Roadmap and introduction

So here it is! Our first-ever post. Here I want to set a basic framework and some goals for my first ever conlang, which I’ll refer to as “Lorem” until I come up with a name for it¹ later down the road.

Roadmap

Based on most sources I’ve seen,² the process of putting together a language can be grouped into a few main steps. (If you don’t know what these mean yet, don’t worry, I’ll go over them one at a time in future posts!)

• Phonology

  • Phonetic system (the sounds that exist in a language)
  • Phonotactics (how the sounds can be put together)
• Writing system / Orthography

• Morphology³

  • Derivational morphology (how new words are made from existing words)
• Syntax (the order words can go in in a sentence)
• Lexicon (building the vocabulary)
• Pragmatics (how the language is used in context, e.g. slang)

This isn’t necessarily in order, and I’ll probably come back to revisit, for example, certain parts of the morphology as I’m working on the syntax, and add words as I think about pragmatics. But this should serve as a decent general roadmap for what I’m hoping to accomplish.

Types of conlang

So there are many different types of conlang, which you can also hear about in The Art of Language Invention.

Type of conlang	Description	Examples
Personal language	A language designed for personal use	IS by Stuart Davis, "Pegakibo" by Jack Eisenmann
Stealthlang / Secret language	Designed for you and a small group of people to communicate secretly with, and should be hard for a bystander to understand	"Rose" by Deena Larson
(International) Auxlang / Auxiliary language	Designed for everybody around the world to speak and understand. Should be easy to learn for a wide range of native languages	Esperanto by L. L. Zamenhof, "Interlingua" by the International Auxiliary Language Association
Fictional language	Designed for speakers in a fictional world	Klingon by Mark Okrand, Newspeak by George Orwell
Jokelang / Parody language	Designed to be silly, e.g. to make business transactions unnecessarily complex	Yešqūr by William Spruiell, Europanto by Diego Marani
Naturalistic language	Designed to feel like a plausible natural language	Quenya by J. R. R. Tolkien, Dothraki by David Peterson
Artlang / Artistic language	Designed for artistic purposes	Tsehvu by u/koallary on Reddit
Engelang / Engineered language	Test specific features of language	Lojban, by the Logical Language Group, Ro by Rev. Edward Powell Foster

Lorem is going to be a naturalistic fictional language, meaning that it should be plausible for my (humanoid) fictional species to naturally develop. That means, don’t expect it to be entirely consistent! I’ll shake things up with irregular verbs and things like that when it makes sense.

Goals

My goals for my first ever conlang are:

1. It should seem as realistic as possible. This includes being at a reasonable level of difficulty and not being entirely regular. I should be able to look at it and say, hey, that’s something that this intelligent fictional species could definitely have naturally developed. I ultimately hope to have multiple languages for different species of my world, evolving from a common proto-language. I might be biting off more than I can chew for my first project here, but hey, why not give it a go!
2. It should be understandable and pronounceable by humans. I mean, what’s the point of a language if we can’t speak it, right?
3. It should synergize with its speakers. For example, see how Inuktut has several different words for different types of snow. I hope to include things like idioms and cultural proverbs as I flesh out the speakers of the language through my worldbuilding. Since I’m trying to make my fantasy species distinct from human ethnicity as well, I don’t want to make my language simply an amalgamation of natlangs either.

My personal end goal, and the point of this blog, is to create an understandable grammar for this conlang, a decent-sized lexicon (aka vocabulary) and hopefully integrate it into my worldbuilding along the way.

Here we go! My first step is to get started on the phonology by putting together a phonetic inventory — a list of all the sounds the language is going to have. See you in the next post!