How to Make a Language - Part 1: Introduction

Welcome to a series dedicated to explaining how to create an entire fictional language from scratch. In this first episode, we discuss some of the basic concepts and history of language creation, and establish some of the design goals for our sample language.

[majarimennamazerinth]

"It's not that difficult if you know what you're doing". Well, so is rocket science :P

[nathankuma]

"Made in a few months" Tolkien spent most of his adult life working on Elvish and its language tree. Love your videos but that made me chuckle.

[zawuz]

To induce anxiety watch this video at 2x speed and the music will overwhelm u

[askadia]

The video is very good, but I'd suggest you to use a milder/softer background music

[Septiccatgaming]

“Made for fictional world building projects”

I don’t know about you, but I’m here to make a language for only me and my friends to understand, not world building.

[heyheytaytay]

One of the toughest courses for my B.A. in English program was Linguistics 101 which was required regardless if you had a linguistics minor. You had to pay attention and never miss a day. If you didn't keep up you'd drown. A lot of people failed it at least once regardless of instructor. But I not only found it challenging but absolutely fascinating. I still remember it as being one of my favorites.

[chabadwolf]

I'm just making a language so i can pretend to be a non-english speaker and watch the staff not know what translator to use/get because only i know the language

And so i can write music and shit that only i know the meaning to, but the sound can still be appreciated by others.

There's a lot of things i could do with a language that only i speak tbh

[kayleighlehrman]

"In recent years-"
First given example is almost 70 years old lol

[greyrifterrellik]

One of my favorite instances of a fictional language is "Maherian", from a game called "Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom"

Not because it's any good (I honestly have no idea if it is or not), but because they went out of their way to not just create a whole fictional language, but to record the *ENTIRE GAME* in said language as an optional language pack you can download for free.

That right there is going above and beyond

[sleepy-emerald]

I’m *so* glad that these are here. I’m a writer as a hobby, and I’m also planning to make a language to share with people and see how it turns out as a sort of project.

[HLXDx]

My goal is to create a fictional language with words that doesn’t exist in our languages just so I can explain things that we can’t and still have it seem like a real language..
It’s gonna be something I can use and also something that I can place in fiction, it’s gonna be hard to pronounce just so it will seem like it’s from another planet. Another goal I have for it is to make it cryptic so no one will ever understand what it is and will have to spend months trying to figure it out... this is all part of my plan😈

[your_dad_on_vacation]

Making a language to make my future child think I'm from another planet (and make a mocumentary)

[MrCreeperYT_Official]

A real-world Conlang example is Esperanto. Developed from 1873-1887 by Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhofo in Warsaw, then a multilingual area, where you had to speak many languages to be able to speak to everyone in town, so he came up with Esperanto as an international auxiliary language. It was meant to bring the world closer together( among other reasons like just straight convinence), because Zamenhofo grew up dreaming of a world without war.

[rukahm]

I've been working on my own language for eight years, it's a fully functional language now and you can learn it. It's based on my dreams of a world I've been dreaming of since I was little. It's called Azaiyan and you can check it out if you want. My language book is called "Modern Azaiyan." An "alien" language spoken by a human race on a planet somewhere near Orion.

[peopleskingdomofwolcottia]

Also, some more advice here: You don't have to use all of Biblaridion's advice for making a conlang. I made one that is far less naturalistic, and I'm fairly happy with it. I use it for my fantasy world, prayer, personal journals, and songwriting. Good luck and...

Or lés Æðosúanstúávi nov kræt un páð k'álkiäu ciňfýtýr væ ančvúrjarst!
May all the waves of Earth move to create a path so you can walk to the future without submission!

[BLUEKOMMEH]

Good video, content was great. But holy shit man, the music sounded like a robot having a seizure. It was so abrasive.

[Frahamen]

"in recent years" and then starts with Elvish and Klingon ;)

[derekstryder]

Peeps really out here to do world building, whilst I just want to know how language really works. Conlang sounds like a fun way to get a grasp of it rather than dedicating months or even years to read, write and speak another language. It could also not accomplish that, but still.

[kunplus]

"star shrek" had me laughing
Anyways this is a pretty good video. Nice job!
By the way, would you mind if I used this particular video series of yours as reference for my school project?

[davidmalonzo]

3:25 : Why?
Me: Because its Covid and I'm bored