forum Anyone into conlanging?
Started by Shipfish
tune

people_alt 68 followers

Shipfish

Hello! I have not yet bought Premium, so I cannot make languages through Notebook yet, but I wondered if anyone else around was into conlanging in general?

I am only a newbie conlanger myself, without any full languages under my belt but plenty of sketches. I don't know enough about general linguistics to make my languages very interesting, but I'm learning!

If you have any conlangs already (or conscripts! or just ciphers!) share them here, or share your ideas for constructed languages.

@Mace The Cat

Hello! I have not bought the premium version, however, I would suggest starting out with an alphabet. After that, go with making roots that would make sense for your language. This would depend on what your civilization is like. If your creatures aren't familiar with love, there wouldn't be a phrase for "I love you." If marriage isn't a thing in your civilization, there wouldn't be words for "marriage," "divorce," "spouse," "husband," "wife," et cetera. Think about what your civilization is like first. Or, if you can't decide, go through and make root words for your language translated from your native language. Once you figure out what your civilization is like, you can go through and eliminate words, roots, and phrases that wouldn't be used in their language. Personally, I find that I wouldn't need the premium version to make a language, but it's up to you what you want to do. Also, here's a guide that could help you with conlanging: http://rollforfantasy.com/guides/language-creation.php I find this guide is very useful, though there is a lot more that goes into conlanging than what's solely in it. I hope this helps!

@FantaPop

Hey there! New user without the premium version here, it's definitely tempting to get it just for the language section, but I've been working on a couple conlangs for a few years now. My favourite is a Tolkien-inspired script that I can write in almost as fast as English! (The language behind it? A work in progress ^^; ) Like @"Mace The Cat" said though, it's usually your best bet to start with the alphabet and what kind of sounds you want in your conlang. Then, as you work through common words and if you want it to decline in any sense, you definitely need to worldbuild as you go along - maybe your civilisation doesn't have a word for blue, necessarily, but it has a spectrum of words to show different shades of red. Or it doesn't have a word for snow, but there's several to describe the quality and state of the air. Have fun with it!

@Mace The Cat

@"Avery" You're welcome! Of course, the link doesn't cover everything, even in the 5 parts it has, but it does include a lot to consider. ^^ It'd likely be best to do more research, too. The site as a whole has a lot more than just language creating, though! The sister site to RollForFantasy would be fantasynamegenerators.com, if you need names, too. I find these sites are pretty helpful for a lot of things.

Nicholas

Figure out whether or not your language will be inflected or not (like Latin) where the endings will shift to match the use of the word in the sentence.

@rapteor

hiya! i'm pretty into conlangs myself, although i'm new to them and haven't made any complete ones yet. any tips are appreciated!

@[email protected]

If you want tips from a master look into how Tolkien created his languages. My university had a Tolkien literature class that changed much of how I create my languages and world building in general. In the class our midterm and final project were group efforts that we’d done throughout the semester following Tolkien’s creation cycle (creation of language, gods, people, land, history etc). The man created fourteen fully functioning languages for his books. “Fully functional” meaning it has written and spoken forms, syntax, dialects etc. Some were even the base languages that evolved into other languages as time passed, (languages of the Silmarillion vs languages in the Lord of the Rings).

@@SlightlyZazzedPanda

Yes I love love LOVE conlanging, but I can't get the Premium where I can create languages (I don't have enough money), so I just do it on MicrosoftWord or Notes. My current languages are called Hudecian (Hudenscia), Tolirian (Helemośi), and Qunbarra (LihhQhoBaVNequN').

Deleted user

I have a conlang in the vocab/grammar-strengthening phase. I was hoping someone could tell me how to use special accented characters in Notebook. They looked good when I saved them, but they've all turned into HTML codes.