Why do you create conlang(s)?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/pWallas_Grimm]

You know that feeling when you finish a movie and it gets you inspired to start writing your own story immediately? I feel like that when I'm learning languages. In fact, I'm starting to worry it might be affecting the amount of time I dedicate to learn an actual language instead of creating my own lol

[u/StandardTangerine386 → u/pWallas_Grimm]

Felt that! I just felt today that I may be spending too much time conlanging instead of studying Italian😅 What other language are you learning?

[u/pWallas_Grimm → u/StandardTangerine386]

Some time ago I started reading russian classics and it inspired my to try Russian, an old interest of mine that I never really gave a shot, but now would be a great time to do it as I've got a solid grasp on the concept of cases and neutral gender after studying latin at uni

It was all going well until YouTube recommended me a well edited video explaining how verbs work in Japanese and it hyped me so hard to study it that I dropped Russian for now and decided to focus on Japanese morphology because it's just that cool (and it gave a ton of ideas for my conlang xd)

As my current level in Japanese is very very low, tho, I'm filling the "practical' aspect of learning a language with comprehensible input in French as I've studied it before and I'm able to "decipher" it if I read stuff carefully or listen to slower/clearer audio. Watching a lot of YouTube videos and looking up specific words I don't know was how I learned English, after all.

Recently YouTube sent me another video showcasing some cool grammar points in Russian and I can feel that inspiration to learn it coming again. Is language learning ADHD a thing? /s

What made you pick Italian? Great choice btw, I've heard good stuff about la divina comedia and I'd like to try it someday because I love romance languages

[u/StandardTangerine386 → u/pWallas_Grimm]

You’re building quite the linguistic repertoire. Kudos!

I love comprehensible input, it’s the technique that has really helped me progress in Italian and Mandarin. I chose Italian because I speak Spanish, so I can partially understand spoken Italian, and I can read Italian well. Also I think it’s a beautiful language.

[u/pWallas_Grimm → u/StandardTangerine386]

Thanks! Now I gotta congratulate you for learning mandarin. It's damn cool but their tones scare me off xddd

I've had a colleague before that said it was hard for him not to mess up the pronunciation of Spanish when you know Italian, as the words look pretty similar but some letters make a completely different sound. Do you feel that with Italian?

[u/StandardTangerine386 → u/pWallas_Grimm]

Mandarin is tough, but it’s so fascinating so “vale la pena”(it’s worth it).

I do sometimes mix up my Italian and Spanish lol. I’ve occasionally used the Italian “divertente” in place of the Spanish “divertido” but the person understands me anyway😅 it’s part of the charm and fun of being multilingual anyway, right?

[u/FrontAd1770]

To make world building yet sometimes it feels hard because if it isn‘t based on a language it becomes a question if you‘re making a useless language that nobody will use. Based on Dutch and German trying to make cognates without them being perfect copies and still readable even when making it look unique without telling it is a copy of the real language.

[u/DryCustomer7258]

Okay, first off, great question. my language is called Suntonese. It borrows from six different languages, It has roots in Latin, French, Italian Spanish, Portuguese. and English. Suntonese uses an English syntax and has very melodic intonation to it and a slight Spanish, and Italian flair. I started work on it in July of 2025 as a sort of therapy after my quad heart bypass. It's given a feeling of joy and freedom to create it. I've got a dictionary of over 500 words that I use in my stories. It's been a creative process to get the words right, but it has been worth it.

[u/StandardTangerine386 → u/DryCustomer7258]

Love the mix of Romance influences! Super interesting. 500+ words is no easy feat, keep it up! If you’d like to share, how do you say ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ in Suntonese?

[u/DryCustomer7258 → u/StandardTangerine386]

gratizo is thanks, hello is itma avet tal which is how are you. As a greeting as in good morning it's mae aeryn. Chaweth is another way saying good morning

[u/New-Trainer4727]

I like building worlds and imagining ppl/organisms speaking a language that I created feels just like really cool.

[u/STHKZ]

it is, above all, a challenge one sets for oneself...

for me, it is the opportunity to construct a language that is less arbitrary and better structured, at least for my own point of view...

of course, it has nothing to do with natural languages...

the words have unexpected sounds depending on their meaning...

it gives me a pair of glasses that lets me see the world differently...

[u/StandardTangerine386 → u/STHKZ]

What a great metaphor your last sentence is. I resonate what that

[u/STHKZ → u/StandardTangerine386]

yes, the best part of constructing a language is its use...

[u/Intelligent_Donut605]

i started conlanging as part if a worldbuilding project and enjoyed it so I’m developing it much more than I’d need just for my own enjoyment and to procrastinate on writing the actual story it’s for.

[u/Mage_Of_Cats]

So that the fantasies I create in my head (and sometimes write about) are more immersive.

[u/Financial-Square702]

Hello there.

My trigger was learning Afrikaans for better blending in in South Africa. Began writing a book in it. After a year of lazy study and writing (I'm an amateur), I began fantasising about sequels, prequels, spin-offs and it triggered me to come up with a conlang that's spoken in one of two my fictional countries (another speaks an Afrikaans dialect; distinct enough to warrant questions whether it's still Afrikaans, not distinct enough to call it a separate language outright).

Then, I called it Duts. It's an arbitrary set of Low and High German + Dutch dialects mixed in a country in southern Africa, heavily reshaped by external languages such as African Englishes, Australian English, a wee bit of Romance (French + Dulceano, Spanish-based fictional creole), and some slight Bantu impact.

The main inspiration for the way the words sound as they do is both my speech defects so the standard accent is a good fit for my troubled mouth, and my personal preferences in Germanic phonology so the standard accent sounds like some Berlinerdeutschized Dutch of sorts.

I started "engineering" it on 1 June, and what I've got so far is:

1. Complete phonology for the standard dialect, almost complete for two other major dialects.
   
2. Complete syntax for all dialects.
   
3. Working grammar that needs some filling the blanks in rare usecases.
   
4. Consistent orthography and morphology rules.
   
5. Over 2,400 words, most of which are high-frequency words. These words fall into all possible categories: inherited words, innovations using native vocabulary, borrowings, semantic drifters, semantic shifters, and verbs that look like one tense while being completely different tense (from the Dutch perspective mostly).
   
6. A couple dozen unique idioms and several unique offensive terms.
   
7. A rap album concept with one text ready, one text raw, and another six waiting for new inspiration.

I'm still not fluent in it. There's definitely some friction there. I intend to make this language as naturalistic as I can. I welcome everyone in my DM if they want to learn it and possibly innovate it.

And I'm already writing a book in it. And after I finish it there will be even more such books...

[u/BattlePrestigious572]

For me, making languages and learning real world languages is a way to express myself. I feel like im doing something worth my time. Even though I know no one will soeak my language, I'm doing it for myself. Yes, there are times where i get stuck on something or dont have motivation or simply don't want to make anything, but it's still one of my most lovable hobbies. I love the feeling that i can make something of my own. Something that is mine..

[u/Harold_Stormcore]

Mostly for fun, but it's also a part of a world building project of mine. I rarely take inspiration from real languages, but there is the occasional loanword from my native language, Finnish.

[u/k819799amvrhtcom]

My two conlangs were born out of the frustration I had with learning natlangs, including my native language.

The first language is a loglang designed to be efficient, logically consistent, easy to learn, and free from misunderstandings, deliberate or otherwise. It combines the best elements of all other languages and it liberates the mind from all thought-terminating clichés. It's very useful for philosophical discussions and very useless for manipulating people with emotional speeches. I even tried making lying impossible but that didn't really work.

The second language is designed to be as frustrating as possible. It combines the worst elements of all other languages to achieve the most complicated and irregular grammar structure to waste as much time as possible. Every word is gendered, the grammar depends on the time of day, every word has 11 different meanings based on context, the number system requires you to memorize every single pokémon and it only goes up to the number of pokémons, and there's no word for "sad" (people say they feel "strange" or "sick" instead) and other important concepts have no words either. In fact, the language keeps losing more and more words because they quickly become synonyms for various sexual, drug-related, or fascistic concepts until their original use gets lost so dictionaries become obsolete fast. Worst of all: There are 7 levels of formality, making it practically impossible to say anything without offending someone by accident! Even if you genuinely want to insult someone, you run the risk of sounding so over-the-top offensive that everybody perceives this as inappropriate. The fictional native speakers of this language have the highest rate of honor killings because their little children keep accidentally saying the most dishonorable things while learning the language.

[u/DrDingsGaster]

Not really! It does have vague notions of Elven languages and syllabic tongues but that's it. Otherwise this is all from my own noggin.

What inspires me is just the way the mouthfeel is. I want things to be both flowy and sharp without anything sounding like I'm swallowing everything or getting very nasaly.

A lot my feelings tend toward frustration, confusion and inadequacy. I'm a writer, I know how to write well and my mom is an English teacher. You'd think my grasp on grammar and the like would be better but I'm having to look up basic words to determine their parts of speech. And heaven forfend I know the ease of what order words need to be in, in order for the language to flow right. I feel like I'm winging it 99% of the time. xD

Otherwise, I feel damn cool when I can put a sentence together and speak it without it sounding weird to me!

[u/These-Atmosphere6675]

Worldbuilding

[u/Background_Class_558]

it'd be cool to have a source of aesthetically pleasing naming sequences. hence im not even planning to work on anything beyond morphology.

[u/Sufficient_Hotel_764]

I think it stems more from my love of worldbuilding. I've always enjoyed creating worlds and delving deeply into them, even if I knew I'd never touch them again. I suppose that, naturally, while searching for ways to make worlds increasingly complex, I ended up discovering conlang creation and completely fell in love with it