Make Your Own

Constructed Languages

Course 1 · Chapter 12 · Make Your Own

You have seen what conlangs are (Chapter 1), where they came from (Chapters 2 to 7), and how one is built (Chapters 8 to 11). This last chapter puts it together. It gives you a checklist you can use for any language, finishes the Meren sketch we have built a piece at a time, and ends with advice on naming, documenting and sharing a language of your own.

The Design Checklist

Work through these in order. Each one points back to the chapter where it was explained, and each answer feeds the next:

#	Question	Chapter	Meren's answer
1	What is it for, and who for?	1	An artlang for a river people
2	What kind and motive?	1 to 7	Artlang; art and play
3	Which sounds?	8	p t k m n s l r h and a e i o u
4	Which syllable shapes and stress?	8	(C)V(n); stress on the first syllable
5	How is it written?	8	Latin letters, one letter per sound
6	Word order and word-change type?	9	SOV; agglutinative
7	How are number, role, time and negation marked?	9	Suffixes -ra, -n, -sa, -ko; word ha; question word ke
8	How regular, how natural?	9	Regular, with room to add irregular common words
9	Where do the roots come from?	10	A priori, from Meren sounds
10	Which words first, and how do they grow?	10	About 40 core words; suffixes -po and -lu; compounds
11	How will it live and grow?	11	Fixed core, open vocabulary
12	What is it called, and how is it documented?	12	See below

The Finished Meren Sketch

Here is Meren on one page, with every decision from Chapters 8 to 11 in one place. This is what a "language sheet" looks like: enough for someone else to learn the language and write a sentence.

# MEREN: a language sheet

Sounds     consonants  p t k m n s l r h       vowels  a e i o u
Syllables  (C)V(n)        Stress  first syllable        Writing  Latin letters

Order      subject - object - verb;  describing word follows the noun;  place words follow the noun
Nouns      plural -ra    object -n      (lio, liora, lion, lioran)
Verbs      present: bare    past -sa    future -ko      negation: ha before the verb
Questions  ke at the end of the sentence
Build      -po one who    -lu place for      compounds: first noun describes the second

Words      mi si li mu | ti nu ro | mere sapi kolu simo kano pira lio ana | hamu nesa tohe
           teka tano pasu rua pere nika loha sipu hana | luki mina sena kihi neku pali

# A short text
Mi meren hana.               I river-OBJ love.                 "I love the river."
Mu anan luki pereko.         we boat-OBJ big make-FUT.         "We will make a big boat."
Mu lioran tekako.           we fish-PL-OBJ eat-FUT.           "We will eat fish."
Si meren pasuko ke?         you river-OBJ see-FUT QUESTION.   "Will you see the river?"

Watch out: a name can be an accident

The working name Meren is exactly the object form of mere "river". So Mi meren hana could mean "I love the river" or "I love Meren". That is the kind of clash Chapter 10 warned about, and a good designer looks for it before sharing. Here it is useful rather than harmful (the language of the river is the river), but it is worth deciding on purpose.

Naming and Documenting

A name is the first thing anyone sees, so choose it with the same care as a word. Check it for accidental meanings, say it aloud, and decide whether it follows the language's own rules. Many conlangs are named in themselves: Esperanto means "one who hopes", and tlhIngan Hol means "Klingon language".

Then write it down. A conlang that lives only in your head cannot be learned. A useful minimum is one document with:

A purpose statement (two sentences).
The language sheet like the Meren sheet above.
A word list that you keep up to date, with each word marked as core, coined or adopted.
A sample text with a word-for-word gloss and an English translation, like the four Meren sentences above.
A change log: when each word was added or each rule changed, and why.

Sharing a Language

A language becomes real when someone else uses it. The ways to start are small:

Teach a friend. One speaker who can answer back is worth more than a hundred pages.
Write short texts. A greeting, a story, a song. Texts show the gaps in the grammar.
Join a community of language makers. There are societies and online groups for conlangers, such as the Language Creation Society, founded by David J. Peterson (the Dothraki creator from Chapter 5). They share designs, ask for feedback and run language-building challenges.
Be open about the rules for growth. Say who decides, and how a new word is added (Chapter 11).

Course Complete: What You Can Now Do

Chapter	You can …
1 What Is a Conlang?	tell natural from constructed, and name the four motives and three kinds
2 Before Esperanto	explain why Lingua Ignota, philosophical languages, Solresol and Volapük faded
3 Auxiliary Languages	compare Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua, and judge a bridge language's success
4 Engineered Languages	describe Lojban and Toki Pona, and discuss linguistic relativity
5 Languages for Stories	explain how a screen language is commissioned and what "just enough" means
6 Tolkien's Languages	describe Quenya, Sindarin and their invented history
7 Signed, Whistled and Other Conlangs	separate sign languages, medium shifts and designed codes
8 Sound and Writing	design a phoneme inventory, syllable shape, stress and spelling
9 Building Grammar	choose word order, word-change type and marking, and avoid a relex
10 Building Vocabulary	plan a first word list and grow it with affixes and compounds
11 A Language Lives	describe a language's life cycle, governance and change
12 Make Your Own	complete a language sheet and share it

Where to go next

The best next step is to try. Build a language sheet of your own using the checklist, then test it with a friend. For depth on single languages, see Klingon Grammar 1 and Klingon Basic Conversation 1 for an artlang with an official grammar, and Esperanto Basic Conversation 1 for an auxlang you can speak. Introduction to Linguistics covers the ideas in Chapters 8 and 9 in more depth. Tolkien's Sindarin and Quenya are planned as courses of their own.

Hands-On Exercises

Exercise 1

Write a language sheet for a language of your own. Follow the checklist: purpose, kind, sounds, syllable shape, stress, writing, word order, marking, roots, at least twenty words and one affix. Add a four-line sample text with a gloss and a translation.

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Exercise 2

Translate with the finished Meren sheet. Into English: Si lion tekako ke? and Li sipulun pasusa. Into Meren: "The person made a house." and "We did not see the moon." Then check each Meren sentence against the sound and grammar rules.

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Exercise 3

Review a design. Take your language sheet from Exercise 1 and run three tests: (a) the relex test from Chapter 9, (b) the accidents test from Chapter 10, and (c) a naming check from this chapter. Write one improvement for each failure you find.

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Chapter 12 Quick Reference

Checklist: purpose → kind → sounds → syllables and stress → writing → order and type → marking → regularity → roots → first words → growth → name and documents
A language sheet: sounds, writing, order, nouns, verbs, questions, word-building, words, sample text
Check a name for accidental meanings (Meren is also the object form of mere)
Document: purpose, sheet, word list, sample text with gloss, change log
Share: teach a friend, write short texts, join a community, state the rules for growth