
ConLangs: How to Construct a Language - carlosgg
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/linguistics-and-philosophy/24-917-conlangs-how-to-construct-a-language-fall-2018
======
zhengyi13
If this is intriguing to you, there's a very active subreddit for this at
/r/conlangs. The community there ranges from folks just fooling around with
simple English relexes, to fairly formal investigations into weird linguistic
features like split ergativity.

There's also other channels on YouTube; my favorite is Biblaridion's; their
How To Make A Language series might be a good intro:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHK1gO2Mh68&list=PL6xPxnYMQp...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHK1gO2Mh68&list=PL6xPxnYMQpqsooCDYtQQSiD2O3YO0b2nN)

~~~
rikroots
35.9k members in that conlangs subreddit?

When did my shameful little hobby suddenly get so popular??

~~~
giancarlostoro
There's a discord for learning languages that is doing one as well. It's a
pretty massive server I joined to try and learn different languages. I'm not
sure how related they are to that subreddit though.

------
tome
When I looked into conlangs over ten years ago I concluded that there were
three that were particularly worth knowing.

1\. Novial, because it is extremely regular with simple rules

2\. Ido, because it is a simplified version of Esperanto, which itself has a
non-trivial number of speakers.

3\. Interlingua, because it is roughly a simplified modern romance language,
which themselves have hundreds of millions of native speakers.

~~~
gleki
Here is my list:

Lojban

Ithkuil

Controlled English

------
cpfohl
Also relevant:
[https://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html](https://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html)

------
amatecha
My favorite conlang :)
[https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#lietal](https://wiki.xxiivv.com/#lietal)

------
kybernetikos
Vulgar is a fun tool to generate the beginnings of a conlang:
[https://www.vulgarlang.com/](https://www.vulgarlang.com/)

~~~
schoen

      ...and he stood holding his hat and turned his wet face to the wind...
      tee rũnũ shũ naapoo lẽ teetũ tee pũkii lẽ shamõ teepã õ undefined
      Pronunciation: /teː ˈrũnũ ʃũ naːˈpoː lẽ teːˈtũ teː pũˈkiː lẽ ʃaˈmõ ˈteːpã õ ˌundeˈfined/
      Naawo word order: and stood he holding hat his and turned his face wet to the wind
    

I wonder what's going on with that word for 'wind'!

(Whenever I generate a new language on the site, the word for 'wind' is always
"undefined".)

------
simonebrunozzi
Related discussion on HN yesterday: "Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a
Hypothetical Language" [0].

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20557830](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20557830)

------
julienchastang
Related: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-
be...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beginners)

~~~
rikroots
Thank you for posting that article - I've never read it before. There's many
things John Q says in the article that resonate strongly with me.

I've never viewed my attempts at conlanging as anything more than self-
indulgent art. I found the passage where John outed himself as a 'conlanger'
to his work colleagues hilarious:

> “People at work now held me in some sort of state of half awe, because this
> guy obviously has more going on in his head than being a manager at this
> dopey state agency, and half in contempt, because I’ve now proved myself to
> be beyond whatever state of geekery they might have previously thought about
> me,” Quijada said. “‘You’re a what? A con man?’ ‘No, boss, a conlanger.’”

I've learned over time not to be ashamed of my hobby - in fact I'm happier to
reveal to people that I invent languages than I am to admit to my other hobby:
writing poetry.

It was my desire (need) to share my work with those few people who might be
interested in it that first drove me to teach myself how to code up websites -
so in a way my weird hobby has had a positive effect on my life: web
development and coding became a new passion that has kept me out of trouble
for 2 decades now, and has been my profession for the past 5 years.

Now I'm itching to redevelop my old conlang/conworld website - I haven't done
much with it for 10 years; looking at the code that drives it today ... it
makes me cringe with embarrassment!

[http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/index.php](http://www.rikweb.co.uk/kalieda/index.php)

