someone should make a marioverse Toad conlang where you have to do the toad voice when speaking it
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Conlanging for cheaters
quick tips for creating fantasy language(s) that look believable if you squint
Pick a few rules about what letter/sound combinations can and cannot exist (or are common/uncommon). For example, in English, "sp" or "st" can begin a word, but in Spanish they can't. The "ng" sound (or the voiced velar nasal if you want to get technical), can't appear at the beginning of a syllable in English, but it can in at least of third of languages around the world. English allows for consonant clusters (more than one consonant together without a vowel), but some languages, such as Hawaiian, don't. Picking a few distinctive rules that are different from English or the language you are writing in, and sticking to them, will yield a lot better results than just keysmashing.
Assign meaning to a few suffixes, prefixes, or roots. A simple and useful example of this is making up a particle that means -land or -city or -town, and tacking it onto your appropriate place names. You could also have a particle with a similar meaning to the "er/or one we have in English, such as in "baker," "singer," or "operator," and then incorporate it in your fantasy titles or professions. It's like an Easter egg for careful readers to figure out, and it will make your language/world feel more cohesive.
Focus on places and names. You usually don't need to write full sentences/paragraphs in your conlang. What you might want to do with it is name things. The flavor of your language will seep in from the background, with the added benefit of giving readers some hints on background lore. For example, you could have a conlang that corresponds to a certain group of people, and a character with a corresponding name could then be coded as being from that group without having to specify. A human-inhabited city with an elven-sounding name might imply that it was previously inhabited by elves.
You don't have to know what everything means. Unless you are Linguistics Georg R. R. Tolkien, you probably don't want to (and shouldn't!) actually make up a whole language. So stick some letters together (following your linguistic rules, of course) and save fretting over grammar and definitions for the important stuff.
(Bonus) This isn't technically conlanging, but it can be fun to make up an idiom or two for your fantasy culture (just in English or whatevs) and sprinkle that in a few times. The right made-up idiom can allude to much larger cultural elements without you having to actually explain it.
Congrats! You now have a conlang you can dust over your wip like an appropriate amount of glitter. Conlangs can be intimidating, just because there's so much you can do, but that doesn't mean you have to do it all. So yeah anyway here's what I would recommend; hope y'all have fun :D
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Conlanger: technical, cringe, gives people actual information about what you do, "So you're like Tolkien?", only specific people know you're queer
Child of Babel: cool, mysterious, sinister, sounds like you're in a cult, what do you do? speak in tongues + do orgies probably, makes the right angry, "Do you worship Satan?", aura of gay homosex
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#541
A conlang where the words for west, east, north, and south are derived from the words for "left-wing", "right-wing", "authoritarian", and "libertarian".
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The Setsé Script is the writing system of the Setsé people, who arrived on Uanlikri as colonists and invaders for the powerful Senq Ha Empire overseas. In the centuries that followed, the power or the desire of the Senq Ha waned and the colonies were abandonned, leaving behind splintered nations of conquerors trying to make the best of the strange lands whose peoples they had murdered and displaced.
Text from the image:
When the Setsé landed on Uanlikri more than four centuries ago, they brought with them war, conquest and misery. They also brought the Setsé script, a unique script which is assembled, almost like a puzzle, to describe the phonetical qualities of an utterance.
The Setsé peoples have long ago been cut off from the imperial powers that fed their conquest of the Western Peninsula, Northern Kantishian Moutains, and Spice Islands. Since then, they have splintered. diversified and syncretized into a great many cultures. Despites this, the setsé script endures where litteracy survives. It remains the script of choice for setsé langages, whose tones are hard to transcribe the scripts of Uanlikri's mostly atonal native languages.
The setsé script divides a word into many parts: a central "thought line", read from top to bottom, tone bars traversing the thought line, and symbols indicating consonants on the left and vowels on the right.
Zàtzèpaqóí
Glyph shapes are often modified to fit the available space. In this word, the horn of dz is detached to leave more space to the previous consonnant.
A linked-style consonnant is always used with a vowel glyph which connects to the thought line. Modifications emphasize this connection: the e's new shape fully attaches to the dz glyph.
Conversely, the use of an open-style glyph for q helps identify the associated vowel as a o rather than an e.
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conlanging be like: you have 7 words for child/offspring, but you don’t have a single word for bread
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really underused place of articulation in conlanging yall are missing out
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Furbish From a Linguistic Perspective
hi! if you're familiar with furbies you probably know the very short conlang (a sketch fictlang in particular) furbish! furbish is the language furbies speak before you "teach" them english by taking care of them. i will only be covering the '98 language, as the 2005 and 2010 language updates break some of the language rules the '98 version sets up, and I don't want to deal with that atm. also, do note i'm not a linguist, i just watch a lot of conlang critic
Phonology
Consonants
furbish has 9 consonants, with one digraph (wh) counting as a consonant for simplicity's sake. these consonants are /m/, /n/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /hw/ or /h/, /l/, and /w/.
Vowels
furbish has 6 vowels (including 2 dipthongs): /i/, /u/, /eɪ/, /o/, /aɪ/, and /ɑ/.
Syllables
syllables are made up of vowels and consonants, shown in this chart. There are a total of 35 syllables in furbish.
Morphology
to make a word, syllables are put together using dashes, though some words are syllables on their own. additionally, new words can be created by putting a dash in between two existing words; like "ay-ay-lee-koo" (listen), a compound of "ay-ay" (look) and "lee-koo" (sound).
Grammar/Syntax
furbish seems to work almost the same as english grammar-wise, with a few differences. like many languages, it follows the subject–verb–object word order. for example, "i love you" would be "kah may-may u-nye". verbs have no conjugations and there are no tenses in furbish, along with there being no distinction between a singular and plural noun. most adjectives and nouns in furbish also work as verbs, and a word/phrase equivalent of "to be" does not exist. verbs have no conjugation, and adverbs go in front of the verb. it has two final particles, "doo" as a way to express that a question is being asked (similar to "ka" in japanese) and "wah" as a way to express excitement.
Proposals (Non-Canon)
i have a few proposals to make furbish a fuller language. for starters, making more syllable combinations for coining new words. secondly, a furby alphabet. each letter would represent a furbish syllable. another thing is filler words. i believe "ah" would be a great filler word, as furbies tend to say it a lot while being played with. i also suggest "doo", which could work as the furbish speaker questioning what they should say. finally, i've come up with a canon name for furbish in furbish. "kah-lee-koo", a compound of "kah" (me) and "lee-koo" (sound). roughly translated it means "my sound".
I'm autistic about furbies and conlangs fascinate me, so I had to make this!! I hope you all enjoyed :]
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Just thinking about how conlanging is actually so cool
You’re literally making a new ass language with unique words and grammar like woahhh
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The Black Coast Avoidance Speech
Please Consider Supporting Me:
[Ko-Fi]
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#540
A future dialect of English where "69" is grammaticalized into an affix marking a reciprocal verb.
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Reachtongue Update 24/02/05
number system (wip)
declension example. inspired by uralic, and used a lot of Diachronica
wanted to post more, but pc keeps dying randomly, so this is what's on my phone rn. I'll post more later, it's 4:18 lol
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