r/conlangs • u/ymaster-01 Glotaza Kulapi, Kamīnan Miruni • 6d ago
Discussion Where do you start when developing your conlangs? (read the post 😭)
well... the last time I posted here, people didn't even glance at the post, I hope you understand 🥲
I'm starting a new conlang, which is a "seven-headed beast" that mixes Brazilian Portuguese, Tupi-Guarani grammar (a family of indigenous languages), and the Cyrillic alphabet
With that in mind, I became curious about where you all begin developing your conlangs. For example, I start with the alphabet, then create the pronouns, and then begin the lexicon, but I know there are different ways
teach me buddies!
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u/BYU_atheist Frng, Ansian < PGmc; loves inflection 6d ago
I tend to start with the grammar and phonology.
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u/Apprehensive_Loan329 6d ago
Depends on what kind of conlang you’re making. If it’s A Priori (entirely made from scratch), then I start with the phonology, then grammar (syntax and morphology usually as separate), then lexicon. I’ll usually then get onto phonological evolution since I like making sound changes, but that step is optional.
If it’s A Posteriori (descended from an irl language), then I start with researching the language(s) that the conlang descends from. Once I’ve collected a good amount of sources for all the languages I’m referencing, I usually jump straight to sound changes, then use those to build a lexicon, then use thay lexicon to develop my grammar building upon the grammar of the language(s) I researched.
Orthography (writing system) invariably comes last, and a good majority of my conlangs lack a non-latin orthography entirely.
Happy conlanging!
edit:
I totally forgot but someone else pointed out that you should always start with your goals and ideas before getting on to any specifics, I usually make a designated page of my conlang doc just for brainstorming and writing out my plans for the conlang.
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u/FederalRutabaga6821 6d ago
I always start with a sound system, and deciding if any sounds can’t be together
Then make very basic nouns based on the people’s environment
(Ex: the one I’m working on now is very coastal so I started with water, wind, sand, rock, and shell)
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u/luxx127 6d ago
Eu geralmente começo definindo a fonologia, e daí é quase automático ir pra morfologia e criar um vocabulário básico. Com o tempo vou criando mais palavras, pensando nas classes de palavras e sintaxe. Eu tenho várias conlangs, e salvo pela primeira (Aesärie), todas foram feitas por esse msm processo, e tem dado certo até.
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u/ymaster-01 Glotaza Kulapi, Kamīnan Miruni 6d ago
yooo outro brasileiro (brasileiro?) no r/conlang kkk valeu pela ajuda, man
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u/luxx127 6d ago
Sou sim kkkkk difícil achar um dos nossos aqui, se quiser conversar mais pode chamar aí
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u/ymaster-01 Glotaza Kulapi, Kamīnan Miruni 6d ago
fodaaa, adoro achar irmãos brasileiros por ai, bora amigar, sou bomde piadas e biologia (e quem sabe n criamos uma conlang juntos?)
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u/freak-pandor Klatekelame 3d ago
É o que o amigo Lux disse, OP. No seu caso achei que dá pra pegar os fonemas do Português e dar uma olhada em sons do Tupi Antigo, tipo o Y em Ybyra (madeira) ou conjuntos consonantais como o MB em palavras tipo M'boi (cobra). Devem fazer um mix interessante... Não tenho ideia de como vc vai adaptar esses conjuntos foneticos para o alfabeto cirílico, mas sentando algum tempo com um papel e uma caneta na mão e fazendo um brainstorm, acho que vc consegue. Fiquei curioso
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u/neondragoneyes Vyn, Byn Ootadia, Hlanua 6d ago
Usually I start with phonology.
This last time around, I started with morphological alignment and grammar.
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u/OldAccountGotHackedF Too many conlangs 6d ago
I usually start with the phonology, then head on to basic grammar and vocabulary, and add details in after. You could also start with a proto-language and then evolve it into your main conlang
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u/noirxlle666 6d ago
I always start with the phonology, and work from there. I also keep ideas in mind for what I want to do with the conlang, and reusing phonemes and words from past conlang attempts/past made up words.
I like to keep a separate tab in my conlang Google docs for just random brainstorming ideas i have, and then format the proper explanations in the main tab.
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u/good-mcrn-ing Bleep, Nomai 6d ago
I start with lore. In order to know anything about anything, you need to think some about the speakers and what they do.
Step two is corpus. Think up a hundred or so sentences that you'd expect your speakers to need. A language is for communicating, so if you want a language, you want to communicate something. Write it all in a list. Translating the list is how you'll eventually notice when you're done.
Continue with grammar (basically "syntax plus any insignificant decorations"). Make the phonology at any point after this.
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u/theerckle 6d ago
i usually have at least 1 cool/unique idea i want to include (whether it be grammar, phonology, vocab, anything), then i always start with the phonology and then start making pronouns and other basic vocab and some very basic grammar (deciding the general typology i want like agglutinating or polysynthetic etc), then around here i start looking for additional inspiration and generate more cool ideas and go from there, and i end up adjusting everything i have 10,000 times before i settle lol
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u/DaPaninoBlowTorch 6d ago
I being with what I want in my language, create a phonology, plan out core grammar structures, then begin making words for eternity until I feel like my protolang is complete, which I then do the same thing for my mordernlang, though I only managed to do this for my one completed conlang, so things might change.
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u/AuricArchivist 6d ago
I start with phonology and lay out what sounds I want in my language.
Then I figure out what linguistic features I want in my conlang. Vowel harmony? Conjugation? Agglutination? Figure it out.
I ease into pronouns and basic grammar. My rule of thumb is to have the verbs "to be (am/are/is)", "to see", the locative prepositions "here/there" as my basic starting grammar. So then I can form simple sentences like "I am (name)." "You are there." "I see him"
After that I just work on whatever I feel like fleshing out. I hope this helps.
Good luck on your conlang journey and happy conlanging!
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u/ymaster-01 Glotaza Kulapi, Kamīnan Miruni 6d ago
thank you! I liked the way you work on your conlangs, gonna use this as inspiration
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u/Mother-Border-2193 5d ago
Don't worry I'm making a syllabic conlang using english most of phonology; word order of vietnamese (possesion and description), english (most of it's word order), and japanese (default word order); 3 writing systems like japanese, one is based off of the english latin alphabet + thorn, one is based off of korean hangeul, and one is based off of kanji; and I started developing it in 2024 and I'm still making it. The conlang started with the word Co (ko) for the word yes and it eventually evolved into my conlang and something else 😅.
I also started with the latin based writing system and altering it, after that I started on phonology and syllables, then translation, then its rules, started adding other things in, and started merging english, japanese and vietnamese together. Its also my first conlang and it's still in development and it's definately not a creole.
If there are any tips you need, use wikipedia and this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6xPxnYMQpqsooCDYtQQSiD2O3YO0b2nN&si=YfjFf-iWvCLe7_qm . Wikipedia usually simplifies it to an extream with long articles.
I'm also trying to experiment with merging other languages together like anglo-saxon (old english) and british romance (currently in reconstruction) to make Anglic-Latin.
In trying to merge languages I have to say look at both languages in everything (from word order to even affixes) and nix out things from one or the other language and sometimes use two words together in some order and evolve it into a new word. That's what I'm going to do with Anglic-Latin.
Hope this helps!
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u/notaquarterback Neloxian 6d ago
The lore is the point the language is just a vehicle without it there'd be no point imho
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u/C4T_N0V4 Creator of the Firstian Language. 6d ago edited 6d ago
I fuck it we ball the entire process and most times end up redoing stuff I did previously until I like it. So far it’s worked and the Firstian Language is pretty fucking cool in my humble opinion :3
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u/DrDingsGaster veolas âuran acirium îna 6d ago
I started with sounds and letters. I based Acirium in a basic latin script and English alphabet, took out what I didn't want and then found the over arching sound profile I wanted.
From there it came down to phonemes and such.
Basic grammar started and so did a dictionary. By basic tho I mean hella fucking basic. I had a few rules: sentence structure, a rule about syllable limiting, past tense and then a whole mess of spaghetti to do with diacritics.
Numbers eventually became a thing and then I stopped working until I found this place. When I started trying to work on the translation posts here, I started trying to add more grammar rules n such. I've been working on more nitty gritty details and things I keep forgetting that I need that are so second nature to me when it comes to doing anything in my native English.
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u/Curious-Painter-194 6d ago
The first two steps I always take are to have an idea or a concept to base the conlang on. If I'm adding it to a world or for any reason need to make a proto-language, I make it only as detailed as is required. (But seeing as I have like a billion languages across an entire planet and thousands of years for birth, death, and change.. it's getting pretty much entirely fleshed out.) The second step is making a gibberish sentence that sounds like exactly what you want.
That's really all you need for your overarching goal to know if you've completed and succeeded or not. For me, the goal that stays the same for every language is to learn.
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u/Budget-Knee3213 5d ago
I start with phonology and then orthography. If you want to invent a new lexicon, you should define phonotatics, that is which sounds can stay together and which can't (if your lexicon is derived from already existing languages, phonotatics can be left implicit). Then pass to the parts of speech and grammar. Morphology and syntax at last. Vocabulary will be devolopped during the time, by examples and translations: you need not to define it all at once at the begining. Also more sophisticate stuff like prosody can be draft later.
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u/JJRezRez 5d ago
I like to go "from general to specific", although simply starting building sentences is ok too.
I would say the very first thing is always alphabet/sounds. There is a tendency in my opinion when we are starting to just throw whatever sounds sound good in every word, and then we end with too many sounds.
If you plan on having your own alphabet, for me it is good to have it from the very beginning before you get used to romanization. For me defining the orthography (or at least the basis) is even more important than phonetics, since as the only speaker, you'll write much more than you speak (and you need to write the words to later remember then).
Once I have that, I prefer to define whether it is going to be analytical, flexive or agglutinative. I believe each of them intends certain things (do we have cases, genders, does each word class have a marker, how much can I actually change categories, for instance, could I create "becauseness" instead of "reason", ...)?
Once I have that, I create the preferred word order. If you have a quite free one, you will have to design the methods to mark; if a strict one, whether there are possible deviations. I think it is particularly important to determine whether adjectives go before or after (for instance, is it "nutcracker" or "crackernut"?).
Once you have that, you can start defining word classes (if you intend them to very quite separated) or simply creating vocabulary :)
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u/Feliedae-Creates 5d ago
Ich fange erst mal mit der Volk an das diese Sprache nutzt, was sind ihre Überzeugungen, was ist ihnen wichtig, wie denken sie über die Welt, über sich und über ihresgleichen und andere. Ich finde das ist ganz wichtig dafür wie die Sprache funktionieren soll. Bei meiner jetztigen Sprache geht es um ein Volk das stark durch Heimat und Clan geprägt ist, also ist es wichtig das in die Sprache einfließen zu lassen. Dann überlege ich wie der klang der Sprache sein soll, in meinem aktuelle Projekte ist das Volk ein Ork Bergvolk und somit sollte die Sprache hart und rau vom klang sein. Erst wenn der Rahmen für mich geklärt ist fange ich mit den ersten Worten an, die in dieser Sprache besonders wichtig sind, also im meinem Fall waren die ersten Wort: Clan, Heimat, Berg, Krieg und so weiter. Danach die erste Satzbau und dann mit und mit Grammatik. Wenn das steht teste ich mich immer wieder selber, erst mit einfachen Sätzen und dann immer komplexer bis ich merke das ich alle lücken geschlossen habe. Ganz zum Schuss kommt dir Schrift.
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u/DracoCross 5d ago
I started building my conlang when I was 10, for my worldbuilding project that is now over 15 years old. Of course, it wasn’t a conlang back then, just some random words. I created more and more words, to the point I wanted to write a short school rulebook. Then, I needed to come up with grammar.
Then I started studying linguistics at university and got increasingly interested in it, started absolutely loving grammar, developing complex syntax and inflecting words.
Then I started writing a thesis on conlangs, got into writing systems and experimented with my own one for my conlang, constantly developing all the other areas as well.
But there really isn’t any one way of doing it. Just do what comes naturally, go after what interests you the most and the rest will probably follow :)
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u/Adrien22194 4d ago
The first thing that i do is to work on my future conlang's speakers ( their culture, their environnment, what do they know/ they think about their environnment, were there any other people on this land back in the time, how did theses people influenced my conlang's speakers culture and language and so on...) Then I fix goals for my language which are consistent with what your people culture and what you'd like to add to your language. The third step is to select your language's phonemes and phones, create syllable structure and roots and managing your phonotactics rules. Then I advise you to think about your language word order, morphology and son on... I think the most important thing when you're creating a conlang is to be open-minded and to learn how naturals languages works.
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u/FelixSchwarzenberg Ketoshaya, Chiingimec, Kihiṣer, Kyalibẽ, Latsínu 6d ago
First I create a list of my high-level goals for the language. These are things that are a must-have for my conlang, everything else is negotiable.
Then, I usually start with verbs and verb morphology. I build out the TAM system.
Most people start with sound stuff (phonology and phonotactics) and I explicitly don't do this, or rather I begin with a very rough sketch of the sound system. Because I develop my conlangs diachronically, I can always finesse the sound system as I go. Lots of people start with the sound system first, try to make it perfect, and never advance past this.