I’m in the process of making my own language, and am wondering if I’m alone on the board (I could also use some ideas).
Have you developed your own language? If so, what did you do? What existing languages did you base yours on? Did you modify any alphabets, or make ones from scratch? How would you describe your language?
I’m also wondering how to make my own fonts, so that I can type my language into a computer. Are there any good, free-ware programs for this purpose?
Have you seen Mark Rosenfelder’s Language Construction Kit? It inspired me to create my own language, which I’ll get around to when I have a few spare weeks lying around.
Seriously, though, it’s a cool resource.
I dabbled with making a language in the tradition of heiroglyphics. It was a very rewarding process, trying to think of symbols whose different juxtapostitions could create deep semantic meaning.
I got to the point where I could write some pretty complex thoughts with it, but for some reason I gave it up. Dunno why.
However, it wasn’t really based on anything. I pretty much made it up from scratch. Every once and a while when I read through some of my old stuff I happen upon something I wrote in it. I can still read it, but I’ll be damned if I remember how to write it. Ha!
Hah. I don’t need no steeeenkin’ language. Even if i speak a language the person I’m talking to understands, chances are, he/she won’t understand me. It’s an Aquarian thing.
I invented a secret alphabet one boring day during fifth grade, and I still use it for little stuff I don’t want anyone else to read. Its defining features are an absence of curvy lines and its complete, utter easy-to-figure-out-ness. (The letter K is an X with a box around it! Who’da thunk it…)
I started one when I was about 13. It was based on certain modifications to English words (not unlike pig latin, but with different “change” rules for nouns and verbs instead of just putting the first consonant sound with -ay after the word). We (I started it with a friend) then further enhanced it with some other intuitive substitutions for words, including foreign words we knew.
It had some interesting logic involved, but most of the syntax and grammar were just like English. And we never got really good at it.
As a kid developed my own “Morse” code, because I had no idea how the real one worked. As I recall, mine had three kinds of tones, not two, because of how I rapped a tin can.
I guess that’s base 3 or ternary? Or does absence of sound form the zero and make it quaternary?
I’ve made attempts at one a few times (Pat`Aolf, it’s called) - I’ve got the grammar pretty figured out (it’s quite simple, but rather elegant), and the alphabet (30 letters, gives all of the sounds I gave the language without letters doing double duty, or 2 letters being used for the same sound), but the vocabulary, save for a handful of words suf-/pre-fixes, is escaping me, for the most part.
Yep, I’m a conlanger - a constructor of languages, Secifically I create artlangs, or languages for artistic purposes, as opposed to auxiliary languages (auxlangs) such as Esperanto. (I speak Esperanto, of course, but I haven’t tried to follow in Dr. Zamenhof’s footsteps.)
I’ve composed a language called Lyanjen (http://www.crosswinds.net/~shrislyaria) and the conculture to go with it. You can go read the portion of the grammar that’s already up.
Enjoy!
Ever since I can remember I was making up new scripts and languages. I never get far on any of them. Usually I will get a few words and the basic grammer done and then move on to something else. But I sure come up with some interesting looking doodles for anyone who dared to look in my school notebook. The current language I’m messing with is something like chinese (which I take at school) and English (Which is good because it is the only language I can speak), although it doesnt take anything directly from them. In appearence it looks kind of like Arabic mixed with tengwar. I lead a very secret nerdy life style. I really love Rosenfelder’s page. It provides hours of fun as well as really good, easy to understand information for anyone who likes languages. I lead a very secret nerdy life style.
I didn’t really invent a new language, but a very good written language I came up with is simply to rotate the alphabet 90 degrees counter-clockwise (modifiing the obvious letters) thus allowing easy reading by simply rotating the paper while looking meanless to anyone not familiar with it.
The problem with whole languages is that you have to come up with all that vocabulary - otherwise it’s really just coded English.
FWIW, Cirque de Solie (sp?) invented it’s own language which it uses in it’s songs. It’s quite beatiful.
Alphabets are easy and fun.
Languages are a different matter. It would be challenge enough to memorize analogues to the most commonly used 10,000 words of your English vocabulary; but then on top of that, you’d probably want a sense of etymology, so that there is a bit of a word-derivation structure rather than a box of 10,000 sounds with no pattern to them; and you’d want a grammatical structure unless you’re just going to lift the grammer of English, shake the words out, and replace them with your own set.
None of which is to say that languages can’t be fun, but I’d say it would be the hobby of a lifetime to craft one and learn to think in it and express yourself in it.
I have invented a language called Allurit. Sadly, I lost the notebook containing the lexicon. I can remember fragments. I started when I was 14, with the verb conjugations and the basic vocabulary. Then came aspects of the grammatical structure (including placing of clauses and question phrasing). I admit that the grammer is in some respects similar to French.
The vocabulary does have a sense of etymology. I either start with a word that sounds “right”, and then work out a root and related words, or I start with a root and derive a family of words from it. (example root -rar- “turning, circle”, hurrar=year from hui=big and -rar, mandrar=day from mani=sun and -rar, rasidalë=to spin round from rar- and dalë=to go)
Sometimes synonyms occured spontaneously.
Rarely, Allurit words don’t have a strict synonym in English. I’m often going for a concept, not a English word-Allurit word correspondance. There usually is some kind of correspondance because English has an enormous vocabulary.
I don’t have an alphabet. I would sometimes write Allurit in a form of Tengwar.
In real life, I can spell ‘grammar’
I loztra haitalyeret khrambë ‘grammar’.
When I was a child (about 1-3 years old) my brother and I developed a language that only we could understand, and I used it exclusively (with certain exceptions) until I was four. Interestingly enough, I could read English at the same time and the only time I would speak it (English) would be to figure out something I was reading.
Unfortunately I lost all use of the language by the time I entered school and now I only have a few phrases/words left in my memory. My sister, otoh, can remember quite a bit of her weird brothers’ weird language.
Some examples:
Una gatta bitie toe - I have to go to the bathroom.
Gunk - Milk.
Gook - Water.
That’s pretty much it - if you want more, ask my sis.
I was always surprised when people who were inventing languages would still include stupid stuff like a million different verb endings or irregular verbs or gendered nouns. The language idea I came up with was just this: each verb infinitive is a single word. Say, “blarg” means “to eat”. Then you have a single word for each tense. “mak” is the word for past tense, say. “Gub” is for future tense. Thus, “mak blarg” = “ate” and “gub blarg” = “will eat”. Once you know the word for a tense, you can put any verb in that tense. No irregularities, no jillions of verb endings.
That’s about as far as I ever got.
That’s not unreasonable for an auxlang, Lego, but it makes for a fairly flat and bland language if you’re creating the language for artistic purposes–say, as a language for a fictional race/nation.
I’m currently working on a language for the Alurrans–a race of powerful cat-creatures in my games and (still somewhat nebulous) novel. It’s quite challenging, since I’m trying to make it very catlike in tone, but still pronounceable by humans. There will inevitably be many words without exact English equivalents.
Bön! Me gadothu nacï wïl hatï mü Mömö gelün cevdim. Döle gerü Uralshï-Altayshï gelde wöni corubun vededim: Suwomï, Majar, Türük, Mongol ba. Mömö himete öder Sibir mardhï, Ïrtïsh holanï fölödhi osuldïta.
I suppose the thing for a lot of the people who conlang is the ability to explore interesting grammatical patterns. Like I say, you’re not trying to create a useful or easy language, necessarily, but an interesting one.
For example, in Lyanjen, I set out to do a mostly inflectional language, so I have several fun features like four different verb aspects (simple, progressive, perfect, and future) for each of the tenses. This gives:
past simple (I ran)
past imperfect (I used to run)
past perfect (I had run)
past future (I was about to run)
present simple (I am running)
present imperfect (I [sometimes] run)
present perfect (I have run)
present future (I am about to run)
future simple (I will run)
future imperfect (I will [sometimes] run)
future perfect (I will have run)
future future (I will be about to run)
Those are just the indicative ones! They’re not to mention conditional, optative (“may he run”), and imperative moods, and lots of other fun stuff. I also have two different first-person-plural pronouns (“you and I” and “I and others”), a T-V distinction (like “tu” and “vous” in French or “tú” and “usted” in Spanish), valency modifiers for verbs (never mind), and (the crowning achievement) a six-way declensional system, including intransitive, ergative, and accusative direct cases (such a tripartite system is only used by two or three languages in the world, such as Dyirbal, an Australian Aboriginal one.)
Ha haaaa! It’s an artlang! I can do whatever I want!
Of course, another conlang I’m sketching out a little bit, Oolanee, is much more isolating. I use an isolating verb system like you describe (with individual verbs marking perfect, future, conditional, and subjunctive cases), and I’ve managed to restrict myself to two declensions (direct and oblique, like Hindi).
So it’s, uh, fun.
Anyway, here’s a good listserv for artlangers: http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/conlang.html
Anyway.