Welcome to Part 2 of my Culture Building 101 series. For the other posts, click here. For the Conlanging 101 series, click here. To see these concepts in action in my books, click here.
Metaphysics (and Physics)
Whether we recognize it or not, metaphysics plays an important part in our everyday lives. Without it, we would be unable to know anything about anything at all. It pertains to the nature of reality, the nature of consciousness, and what is existence.
Why have I suddenly waxed philosophical? What does this have to do with building a culture? Consider these questions:
Is there a God?
What is our purpose?
Who am I?
Am I the one really making choices or is free will an illusion?
You have a belief that answers each one of those questions, and there are a variety of ideas that seek to get to the bottom of all these matters. All these questions address fundamental qualities of reality such as identity, cause and effect, purpose, and, well…what is reality?
Really weird, that’s what.
Cultures and individuals will operate according to how they understand and seek to answer these questions. A real world analogy you can consider is the nature of time in different cultures. Many cultures consider time to be circular or even an illusion, whereas other cultures consider time to be a linear, progressive aspect of nature. This can influence how people of different cultures value things like punctuality or recording events. Another way metaphysics will fundamentally affect entire cultures and individuals within them is whether they believe there is such a thing as objective truth or reality at all. This can especially impact morality, leading to either a relativist moral system or a concrete one with distinguishable acts of good and evil.
Most people will choose to create a world where the metaphysics and physics, the essence of reality and how it manifests, is generally the same as ours and recognizable. Cause and effect, the direction of time, all go in the same direction as our reality. Gravity and light behave the same. It would take a LOT of work and imagination to come up with an entirely new pattern of existence, so understandably, most apples don’t venture too far from the proverbial tree.
Heh. It’s a gravity joke.
Where it can get very interesting is how a magic system might affect the laws of physics (or the metaphysics of reality itself). Are gods bestowing power upon wielders of magic, like a cleric or warlock in Dungeons and Dragons? Is there a non-sentient font of power that those with particular traits/heritage can draw upon? Are there multiple dimensions beyond what people can directly see, with other planes of existence where more powerful beings exist? Is there a multiverse that allows people to “pull” energy from in order to use in their universe, or that people can travel to? Perhaps those questions can get the noggin joggin’.
Top Down vs Bottom to Top
Depending on where you are in your worldbuilding journey, you will approach it in one of two ways. The first way is you will start with a broad (often metaphysical) concept and start creating a world from the ground up using that concept as a foundation. You might start with a question such as “what if the Greek gods were real?” or “what if our universe is a simulation?” and try to map out how those questions that concern the metaphysical reality of your world affect the rest of the “pyramid.” The second way is you have a specific phenomenon or scenario in mind, and you work backwards all the way to the metaphysical questions in order to explain the phenomenon/situation. This second way is largely how I planned the culture in my series, The Warriors of Bhrea. I had an idea about warriors who could manipulate elements such as light, water, and earth, and over time, I figured out the metaphysical mechanisms that would explain and power these abilities. The way you choose to go about your own worldbuilding is entirely up to you—there is no right or wrong way!
Okay, maybe a wrong way is just copying the entire worldbuilding schema of Star Wars and calling it Schmar Doors.
You may have read my series on conlanging (the full series here). If you haven’t and want some pointers on creating your own language, be sure to check it out! Now, what if you’re interested not only in creating a language, but creating a beautiful home for that language to live in?
That’s where culture comes in. Perhaps you’re interested in worldbuilding for a story you’re writing, a tabletop campaign you’re planning, or simply want to have an outlet for your creativity. Whatever the case, an essential part of worldbuilding is designing and fleshing out cultures within your world. There are a million and one blogs, websites, and tools helping you figure out the logistics of a realistic (or perhaps unrealistic, but original, universe and magic system). This series is going to focus most on the cultural aspect of worldbuilding—helping give some good starting points, considerations, and resources for constructing a culture (or many cultures) for your world!
credit to Alex Mit
Thousands of years ago, I studied Anthropology (and also Global Studies) in college. It wasn’t the most useful for getting a job, BUT, it has been very useful for guiding my own culture and language constructing. And now, I will share what I learned through my own experience in this process and implementing it in my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea.
The Why
Like in Conlanging 101, it is important to determine why you want to design a culture. What purpose will it serve? Will you need to start building from scratch, or will you already have a real world example to draw from? How involved will the cultural aspects of the setting be with the story/gameplay/etc? These questions will help determine the scope of how much detail you will need and how in depth you will need to focus on certain aspects of culture. For example, if you are writing an alternate historical fantasy set in medieval China, you won’t necessarily need to build a culture from scratch, but you will need to adapt the culture of that time and place to whatever fantastical elements you will introduce in the story (like if dragons were real). As another example, you might be creating a tabletop RPG set in an entirely different universe where the very physical laws of nature are different, so you’ll need to go DEEP into the foundations of worldbuilding and how that will affect the cultures of that universe. And finally, sometimes you won’t need to plan out an ENTIRE culture, only focus in depth on certain aspects that are important for your project. Perhaps much of your fantasy world reflects our own, but you want to pour your creativity into the religions of your world. You will still want to consider how other aspects of culture influence religion, but you won’t need to plan out detailed systems unless they deal directly with religion.
credit to Amith
The Culture Building Process
Once you have determined your “why” and the scope of your project, on to actual building! Sort of like conlanging, culture is made up of foundational pieces that build upon each other. However, instead of just putting basic sounds together into more and more complex sentences, I view culture more like a pyramid. At the base is the fundamental aspect of reality, the physics and metaphysics of the universe, and at the top is more “surface level” stuff like the aesthetics of buildings and clothing—the things that would be more directly apparent in a setting.
And what all is in between? While it may not cover all aspects of culture, my process generally goes like this:
Metaphysics/Physics
Environment/Biology
Geography & How Geographies Interact
Physical Needs
Beliefs & Values
Family Structure
Societal Systems
Technology
Aesthetics
Individual Differences
The first three blocks pertain more to the physical aspect of a world. While not dealing with culture directly yet, they still represent very important considerations for the culture. After all, it is difficult to have a culture if there is nowhere for a culture to live!
The next seven blocks have more to do with the actual culture you want to design. Several of those categories, like societal systems and family structure, are more complex and might require some “sub posts” in order to fully explain my process.
For now, however, I will wrap up this introduction. I hope you find the upcoming information useful, and if you’d like to see my culture-building in action, be sure to check out my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea!
You’ve probably heard of Klingon, or perhaps Quenya (from J.R.R. Tolkien’s books), but have you heard of Anglish?
It might sound a little familiar, but only because of its play on the word “English”—you know, one of the most commonly spoken languages in the world?
This doesn’t even include the number of people who have learned English as a second language.
Before I get into Anglish, first let’s talk about English. Pretty much any English speaker, native or learned, knows that English is…weird. So many strange exceptions to rules, odd spelling, and pronunciations that don’t match how a word looks. WHY is that?
There are several reasons, from vowel shifts to dropping consonants in a word (but keeping the letters, of course). The one I will focus on right now is foreign influence.
A little bit of history…
The history of the British Isles can be oversimplified as one long string of invaders taking over. Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans, the French… Who hasn’t taken over Britain at some point? We’ll start with the Anglo-Saxons. A Germanic tribe, their language was the root of what we speak today. When they took over, they mingled with the Celtic tribes, and presumably, some exchange of vocabulary occurred, but we don’t know the exact extent.
A few centuries later, Vikings start invading and bringing their own language (Old Norse), and that contact further influenced English. Another couple centuries later, and the Normans invade, successfully conquering England and establishing a new ruling class. This is where French starts to heavily influence the development of English.
I have written before about how class differences affected which French words got adapted into English. Words that deal with the raw, unprocessed product, such as a pig or cow, remained English. Words that dealt with the end product (and thus made it to the tables of the ruling class), became more influenced by French. For example, pork and beef.
What’s the point of all this? Why I am rambling about the French and cows?
Oui, oui, moooo-sieur, moooo-moiselle.
Now, we get to Anglish!
Anglish is variation—a sort of conlang in the context of a real language—that attempts to only use words firmly rooted in English’s origins, not words borrowed from other languages. Psh, you say. That’s easy!
Is it?
Take the following sentence:
I am a person because I use my brain—that is a fact!
Silly sentences aside, can you spot how many of those words are from foreign (mostly French) influence?
If you guessed person, because, use, and fact, you are correct! I was surprised to learn brain is derived from Old English brægen. Not a foreign word!
Anyway, it’s not so easy to omit foreign words, is it? Here is the same sentence but using only words derived from Old English:
I am a man owing to wielding my brain—that is a truth!
You can see how it’s still intelligible, though quite different than what might come naturally.
Many people have attempted to whittle away foreign influence on the English language, notably Paul Jennings, who coined the term “Anglish” in 1966 (900 years after the Battle of Hastings, where the Normans defeated the English and began their reign of Frenchy terror).
And now, the Anglish project garners fascination from all kinds of folks. Some want to exercise their linguistic chops and come up with new words as an alternate for modern terms that Old English never envisioned. For example, instead of “computer,” saying “reckoner,” which sounds a little ominous…but also rather cool.
Why might it be useful to look into Anglish?
If you’re the conlanging type like I am, you are probably interested in languages in general, as well as their history and relationships. That is one reason to consider looking a bit into Anglish, simply to compare how English could have been to what English is today. Then, you could apply some of those concepts to your own language. How has outside influence changed the languages of your world? What is the reaction to that influence? Are there factions in your world that oppose that influence and wish to “restore” the language?
It’s questions like these that might make exploring Anglish worth it. Well, where can you do such a thing? Turns out, there is a community for that, including groups on Discord, Reddit, and others. There’s even an Anglish translator.
If you’re interested in Anglish and how it could be a fun and informative way to explore your own conlang, be sure to check it out at www.anglish.org. You can find links to the various communities concerned with Anglish there, as well as some videos and history that expand upon what I wrote here. It’s got some great info!
Want some more resources? Here are a couple more sites that provide useful info on the origin of English words and some ways to “translate” modern English to Anglish.
And we’re back! In this post, we will continue discussing creating a writing system for your conlang, diving into a few more practical details to help you plan and design a writing system that fits your language. For previous posts on constructing a language, click here!
Types of Writing Systems
Omniglot has a ton of information about writing systems and languages, so check it out if you are interested. I’m just going to briefly describe the different types:
Consonant alphabets: consonants have their own letters, and vowels may be indicated by consonant letters or by diacritics (Arabic, Hebrew).
Alphabets: letters represent vowels and consonants. Each letter might have only one sound, or a letter might represent a set of sounds (English, Russian, Georgian).
Syllabic alphabets: symbols represent a syllable–a consonant and inherent vowel. The vowel might be modified by diacritics, or have its own symbol if it’s the start of a word (Hindi, Nepali).
Syllabaries: the symbols represent a syllable–usually a consonant and a vowel (Japanese, Cherokee).
Logographic: a symbol represents the meaning and the sound. They might resemble the things they represent, or they might be an abstract representation (Chinese, Egyptian hieroglyphs).
Getting some familiarity with different types of writing systems is extremely helpful for creating your own. Would you prefer an alphabet-based system for ease? Or are you going all out in creating a complex, logographic system? Take a look at Omniglot for excellent sources of inspiration, whether from the real world or another conlang.
Applying Some Basic Principles
So, after you get an idea of what kind of writing system fits your language, it’s time to start experimenting with design. This part is one of the most fun! All you need is a piece of paper and pencil, or you can use a drawing tablet if you have one.
Graph paper might be helpful for those who like lots of visual organization, but it’s not necessary. Here are some simple sketches of possible characters or letters in a writing system:
This is a great opportunity to play around with lines, curves, circles, squares, dots, and squiggles. Perhaps you want an alphabet that is composed of straight lines–try making combinations of lines and different angles. Maybe you want a more flowy script–sometimes just letting your hand go free with the curves will lead to some interesting ideas. I also sketched some characters in a more square configuration, as well as some more circular shapes (generally). Combining several of these elements will create a more complex system, if that is what you are looking for.
Korvet’s Alphabet
Korvet uses an alphabet, read from left to right. After some time of experimenting with different shapes, I came up with this:
I wanted there to be a more flowy element to the written language, something that could flow and fit together as it is written. Keep in mind that it took me a long time to perfect my ideas–this was NOT the starting product. So, remember to have patience with your own process.
You can see how I build upon certain elements. For example, when converting the basic vowels to dipthongs or making variations, I took the original letter and added/changed a different element to indicate a change in sound. The letter for /a/ loses its dot and gains a line to make the dipthong /ai/.
Here is a sentence written in Korvet:
The beautiful woman cries for her lost lover.
Some Considerations for Creating a Writing System
There a few things I recommend considering, should it be relevant to your particular conlang.
First, consider its history. If your world follows roughly the same progression in written language systems, the first media for writing would likely be stone, clay, wood, or bones. This will limit how some languages can be written. If it’s carved in stone, it probably cannot have many curves. Straight lines will be much more practical unless there is a high level of specialty involved (such as a scribe class that is paid to carve complex characters). If the writing system is painted on a surface, that allows for more curves and complexity. Using other simple shapes like wedges could also be practical (think Sumerian cuneiform). Then, as time goes on and media like paper or vellum develop, scripts can evolve with those advances.
Second, think about how practical it is to write these languages quickly. When you are writing, are you focusing on creating every letter or character perfectly? Probably not. Languages frequently develop ways to make writing more practical, such as cursive or shorthand. Consider how your language might reflect that.
Third, keep in mind the direction of reading and writing you want. English and Korvet are read from left to right, top to bottom, in rows of text. However, traditional Chinese is read from right to left, top to bottom, in columns.
Lastly, the concepts I have covered here assume a human or humanoid writer that has hands with five digits. If you are creating a world filled with nonhuman species, you could have a lot of fun coming up with ways to adapt their writing to their two-fingered hands, tentacles, claws…whatever you can imagine! For example, in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the dragon language is written with large claws and reflects that. In Arrival, the aliens use tentacles and ink blots to write.
Skyrim’s dragon languageArrival’s ink blot language
Wrapping Up
I hope you find some of these basic ideas for creating a writing system helpful. As you develop your conlang, you might find your writing system inspires changes in your phonology or syntax, or vice versa! It is not a linear progression to create a language, so keep that in mind.
Though I don’t feature the writing systems themselves in The Warriors of Bhrea, my books feature a few conlangs of my own creation! Check out my books here.
I’m back, and I have a couple friends here to join us this time! The next step of conlanging we will cover is creating a writing system. Check out this page to see all the previous posts on creating a language. They have a lot of great info and resources!
Creating a Writing System: An Interview with Two Webcomic Artists
I have with me artists/writers Kiarou and moui. They are co-creators of the web comic Messenger to Gevurah, a beautifully illustrated story with its own fleshed-out worldbuilding, including an amazing writing system! Before we launch into writing systems, here is some amazing art from their comic. Please do check out their work–you won’t regret it! You can find multiple formats and places to read their comic here.
Now tell us a bit about the writing system! What inspired it (if anything) and what are its characteristics?
moui & Kiarou: We knew right off the back that language and writing would be important themes in our story. However we definitely didn’t want to keep everything in English, simply for immersion sake. Since the world of Messenger To Gevurah is a pure fantasy, it just seemed appropriate to immerse that world even more with its own language and writing system.
When first creating your world, what things did you consider when it came to the language/writing system? How did those considerations change as you got deeper into writing the story, if they did change?
Kiarou: The funny thing is, I’m actually not very gifted in languages. It’s always been an area I struggled with in school. We knew that there was a certain aesthetic that we wanted to go with, but the system itself had to be simple. So we made it a simple phonetic translation system, where the symbols simply stand for sounds that can be phonetically translated into English! It’s not that’s complex and easy for me to keep straight.
Practically speaking, how did you go about designing the writing system?
moui & Kiarou: The aesthetics of the visual style of the writing system was actually built backwards from the logo design. We had an idea for what the series logo should look like: The title MESSENGER TO GEVURAH, but then have a subtitle of the series in a different language. Almost like in Japanese animations where they will have the English title with the Kanji title underneath it. Well, we definitely didn’t want Kanji or any other real world language, so we made up our own. We worked with the logo to see what visually looked good as a logo.
Original doodle for the logoDigital refinementNew conceptFinalized concept
Once we had our logo finalized, we made the rest of the alphabet to fit with the symbols used in the logo. Since the setting of MtG was a city that is strong, inflexible and imposing, we wanted a written language that reflected those qualities. We referenced various languages like Latin and Hebrew as a visual motif guide on how to get an alphabet to look cohesive.
Original lettering guide sketch
Did anything surprise you about creating a writing system? If so, what?
moui & Kiarou: An unintended benefit of having a made up written language was how much easier it made drawing some panels! In some scenes where there is a book with a large amount of text whose content is unimportant, it’s easier to just mash a bunch of symbols together rather than having to type something out. And it looks much better than just drawing squiggly lines as a shorthand.
What advice would you give to a new conlanger who wants to create a writing system to supplement their conlang?
moui & Kiarou: Think about the people and culture that use this written language and try to get that language to reflect the culture at large. Is the culture a complex web of hierarchies and systems? Then make the language complex and difficult, so that not every layman in that society could pick it up. Is this culture free thinking? Then a visual style that blends words together or is flexible in the scripts is a great direction to go. Even if the language doesn’t make 100% sense from a philology perspective, the visual information you can subconsciously give your audience is invaluable.
What has been the most fun or rewarding thing about developing your comic and its setting?
moui: It’s been so interesting seeing how the art style has changed over the years. Since it takes us a very long time to complete a chapter, there is a clear visual development from the first chapter of Volume 1 to the last. It’s kind of cool to see how seamless it happens, but then when you contrast the first page with the last, it’s like “wow, I’ve really improved!”. It’s exciting to wonder how the art will look after several volumes are completed!
Any final thoughts regarding designing a writing system, and worldbuilding/conlanging in general?
moui & Kiarou: Be as simple or as complex as you like, I think the important thing with these type of things is how it functions as a component in the story and in your world building! It’s very easy for us fantasy writers to get caught up in the world building process, but it’s always good to step back every once in a while and ask “what function does this serve and am I getting the most out of it?” If you keep the practical function of these story components in mind, then you will find all sorts of creative and efficient ways to incorporating language into your story!
As you can see, lots of great and practical information to get inspiration from! A big thanks to Kiarou and moui for coming over to my little corner of the internet to talking about creating a writing system. Again, check out Messenger to Gevurah… If you like manga, webcomics, art, or just a plain ol’ good story, check this hidden gem out here!
Next Time
In my next installment of this series, I will go into some more detail on writing systems and resources to draw upon as you create your own. Stay tuned for that, and check out my books on Amazon while you’re at it! They include the conlang Korvet and are epic stories to boot.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? 😅 Fear not, my little Tolkienians, we shall continue! In this post, we will go over a few ways to flesh out your language beyond just its grammar and vocabulary. If you’d like to look over my previous posts, check them out here!
Spicing up a conlang with culture
Something that gives conlangs a little “oomph” is to flesh it out and really integrate it into the culture you are creating. Culture and environment shape language and vice versa. The lives that the people live dictate what words they commonly use and their general outlook on life, expressed in language.
After reading my book, The Warriors of Bhrea: The Lost King, you might remember the concept of pakrea, or etiquette. Pakrea manifests in Korvet by using many different words and inflections to talk to and about different types of people. For instance, when talking to an aristocrat as a commoner or a servant, you would use an entirely different set of pronouns than if you were talking to a social equal. The social caste system is built into the language, thus enforcing the social strati even further.
In Po’Am, a tropical island culture, they have no word for things like snow and ice because they do not experience that weather. However, there are many words for storms and rain, differentiated by minute details that may not matter to a landlocked nation, but to a sea-faring nation, the differences could mean life or death.
These are the small details that can really bring your language to life. Play around, have some fun, and let your imagination run wild!
What about other cultures?
No culture exists in a vacuum. There is a world beyond your culture’s borders, and chances are, your culture interacts with it. Perhaps they are trade partners, perhaps they are at war. Regardless of the nature of those interactions, there are almost certainly words and cultural bits shared between the two cultures.
A really good way to spice up your conlang is to include borrowed words from other languages. They may be integrated into your conlang by changing a few sounds, but their origin will be different, and thus the word might sound a little unique in your language.
In Korvet, there are a few borrowed words from another language, Sopta–the language of the southern country Zulda. Some of these words include:
Jesvena (from Chesfena, the Zuldan Sun Goddess)
desakh (from desuq, a popular drink)
Some more borrowed words:
ajlit, slang for “awesome” or “cool” (from Bwe’at’s achelet, meaning “bird wing”)
An interesting phenomenon that occurred in English (and I’m sure other languages) was that when the Normans invaded England and essentially took over, the English language we see today reflects the social changes occurring in England. If you are a native English speaker, you might use these words every day! For words that describe the source of a meat product, the etymology reflects the more lower-class Saxon side of English: pig, cow, sheep, deer. This was because they were the ones hunting and raising these animals. However, the upper-class French Normans would have usually only seen the culinary result of hunting, thus influencing the words used to describe the meat: pork, beef, mutton, venison. Read more about this fascinating tidbit here!
The reason I bring that up is because the conqueror between two cultures might very well replace or usurp the conquered language’s words in certain ways. Yet another way you could think about fleshing out the cultural influences of your language!
Language families
Another aspect to consider is whether a conlang is part of a language family. In the world of Bhrea, Korvet is related to several languages: Pronegh, Bwe’at, and Detma, to name a few. It is also more distantly related to the Bhaida family, a group of Algaran languages.
Here is a rather rudimentary table from when I was doing some early planning:
***** Faghaena/Algara *****
***************** Bhrea *******************
Gloss
Proto-Bretasji
AncientBhaida
Aroa
Fardh
Gwae
Ancient Jolan
Korvet
Detma
Pronegh
Kewas
Bwe’at
one
sajun
runa
roa
shru
ro
sjun
jun
shun
sjun
sjua
chu
two
davti
dava
dafh
sa
fa
dva
dva
tva
dvat
dvan
dvar
three
gwal
gwae
gwaelh
gwaet
gea
gwa’al
gal
kal
gwom
gwal
ka’al
four
ngetya
nai
naio
nat
nai’e
nge
nge
nge
gae
nga
nes
five
sobad
soa
san
ona
soa
soka
soka
sokra
sog
sokan
zoka
six
ayaj
taka
tagh
taya
ta
ayaki
aya
ayan
aki
taki
aha
seven
mit
mit
bitai
pit
bi
mira
mir
mirl
viti
mita
omi
eight
ve’at
fe’a
faedh
taekh
fe’a
ve’et
vet
veh
ve’at
ve’et
set
nine
liang-ga
liya
lita
lida
le
nia
ria
niang
liya
liang
tiaz
ten
sjevet
re
reka
ret
ge
sje
sjekh
sjeng
sjet
resje
sjeche
I personally did not go into much depth beyond this chart. However, it is nice to have in the background as a reference for general patterns in changes between related languages. For example, when I want to reference the Bwe’at language, I know from this chart that the /s/ phoneme often changes to /z/, that /j/ or /ʒ/ changes to /tʃ/. Perhaps this method would be useful for you as well.
Wrapping up
There are many more things to consider when integrating your conlang into a culture–I’ve only listed a few! Here are some resources on worldbuilding/conlanging to help flesh out your ideas:
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions (this is very helpful for determining how a society and environment might influence the language)
Hello Future Me (some general, broad ways to structure your world, and writing as well)
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange (an incredible collection of resources for just about any aspect of worldbuilding you might want to explore)
Next time, we will go over writing systems. And, I will have a special guest on to showcase how he created his own writing system! Stay tuned, and don’t forget to check out my series, The Warriors of Bhrea, complete with several conlangs and unique cultures.
I hope you brought your Tolkien hats, because it’s time to get conlanging again!
Before we dive in, I hope you get a chance to check out my book series, The Warriors of Bhrea, which has its very own constructed language called Korvet. If you’d like to see a conlang in action (and have already read LOTR), take a look at my series here!
You can learn Korvet right along with Lauren. 😉
Now, back to business. In Part 1, we went over sounds. In Part 2, we created roots. And in Part 3, we created words and their structure. Check out those previous posts if you have not already!
Now, it’s time to put those words to work and make some sentences.
The Basics
Next it’s time to think about how to organize words in a meaningful way. In other words, you need to create a syntax.
How does a sentence have meaning? If you think back to elementary school, you probably learned that there are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. In English, the word order helps you determine the word’s function.
He walked to the store.
We know that the subject of the sentence is “He” because it is the first noun. If it were in another order, it would have a different meaning.
The store walked to him.
A weird sentence, and it TECHNICALLY makes sense. Grammatically, at least. I’ll let you determine the capability of a store to walk. However, that shows my point of word order mattering.
“To the store he walked” is also an acceptable sentence in English, Yoda reminds us.
Here are a few sentences that DON’T make sense because they violate English’s syntax rules:
The store him to walked.
Walked he store to.
To him walked store the.
As you can see, they don’t make a lick of sense due to the order of the words! This is why word order matters in English.
Linguistic Typology
Linguists categorize language typology by what order the subject, verb, and object go in. There can be six combinations:
Object–subject–verb
Object–verb–subject
Subject–verb–object
Subject–object–verb
Verb–subject–object
Verb–object–subject
SOV is the most common type, at about 45% of languages (such as Japanese, Latin, and Urdu). SVO follows closely behind at 42% (Mandarin, French, and Thai). English is SVO, or subject-verb-object. We can see that in the example from above:
He (subject) walked (verb) to the store (object).
Korvet is OVS, which apparently is a very rare type–about 1% of the world’s languages (and, funnily enough, Klingon). That wasn’t intentional, but somehow it ended up that way! A Korvet sentence might look like this:
bis (store) + –em- (accusative case) -jat (to) + il- (past tense) + lar (walk/go) + -ra (he) = bisemjat illarra (he walked to the store)
The typology is the most basic component to consider for your conlang. However, what about more complex sentences? If every sentence were just a subject, verb, and object, that would get old pretty fast, don’t you think?
As you flesh out your language’s syntax, you’ll want to add elements like how to make subclauses, conjunctions, and transformations. And that’s just scratching the surface, really!
Resources
Rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ll give you some resources to dive deeper into creating more complex sentence structures. Seriously, check these out, because they are incredibly helpful, and their creators are deep wells of conlanging knowledge to draw upon.
This was and still is my conlang bible! For any aspiring language builders, I highly recommend taking a look at this site. Mark Rosenfelder writes his process in an understandable yet entertaining way.
If you prefer video resources, this is a hidden gem! If you admired the usage of conlangs in media like Game of Thrones, The Witcher, and more, you can watch the creator of those languages (David Peterson) show you his process as he creates new conlangs with an experienced linguist.
Perhaps you are old school and enjoy the good ol’ days when web pages were neatly organized into walls of text with headings and paragraphs of text underneath. That’s not a knock against anything–the info is seriously useful! Rick Morneau dives deep into syntax and gives you a full run down. If you want to know pretty much all there is to syntax, this is a wonderfully informative page.
In the next part, we will go over fleshing out your conlang and adding cultural flourishes that will give the language some oomph and “realistic” feel. Until then, happy conlanging!
Hello folks! I’m back with the third installment of Conlanging 101: How to Create a Language. In Part 1, I described how to create the sounds of your language. In Part 2, I talked about creating word roots. Check them out if you have not read them yet, for they have some essential information!
Next, if you’d like to see my method applied in action, check out my series, The Warriors of Bhrea here! Not only will you get to see the fruits of my conlanging, but you’ll get an action-packed story out of the deal as well.
So what’s next when it comes to creating a language? When you have your sounds and have put together a few roots, the next step is to structure the roots to create words and meaning.
Morphology
The next step is morphology. I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “morphology”, I think of this:
Bugs and stuff.
It seems a bit like a scary and jingoistic word meant for the likes of biologists with Ph.Ds, but all morphology really means is how to build a word. But Tabby, you say, I thought I already created words. I have a whole list right here!
Yes, you did create some words, root words. However, the next step is add some complexity to those words. How will you put together sounds and words to change their meaning based on how you need to use the root word?
Dissecting Morphology (See what I did there?)
So… How does a root transform into a word? This site has a great explanation for how it all works. Check it out to get a basic understanding of the concept, if you are interested.
Words are made of pieces–the root and whatever sounds are affixed to them to create meaning. For example, dogs is made up of dog and -s. Together they mean “more than one dog.”
In Korvet, that is achieved by adding -ei to the end of a root.
Both dogs and yasjerei are made up of two morphemes–the root for “dog” and the plural marker. In this case, dog and yasjer are free morphemes because they have meaning on their own. The plural markers -s and –ei require something attached in order to mean anything, making them bound morphemes.
For you more visual learners, another way to look at it is like this:
This is a morphology tree for the word “independently”. You can see different morphemes come together to build the entire word, such as the root “depend” and -ly to make it an adverb. “Depend” is a free morpheme because it has meaning on its own, whereas -ly is a bound morpheme, needing to be attached to a verb, adjective, or adverb in order to have meaning.
Inflections
The examples -ei, -s, and -ly above are inflections, or affixes attached to words to adjust their meaning. Some other examples are -ed to make a verb past tense, -est to make adjective a superlative, or un- to indicate the negation/reversal of a verb. Some more inflections in Korvet are adding -m to a noun to make it the object of sentence.
Se (I)+ -m [object]= sem (me)
There are several types of languages when it comes to inflections:
Agglutinative – each affix has a fixed meaning (Tagalog, Turkish, Hungarian, Japanese).
Fusional – an affix may have more than one meaning (Spanish, Pashto, German, Irish)
Isolating – there are no affixes, and meanings are modified by using additional words (Mandarin, Yoruba).
Polysynthetic – nouns and other sentence parts are embedded in verbs and often come out as “sentence-words” (Nahuatl, Mohawk, Tiwi).
For most natural languages, they have elements of different types of inflection strategies.
Korvet is overall an agglutinative language–each affix has a fixed meaning. It’s pretty straight forward in that regard for simplicity’s sake–each part of speech has its own affix.
Inflections can come in the form of suffixes: -ed, -ing, and -s to indicate verb tense in English. There are also prefixes: pre-, un-, or dis-. There are even infixes, which are inserted into a root. English doesn’t have any true infixes that I know of, but something that comes close is when someone says, “Abso-fricking-lutely!”
Korvet has all three. To create an adjective, add an a- to the beginning:
a- + sjeret (beauty) = asjeret (beautiful)
To indicate being behind or after something, add -toa:
bret (tree) + –toa (behind) = brettoa (behind the tree)
To indicate being in a multiple of something, add -ei, then -ti:
jen (house) + –ei (plural) + –ti (in) = jeneiti (in the houses)
Putting It All Together
Again, now it is your turn. How do you organize all these morphemes?
Once you decide what kind of morphological structure (i.e. agglutinative, isolating, etc.) your language will follow, write down some affixes and their meaning. You could organize it by parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.), or you could separate by prefix, suffix, and infix.
If you’ve been brave enough to try out Polyglot, that probably has some good ways to organize all the morphemes you’ve created.
This will tie into the next step, which is figuring out the syntax of your language, so keep that in mind! For now, it might be best to just keep notes. Next time, I will lay out the basics of creating a syntax, or grammar structure, for your conlang.
Now, onto my second installment of How to Create a Language. In Part 1, I went over getting started with the process of creating a language and how to select some foundational sounds that will make up your language.
Creating Words and Roots
Once you have your sounds, you need to start making roots. Roots could be words, but really they are building blocks of language that have meaning. This step is quite simple, but time consuming. I won’t need to regale you with detailed steps of how to create words–it’s really easy once you have your sounds! You just…put sounds together. However, depending on how fleshed out you want your language to be, there are a lot of words. Who would have thought?
Even in Kindergarten, it can get overwhelming sometimes.
Back in the day, I used Ogden’s Basic English to create a list of words and make up a corresponding word in Korvet. It took FOREVER, but I managed to create a word for each entry into the lexicon. I kept in mind the setting and took out words that were relevant (such as “train”, since trains do not exist in Bhrea).
I came up with roots like these:
air – juwe
baby – titel
drink – sjal
I – -se
in – -ti
smile – tlamil
to/toward – -jat
watch – sant
You’ll notice how I used sounds from my sounds chart in Part 1, such as tl, sj, etc.
The internet has a wealth of resources for generating words/roots, which you’ll see listed below. As you’re creating your list, it’s handy to have a place to store the roots/words. It could be as simple as creating a list in a Word or Google Doc, or perhaps a csv or Excel/Sheets file. Heck, if you really want to, you could keep a notebook that contains all the words and roots for your language.
Okay! Now for your turn. How can you create some roots for your language? You could use my method and slave away for hours on end, or you could use some of these tools below. Explore and click around to find one (or more) you like.
This one is my favorite. It’s easy to use and goes way beyond just giving you some words. It will even give you the bare bones of a phonology and grammar structure, in addition to 200 words. This is a GREAT tool to get started and play around with some ideas and not have to do the legwork for each idea. I recommend Vulgar the most, especially for people who are just starting out.
This one is straightforward and fairly simple. This one might be good for generating lots of possibilities that you pick a few you like from. All you need to do is give the consonants, vowels, and glides in your language, then tell it the patterns your language allows. For instance, whether it allows CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) patterns, CCV, VVC, etc.
This one is a little more complex, but you can do more with it. I recommend looking at the Help section so you understand fully how to achieve your desired effects. What’s rather cool about this program is your ability to emphasize different sounds you want using an *.
This one is great if you are looking for a just a few words and you need help getting inspiration. By typing how many words you are looking for and clicking “randomize”, you will get a list of words from conlangs that already exist. They might help you generate some words when you are stuck, or you could even borrow them for your own conlang.
This is for those who want to get serious. This program contains so many features, many of which I haven’t even started exploring, but it sounds cool. It has everything, from a place to store your lexicon to a way to keep track of your grammar rules. If you want to *really* be into conlanging, this could be a great tool for you.
There you have it, folks, the next step of creating a language. Next, we will look at structuring the words and creating a morphology.
Until then, check out my books, with their very own conlang!
Over the months I’ve had my first book out, The Warriors of Bhrea: The Lost King, I’ve gotten many questions as to just how I created a language as well those expressing they wish they could do the same. Conlangs, or constructed languages, seem like they take an immense amount of work–but the truth is, they only really take as much work as you want to put into them. You could go full J. R. R. Tolkien, or you could just lay a simple ground work with a few words to get you through a scene or give a character a little extra pizzazz.
This is the first part of a series detailing the step-by-step process I used to build the language I use in my books, Korvet. I created a full set of phonemes, morphemes, lexicon, syntax, and more. Don’t let those words intimidate you–I will explain everything as we go! These are steps you can follow to whatever degree is best for you. I’ll also provide some GREAT conlang resources and tools along the way.
Strap in, and welcome to part 1 of Tabby’s conlang tutorial, guide, blog, or whatever you want to call it. 😎 We’re gonna do some Tolkienin’.
First things first. Why do you want to create a conlang?
It’s important to consider this before getting started, that way you only do as much as you need to and don’t overwhelm yourself with complex details if you don’t need to. Some potentials reasons would be:
for a book–likely a fantasy book–and characters will speak this language
for an original character creation–and you will need some interesting words and phrases to flesh out this character
for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign–characters will speak words from it, locations and items will be named according the language’s conventions
for fun–you just want to create a fleshed out world complete with how its denizens speak (for the record, this one is not lame…this is how J. R. R. Tolkien started out!)
Find your reason and use it to determine just how in-depth you need to go. Do you just need some words and phrases, or do you need to plan the whole shebang? Using your why as your guide, you can go through my step by step process and decide how far you need to go with each step to achieve your goal.
Next up: researching and looking at examples!
This step might seem insignificant, but it is worth it. Trust me, you will WANT to look at other languages (real and constructed) to get inspiration and ideas for your conlang! Let’s take a look at a range of language types, both natural and constructed. Don’t feel the need to look through all of these, but hopefully a few them will give you some ideas of different sounds, tones, and feels you could explore with your language. Make sure to check out some of the audio and video to hear some samples as well!
The pinnacle of haute couture language creation. 🧐
While you’re exploring languages, pay attention to their sounds and tone, then think of your language. Do you want your language to sound fluid and soft, or how about harsh and blocky? Do you want it to have tones and sound sing-songy, or will speakers use other kinds of inflection? This segues perfectly into the first real step of constructing a language…
Step 1: Creating the sounds of your language
Every language is made up of a set of basic sounds. Those sounds can generally be divided into consonants and vowels. Linguists organize those sounds into fancy charts. For example, the consonant chart for North American English is below:
Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation
bilabial
labio-dental
dental
alveolar
palatal
velar
glottal
stop
p b
t d
k g
fricative
f v
θ ð
s z
ʃ ʒ
h
affricate
t̠ʃ d̠ʒ
nasal
m
n
η
liquid
l
r
glide
w
y
North American English Phonology
If that looks like a bunch of mumbo jumbo, and you’re pretty much right! However, it’s really quite simple once you know what columns and rows mean.
Place of articulation indicates where in your mouth you make the sound. Sounds with your lips are bilabial, such as the /m/ sound, because you are pressing your lips together and push air through your vocal cords to make a sound.
Manner of articulation is how the airstream is affected as it flows from the lungs and out the nose and mouth. To revisit the /m/ sound again, it is nasal because the air goes through your vocal cords and out your nose. In each column, consonants can be voice or voiceless. Voiceless does not use the vocal cords, like p, t, and s. Voiced use the vocal cords, like b, d, and z. In the tables, I have the voiceless consonants on the left side of each column and the voiced on the right.
Where in the mouth different types of consonants are produced.
I don’t want to bore you with long lists describing the difference between bilabial and palatal, so check out this video on the subject! It breaks it down very well.
There is also a chart for vowels, but to be honest, that adds another layer of complexity may be unnecessary if you don’t want to get into all the subtle differences between each vowel sound. To keep it simple, I’ve stuck with your good ol’ a, e, i, o, and u, with a couple minor variations for e and i and the dipthongs au, ei, and ai. If you’re interested in learning more, you can hear all the different vowels sounds here.
These are the Korvet consonants:
Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation
bilabial
labio-dental
alveolar
postaveolar
palatal
velar
stop
p b
t d
k g
fricative
v
s
ʒ ɹ̠˔
x
affricate
d̠ʒ
flap
ɾ
nasal
m
n
η
liquid
l
lateral fricative
ɬ
glide
w
y
Korvet Phonology
You may notice that there are several differences between Korvet and English. For instance, Korvet doesn’t have an /f/ or /h/, but it has a /ɹ̠˔/, which is a sound that doesn’t appear in that many languages. According to Wikipedia, it only appears in some dialects of Dutch, Thai, and Mandarin. The closest way I can describe it is that it is a mix between an r and a j. You can listen to what it sounds like here! This sound is found at the end of Korvet words that end in r, like agesjinar. Another is ɬ, which is most famously known as the Welsh ll, like in Llywelyn. In Korvet, that sound is made when l is combined with an aleovlar consonant, like t or j. The name Tlense has this sound.
So all that was a roundabout way of thinking about what sounds you want to have in your language, because it all begins there. I think the sounds can say a lot about “the feel” of a language. I wanted Korvet to have a soft and flowy feel, so there aren’t that many fricatives or affricates, and there are a few glides and liquids.
Once you have your sounds, starting putting them together. Have some fun with it! Some examples of common sounds in English are mp, nt, fr…and adding vowels in the mix. Plass and dilk are words that could be in English because they use common sound combinations, but vlar and mtib could not be from English.
In Korvet, I allowed some unusual sounds to be put together, such as tl, jl, vl, dv, and sv. There are also some familiar combinations, like nt, gl, sk, and lt.
Romanization
As you pick and combine sounds for your language, you will need to consider how it will be represented in the Roman alphabet. In other words, how will the English-speaking normies read your word? If they saw a word like h3rḗḱs, I wouldn’t blame them for running away. A more palatable way to put it would be hraex, or perhaps hraeks. While still foreign-looking, it is written only with Roman letters, thus being much less intimidating to read.
When creating Korvet, I kept in mind how the language would look in with Roman letters. Despite having several sounds that don’t correlate to any English letter, there were some approximations that would do the job. For example, there is no single letter that represents the /x/ sound, so kh would do (this is the common spelling for it anyway). English also doesn’t have a consistent way of spelling the /ʒ/ sound (like in measure or decision), so I decided sj would be the consistent spelling for that sound in Korvet.
Now I have a way to spell out my langauge:
Nasj’jos, Attriminda kamse. Bhreata yaserase. Korveta etsjwoten? Sem ettongle’anen?
[Hello, I’m Attriminda. I live in Bhrea. Do you speak Korvet? Can you understand me?]
While it doesn’t look like English, it also doesn’t look so foreign that it will be impossible to parse out how to pronounce it.
Wrapping up
I’ve given you a lot of information–now it’s time to go try some things on your own! Write down some sounds you want to use for your language–remember that there are many, many potential sounds to choose from. Some are very rare. Don’t be afraid to explore those as well.
You can write down your sounds in a list, or if you want a more organized visual representation, here is a blank consonant chart for you to play around with:
bilabial
labio-dental
alveolar
postaveolar
palatal
velar
stop
fricative
affricate
flap
nasal
lateral liquid
lateral fricative
glide
And next time, we will go over how to create a lexicon, or list of words. You are going to love the resources I’ve found for you–it will make compiling lists of words easy and fun! Click here to go to Part 2!
