Making Languages Doesn't Have To Be Hard (Conlang) | Worldbuilding

in this video we'll discuss designing fictional languages for World building projects and how creating an entire language doesn't have to be a daunting task with some simple steps hey everyone my name is Matthew at least that's what I'm called in English and this video is part of a series where I'll be going through a science adjacent World building process step by step last time we discussed designing fantasy races and how creatures evolve the intelligence needed for establishing civilizations if you've missed that video the link to it should be here for today's video we'll be looking at language specifically designing fictional languages how to get started and then make some languages of our own for our newly designed fantasy races so without further Ado welcome to the world building Corner alright let's do do this language importantly is a structured system of communication while many creatures are capable of communication language in structured form is unique to humans proto-languages are expected to have been present among our ancestors all the way back to Homo habilis over 2 million years ago and over the course of its history a language has evolved from our Proto languages into the plethora of unique languages that exist today this evolutionary development is a defining characteristic of a naturalistic language and the English language today is the product of many many different iterations and developments that differentiate it from the other languages on Earth of course as World Builders we don't have thousands of years to progressively shape and evolve a language which is where conlang comes in conlang short for constructed language refers to a language that is deliberately constructed for use rather than one that evolves naturally over time for most people however creating an entire language is an overwhelming borderline insurmountable task and often isn't necessary for the World building process instead we can create what's called a Proto language a usually very simple foundational language that will have all the information needed for language expansion in the future should you wish to follow that path in addition to being much simpler and less arduous to create Proto languages also tend to follow an evolution that mimics a natural language's development over time so we can expect more authentic and believable results so where do we begin the starting point for most languages is phonetics which refers to the sounds present in a language to establish this we look to the in International Phonetic Alphabet or more commonly just the IPA which is an inventory containing all the sounds that can possibly be produced by a human and as human world Builders designing for human audiences I consider it kind of pointless if we can't at least make the sounds of the languages we're creating so this is the sound inventory we'll be sticking to this table for the IPA is readily available on Wikipedia complete with attached sound links that you can click on that will play any sound in the inventory nah the IPA is separated into place of articulation and manner of articulation place of articulation refers to where along the vocal tract sounds are being made for example the B sound is located at our lips which makes it labial whereas the G sound is located at our palette the back part of the roof of our mouth which makes it dorsal the manner of articulation then refers to what we do with our vocal tract in order to make the sound for example when we make the D sound sound is made that is then suddenly stopped which makes it a plosive all other sounds that have the same mechanics fall into the same manner of articulation which for plosives include sounds like when two sounds fall into the same box like Fe and the they refer to the same sound with the left being voiceless and the right being voiced when making the sound your vocal chords are silent while when making the the sound your vocal chords vibrate which adjusts the sound it's exceptionally likely that if a language includes a voiceless sound it will also include its voiced equivalent so we just have to choose the sounds we like and call it a day right well not quite firstly not all sounds in the IPA are present in a language in fact in many languages only a handful of sounds are present and they tend to come in groups of places and manners of articulation for example this is the Australian English IPA chart and yes different dialects and accents have their own unique IPA charts that you can find easily on Wikipedia as you can see there are clear groups of labial alveolar post alveolar and Velar sounds as well as nasals plosives and fricatives there are some outliers to these groups such as the CH and J sounds represented by these symbols and overwhelmingly most languages follow this trend are of having a group of sounds with two or three outliers for calm langing less is more when it comes to sound selection and for this series we'll be keeping things on the simple side in order to keep things easier to follow let's create some of the phonologies that we'll be using for our world building project these are the four fantasy species that we created last time the sileran the urakan the naquil and humans we'll talk more about humans at the end though so for now let's focus on the other three for the sileron I generally associate reptilian-like creatures with and sounds which are both coronal sounds as well as fricatives so let's establish groups of sounds in both categories as well as a couple of outliers for more common sounds like ye and K and if we're putting in K we should also put its voiced equivalent of ger also seeing as we have the T and Sh sounds we can include the CH sound which phonetically is a combination of the two as well as the J sound which is a combination of the de and Je sounds which are also both present for human languages it's exceptionally likely that there would be at least one labial sound though the lips of reptiles are structured differently than humans and are less pronounced making labial sounds harder for them to produce so let's exclude them entirely let's also keep their vowels at a very simple 5 vowel system [Music] a strong Trend within human languages is that the word for Bear will include a strong R sound following a vowel like bear erson Bjorn in many of these languages the ER sound is trilled so let's focus the language around a trilled ah if you can't roll your r's then don't worry a regular R sound will work just fine from this trilled R we can create a group of coronal sounds though to differentiate between this group and the group within the sileran language let's exclude and Sh sounds which are less common in languages anyway these creatures also do have lips that can be used for language so we can include a grouping for labial sounds and now that we've done that it makes sense to create a another grouping for nasals plosives and fricatives from here we can throw in the sound to add to the Vela group add the z sound because the D and Z Sounds are both present and do the same for the F sound finally we'll include the Yu sound as an outlier and establish a five vowel system though instead of air used like in the sileran language the urakan will use a schwa instead which is the ER sound used in words like about rather than about their language is also going to include the glottal stop which is the sound made at the back of our throat that very suddenly stops the sound between the two syllables of na ah Bears in real life make this sound when they're scared or in danger which is something we'll return to when it comes to making some of their words the naquil have perhaps the strangest language at least to English speakers and I'd like their language to be inspired by otherworldly Eldritch languages the kind you'd expect from a lovecraftian adventure their phonology however is reasonably standard with groupings of alveolas Villas nasals plosives and fricatives they don't Trill their R's include the were and ya sounds as well as the glottal stop which is used in their name they too will have a five vowel system though every vowel will have an elongated equivalent which in the IPA is noted by the colon symbol now that we've got our phonology down let's quickly talk about syllables syllables are separated into three parts onset nucleus and Coda technically the nucleus is the only obligatory part of a syllable and it's overwhelmingly likely that it will be a a vowel the onset and Coda are then any sounds within a syllable that are before or after the nucleus respectively which generally are consonants syllable structure therefore is broken up into consonant and vowel sounds represented by C's and V's for example a language with a c v c syllable structure has syllables that are always consonant vowel consonant if the C's are in Brackets like this it means that the consonant is optional and doesn't need to be included let's assign the sileran language a c v c structure the urakan language a c c v c structure and the naquil a structure of c c c v c c with simpler syllable structures sileran and urakhan will be easier and likely sound more familiar while naquilian has the potential for some truly strange sounding words that would be harder to pronounce notably while some languages do have mandatory onset consonants coders are always optional in every language now we have to establish syllable stress consider the words suspect and suspect the stress placed on the first syllable compared to the second completely changes the meaning of the word the rules for where stress is placed on a word can become complicated and are likely to develop over time as a language evolves what we need here is not an extensive list of rules but rather a starting point to keep things consistent and simple let's say that the default stress for all of our starting languages falls on the second to last syllable without phonology syllable structure and stress established we can make our proto-language proper importantly we don't need to make an entire language remembering that our Sapient creatures are going to start out very simple instead here are some basic root words that we can start with from here we need to establish a default word order which is simply the order that the subject the verb and the object appear in a sentence English for example follows that exact order subject verb object and for Simplicity we call English an SVO language word order can follow any of the six possible combinations though it's overwhelmingly more common for the subject to be placed first followed then by languages with the verb first and then finally languages with objects first are exceptionally rare let's give cilerin a word order of vso urakan a word order of s v o like English and naquil a free word order which means that it will require prefixes and suffixes in order to establish what's being talked about finally we need to determine whether adjectives and AD positions are derived from nouns or verbs which will determine where they're placed in a sentence for Simplicity it's far easier to have one derived from nouns and the other from verbs rather than both deriving from one let's say that both siluren and urakhan have adjectives derived from nouns and add positions derived from verbs in both languages the verb appears before the object which is the noun and so add positions are ordered first which makes them prepositions while adjectives are ordered last most languages also order possession such as the cat's food in the same order as adjectives and nouns with the possessor in this case the cat being treated as an adjective while the thing being possessed in this case the food is treated as a noun this gives us these final sentence structures will use the opposite system with adjectives derived from verbs and add positions derived from nouns though with a free word order we don't have to worry about where the adjectives and AD positions are placed but rather need to use prefixes and suffixes to establish connections between words and their auxiliaries importantly what we've discussed a basic outline for sentence structure these are at most guidelines and for every Point there's an example of a real life language that bucks the trend so if you want your language to be different and unique there's absolutely precedent that such a language can develop just be aware that the further from these guidelines a language deviates the more complex and less user-friendly it will be with all of this together we have everything we we need for a proto-language in the urakan language for example translates to I am going to the river to fish for food which is an easy translation for us due to urakan having the same structure as English in sileran however the same phrase is hopefully some of the personality of both languages comes through Even In This Very primitive State from here these Proto languages can be expanded upon progressively as we move forward when these creatures make a new discovery or develop something new they'll probably develop words involving that thing such as words regarding to agriculture or Metallurgy as we know from real life it's exceptionally likely that a huge number of diverse languages will evolve though keeping track of hundreds of languages across multiple species is a little beyond the scope of this series so for Simplicity we'll be following each species major language on its Journey Through Time for the majority of world Builders this is enough information about languages to use for a project using the words we already have here we can set up naming conventions for places like Forest town or River and urakhan settlement on a rivermouth might be called something like senanut Gru which might over time simplify to have Gru Bier suffix attached to any settlement on a river mouth this is how in English we end up with suffixes like bergdale and ham attached to many place names importantly if this does occur in your language you'll need to establish a new word for what the old word used to mean otherwise our urakan that are now using Gru to mean River mouth are going to have no word for Finnish and there we have it three Proto languages ready to go and be expanded upon as we continue to World build but Matthew you ask what about the language your humans will use well we're deliberately going to have humans have no fictional language at all and instead use whatever language we speak in real life consider it like Galactic basic in Star Wars or common in Dungeons and Dragons this is a very important World building strategy because the vast majority of viewers readers and players don't want to have to learn an entirely new language just to be able to connect with your world by providing a default option it makes your world more approachable while still being exotic due to your other conlangs being present for most people the names of creatures their settlements and short phrases are more than enough to keep them immersed and provide a wonderfully Rich fantasy experience for those of you who do want a deeper dive into creating fictional languages though what I've presented in this video is only a surface look at the basics of language creation and the extended process can be a huge Rabbit Hole to get lost in including factors like vowel and consonant harmonies cases rule exceptions and even more the channel I turn to for any advanced conlanging is biblaridian who creates fantastic and very informative content on creating language if you're interested I've linked his channel in the description so be sure to go and check him out so to recap constructing a language for a World building project requires a phonological inventory syllable structure and sentence structure with a small lexicon of root words and some core rules we can make up basic sentences that will get us starred with enough language to provide names for places and things for our fictional species and provide them with the backbone for cultural Evolution join me next time where we'll be taking our species through the Stone Age detailing everything from campfires around caves all the way through to the birth of civilization you can find all the information for this video as well as other resources for World building in general over at worldbuildingconnor.com and if if you've enjoyed this video don't forget to like And subscribe to follow the World building journey and until next time stay awesome

Channel: Worldbuilding Corner

Views: 46,110

Keywords: worldbuilding, storytelling, how to worldbuild, writing, fantasy, fantasy creatures, ecology, fantasy races, intelligent life, language, conlang, constructed language, natlang, make your own language

Id: bjFvRnCYzN4

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022