Transcript How to make your own Language

How to make your own
Language
And other fun stuff (for me, that is)
This is nothing new

From the Klingon language in the Star Trek universe, to
the Na'vi language from James Cameron's Avatar, fictional
languages can go a long way towards making a work of
fiction feel "real" and "lived-in".

Making a fictional language can be an intense undertaking
- for instance, J.R.R. Tolkien famously studied linguistics
as an academic before penning the Lord of the Rings
novels, which incorporated multiple languages of his own
creation.

However, depending on the scope of the project, it's also
possible for amateurs to create their own fictional
languages for fun or as part of a self-constructed fictional
Name your language.
 You
have full control over it!
 Make sure it sounds like a language
name though!!
Start with pronunciation
 You
can choose how to pronounce the
language, giving it the overall sound and
feel you're going for.
 However,
to make it more thorough and
professional, you'll have to do some
background to take it beyond sounds.
Create the language’s alphabet

This is where you can get creative. It could be anything you want. You have some
choices: Use pictographs or symbols. Many languages, like Chinese, use
pictographs or symbols to represent their spoken language. If you choose to do
this, you'll also have to come up with a pronunciation for each symbol. Each
symbol will have its own unique sound. Numbers are a good example. This is a
beautiful but cumbersome route.

Make up an alphabet or syllabary. Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic...
Create a set of symbols which represent individual letters or entire syllables, or
even diphthongs.

Use an alphabet already in existence. If you use our Latin alphabet, for example,
you will simply have to create new words for things rather than coming up for an
entirely new pronunciation system.

Combine different alphabets. Add accents to existing letters (ex: Spanish's ñ) to
create new letters or sounds.
Create the Vocabulary

These are the words for your language. You should start off by making
common words first, and then move on to less common words. Start with the
foundation words, the words that will be used very often. These are words
like "I", "he", "his", "and", "a", "to", and "the". Then move on to verbs such as
"to be", "to have", "to like", "to go", and "to make". Don't forget about a e i o u
y that makes a big part in accents.

Move on to common things. As your vocabulary grows, start naming everything
you can think of. Remember countries, body parts, action words, etc. Don't
forget numbers!

If you're stumped, remember you can borrow words from other languages. You
can even alter the word. For example, the French word for man is homme.
The Spanish word—hombre—is almost the same, with only a few letters/the
pronunciation changed.
Build your own dictionary

Open the dictionary and begin copying words with
their translations.

Not only will this be helpful if you forget how to
say something, but it will ensure you don't miss a
word.

Try to make the words easily pronounceable—you
don't want to be stuck with tongue twisters every
time you open your mouth.
Make your words appear natural
One
common pitfall for language
makers is to use too many
apostrophes in vocabulary words.
Create your grammar rules
These
describe how sentences
are formed.
You can copy many from
existing languages, but you
should change some rules to
stay original.
Decide how to pluralize nouns

You need to have a way to tell the difference between
"book" and "books".

Many languages add an -s as a suffix. You could choose to
add a suffix or even a prefix to your words.

You may even add a whole new word!
 (Examples:
If book = Skaru, then books may equal
Neskaru, Skarune, Skaneru, Skaru Ne, or Ne Skaru,
etc.!))
Decide how create the tenses of the
verbs.

These will tell when something happened. The
three main tenses are past, present, and future.

You may also want a way to tell the difference
between words like "swim" and "swimming".

But it's not necessary.

For example in the French language, "Je nage"
can mean "I swim" OR "I am swimming".
Figure out how to conjugate verbs
 Conjugation
is how a verb is modified
to show who is doing it.
 In English, we say "I like" and "He
likes".
Write sentences using your new
language.
 Start
off with a simple sentence like "I
have a cat."
 You can then move on to more
complex sentences, like "I like to
watch television, but I prefer to go to
the movies."
Practice.
Just
like learning a foreign
language, it will take practice
before you can use your language
with ease.
Test it out on everyone.
You
will love the confused look
on their faces, you may look
like a weirdo, or even a jerk,
but don't let it discourage you!
Teach other people your language
If
you want to be able to use the
language with your friends, you
should teach them.
You can even try to spread your
language to as many people as you
want.
Store your rules in a dictionary or
phrase book.
This way you will always have something to refer
to if you need help remembering your language.
 You can even sell them to make a little extra
money!
 If you want to make your language well known,
then write dictionaries of the language (including
its alphabet) to learn your language, and give
them out to everyone you want to use the
language with.

Tips

Make sure that it is a language that while speaking, you don't get a literal knot in
your tongue!

Remember you should know how to write it. For example we write it from left to
right, in Arabic it's right to left, Chinese is in columns, and so on.

Make sure that you and your friend(s) all follow a systematic language system. In
other words, make sure that you follow the same guidelines.

Make sure you practice saying and spelling out many basic words in your language,
English examples: is, who, when, of, why, if, what, where, can, may, etc.

Don't use random letters. It should make some sense, so that it will be easier to
learn and speak with [Example: Don't use oh as e, hello as llo, and See ya as c
yah).

When starting off, follow closely to a language you like. This will make grammar
much easier to make. You must avoid simply copying the grammar rules, however,
as this would technically turn your language into a code.

Practice your language frequently so that you don't forget it!

Don't forget punctuation!

As a shortcut, and for a bit of interesting background, add connotation to
various letters, preferably vowels. To do this, think of various words that
begin with/have a lot of a certain vowel. For example: austere, acrimony,
ebullient, embolden; in this case, the vowel A might carry with it a negative
meaning, whereas E would be positive. Then, even if you forget your own
words without the help of your dictionary, you could still make a good guess
based on the composition of the letters.

Try not to make your words sound like utter and complete gibberish just add a
little extra than our regular English language. We don't want a knot in your
tongue after speaking to your friends. Just put marks over the letters or make
up something right on the spot, you might have to take some time on this!

Basing letters on objects (pictographs) is an easy way to start a writing system.

Try this with a group of friends. It's much more fun when there are other people that can
understand your language.

If you want to make other languages, you can use this language as a model and change some
letters or sounds to create a different language. This makes your first language a protolanguage—a language that branches off into a family of languages.

Email or text your friends the language so that they won't be so confused.

When making a writing system, take a break about every five minutes and come back to it or
all your letters will begin to look identical.

Making prefixes or suffixes that mean something and adding them together to create words
could help. For example if the syllable 'tah' meant true, 'ky' meant story, and 'fen' meant
traditional then 'Tahky' means a true story, 'fenky' means traditional story, 'Fentahky' means a
true traditional story, and 'Tahfen' means a true tradition.

If you want to type your language find a font creator (Handwriting Font Creator). then install
the font and type it in a word processor. If you know your way around photo editors then you
should create an image for each character so it's more web friendly.
Warnings

Unless you mean to do this, check that the words you are
translating aren't slang words so that if, however, you
want to translate what you're saying you will be able to do
it easily.

Take time away from your language when in the creating
process or you may become frustrated and give up. This
happens often and may then discourage you.
Due at the beginning of class Friday
no exceptions
 MINIMUM
500 WORDS
 DICTIONARY
 AT LEAST A FULL TWO PAGE DIALOGUE
USING THE LANGUAGE