Conlangers

With it being the holiday season, I've been pretty busy, so I'm sorry about the lack of posts recently. But wow, I got a lot of response to the card game post, so I wanted to post more about it! I thought that today I would write some more about the additional functionality I am building into the game.

I am designing the game to be playable with a group but also for solo play. With solo play, I figured you could use it to generate a random language, or you could put up the cards that would mostly describe your own conlang, and then be able to play around with the language by substituting, adding, or taking away some of the cards. Also, you could more easily understand other conlangs by putting up the cards that create that conlang. After doing this a few times, you would sense patterns between the cards for how certain languages sound and behave. If you an amateur linguist (like me), developing a recognition for these patterns could be really helpful to wrapping your head around and learning linguistic principles.

In addition to all this, after I'm done making all the cards, I want to make a flash game which you can play, and make it even easier to play with language, being able to click and drag cards around and such. Also, I want to make it so that you can develop a conlang in the game, and have it spit out a long code which you can copy and paste. Then you could post about your language online, include the code, and others would be able to paste the code into their flash game and see your conlang pop up on the screen! I think could work much more quickly than having to write out your entire phonology, morphology, syntax, grammer, etc. Especially if the code is in a file that can include a lexicon and notes on the language. It could make Conlang Relays a smoother process and more fun! But thats probably a couple years away still.

Please comment if you have any helpful ideas or if you think this can't be done. I'm interested to hear your opinion either way!

Here is the handout made by John Quijada for his talk at the 2nd LCC:

If you click on the image, it will take you to my Flickr account and you can see the full-size version; even print it out if you like.

It seemed like such a basic idea when I first heard it, but it really is at the heart of making a language: how do you want your language to sound? And even deeper than that, what character does your language have?

There was a word John showed us: sprachgefuhl. It means "the character of a language," among other things. We all know that French is a pretty soft language, the "language of love," and so forth. We know that Japanese, German, and Norwegian sound completely different from each other. These languages have a very different "feel" from each other. How will your language feel different? Or do you want it to feel different? Maybe you want your conlang to feel similar to some other language. What characteristics will your language have that will make it unique? Or what are the unique characteristics of the language you want to emulate? On this handout, John Quijada remarks on how Quenya (Tolkien's elvish language) sound nothing like Polynesian or African Bantu languages, despite having similar phonemic inventories. Interesting, huh?

There are a lot of options on this sheet that could go over your head if you look at them all at once. I suggest a strategy or exercise (whichever you prefer): consider each item individually, write out your selection on a page somewhere, then look at your answers and try to think out how this language might look or sound. Generate some words and put together a few sentences. Then go through it again with a new page and change a few things. See how it changes and compares to the last page. Try this a few times and get a feel for how the pieces of language fit together and change the overall picture of a language.

Here is the handout made by John Quijada for his talk at the 2nd LCC:

If you click on the image, it will take you to my Flickr account and you can see the full-size version; even print it out if you like.

It seemed like such a basic idea when I first heard it, but it really is at the heart of making a language: how do you want your language to sound? And even deeper than that, what character does your language have?

There was a word John showed us: sprachgefuhl. It means "the character of a language," among other things. We all know that French is a pretty soft language, the "language of love," and so forth. We know that Japanese, German, and Norwegian sound completely different from each other. These languages have a very different "feel" from each other. How will your language feel different? Or do you want it to feel different? Maybe you want your conlang to feel similar to some other language. What characteristics will your language have that will make it unique? Or what are the unique characteristics of the language you want to emulate? On this handout, John Quijada remarks on how Quenya (Tolkien's elvish language) sound nothing like Polynesian or African Bantu languages, despite having similar phonemic inventories. Interesting, huh?

There are a lot of options on this sheet that could go over your head if you look at them all at once. I suggest a strategy or exercise (whichever you prefer): consider each item individually, write out your selection on a page somewhere, then look at your answers and try to think out how this language might look or sound. Generate some words and put together a few sentences. Then go through it again with a new page and change a few things. See how it changes and compares to the last page. Try this a few times and get a feel for how the pieces of language fit together and change the overall picture of a language.

Here is the handout made by John Quijada for his talk at the 2nd LCC:

If you click on the image, it will take you to my Flickr account and you can see the full-size version; even print it out if you like.

It seemed like such a basic idea when I first heard it, but it really is at the heart of making a language: how do you want your language to sound? And even deeper than that, what character does your language have?

There was a word John showed us: sprachgefuhl. It means "the character of a language," among other things. We all know that French is a pretty soft language, the "language of love," and so forth. We know that Japanese, German, and Norwegian sound completely different from each other. These languages have a very different "feel" from each other. How will your language feel different? Or do you want it to feel different? Maybe you want your conlang to feel similar to some other language. What characteristics will your language have that will make it unique? Or what are the unique characteristics of the language you want to emulate? On this handout, John Quijada remarks on how Quenya (Tolkien's elvish language) sound nothing like Polynesian or African Bantu languages, despite having similar phonemic inventories. Interesting, huh?

There are a lot of options on this sheet that could go over your head if you look at them all at once. I suggest a strategy or exercise (whichever you prefer): consider each item individually, write out your selection on a page somewhere, then look at your answers and try to think out how this language might look or sound. Generate some words and put together a few sentences. Then go through it again with a new page and change a few things. See how it changes and compares to the last page. Try this a few times and get a feel for how the pieces of language fit together and change the overall picture of a language.