Using The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder, I'm going to create a language, starting today. You can follow along with me by reading the parts that corespond to what I create, as I go along.

I'll begin with Models

Natural and Unnatural Languages

(Note: For those of you wondering what "Esperanto" is, I checked and it was created by a council of so called "aux-laungers" who were trying to create a global language. Didn't work out.)

I've decided to go with a natural languages, because it will be easier to create something that I'm familier with. Naturally.

Non-western Models

My goal is to create a language that western language speakers can learn easily. Therefor, I'm going to spend less time investigating non-western tongues that someone creating an exotic language would.

Sounds

Types of Consonants and Inventing Consonants

First I'm going to make glottal "h" with a full stop. I'm also going to make an alvelolar "t" but this t is also dental. You form it by placing the tip of your tongue on the back of your lower teeth, then arching your tongue so that the top also touches the alveolar position. (Think of a chipmunk chirpping.)

That's all for tonight, I'll add some more "english" sounding consonants.

Sounds very interesting. And a lot more trouble than I'm willing to go to...lol

It's not very much trouble. You just start when you're feeling creative, and then let it rest 'till you feel creative again.

I'd like to make up a language, but it looks a bit confusing. Where do you even start when doing something like that?

Sapphira, the site I use to help me is The Language Construction Kit. It and learning a foreign language will help leaps and bounds.

Oh duh, there's a link at the top... I was a bit of an airhead yesterday :P

That looks really interesting! I might try it sometime when I don't have a pile of schoolwork to do...

Wow, this looks really fun!

I need to make a language for my world because right now everyone is speaking Gaelic (lol).

My only problem is that I can't seem to make sense of the chart... I think that I need to go back and re-read it.

I'm going to try this eventually, but it's confusing me just a bit at the moment. It's the whole creating consonants and vowels that I'm not quite getting. I understand the concept, but I can't figure out how to actually come up with the sounds themselves.

You've seen the mouth diagram? Just try sounding out some weird sounds. Try to make a alveo-palatal sound for example.

I'm probably making this a lot harder than it actually is... but I cannot for the life of me figure this part out. I know what I'm supposed to do, it just all comes out the same sound as a different letter.

EDIT: well, I think I figured some out. I'll try it and see how it goes.

Is it bad that the words sound differently when spoken than someone might read them?

It's not bad at all. The goal is to simply find a letter that represents a similar sound, or use a foreign symbol for your sound.

Here's something to try. We can all make a glotal "h", but try to make other glotal sounds. English doesn't have any other glotal sounds, so using one will make you language sound less English.
<><>
I'll try to add some more sounds to the alphabet I'm creating, but I get very short bursts of inspiration.

Well, this may be pretty dumb, but here's what I've typed in my notes so far (and if they don't make much sense, it's because I just described it enough for me to remember... these particular notes aren't meant to actually explain the language to anyone):



Any advice or anything? I haven't started on grammar or making an alphabet or anything yet. I only have a few words so far, and I may have to change those.

I think that those rules make sense together. As to advice, follow the order the webpage is in.

Update: I've decided that my language will allow no affricatives or approximates. I wanted to give it a forceful, un-elegant sound, so I decide that only stops and fricatives would do. More letters as I'm inspired.

That's what I've been doing is following the outline. That's partially why my notes seem so random at first glance. Each section is just something that pertains to a section in the outline.

I'm trying to kind of make the language kind of harsh, yet flowing (if that makes sense). Right now it's just kind of light and airy, though, from the words I've come up with.

Could you post one of the words as an example?

That's about the extent of my word list so far. And the pronunciation things probably don't make much sense. I still need to work on it.
And I have the numbers pretty much figured out (it's a rather simple system. I only had to come up with numbers 1-10 and the suffixes for higher numbers like 10s and 100s)

I like that system of making languages pretty well (as far as I have read it). But I disagree with part of his order: the grammar (at least part of it) should always come before the vocabulary. This is because the grammar is always very deeply interconnected with what words the language has. Of course, the grammar is one of the hardest parts to do, but whatever. I am getting better at it once I have started studying Greek parts of speech. Greek is very rich in its grammatical structure, and helps me get out of the English grammatical box I am in.

I get bored with things sometimes, so I actually only came up with a few words to get the general idea, then started on the grammar. I'll add words as I need them.

Emeth, you're right. I hadn't noticed that part of the order before. I would definitely agree. Of course, it could be useful by lending a sense of development, because languages often have words from older forms when the grammar was different. Then again, it's risky territory for someone who really wants an accurate language, and I'm by no means an expert.

Sapphira, that is the way I would do it, except that I'm developing the language strictly for the joy of development. I don't intend to use the language very much in my stories, so need isn't much of an issue for me.

I won't be using the language in my story very much (at least for now... This language is for the race I made up, and I may write stories focused more on them later), but I think it would be cool to actually be able to speak the language too. So mainly I've been making up words when there's a sentence I want to type out (I haven't used it out loud yet).

Hiya,
Just remember that you want it also to "look" like a real language on the page. It should look just like English, for instance, or be in the same word order necessarily.

It helps to look at all the languages in the world - then look at the language families and see how they either look the same or differ. And leave space to go further with the language if you want to.

It helps to read up on languages if you want to create them. Look at language history - English is very fascinating, if I may sound extremely bookish! Look at what causes a language to change or to use words from other languages (Like French in English).

Just my two cents' worth!

Marshwriter

I love doing that. The theses in the beginning of Webster's 1828 dictionary are invaluable, as well as fascinating, enthralling, and absolutely brilliant.

Well, it was actually created by L.M. Zamenhoff, who was a linguist of about a minimum of 10 languages. Statistics show that Esperanto is being spoken by about 10,000,000 worldwide. I just found this out by looking it up online.

I am not trying to make you look bad, I just thought that some new info would be nice to see on here, as I have thought about learning Esperanto myself!

Kindest Regards,
Akicita

Okay, I'm bored with these ideas.

My brother have been kicking around some ideas about languages that are focused on musical qualities.

There are several possibilities.

Rhythm. Communication via rhythm will probably use only consonants. Gestures that create slapping and clicking noises could probably also be included. Rhythm alters the language in a self-similar pattern. Sounds could be long or short, repeated, etc., to form words. Words are strung together in certain patterns capture emotional qualities. The length of pauses or carrying over a rhythm into a new sentence could be used to indicate whether or not a subject has been changed, imply unspoken thoughts (urging people to "read between the lines") and things of that nature.

I really want to explore the rhythm idea. Look at this video to get some ideas: http://podcast.conlang.org/2009/02/dritok-the-sound-of-no-voice-speaking/

A melodic language, and a language somehow based on scales, are some other ideas that could work in the same world. The rhythm language could work well for Huri and other creatures in my CS synopsis world. (That story, BTW, must take a back seat to a serial that will be featured on the blog.)

The melodic concept is rather hazy, but I think it would rely heavily on human-universals tied into emotions.

Want to help with the rhythm idea?

Insert large "Neil has edited this post!" sign.

Okay, I've got some ideas for the melodic language.

Scrap vowels and consonants. Instead, this language uses musical notes. That gives to options for the production of musical notes: voice, and whistling.

Voicing is so complex, voices are so different, it's so difficult for certain people to hit certain notes without training, and the note-range of each person is so small (compared to whistling ranges), that whistling seems like a much better choice.

There are several choices for determining the language's sounds. One is to simply have every musical note be a sound. Another is to have the language use sounds from certain scales. (This limits the number of sounds, but could make the language sound more pleasant to people trained only in western music culture.)

In any case, the affixes (etc.) that form words are created by simple sound patterns. (jumping between two musical notes.) So, the affixes are slurred (musical term: no "air" between the notes. The notes simply carry straight into each other.), but the spaces between affixes have a brief pause. Pauses between words are slightly longer. There are no "longer" pauses between sentences: the listener knows a sentence has ended by grammatical rules.

So, any help with this idea?

Well, I stand corrected.

Although, Zamenhoff's goal of created a universal auxiliary language in order to develop peace and understand throughout the world has failed. Esperantist have organized into councils before, which often had great disagreements.

Besides that, the mis-guided Esperantist seem to create a lot of discord among the linguist and conlangers.

Aside from that, I've complete a lot of work on my melodic language concept. (Which, with Jay's permission, may serve as an auxiliary language of Elvish Society, or, I hope, the first language of a group of Sprites.)

No. Not the soda brand. The small Elves living near the Earth portals. Sprites. Not Sprite.

I ended up with 144 sounds. And, since this is either a loglan (logic language) or an englan (a language designed to meet certain use-criteria), it's going to need every single sound it has.

Each "sound" is actually a series of two notes (does that make every sound a digraph?). I used every in a given octave (12), and thus, multiplying twelve by twelve, I eventually wrote every single sound down. I could replicate that here (and I will, eventually), but instead I'll just offer the first twelve sounds.

a-a
a-a#
a-b
a-c
a-c#
a-d
a-d#
a-e
a-f
a-f#
a-g
a-g#

And, you replicate that pattern with every note.

When you do that, you end up with twelves double-notes. (a-a, for example) The second note is an octave above the first.

Now, there's a rule for determining how long each note is held. (A replication of letters in English changing the sound of other letters.)

The first note is always held for one beat. (The length of beats is determined by the speaker.)

The first note of each "letter" determine which major key (always a major key) the letter is in. For example, a-a# is in the key of A Major.

The second note can have one of several relationships with the key. It can be either the tonic, the super tonic, the mediant, the sub-dominant, the dominant, the sub-mediant, the leading tone, or it can be an accidental. (It's not in the key.)

That relationship determines how long the note is held:

Tonic and dominant: Fermata (Over four beats, at the speakers discretion.)
Super tonic, leading tone, and sub-dominant: one beat
Mediant and sub-mediant: two beats
Accidentals: one beat

The lack of three beat notes is an intentional decision. Every language has its quirks.

All letter orders are permitted. Why? Because that allows for more words, which allows the language as much logic as possible.

All words must be unequivocal. (a word has only one meaning, and is the only word with that meaning)

I may also make a variant that would sound more pleasant and would reflect the traits of a cultural language, not a logical language.

Sounds fascinating! Would they utilize clicks and such like sounds for punctuation?

I know what you mean about the note-range of people being small. I have that problem a lot of the time when I sing, because I can't hit higher notes. Not because it sounds bad, just because my voice won't do that.

However, some people can't whistle either... *guilty*

But it does sound like a pretty cool language, regardless.

They would naturally adapt to it. Children who grow up with yodeling parents don't learn to yodel: they just do it and think everyone does it that way.

Ah. Very true.

And that's what makes hitting the right notes, and keeping every different combination in your mind, easy.

Although, there may be a slightly higher count of mute people. But, if this is an Elvish or Spritish language, especially and auxiliary language, then there are probably alternative languages.

Hm...punctuation has been a problem. I'm debating eliminating it. It could be implied by content/context.

Possible, but that does make it a harder language to create and learn. I would predict that they would have an extensive punctuation system, comprising much of what latin delegated to suffixes.

I'm breaking my own rule and posting to a dead thread in order to toss out this thought:

I have two options. I can use the Latin cop-out and use affixes instead of punctuation.

Or I can take the more exciting route, and use a rhythm system to create punctuation.

I think I'll go with rhythm. Any ideas? (Remember, this is a system of rules to indicate case, gender, control sentence order, and fulfill the use of punctuation in English.)

Rhythm.... That sounds like it would fit with their culture, and work quite well. I like it!

And for speech giving, story telling, and other forms of artistic speaking, the rhythm can be aided by the use of percussion instruments, dancing, etc., while the sounds themselves can be accompanied by musical instruments playing the same lines.

I've decided to use the speech as the language of a culture that exists in a world where music (guided by the musicians intent and within the limits of their musical skill) has "magical" power. (For example, a smith can sing over his work, and by working a singing at the same time can put power into the object.)

So, music and rhythm will not only have a profound social and emotional power, but also the ability to work magic. In this way, speakers can use their words to go beyond normal communication by creating imagery in the hearer's mind, or by effecting an object, or manipulating an emotion (as music already can, this is just exaggerated), etc.

Since I've finished developing my other language, Wozal Nijön, I suppose I'll get to work on this one.

One thing I need to shoot for is creating a musical feeling. Some ambiguity and a replication of some music theory principles.