Introduction to Conlanging

Conlanging (constructed language creation) is the art and science of creating new languages. Whether you're building a language for a fantasy world, exploring linguistic concepts, or just having fun, this guide will teach you the fundamentals.

What is a Conlang?

A constructed language (conlang) is a language that has been deliberately created rather than having evolved naturally. Famous examples include:

• Esperanto — designed for international communication
• Quenya & Sindarin — Tolkien's Elvish languages
• Klingon — created for Star Trek
• Dothraki & High Valyrian — from Game of Thrones
• Na'vi — from Avatar

Components of a Language

Every language consists of several interconnected systems:

How to Use This Platform

Conlanger provides tools for each component of language creation. The typical workflow is:

1. Create a language on the home page
2. Define your phonology — choose sounds, syllable structures
3. Build your morphology — create grammar categories and affixes
4. Set up syntax — define word order and sentence patterns
5. Add vocabulary — build your lexicon
6. Create a writing system (optional)
7. Write texts — practice using your language

Getting Started

Creating Your First Language

From the home page, click "New Language" to create your conlang. You'll need to provide:

• Name — What is your language called?
• Native Name (optional) — What do speakers call it in the language itself?
• Description — A brief overview of your language's concept

Design Philosophy

Before diving into the technical details, consider some high-level questions:

The Overview Page

Once you create a language, you'll see the Overview page. This dashboard shows:

• Quick statistics about your language
• Navigation tabs to each section (Phonology, Morphology, etc.)
• A summary of what you've created so far

Phonology

Phonology is the study of sounds in language. It's typically the first system you'll design because everything else builds on it.

Phonemes vs. Phones

A phoneme is a meaningful sound unit — changing it changes the word's meaning. A phone is any actual sound produced.

Consonants

Consonants are classified by three features:

Place of Articulation

Where in the mouth the sound is made:

• Bilabial — both lips (p, b, m)
• Labiodental — lip and teeth (f, v)
• Dental/Alveolar — tongue and teeth/ridge (t, d, s, n, l)
• Postalveolar — behind the alveolar ridge (ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ)
• Palatal — tongue and hard palate (j, ɲ, c)
• Velar — tongue and soft palate (k, g, ŋ)
• Uvular — tongue and uvula (q, ʁ)
• Glottal — in the throat (h, ʔ)

Manner of Articulation

How the airflow is modified:

• Plosives/Stops — complete blockage then release (p, t, k)
• Fricatives — turbulent airflow (f, s, ʃ)
• Affricates — stop + fricative (tʃ, dʒ)
• Nasals — air through nose (m, n, ŋ)
• Approximants — little obstruction (w, j, l, ɹ)
• Trills — vibrating articulator (r)

Voicing

Whether the vocal cords vibrate:

• Voiced — vocal cords vibrate (b, d, g, z)
• Voiceless — no vibration (p, t, k, s)

Vowels

Vowels are classified by:

• Height — how open the mouth is (high/close, mid, low/open)
• Backness — tongue position (front, central, back)
• Roundedness — lip shape (rounded or unrounded)

Allophones

Allophones are predictable variants of a phoneme in specific environments. They don't change meaning — native speakers often don't notice the difference.

Using Allophones in Conlanger

To add an allophone:

1. Go to the Phonology page, Allophones section
2. Click "Add Allophone"
3. Select the parent phoneme
4. Enter the allophonic pronunciation
5. Describe the environment using standard notation

Environment Notation

Phonotactics

Phonotactics are the rules for which sounds can appear together. This defines your syllable structure and consonant clusters.

Syllable Structure

A syllable has three parts:

• Onset — initial consonant(s)
• Nucleus — the vowel (required)
• Coda — final consonant(s)

Common patterns (C = consonant, V = vowel):

Using Phonotactics in Conlanger

Define your syllable patterns in the Phonotactics section. These are used by the Word Generator tool to create words that follow your rules.

Sound Changes

Sound changes show how pronunciation evolves over time. They're written as rules:

A → B / X_Y

Meaning: "A becomes B when preceded by X and followed by Y"

Morphology

Morphology is the study of word structure — how words are built from smaller meaningful pieces.

What is a Morpheme?

A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning. Words can contain one or more morphemes.

Types of Morphemes

By Position

• Root/Stem — the core meaning (walk, book, happy)
• Prefix — attaches before (un-, re-, pre-)
• Suffix — attaches after (-ing, -ed, -ness)
• Infix — inserts inside (Tagalog: sulat → s-um-ulat)
• Circumfix — wraps around (German: machen → ge-mach-t)

By Function

• Derivational — creates new words (happy → happiness)
• Inflectional — shows grammar (walk → walks, walked)

Grammar Categories

Grammar categories are the features that words can express through inflection. Different word classes have different categories.

Common Noun Categories

Common Verb Categories

Using Grammar Categories in Conlanger

1. Go to Morphology → Grammar Categories
2. Click "Add Category"
3. Enter the category name (e.g., "Number")
4. Add values with abbreviations (e.g., "singular:SG", "plural:PL")
5. Select which word classes this applies to

Allomorphs

Just like phonemes have allophones, morphemes can have allomorphs — different forms in different environments.

Inflection Classes

Languages often have multiple patterns for the same inflection. These are called inflection classes (or declensions for nouns, conjugations for verbs).

Using Inflection Classes in Conlanger

1. Go to Morphology → Inflection Classes
2. Click "Add Class"
3. Name it (e.g., "1st Declension", "Strong Verbs")
4. Select the word class (noun, verb, etc.)
5. Define the paradigm — all the forms with their features

Morphological Typology

Languages fall on a spectrum of how they use morphology:

Syntax

Syntax is the study of sentence structure — how words combine into phrases and sentences.

Word Order

The basic word order describes how Subject (S), Verb (V), and Object (O) are arranged.

Word Order Correlations

Basic word order tends to correlate with other patterns. These aren't strict rules, but strong tendencies:

Head-Initial Languages (like SVO, VSO)

• Prepositions: in the house
• Noun-Adjective: casa grande (Spanish: "house big")
• Noun-Genitive: house of stone
• Auxiliary-Verb: will go

Head-Final Languages (like SOV)

• Postpositions: house in
• Adjective-Noun: big house
• Genitive-Noun: stone house
• Verb-Auxiliary: go will

Sentence Types

Questions

Languages form questions in different ways:

• Intonation only — same words, different pitch
• Question particle — add a word like "ka" (Japanese)
• Word order change — "You are going" → "Are you going?"
• Question words — who, what, where, etc.

Negation

Where does the negative go?

• Before verb — "I not go" (Japanese, many languages)
• After verb — "I go not" (German subordinate clauses)
• Around verb — French "ne...pas" wraps the verb
• Negative verb — a special verb form (Finnish)
• Multiple negation — "I don't know nothing" (many dialects)

Syntax Rules in Conlanger

Use the Syntax page to define your language's patterns. The rules use phrase structure notation:

S → NP VP
VP → V NP
NP → (Det) (Adj) N

Meaning:

• A sentence (S) consists of a noun phrase (NP) and verb phrase (VP)
• A verb phrase consists of a verb (V) and noun phrase
• A noun phrase has an optional determiner, optional adjective, and noun

Lexicon

The lexicon is your language's vocabulary — all its words and their meanings.

Word Classes

Most languages have these basic word classes (parts of speech):

• Nouns — people, places, things, ideas
• Verbs — actions, states, events
• Adjectives — describe nouns
• Adverbs — modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs
• Adpositions — prepositions or postpositions (in, on, under)
• Pronouns — stand in for nouns (I, you, they)
• Determiners — the, a, this, that
• Conjunctions — and, or, but, because
• Interjections — oh!, wow!, ouch!

Creating Words

The Word Generator

Use the Word Generator (Tools page) to create words that follow your phonotactics. This ensures consistency in how words sound.

Semantic Fields

A good approach is to build vocabulary by semantic field:

• Basic verbs (be, have, do, go, see, say...)
• Body parts
• Family terms
• Numbers
• Colors
• Nature (water, fire, earth, sky...)
• Common objects

Etymology

Words have histories! Tracking etymology makes your language feel more authentic:

• Compound words — sun + rise = sunrise
• Derivation — happy → happiness, unhappy
• Borrowing — words from other languages
• Semantic shift — meaning changes over time

Word Relations

Track relationships between words:

• Synonyms — similar meaning (big, large)
• Antonyms — opposite meaning (hot, cold)
• Hypernyms — more general (animal → dog)
• Hyponyms — more specific (dog → poodle)
• Derived from — morphological relationship

Writing Systems

Creating a writing system is optional but adds depth to your conlang. There are several types to choose from.

Types of Writing Systems

Writing Direction

• Left to Right (LTR) — Latin, Greek, Cyrillic
• Right to Left (RTL) — Arabic, Hebrew
• Top to Bottom (TTB) — Traditional Chinese, Mongolian
• Boustrophedon — alternating directions (ancient Greek)

Creating Glyphs

When designing symbols, consider:

• Simplicity — can it be written quickly?
• Distinctiveness — are similar sounds distinct enough?
• Aesthetics — does it look good?
• Internal logic — do related sounds have related shapes?

Romanization

Even with a unique script, you'll want a romanization system for practical use. Define consistent rules for writing your language in Latin letters.

Texts & Interlinear Glossing

Writing texts in your conlang brings it to life. Interlinear glossing helps you (and others) understand the structure.

What is Interlinear Glossing?

An interlinear gloss shows each word broken down with its morphemes, their meanings, and a translation. It's the standard format linguists use.

Leipzig Glossing Rules

The Leipzig Glossing Rules are the standard conventions. Key principles:

• Morpheme boundaries marked with hyphens: walk-ed
• Grammatical categories in SMALL CAPS: walk-PST
• Fused meanings joined with dots: 3SG.PRES
• Standard abbreviations for common categories

Common Abbreviations

Using the Texts Page

1. Create a new text with a title and optional source
2. Enter the original text in your conlang
3. Add a free translation
4. Add interlinear lines for detailed glossing
5. Export to LaTeX or HTML for sharing

Translation Exercises

Good texts to start with:

• The North Wind and the Sun — classic linguistics text
• Tower of Babel — shows off different grammatical features
• Simple dialogues — greetings, introductions
• Your own stories — most satisfying!

Tools

Conlanger includes several tools to help you build and analyze your language.

Word Generator

Automatically creates words following your phonotactic rules.

1. Set minimum and maximum syllable counts
2. Define syllable structures (CV, CVC, etc.)
3. Generate words
4. Select the ones you like and add to lexicon

Sound Change Applier

Apply your sound change rules to words in bulk. Great for:

• Evolving a proto-language into daughter languages
• Seeing how words would change over time
• Testing sound change rules

Paradigm Generator

Enter a word stem and inflection class to see all its forms. Useful for checking that your morphology is consistent.

Minimal Pairs Finder

Finds words in your lexicon that differ by only one sound. Minimal pairs prove that two sounds are distinct phonemes.

Phonotactic Probability

Analyzes how "natural" a word sounds based on phoneme frequencies in your lexicon. Higher scores mean the word uses common patterns.