Blue words are probably the name of a social media company. If words are red, those of us with English as our native language might think they're urgent or the title of a romance novel. ![]() Let’s make some glyphs!Ĭolor is a big part of our communication. I love the idea that vowels are simple marks added to the consonants rather than their own markings. Our writing system is going to be an Abugida. (These are for the really big linguistics fans out there.) Featural glyphs encode phonetic information directly, such as using certain diacritics to determine whether a consonant sound is plosive. Featural: These ones are extra special. But also street signs or the no smoking symbol. Ideographic: Symbols that represent entire concepts or ideas.Real world example: “:)” and “:O”. ![]() Logographic: Separate glyphs for every word or phrase. Real world examples: Japanese and Cherokee. Similar to but slightly different from an abugida. Syllabary: Entire syllables receive their own glyph. Real world examples: Our own romantic alphabet (such as English and Spanish). Alphabet: A separate glyph for each consonant and vowel. Vowels often are shown by diacritics (additional marks to the base letter). Abugida: A separate glyph for each consonant and vowel pairing. Real world examples: Arabic and Hebrew (though there are forms of writing vowels). Vowels are meant to be inferred by the reader. Abjad: Glyphs exist only for their consonants. These writing systems primarily differ on how many sounds are expressed per glyph and what kind of information is encoded by the glyphs. But we need to decide what kind of writing system we want to use. Now that we have our sounds, we are going to need some glyphs to encode that phonetic information. If you are creating a language for a different species, consider what kind of sounds their language would encode. Also fun to consider is that these are just human sounds. But I’d encourage you to dig into sounds that are different from the ones you are used to. Many of the sounds I selected are English sounds or close to English sounds for simplicity. We will determine rules for each set later. Sticking to that theme, I’ll choose ten consonants. Perhaps the number five holds some significance to this culture, and so there are only five vowel sounds that are used. For now I’ll select some vowels for this language we are creating. We don’t have time to get into the differences between plosives, nasals, and approximants, so I’ll leave that to your own research. I can’t make that decision for you, but I will say that I find it easier to select vowels first and then consonants. How the fricative are you supposed to choose between all these amazing sounds for your conlang? ![]() Tolkien and the creators of the TV show Star Trek, these languages are fully fabricated by true language artists.Įlvish, Klingon, and Dothraki are the languages you have likely heard the most about, but there are quite a few constructed languages out there.Īnd today you will join those legendary language artists. What is a Conlang?Ī conlang is a CONstructed LANGuage. So, as long as you fully accept that this will grab hold of your very soul and cause you to rethink the very sounds that come out of your mouth on a daily basis, then we should be good to go.īut you already knew that, didn’t you? You’re here because you’re already hooked. The phonemes, glyphs, and writing systems you learn here will haunt your dreams into the eternities. The bad news is that, if you’re like me, you will never escape the fascinating world of linguistics. The good news is that you just need four things: phonemes, a writing system, grammar rules, and a dictionary. So exciting! A language all your own! Well I have some good news and some bad news. You came here looking to learn how to make your own language, more lovingly known as a conlang.
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