually) , a syllabary which represents a syllable (up to about 100) or pictographs (hundreds needed).

Create words by putting your sounds together. Try combining words to make new but similar words. For example, any is an indeterminate word, and where is for a place, anywhere being a compound word being a place that does not have a pre-determined location.

Order your sentences. English has an order of subject-verb-object (the dog ran after the ball), while in Japanese they use subject-object-verb. Once you choose an order for where your words fit into your sentence, be sure to always follow the pattern as to not be confusing later on.

Make grammar rules. These are the rules that dictate your language, and if you are following the steps, you will have already started. Does your language have plurals? How many ways can your verbs be conjugated? Is your punctuation the same as in English?

Start creating your dictionary, and be sure to always write it down and keep notes, or you won’t remember.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Create new documents using your language, writing journals entries, translating books or try speaking it out loud. Get to know your language.

For languages similar to English, here are the word classes to help you start choosing which words you need translated: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners/articles, interjections and suffixes. Please note, not all languages have these classes, and your language may not require them either.

Things to remember:

Making a symbol equal to English letters and writing English words with your new alphabet is a cypher, not a new language.

The shape of your creature’s mouth will determine the sounds they can make. That being said, if you make a language too hard to pronounce or remember, no one will be able to learn it. You probably want your new language to be useable.

Homophones are words that sound or are written the same, but have different meanings. This happens all the time, just be careful when using similar words, people will confuse them often. This could mean your character learning the language can make people laugh with silly comical mistakes, or insult an entire race.

Your conlang will, and should, have words that don’t translate to English, and that’s ok. A fantasy world will likely have many different words that we are not accustomed to for things like weapons, or food or instruments we don’t have.

Implementing the language into your WIP is an art. You want the language to come naturally to native speakers, but using too many words too quickly will draw attention away from your words, and your reader will start to skip them. Try putting in a dictionary at the start of the book for reference, and slowly growing your readers knowledge without overwhelming them. No one wants to try to remember a new language while also getting to know your characters, environment and plot.

Keep in mind, all languages have slang and idioms. There may even be several dialects of the language, similar to English. Don’t forget, you also need a new name for their currency. These are all things you need to consider when creating your language.

You need about 800 to have conversational basics and over 8000 words to be a native speaker of a language. No matter where you end up, you need to start somewhere.

Hopefully this is helpful to someone! If something I wrote is wrong, please let me know so I can change it :) Any questions, comments or concerns, message me or leave them below!

Happy Writing

[jingerpi]

I should probably not be suprised when jan pi toki pona give me unsolicited toki pona advice but it still gets on my nerves. like, im willing enaging with the linguistics people and a constructed language i should expect people to be persnickety about it but that doesn't make it any less annoying @-@

[conlangcrab]

Vulgarlang for funzies generating conlangs and seeing how a conlang is formulated.

Conlang Critic for reviews on existing conlangs and funny stuff.

K Klein for curiosity diving into linguistics.

JasonTank WordGen for making structurally generated words for your dictionary.

Awkwords is another such generator for dictionary filling.

Agma Schwa - the Conlang Circle Jerk (affectionate).

@thecrazyneographist for conscript/neography inspiration (or borrowing, or commissioning).

Omniglot.com for a lot of language info and also the index of all writing systems on Earth today (excluding neographies not submitted by their authors).

Linguistics portal on Wikipedia.

IPA (you can also use Vulgarlang's ^^^ custom phonetic inventory redactor to hear how things sound).

I’ve reached a new low high in my writing procrastination:

I’ve started developing a conlang

Maybe I should do a linguistics degree because this shit is interesting at fuck. I was in a YouTube rabbit hole of rhoticity and velar fricatives for hours.

[paizau]

this site is amazing, it has so much inforamtion on ancient indo-european languages from early vedic to old irish, on languages of the near east like kurdish, neo-aramaic and georgian, and a whole bunch of mayam languages. highly reccomend checking it out

[ichayalovesyou]

Learning Modern Golic Vulcan (Vulkansu)

Primary Resources

Kir'Shara: Vulcan Language Page

Offers a Wayback Machine link to the Vulcan Language Dictionary and the basics of Vulcan word, tense, and grammatical structure.

*Vulcan Language Dictionary

Not the same as the VLD provided by Kir'Shara's Wayback Machine, rudimentary search engine to quickly find Vulkansu translations to english words and storehouses specific Vulcan cultural references that cannot be translated into an English word.

Vulcan Language Institute

A website in development by @yel-halansu among other contributors to composite a very large index of Vulcan languages (including dialects), words, and Vulcan stories in both English & Vulkansu.

The Vulcan Language PDF

A somewhat outdated but still useful Vulkansu dictionary, primarily helpful for the language lessons in the latter half.

Kor'saya: Vulkansu Script

Lore on the development of the ancient script, there are other fonts like “handwriting” and “Dzhaleyl” but AGV (Ancient Golic Vulcan) is the one which contains the letter-by-letter breakdown.

Vulcan Alphabet Song

A rudimentary children's song "ghost written" by Amanda Grayson on the absolute basics of the Vulcan alphabet from consonants, to vowels, punctuation, self-identification, to digits. (Hopefully I will be able to put it to music soon instead of just lyrics!)

Names

City Names

Monastery Names

Name Prefixes & Suffixes

Translations for the apostrophes and hyphens in Vulcan names.

Vulcan Name Repository

A glossary of Vulcan names and their meanings. Explanations for types of names in Vulcan culture:

Place of Origin ~ Ancestry ~ te-Vikram (the Deep Desert Tribe) ~ Childhood Names ~ Personality ~ Occupation ~ Survival ~ Mysticism

Anecdotes & Ancillary Material

Vulcan Alphabet Song

A rudimentary children's song "ghost written" by Amanda Grayson on the absolute basics of the Vulcan alphabet from consonants, to vowels, punctuation, self-identification, to digits. (Hopefully I will be able to put it to music soon instead of just lyrics!)

Vulcan Flashcards

Beautifully designed flashcards for the Vulkansu alphabet from A through T in the phonetic alphabet.

The Vulcan Accent

What does a Vulcan accent sound like in Federation Standard? Question posited by @sporkandpringles, answer provided by @nuclear-wessels!

The Origin of "Fool"

Anecdote provided by @porthos-stew and lore provided by @yel-halansu

Vulcan Colloquialisms

Though logical only in specific contexts, @makeallthingsyours has accrued a handful of common Vulcan expressions and translated them into Federation Standard

Click Here to Return to the Vulcan Masterpost (Coming Soon!)

[felix-lupin]

[ID: Five edited images of the "save me white girl" meme. 1: "nimi.li ... save me.. nimi.li. save me nimi.li." 2: "lipu Linku... save me.. lipu Linku. save me lipu Linku." 3: "telo misikeke pi toki pona... save me.. telo misikeke pi toki pona. save me telo misikeke pi toki pona." 4: "fairfax pona... save me.. fairfax pona. save me fairfax pona." 5: "nasin toki pona... save me.. nasin toki pona. save me nasin toki pona." End ID.]

nimi.li & lipu Linku - toki pona dictionaries

telo misikeke pi toki pona - a grammar checker

fairfax pona - a site to convert toki pona into sitelen pona

nasin toki pona - a grammar guide for toki pona that i personally found to be helpful

[oddlyzephyrous]

Aw, thanks! I'll have to look into that! Thanks so much for your assistance. :)

Hey! I'm new to conlanging and I'm wondering if there's anywhere you'd recommend looking, on Tumblr or elsewhere, for beginner conlangers to learn and get advice. I love the idea of conlang but it's hard to wrap my head around sometimes.

apologies if i am bothering you. I am just not sure where else to ask.

Warmest regards :)

I have a book out called The Art of Language Invention you can buy or borrow from the library. If your library doesn't have it, they'll probably get it, if you ask them to do so (or some other might have it via interlibrary loan). I'd love for my book to be in more libraries.

The book has two covers, by the way. This is the original:

And this is the extra crispy new edition:

The new edition has a whole new chapter, and also some corrected typos (well, the latest latest one does), and it also has some of @quothalinguist's work. If you can find the new one, that's the better one.

Incidentally, when I was initially deciding on the cover, I had to decide between blue on black and black on blue. I ultimately decided for blue on black, but I really liked the other one. It made me so, so, so happy to know that both covers now get to exist. It's freaking awesome.

There's also plenty of good intro conlang stuff on YouTube. I've got a channel. Biblaridion's is good. And you can poke around.

Plus, anyone who happens to see this can feel free to reblog/reply with comments with other resources.

Hope that helps!

[ualthum]

Friendly reminder that the newly edited version of the pronunciation guide is live on my YouTube page. Hear the runes in their clearest forms and feel the presence of Sul'voth.

[multiversetravelingjournalist]

Things to theme conlangs after

The planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter, etc.).

Holidays (New Years, Easter, Halloween, etc.).

The Seven Sins (Pride, Lust, Gluttony, etc.).

The Four elements (Air, Water, Earth, Fire).

The Four seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter).

[j-esbian]

frustrating how so many craft books have a section about "how to sell what you've made"

like on one hand i get it because the person writing the book has obviously made their craft a full-time job. and they might have some tips and tricks that might be useful, and there are people out there who might be trying to start a small business out of it

but on the other hand it's just exhausting and feels like another voice saying "what's the point of having a hobby if you're not going to monetize it"

[conlangcrab]

A treat for y'all, because I like to dwell there: