I just finished the interior layout of my debut novel that will be coming out in November, The Lost Text of the Omen Bird, which was a more complicated endeavor than the typical work of fiction. The book is framed as the recovered logs of an ancient civilization, and makes extensive use of their language and the script I developed for writing it.
I'll admit, I did kind of pull a Tolkien with this one: I wrote the language first, and part of my motivation for writing this book was to create more space for that language to live. It's one of three languages I created within this universe, which is my most fully developed sandbox and one I've used for other stories (and plan to use for more). Of the three languages I’ve written, the one used in The Lost Text of the Omen Bird is the closest to functional. It's still definitely a work in progress, but it has a full set of grammar rules and a dictionary of around 3,000 words. I haven't fully learned my own language to the point that I could speak it off the cuff, but I have translated things into it and—while I do occasionally still stumble across things I haven't figured out have to say yet, and have to stop and fill in those gaps in the language before I can keep going—it does function in that sense.
I'm the kind of person that tends to learn things best by doing them. Probably the process would've been a lot faster and easier if I'd taken a class in how to write languages from the start, and I'm sure there are tons of options out there for people who want that more formalized kind of entry point. But for other folks like me, who get a kick out of the learning process itself and aren't in a rush to “finish” the language, here are some rough steps you can take and some resources that can help you out at each stage.
Really, actually learn English.
Some of you might already be ahead of the game here, if you actually really paid attention during English class or have a job like an English teacher or a professional editor. But most people, even those who write for a living and know how to write correct sentences, don't fully understand the official rules of the English language. Someone who's a native speaker of a language picks up knowledge of its rules through use and repetition. They can point to a sentence and tell you whether it's right or wrong, but not necessarily why.
I made my first attempts at writing a language before I worked as an editor, when I was one of those writers who knew how English basically worked but hadn't fully studied its architecture. Once I started trying to think about the language beyond just building its vocabulary, my lack of deep grammar knowledge was a definite roadblock.
If you need a refresher on rules of the English language, the first resource I'd recommend you use is the good old Elements of Style. It's not that long and it's written in pretty straightforward language, so you don't need to be a linguist to understand the concepts it's talking about. Now, because it's fairly short, Strunk & White doesn't cover every single detail of the language that you might need to think about when you're writing your own language. For deeper exploration of English grammar, there are a couple of excellent free online resources:
- Purdue Owl – A comprehensive and easy to search guide to various grammar concepts
- Khan Academy – Website that offers free courses in a range of subjects, including a very thorough one on grammar
Studying resources like this can help you clarify exactly why certain grammar rules function the way they do, along with the specific terminology for grammatical concepts. That's not something that's important for most daily users, so it's easy to forget, but once you're trying to write your own language it's helpful to know what to call grammatical concepts so you can research different ways to approach them.
Study some other languages.
Studying other natural languages (those that originated organically and are used in the real world) can be useful as a conlanger for a few reasons. For one, it gives you experience with what it's like to learn a new language from scratch. This is useful practice in building the foundations of a language in your brain, something you'll need to replicate if you're writing your own. It also gives you some exposure to alternate approaches to language, aside from what you'll find in English, which can help you to envision how you might want to structure things.
You don't necessarily need to become fluent in another language to learn from it. In fact, it can be more helpful to get a baseline introduction to a few different languages, taking a kind of general survey of how different cultures have approached their communication system.
Some useful free resources to learn about different languages include:
- Duolingo – a free language learning app that has a wide range of languages to choose from
- Omniglot – an online encyclopedia of languages and writing systems, that can give you a basic introduction and further reading resources for a huge variety of different languages
- 7,000 Languages – language learning classes and information on endangered languages. Currently its courses are primarily focused on indigenous American languages, though they have plans to expand as they develop more courses
- Open Culture – a website with free learning resources on a variety of topics, including several focused on language learning. Resources are listed for over 45 different languages currently
It can also be useful to check out some constructed languages that other people have already created and see how they approached it. A couple of those resources listed above can also be tools for learning about conlangs, including Duolingo (which has courses in Klingon, High Valyrian, and Esperanto) and Omniglot, which has info on several constructed scripts.
Here are some other resources to learn about constructed languages:
- Toki Pona – A simple constructed language with its own script that is an excellent model for a simple, easily learnable conlang
- Esperanto – The most popular constructed language worldwide, Esperanto has its own organization (Universala Esperanto-Asocio) that organizes a yearly conference.
- The Klingon Language Institute – One of the most popular fictional conlangs, Klingon speakers also have their own annual meeting, along with language learning resources and other info on their website
- Ardalambion – An established resource for information on Tolkien's languages
- Tolkien Gateway – A fan-created Wiki focused on Tolkien's universe, it also has some fairly detailed information on many of the languages used in the world
This obviously isn't a comprehensive list of existing constructed languages (I wrote another blog post in the past with info on a few other ones that have been created throughout history), but these are among the most well-known constructed languages, and can be a good starting foundation if you're just getting into things.
Get some insight from the pros.
There are a few big names in the conlanging world who are good people to look into if you're interested in getting into it yourself. One of these is Mark Rosenfelder, a linguist and conlanger who has written a few different books on the subject worth checking out.
Another well-known conlanger is David J. Peterson , who's created languages for a lot of TV shows including Game of Thrones. He also has a YouTube series, The Art of Language Invention, that's worth a watch for conlangers, and wrote a book by the same name that's become one of the most oft-cited texts for modern conlangers to learn the craft.
Peterson was also one of the founders of the Language Creation Society, a global organization for conlangers that can be another helpful resource. The “Conlanger's Library” portion of their website is a great place to check for books, articles, and other resources to help you write languages.
Other potentially helpful resources
If you're planning to write your own original script for the language, turning it into a font lets you use it much more easily. I use FontStruct to do this, and it's served me well thus far. There are other free tools out there you can use to do the same thing, too, like FontForge and Glyphr Studio, so there are a few different ways you can go about turning your script into a font that you can type in. With FontStruct, you assign each keystroke to a specific symbol that you create within the interface, then you can export it as a True-Type Font that you can install on any computer.
You can also use online tools for building your language's dictionary. I'm a bit old-school here, and I still have my languages just saved in Word documents. A Google Doc or word processor is a functional way to organize your words, though arguably not the most efficient. If you want to give your language an actual codified, searchable dictionary, you can use the open-source Lexonomy platform to create one for free.
As a last word, remember that other folks who also write languages can be one of your best resources, especially if you're trying to do something that's very different from existing languages. There aren't really any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to writing languages, which is awesome from a creativity standpoint but also means you don't necessarily have a clear roadmap to follow when you're doing it. You'll find forums and Discords on a lot of those websites I linked to. There's also at least one subreddit (r/conlangs), and are plenty of similar groups across the vast expanse that is social media and the internet at large. Joining a community of fellow conlangers can be helpful for ideas and problem solving (plus a chance to geek out with fellow language nerds).
See similar posts: