Forums » Smalltalk » I never realised how hard it is to write a languag

I've been working on a language for my own world for months. I had given up until I recieved my name written in C'ërod, Demilicious' language, which motivated me to begin working on it again.

And holy crap it's a lot harder than I thought.

I've been spending ours scrounging the internet for references, tips and tricks, inspiration, and things like that. While I've had some ideas, I can never get it to look right nor sound right.

I was wondering if any body else had any tricks or tips to help move this process along?

Personally, I get as much of the grammar stuff out of the way first. I find it very helpful to have the framework already done before coming up with words.

Second, I create new words only when I need to. Granted, that doesn't help in all situations, but for RPing, it does me fine. Saves on the workload.

I have a handful of languages I'm working on. Sometimes I come up with words on the spot, other times I take inspiration from other languages. More than once I've basically created languages using google translate - put a single word into several specific languages (from nations with mildly similar cultural influence to the culture speaking my language) and combining the results into one.

And finally, there's the written form. Whilst more complicated systems are slower to write out (my Xág'tyán uses 4-letter characters, for instance), they can create a more interesting approach to coming up with a language that can inspire motivation to create more words, particularly when you want to get more writing done to test it out.

Ahh, Riik, I love the look of Xág'tyán! It's awesome! Well done!

The advice here is given spot on too. I think what can help when thinking up a language too is what sounds are appealing to you, and thinking what kind of language do you want to make? Do you want to make it inflection heavy, or gruff sounding? Do you want to have a commonality with certain letters sounding a certain way - think French and the incessant rolling of the "R's". To you like clicks, or trills?

Also, as Riik says, going at it one word at a time might help too. Let's say in a roleplay thread you want to address someone in an endearing way - think of solely creating something that sounds warm and loving to you, and if it fits with your idea of the language you're making? Say it out loud! Sure some people might give you the quizzical brow, but you are creating, and doing you. Besides, it's not as if no one's ever walked into a room before and completely forgotten what they went in there for in the first place, right?

Rather than look at it as a daunting task or challenge, don't be afraid to have fun with it. Some parts are going to be tough, sure, but you're creating a part of you, making your imagination into reality. That's wondrous.

https://www.vulgarlang.com/ You might find this resource useful!

(You can see a dictionary for a language I created here https://ggterrabad.tumblr.com only use lower case when searching for words. It does not appreciate upper case)

Personally I think one point easily overlooked on custom made languages is verbal conjugations, specially if you come from an english-speaking background which is a language with very few verbal times if compared to languages like French or Portuguese. In my mother tongue there's present. Then there's perfect past, overly perfect past, imperfect past of the subjunctive and of the indicative. Then we have future, future of the past and future of the present. Some of these can't even be directly translated into English. Why is Japanese so hard for most westerns, writing system aside? Because it has a freakcton of words that cannot be directly translated and meaning simple escapes our cultural understanding of things.

In the end it's very easy to make a language that is merely a cipher of your natural language, meaning that everything can be easily directly translated, true linguistics is the hardest part. But of course, one shouldn't bother with that if they are merely going for aesthetics or fun!

I've got two languages but i've never fleshed them out fully. To be honest I know what the script looks like and tend to just use a 1 for 1 cyper for them.

Imperium runes is based loosely on norse and old gothic so should sound and look germanic/nordic with those same sort of rules.
There's no J sound, they have two extra characters Thorn and Esh (which are old germanic/old english letters) and are out and out missing a few we'd use in modern day.
They're also missing completely certain words. They have no word for dog, or wolf, or any canine as they don't exist on their world. They have no word for cow either for the same reasons.
They also don't use any word or name that derives from an earth god (any name starting Tor for example as they have no gods so Thor is a totally alien concept to them)

But I admit, i've never really gotten any further with constructing it as a whole compelte language because honestly, in most cases in rp, it doesn't matter.
You can easily just say "they spoke in their native tongue" and describe what it sounds like, or translate it if the other person can speak the language anyway.

Personally i find turns of phrases far more interesting anyway. My Imperium guys for instance will say things like "may the dawn come quickly" because they culturally have real problems with darkness, night, and full moons.
Light is very important to them because light on their worlds means relative security and safety, so a lot of their sayings will mention light.

They're also a rather war-like culture so a lot of their ideals stem from victory and power and similar.

they are supersticious as heck, put a lot of stock in "lucky days" (that is days with a lot of new moons) and Dawn specifically is very important to them. It means you made it through the night. Particularly after longest night (the winter solstice and their new year) where the dawn is so so far away.

Their holiday names and such are very very literal. "Longest night" "Longest Day" "homecoming" "Harvest". No fancy names, no gods to give credit to, just a very literal description.

Being a very precise, very pragmatic but also highly rules heavy race, their language has a LOT of strict grammar rules. There's a lot less freedom than in english, a lot less slang, it's more formal sounding.

they write left to right like english.

The Sister Races on the other hand, have a very alien language that borrows a bit from sanskrit and arabic but also has clicks, trills, rolling sounds and all sorts of noises most humans can't manage.
It is a weird language to hear, at times it almost sounds as if they're talking backwards. so yeah, it's bizarre.

It uses a sort of scrolling script, very fluid, somewhat pictographic and is written top to bottom, left to right.

It isn't actually their language, the written form is an ancient language and alphabet repurposed as 98% of the population are illiterate anyway.

So their language, their traditions, almost all of it is oral. The scribes write down the important things, like who's related to who and births and marriages and deaths and all that to keep a constant record but generally speaking, because it's not a written language the rules are a bit more.. lax.



this is an example of both fonts.

The vertical one being Sevai or the language of the Sister Races, the pointy one being Imperium Runes which are stylised old gothic runes. It's interesting I think because as with actual old gothic, if you squint, you can actually pick out english words.
I didn't translate either of these into the language, they're literally 1 for 1 cyphers just to demonstrate.

Creating a WHOLE language from whole cloth is... exhausting honestly and honestly I seldom see a real value to doing so. So this is as far as I ever got. A general outline, which for my purposes is "close enough".
Maybe one day i'll make a dictionary lol.