How making my Conlang made me want to learn German again.
As an author, when you’re neck deep in the rabbit-hole hobby that is worldbuilding, some may come across the fleeting yet crazy idea to create their own language within the secondary world they’ve created.
There are many famous fictional languages from all sorts of fictional media. Klingon, Dothraaki, Dovah, and the intricate well put-together Elven tongues that Tolkien created long before he ever even wrote them into his most famous books. Quenya, Sindarin and Noldor are the legacy of a skilled, educated scholar who understood linguistics inside and out over a long lifetime.
As someone world-building to create their own world to put stories, it seemed too much of a hassle to develop conlangs (constructed languages by the community) for my world, as there was no immediate need for them and I knew it would drag me away from actually writing the story I wanted to tell.
However, now that I recently came across a good, story related reason to develop a fictional language, I realised very fast that the process of building a conlang is not only extremely fascinating, but also incredibly fun! Here are some of the first steps I’ve taken in creating my language and how it’s opened my eyes to learning more about linguistics and language as a whole.
It began firstly with establishing the phonology of my language. What do I want my language to sound like? This had me explore the intricacies of linguistic terms involving the wide range of sounds we produce most commonly across many languages. This may not make a great deal of sense, but I wanted my language to have an Icelandic/Germanic set of sounds, with some Latin and even Japanese influences with its grammar, syntax and writing system.
As such, I became familiar with the terms associated with sounds made within the human mouth, ranging from Labial at the lips, proceeding back to Dental, Alveolar, all the way back to Glottal at the back of the throat. Then the modification of how much air is passing through each of those points resulting in each sound.
P, for instance, is a Labial Stop, as it involves the usage of the lips and is a direct stop of air passage to produce that sound. S is a Dental Fricative as is Θ in “thought” = “Θought”.
By learning all this, I was able to lay together a chart compiling all the common sounds my language chiefly involves.
Next came the fun stage of creating root words. These are the most crucial, important and ubiquitous meanings and words that do not drive from any other words.
Pronouns such as those towards ourselves, others and designation of genders or groups of people. Common verbs such as to talk, to walk, to eat, to sleep, to hunt. Concepts and nouns that are all around us, water, fire, sky, earth, mountain, river, sea, food, tree, leaf, animal.
A straightforward lexicon of the words you know that will be common place should be prioritised as being root words.
The Swadesh List (and ones derived or similar to it) is an extremely useful list of some of the most commonly found root words across all languages. This is merely how I approached this, but there are many other avenues that you could do if you want to try conlanging yourself.
Syntax and Grammar are where things get tricky, but this opened my third, fourth, fifth and sixth eye to how I view languages, natural real ones and fictional ones.
As a writer, you may understand Active and Passive voice far better when you divulge over the order placement of your Verbs, Subjects and Objects.
Languages have either a fluid or strict order on when these three appear in a sentence. English most commonly does Subject-Verb-Object: (The Boy Picked up the Ball)
However, Object-Verb-Subject (The Ball was picked up by the Boy) is still technically grammatically correct, but it simply sounds off to the ear.
Over 90% of all known languages place the Subject first in a sentence almost always, showcasing its easy to understand nature perhaps. SVO is common but SOV is an even more common pattern of Syntax, and is the pattern I have integrated into my own language.
Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Persian all follow this SOV order as well as many others.
Very few have Verb-first orders and an extremely rare handful place the Object first.
For simplicity and for my own sanity, I stuck with SOV.
What I have developed so far is still a simple Proto-Language which will no doubt develop overtime but for now, I look forward to establishing both a lexicon via an Alphabet or other system, before moving on to what I think will be the most enjoyable part of the process. Developing a writing system.
Some of my written notes about my language can be found on my buymeacoffee page below.
All in all, this has encouraged me to pick up learning German again.
Have you ever dabbled in conlangs? Are you a beginning or veteran conlanger yourself?
Thank you for reading and have a beautiful day!
- Daniel
My Website: danielcromarauthor.squarespace.com
Buy Me A Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/danielcromarauthor
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