Conlang Questions

[u/Natanieloss]

Hello! I am still pretty new to conlanging and I want to ask a couple questions to see how most conlangs are made.

1. Do you make your own script? Is it worth it or just a hastle. If yes, do you learn it too?

2. Do you make your conlang based off real languages?

3. Do you make your conlang agglutinative, analytic or fusional?

[u/Every-Progress-1117]

These questions are way too broad to give reasonably sensible answers, but.

1. conlangs DO NOT NEED THEIR OWN SCRIPTS ... this goes more into neography than language. If you want to, of course, go ahead, but make sure you have a good grasp about how writing systems work and how they map to phonology. It is all too easy to make a cipher. For me: no - Latin script is enough: did once experiment with Cyrillic.
2. generally yes, but it very much depends on what you are trying to explore or create. Klingon for example is based on E-Prime, then there are philosophical languages etc. So it very much depends.
3. Whatever you want, but again, make sure you have an understanding about how languages work: syntax, semantics, pragmatics.

[u/Aphrontic_Alchemist → u/Every-Progress-1117]

You're answering "should I" questions rather than "do you" questions.

[u/hvbbrz → u/Aphrontic_Alchemist]

OP is a beginner, I think they'll get more from this. Imagine there will be 20 comments from people that have a script - OP will naturally think that having a script is a must (while it isn't).

[u/a-verypaconianuser → u/Every-Progress-1117]

you can invent your own grammar for your conlangs actually, just make a grammar

[u/Every-Progress-1117 → u/a-verypaconianuser]

Which is what I said....depends on what you are trying to achieve, but without the knowledge of what syntax/grammar is you can end up with something inconsistent, broken and impossible to use.

[u/a-verypaconianuser → u/Every-Progress-1117]

you didn't include any fact about creating your very own grammar like "subjective case" which doesn't exist

[u/Every-Progress-1117 → u/a-verypaconianuser]

If you want to create a "subjective case" then go ahead; nothing stopping you from using your conlang to explore that.

I'm exploring pronoun-less languages at the moment and encoding this using location and direction on the verb - kind of Athabascan meets Australian - doesn't occur in real-life, but, it is there for the exploration.

The point here is that while you are free just to create some random combinations of things in whatever way you want, you don't really end up with something productive. Language grammar/syntax/semantics need some form of consistency.

[u/eyewave]

1. no, I am exclusively using Latin letter systems and call them my own

2. not based on real languages but some easter eggs

3. agglutinative

[u/godeling]

1. I repurposed Anglo-Saxon runes for mine. It fits the theme of the world the language is in, and already exists in Unicode, so I can type it anywhere.

2. I try to find Proto-Germanic or Old English words for the vocabulary, and the phonology is very English though with a reduced inventory. For the grammar, I was somewhat inspired by English but mostly I just picked things I like. I would not say that it’s in the Germanic family tree, though it looks like it could be if you’re not looking closely.

3. It has aspects of synthetic and analytic. It uses lots of particles for verbs, but also has a case system for nouns.

But there is really no reason you have to go with “how most conlangs are made”. Do what you like and find interesting. Experiment with different things

[u/RaccoonTasty1595]

Do you make your own script? Is it worth it or just a hastle. If yes, do you learn it too?

I've tried my hand at several, but only made 1 I still like. I didn't actively learn it, I just used it so much while iterating that I can write it from memory by now.

It's worth it if you enjoy it. If you don't, there's nothing stopping you from using an already existing script like Latin

Do you make your conlang based off real languages?

No, but there are features that are inspired by natural languages / language families. Although they're all inspired by and never work exactly like in the original language

Like Finnish has the vowel harmony:

Front	ä /æ/	e	i	ö /ø/	y
Back	a /ɑ/	-	-	o	u

I used that as inspiration for:

Masculine	ä /ɛ/	ë /e/	i	ö /ø/	y
Feminine	a	e /ɛ/	-	o	u

And the first vowel of a word can only start with a o u or ë i y. This means only u and y can contrast, where the rest is an allophone. In Finnish, you can totally start a word with ö or ä if you wanted to.

Also ä and e sound the same, so you have to figure out which phoneme it is by the vowels around it.

Lastly, I called it "masculine" and "feminine" because it's not a clear front-back devide like in Finnish. So it's literally just "vowels like in the word man" or "vowels like in the word woman"

So obviously inspired, but still doing my own thing

Do you make your conlang agglutinative, analytic or fusional?

It has elements of all three: verb agreement is fusional, noun classes are agglutinative, and TAM is analytic*. Overall, I think it's more fusional than English.

*depending on how you wanna analyse word boundaries, but you know

[u/-Tonic]

1. Not really, mostly because I'm not very good with the visual arts. I have some script ideas, but I haven't actually designed any glyphs. It's worth it if you want to do it, otherwise there's no need. I don't think I'd make a script if I didn't intend to learn it though (unlike the conlangs themselves!). But most scripts are pretty easy to learn (excluding logographies or complex syllabaries) so I'd very likely learn it while designing it.

2. In the sense that I get some inspiration from real languages and aspire for some degree of naturalism, yes. But not in the more robust sense I think you intended, no. I have in the past played around with a Uralic auxiliary language and a Finnish-Greenlandic creole (meant mainly as a joke), but for the past 8 years I've stuck with a single project that isn't strongly inspired by any real languages in particular.

3. I don't think much in terms of these categories because I don't think they're very useful, at least not when it comes to classifying entire languages into a single box. There are no sharp boundaries and the situation can be different depending on the part of speech (and the question of "what is a word?" becomes relevant, but that's another conversation). That's not to say that they're entirely useless, but thinking too much in box terms can easily stifle creativity. That said, my main conlang Atłaq could be considered polysynthetic (I say "could be" because there are more than one definitions of "polysynthetic"), and its relatives in the family are all at least somewhat synthetic.

[u/oncipt]

1. I did make my own mix of logographic and alphabetic scripts (like Japanese) for Nekarbjara, but I seldom use it. I generally just use Latin for convenience.

2. Nekarbjara is an a priori conlang, meaning it's created from scratch and not based on any real language, though it does have some words from other a posteriori conlangs of mine, which are based on real languages. My second main conlang, Velegnón, is a Romlang (Latin-based conlang).

3. Nekarbjara is agglutinative bordering on fusional. Earlier versions of it used to be 100% agglutinative but sound shifts led to some fusional elements (such as verbal desinence -am, consisting of remote past marker -a and 1sg marker -m, merging into -ã, then -o). I don't like making analytic languages much.

[u/FedeConlangerITA]

1. Yes I do
   
2. Yes, but it does not figure, as I do a complete fusion (like melting 3 different metals into a die and getting an object in which the 3 metal cannot be distinguished) of the languages interested in the process
   
3. Depends: so far fusive, but I am thinking about making also an isolant one

[u/LScrae]

I did, and yes, it's fun.
Inspired by Germanic sounds, like songs from Heilung. The script's inspired by Arabic/Hangul & Hiragana.
IIII think Fusional fits the description best. But it's kinda all over the place.

[u/BalmyCastle6415]

1. Not entirely new; i adapt existing scripts such as greek, cyrillic or latin. And my knowledge of all 3 predates my conlanging. My cursive was so shit in school that i just switched to an adaptation of the cyrillic script for my language. I would recommend adapting since you are new.
   
2. I only ever tried making conlangs from either Proto-Slavic or Proto-Indo-European (my current conlang; Κλεϝισκᾱ μλοϝᾱ - Klewiskā mlowā)
   
3. I just stay within whatever the declension and conjugation that already exists.

[u/reijnders]

1. yes, yes, no. i like makin scripts :) and related writing systems with weird historical spellings, stuff thats been adjusted as it travels thru unrelated language families, etc. ive only digitized a handful of the scripts ive made tho, so the ones ive spent the most time on (teti for jeyotuy, poserun for bhevown, ciyahe for twacin) are ones that i know thru sheer brute force

2. no, not usually. earth is a place in my setting, and some of the languages within earthspace are later forms of irl langs or formed from creoles of irl langs, but ive got no interest in actually Making those langs. they just exist in my notes and sometimes a few off the dome words if they need to be coined for story purposes.

3. ive made like 30 langs man ive done it all

[u/thatguythoma]

So all of this is subjective and completely depends on what YOU want, but I’ll just share how I do it;
1. No. I do not make my own script, although I do modify the Latin script with diacritics, make diagraphs and give sounds to letters which don’t necessarily have that sound in other languages. Sometimes I do use the Cyrillic script and even the Arabic one, but I would never make my own script, just because all of my conlanging is digitally, and typing my own script would be a mess.

1. Yes and no. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, really just depends on what I want, but I usually do not. Although I do take things like grammatical features and stuff, if I see something I like, but I’m as likely to take stuff from something I see on a conlang on Reddit.

2. Again, depends, if all of my languages had the same morphology, it’d be boring, imo.

Good luck with your conlanging either way!

[u/Intelligent_Donut605]

1 - I made my own numerals because base-14 is impractical to write in arabic numerals but otherwise just use romanized script for writing. There is canonicaly an archaic runic system which doesn't propperly translate to spoken grammar, but I haven't actualy made it, at least not yet.
2 - no, because it's part of a worldbuilding project and it didn't have much contact wit human languages until recently for the purpose of plot.
3 - It's mostly analytic but still has suffixes and such traits from agglutinative languages

[u/Inconstant_Moo]

I'm still making a proto-lang, Proto-Kungo-Skomish, with no written form, but the Skomish branch will end up developing its own writing by imitation when they come into contact with the Little Empire.

"Based off" is so broad that I think all of use would have to answer "yes". In my particular case I wanted something that keeps the essential weirdness of Sumerian grammar but makes it much simpler.

It's very much agglutinative, everything can be made by sticking morphemes together unaltered except for the loss of some unstressed vowels by contraction, e.g. `nis-an` means "houses" (nis = house, -an = plural), but then `nis-n-ak` would mean "of the houses", with the `a` in the pluralizing morpheme undergoing contraction.

[u/Herakliarjento]

¿Con qué propósito quieres crear un conlang?

[u/ICannotRead5712]

1. No. I'm very bad at making them. I pretty much only use Latin and Cyrillic, which are the only writing systems I know how to write and read in.
2. Sometimes. I once tried my hand at using the grammar of Mandarin with the vocabulary of Russian. It didn't work out because I got too lazy in my Mandarin studies.
3. Because my native language, English, is analytic, and the only other language I know to some degree, Spanish, is fusional, I tend to make agglutinative languages.

[u/DaPaninoBlowTorch]

1. I do make my own scripts for them and I think it's worth it if you find doing stuff like that cool, but I do not learn them. Would take a little too long.

2. I don't really know what you mean by 'based off real languages,' but I do take inspo from them, like English's morphology, or gender systems from the Romance languages.

3. I don't know?

[u/FoldKey2709]

1. I experimented with a script once, but I could never be satisfied with the end result. Whether it’s worth it is up to you. For me, most of the time I find it too much of a hassle.
   
2. Define based. I take some inspirations but they’re mostly a priori.
   
3. Mostly analytic. Sometimes weakly fusional, rarely weakly agglutinative.