shahryarsstories asked: Hey, I'm starting a conlang for a book I'm writing, any advice on where to start?

shahryarsstories asked:
Hey, I'm starting a conlang for a book I'm writing, any advice on where to start? I already have a lot of words and sayings but I doubt there's any shred of consistency because I was having fun just making up words. I'd love to know if I should start over or if I should just go with it and make a grammar system to make the words and sayings make sense grammatically 😂

Well, that’s really good! Nothing better than the thrill of creating new words. Okay, if you are looking for consistency that’s easy enough. You already have a certain corpus (words, phrases, names, etc); the thing now is to see whether some patterns emerge, whether the words kind of look like coming from the same place.

For instance: even if you are not very linguistically inclined you will note that Erik and Amadeo come from two very different languages. The idea is that all your words look either “Erik” or “Amadeo” but that they follow a pattern. The pattern doesn’t have to be those two, I’m just giving an example there. This is called your phonotactics, and it’s the make-up of the conlang. So, how are your words? Do they tend to end mostly on vowel or consonant? If consonant, which ones? Always the same or pretty much any of them. This will all inform you of how your conlang will look like.

When you move onto the grammar you will be able to make small words based on this pattern not to disrupt the general “feel” of the language. Or maybe you discover you have two very different (even if related) languages! That’s even more fun!

Play with it, have fun, and remember you can ask me anything! 😊 thanks for this ask! Hope to have helped you!

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