Category Archives: conlang design

How not to put philosophy into a language

Posted on February 10, 2013 by matthewdeanmartin

This is a follow up to my last post, “Conlangs for expressing a philosophy“. I suppose one can use any vessel for expressing a philosophy you’d like, a prose book, fortune cookies, songs, or even a refrigerator manual or a … Continue reading →

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Conlangs for expressing a philosophy

Posted on January 22, 2013 by matthewdeanmartin

toki pona was supposed to be something about daoism, in my experience, it missed that design goal. I think the historical philosophical languages were supposed to be good for discussing philosophy in general, or approached derivational morphology in sort of … Continue reading →

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365 Conlang thingies beyond #Lexember

Posted on January 5, 2013 by matthewdeanmartin

So what conlaning methodolgy is most likely to capture the minds and hearts of recreational linguists? One based on portmanteus of month names and chapter headers from your linguistics text books of course. Did I even have to answer that? … Continue reading →

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Conlang Taxonomy Part n+1

Posted on December 15, 2012 by matthewdeanmartin

The current most common mental model for classifying conlangs is the Gnoli triangle, the idea that all fake languages are auxlangs, artlangs, or engelangs, or some combination of the three. If you substitute in Esperanto, Elvish, and Lojban you have … Continue reading →

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Conlang Design- Challenges I’m currently facing

Posted on October 8, 2012 by matthewdeanmartin

It is about 30-Day-Conlang time again, so I’m back to the drawing board. Maybe I should follow this up with the rules of the 30-Day-Conlang Challenge. Quick review: Goal wise, I had in mind a conlang that would be extendable, … Continue reading →

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Reactivating your phonetic awareness

Posted on September 1, 2012 by matthewdeanmartin

So you want to create a new language. First you will need to either pick letters or sounds. You might start with the IPA chart, you might not care and just use the phonology and phonotactics of your mother tongue. … Continue reading →

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Gloss equivallency

Posted on December 1, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

I may have invented a concept. Well, it’s new to me. It’s similar to the idea of a relex, which is whole sale replacement of all morphemes in a language with new ones, but otherwise leaving it the same. What … Continue reading →

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In praise of the relex and how to make a better one

Posted on October 19, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Anyhow, I read this article on how to create a language in one day and really it is about machine generated relexes. And that isn’t a bad thing, it has a legitimate purpose. From reading the article it seems there … Continue reading →

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Singletons- A Category of Conlang in Search of a Better Name

Posted on September 8, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

A singleton, is a conlang that may have been created for whatever purpose, but happens to be suitable for someone else, maybe for the intended purpose, maybe for something else and it hasn’t been discovered by anyone yet. Hence the … Continue reading →

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Animal Conlangs

Posted on July 29, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

The British are afraid of genetic engineering allowing monkeys to speak. (Just wait until they find out about all the little talking Great Apes in Britain that the scientists have been secretly creating in their bedrooms)  SF writers are using … Continue reading →

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Culture is not normally embedded in language like a paracite

Posted on July 24, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

While I enjoy putting on my viking hat and woolly sweater, getting out the skyr an playing some Sykur while I’m studying Icelandic– Icelandic would still be Icelandic without all of that cultural stuff.  For every charismatic word that says … Continue reading →

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How do I say my name in ….

Posted on July 11, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

This is probably the first question I have when ever I get more than a mild interest in a constructed language. Surprisingly, this often is poorly documented and there is usually a tedious discussion about the merits of picking a … Continue reading →

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What it would take to finish Shyriiwook (aka the Wookie Language)

Posted on June 25, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Here is one of the longer documents on Shyriiwook. I’m in the mood the beat up on a middle of the pack conlang, one of the sort that seems like there is something there for a fan, but there isn’t … Continue reading →

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My Conlang Manifesto

Posted on June 23, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

Please see the Conlang Manifesto Manifesto before subscribing to any advice here. Unless you are me, this doesn’t really apply to anyone, least of all those writing conlangs as amusing reference grammars, auxlangs or conlangs to support the writing of … Continue reading →

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Conlang Manifesto Manifesto

Posted on June 20, 2011 by matthewdeanmartin

The world needs a meta-manifesto. Manifestos are a recipe for creating one sort of conlang. As soon as you depart from that sort of conlang, the manifesto doesn’t apply. If a conlang author hasn’t explicitly subscribed to a manifesto, then … Continue reading →

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