Conlanging 101: How to Create a Language, Part 2

I’m back, baby!

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?

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.

Vulgar

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.

GenWord

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.

Awkwords

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 *.

Conlang Word Generator

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.

Polyglot

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!