The Conlang Compendium

The Conlang Compendium​

Okay so on the suggestion of the estimable @Eebit and the fact that constructing languages seems to be a fairly biggish thing here (well, roleplays are a good reason to construct languages!) I figured that this thread will find a fairly good enough audience.

The idea is too encourage the conlanging scene a bit on ZEJ and to help people who are interested to pick up the nuances and ideas of conlanging, and also to rabbit about each others languages and as a community provide insights and feedback that the conlanger might appreciate and use to touch-up the languages a little.

The thing about conlanging is that it's all well-and-good if a single person creates a language, but it's hardly going to be a very good language if only one person works on the language and uses it. 99% of the time on chat I'm talking about the language I am currently working on, called Isorian (which is called Isxuor in Isorian), which I plan to some day use in a roleplay. And quite a few people know I had at one point actively been shoving Aeforei up everyone's arses, and that @Mystletainn uses it consistently in her "Mirror Magic" series of roleplays.

The reason I talk so extensively about it is because I want feedback, but the issue is people often don't know what I'm on about and often wonder if I've been smoking something strong, so here's a small effort into kind of raising awareness and attempting to boost the conlanging scene here. Trust me when I say that with a little practice it becomes not hard at all, and oftentimes you can have a lot of fun batting around about concepts and ideas and things thereabouts (languages are like LSD for me, teehee).

But yes, this thread will serve as a hub for people to discuss languages, from the most experienced of conlangers to the newbiest of you lot. You can talk about your languages, you can ask questions, you can chronicle your development, you can add and discuss conlanging resources (which I will put up shortly) and you can provide and receive feedback. You can even discuss much bigger conlang projects such as Volapük and Esperanto and discuss their pros/cons/what you like about them/what you dislike/what you think they could use/et cetera. Really the only limitation here is that you don't outright spam up this thread with, say, an argument detailing the reasons why Catalan and Occitan are mutually intelligible (or not) or why the language of India is Indian (I will punt you in the balls or the vag or both if you even begin this argument).

But yes you can discuss valid existing languages BUT only in the context of conlanging: e.g., when I talk about Isorian I often talk about the occasional homophony and high level of cognates when you compare Isorian and, say, Italian or French. And then you could argue saying: "But Espy, you designed Isorian to be a Romance language with close ties to French! In fact, Isora [place where Isorian is spoken] is right between France and Italy!!"—and then I would say, yes, you're right, that was a derp!

But yes, you could definitely talk constructing languages here. Anything about language construction. There are quite a few people around willing to help with that, like myself and @Shadow and @"The Kakuzato" [I'm arbitrarily volunteering you two lol] so if you're interested you can definitely post here!​

 

RE: The Conlang Thread

Resources​

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION | RESOURCES AND LINKS]

Clearly as with everything it's good to start out with a few resources, especially if you have trouble with conlanging. I'm divvying up resources based on skill level here, and I'll probably provide a slight guide on how to use what resources at which stage for ease of use. Again, you can if you want ask questions if you feel a bit unclear.

A slight pre-list note. Conlanging is a little easier the more languages you know, or at least the more languages the theories and general ideas behind which you know. You can conlang even if English is the only language you speak, and you weren't even aware of the existance of any other languages, but it's preferred that you read up or look up a few other languages. I recommend looking up around three or four of the following languages: Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Tamil, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese Spanish, French, Kiswahili, Finnish, Swedish, German, Xhosa, and well basically any other language that catches your fancy. I am definitely not telling you to -learn- these languages outright, but it would be good to read through the Wikipedia pages and have a general idea of what goes on. But if you want to learn a language, or if you already speak one to some extent, nothing like it! [There are a tonne of useful ways to learn languages, as generally summarised on this post. Duolingo, not in the previous link, is my recommendation with which to start.]

Although typically you want to take conlanging in stages. My classifications of "Novice", "Intermediate" and "advanced" might not fit the general ideas of what those levels of competence mean in general, so I'll explain exactly whomfor each list is meant, although you're more than welcome to look back.

For Complete Beginners:
For those who have no or next to no experience with constructing languages.

1. Learn IPA—Again, a general gist of how it works is preferable if you cannot learn the alphabet, although it is extremely vital that you do so at the least, or have someone around who can tell you which IPA symbol is used to represent which sound.
2. The Language Construction Kit—very, very, very useful, as it goes over several concepts vital to beginners. Although it does seem fairly basic it would be good to go over these concepts.
3. The Conlang Wiki—visit this Wiki, but don't make a page for your language just yet, but look at various language pages and see how people have approached making languages. Different people have different styles and different ideas for their language, so keep that in mind.
4. Terminology—it's very, very good to keep terminology in mind, especially when it comes to what exactly a language entails. Strangely enough, if you have the patience for the fancy words, Wikipedia is an altogether -excellent- place to confer. When you search up some linguistic term, see the infobox to the right of the WP page? Yeah, that'll be your Bible.

For Novices:
For those who have a fair understanding of how languages work, or at least how they shift, change and evolve. Novices have a command over IPA, or at least can recognise sounds and notation.

1. Awkwords—a syllable generator with which to play around and create syllables.
2. Gleb—random phonetic inventory generatore–viz., a bunch of sounds that will be useful to recognising how you want your conlang to work.
3. Software for conlanging—fairly self-explanatory! Also invaluable if you like operating solely off a computer.

For Intermediates:
For those who have had minor experience making parts of languages (like imagining how you want, say, nouns to be declined, or what tenses and moods of verbs you want), or for those who have a good grasp of phonetics and phonotactics, and/or the way languages are formed.

1. The Conlang Wiki—at this point you're ready for a page on tge Conland WIki! Once you have a good grasp of the mechanisms of language, and have a fairly good idea of how you want your language to pan out, definitely revisit this site and start a page for your language. It doesn't have to be 100% complete before you put it on here, but definitely have some sort of idea how you want it to be. You don't have to complete the entire page before you publish it as well—you can work on it over time as it maintains to be published, by editing the page.
2. Lexique Pro—if you have a Windows or the capability of running WinPrograms on Unix or other OSes, once you begin developing your vocabulary, do get Lexique Pro. It's a linguistic orgasm of seismic proportions. The website explains all.

For the Advanced:
For those who have made a conlang before, or who understand very well the nuances of languages, what distinguishes languages, and how they are historically, poilitically and linguistically affected, and/or who have a competent understanding of phonetic and phonotactic theory.

 

RE: The Conlang Thread

Compendium​

[UNDER CONSTRUCTION | LIST OF STUFFS I WILL EDIT IN MOMENTARILY]

 

Gist; thank you bb mine. <3

In other news:
<Espeonature>: But yeah I'm nowhere near done with it
<Espeonature>: I'm still figuring out which resources would be best under which tier
<Espeonature>: That too I'm trying to gather resources, so any contributions would be lovely

So yeah. Any and all contributions are welcome.

 

Much obliged. <3 Will add anon.

 

Okay to encourage a little activity I am going to talk about my current language of interest, Isorian.

You can find the project here on the Conlang Wiki. It'll be good to have a basic understanding of IPA as I and basically every conlanger ever and your mom use IPA to denote everything, as it is an extremely convenient and easy way to express sounds and phones (phone being a fancy term for, er, well, "sound")!

A lot of you know superficially about Isorian already from the innumerable times I have mentioned activity or updates on the Conlang.Wikia page at Chat, but I hope to go into detail about the project here, and to begin logging the updates (and the specifics) on ZEJ. Well, I've -almost entirely- finished the project, so more like what's left of it, and things beyond the project, like the history of Isora and Isxuor, and the more complex and complicated grammatical categories (such as figures of speech, idioms, et cetera, all of which are tied to the history of Isxuor).

I'm... not entirely sure where and when Isxuor was as a language conceived. It's not the paragon language for new conlangers to learn conlanging from because, well, I woke up one morning with a basic idea of the structure and function of the language, and I've been adding and tweaking it ever since.

It was an interesting dream, actually, involved these weird white things, probably people, who just kind of started speaking the language and I just knew what they knew saying—but when I woke up I didn't remember much of the conversation or anything else, but I realised that what they were speaking wasn't quite an existing language. It's interesting because that was before I knew of the distinction between the East Romance languages (like Romanian or Italian) and the West Romance languages (like French and Spanish and Portuguese), and Isxuor clearly fell into the former category.

With one major exception, however: nouns. Isxuor nouns don't have a paltry two forms (singular and plural) like -almost- all other Romance languages. No, it stands at a whopping (well for a modern Romlang) eight—namely 4 cases and 2 numbers. It may seem unnecessarily complicated but it really isn't; cases tend to give a lot more freedom with speech, personally, and combined with the right adpositions (which include prepositions, postpositions and circumpositions) can form several more meanings with fewer words. And this was mostly the case with Latin which due to being far too strict and the history of Rome devolved—well, evolved—into the Romance languages.

Verb systems are huge per usual, if a little more streamlined and regular. Go check out the page and check the Sample Regular Conjugations.

There's a lot more I have to say on the matter, but I'll give updates and news in instalments. What are your thoughts?

 

As you all obviously know by now the way I'm stopped twittering—ugh Kuda y u make me use this word—about Isxuor on chat, the project has come to a near close. I have not achieved perfection, but I have achieved a standard I do believe conducive to the organic evolution of the language into something perhaps more than it can possibly be under a sole person's reach.

Of course the WIkia page—found here per usual—isn't complete. That will require some change and modification, which will happen when I get my lazy ass off te bed in the due course of time. People are free to check it out, but I still have a bunch of explaining of certain grammatical elements to do. And I have to fix the verb template, which is being a grand old bitchpls. Also I have no memory of writing any of this. Fun.

 

I've been using PG for a week and I'm a huge fan. I wasn't sure whether to bring this up earlier since it waas still in development stages, but the program works super smoothly oh my god.