Any writers out there interested in conlangs?

[zuggarts]

I've played around with constructing languages for a fictional world of mine, but never really developed a system in full before. Anyone else interested in doing so/has already done so? I'd be really interested to see the results!

[375]

Oh hell yeah My favorite part of writing is constructing languages for meh worlds <3 In my epic novel, I turned the names of colors into a language for my "Colorful World of Kanti" country.

[joe_galindez]

There's professional nerdery and then there's Tolkien nerdery.

[AmysGames]

I'm kind of a language nerd sooo yep, I have definitely dabbled in fictional tongues. Twice, in fact!

The first one was created when I was young and has very awkward grammar rules, mostly based on English because yeah. The second one was created some years later, and has more unique grammar, but less of an extensive dictionary than the first since I've spent less time on it. I can write complete sentences in both though—sometimes when I'm feeling extra nerdy, I'll try and rewrite an entire song/story in the fictional language. It's pretty effective for knowing what words might be needed, lol.

They also both have their own alphabets. Here's "hello" in both languages because I'm a nerd

idk if either of them would be effective as actual languages but whatever, it's fun

[Croik]

Ooh yes! I took linguistics classes in college and have always been interested, but I've never fully dived in myself. I've been thinking about getting David Peterson's book as I work on the planning for a new novel. The characters using different languages is a plot point so it would be nice to actually have a properly constructed sentence, haha.

[gateofselidor]

I have multiple partially-developed conlangs for my current comic. I don’t have enough time to fully develop them, but they have basic grammar and enough words to string together the sentences I need in the comic. A couple of scenes with them in:

Lemongrass :: 122-128 | Tapas

Lemongrass :: 183 | Tapas

I had a lot of fun working on them. I wanted to make my settings as realistic as I reasonably could, which involved there being at least one language for each major region on the continent. I also came up with a lot of trivial details relating to the languages that probably won’t come up in the comic itself. I built one of the languages to be a predecessor of another. It’s rarely used outside of ceremonial purposes at the time the comic is set, but there are a handful of remote places where dialects of it have survived.

[emkay]

I love making fictional languages! I plan to have one for all of my fantasy settings, but right now I have a prototype called 'Dakehn' that's based on the English alphabet. It's pretty simple, but you can see the list of rules and conventions here on my website (which is still a WIP sadly).

[KateGrove]

I think I tried, but I don't remember, because it was so long ago. It's very exhausting, that's all I remember.

However, there's this comic here I love and it has its own language developed (don't worry, the majority is still in English and if not, there's always translation ):

Burning Bright | Tapas

[Strontium]

I have mixed feelings about conlangs. From an intellectual standpoint I think they're awesome and super interesting, but I always find them a bit uncessary in stories, especially webcomics where I personally think the goal should be readability. In novels it's more forgiving, but a shoddily done conlang is super annoying. In my own writing I much prefer to develop con slang, like in A Clockwork Orange (which my teachers think I've read, but I haven't) or the YA book Lizard Radio, or even the Red Rising trilogy to an extent. Some of the conslang in Adventure Time is part of my regular way of speaking even, but that's an extreme case because I just love quoting Adventure Time.

Meanwhile, this is an excellent tool available in free and paid versions - a conlang generator called Vulgar. Although I haven't used it (it doesn't work on mobile) I read testimonies and it seems to be very very handy and easy to use, so I'd suggest checking it out to anyone developing a conlang!

[gateofselidor]

It can definitely be done badly. Personally, I always go by the rule 'if the reader needs to understand it, just write it in English'. I never provide translations of conlang in my comics, so I have to think carefully about where to use it (if a reader comments asking for one, I might reply with a translation, but it's not going anywhere on the page itself or in my author comment).

It works well when you're seeing things from the perspective of someone who wouldn't be able to understand the words anyway, to add a sense of confusion or isolation. It also works well for short exclamations where the meaning is obvious from the context.

Vulgar is a really powerful tool. Definitely worth getting if you like creating conlangs. It's good not just for creating from scratch, but also for generating vocab for an existing language by entering all the rules and sounds and seeing what it comes up with.