EVERYTHING You Need to Make a Fictional Language for Your Story | Conlang 101
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- I constantly get questions about this, so it's time... now I pass the power of language making to you. Use it wisely.
My webtoon: www.webtoons.com/en/challenge...
Timestamps:
00:00 - HELLO
02:11 - Languages Profiles
03:08 - Real World Influences
06:37 - How it Sounds/Phonology
07:29 - Vulgarlang
08:00 - Making Vocabulary
08:28 - Linguistic Easter Eggs
09:10 - Awkwords & Other Word Generators
11:00 - How it Looks/Orthography
11:52 - Writing Systems
12:46 - Popular Conlangs in Media
13:28 - Omniglot & Grapheion
14:05 - Conlang Fontmaking
15:04 - Font Tips
In order of appearance!
Language Status Scale: www.ethnologue.com/about/lang...
Ethnolinguistic maps: www.ccat.sas.upenn.edu/plc/cl...
Language Family Tree: www.mindmeister.com/237837655...
Old Language Family Graphic: www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?p...
Language Evolutionary Tree: www.elinguistics.net/Language...
VulgarLang: www.vulgarlang.com/
Awkwords: akana.conlang.org/tools/awkwords/
Lexifer: lingweenie.org/conlang/lexife...
Gen: www.zompist.com/gen.html
Omniglot Conlangs: omniglot.com/conscripts/conla...
Writing Systems: neographilia.wordpress.com/wr...
Grapheion: lingweenie.org/conlang/graphe...
Calligraphr: www.calligraphr.com/
And all my regular links:
85 Unseen (Webtoon): www.webtoons.com/en/challenge...
85 Unseen (Tapas): tapas.io/series/85unseen/info
TikTok: / klgraywill
Instagram: / 85unseen
Patreon: / klgraywill
Ko-fi: ko-fi.com/klgraywill
Main website: www.klgraywill.com/
#worldbuilding #conlangs #fantasyfiction #webtoon - Jak na to + styl
I briefly talked about linguistic easter eggs in this video and I did actually hide a linguistic easter egg in this video 👀tell me if you find it!!
ok whereeeee tell me
ईस्टरी अंडा।
@@hustlewithhimanshu8899 nailed it 👏
Lol
@@klgraywillso can i get avabic for free and free download font please
THANKYOU for a tutorial that isnt a seminar on language. Basically all tutorials on CZcams are just impossible to learn from, from an artists perspective.
This is why I'm so happy I found this video. I was nearly ready to give up. Those videos feel like I should already have studied language courses for a year. haha
@@EverflameArt I ended up just experimenting and rewathcing them over and over again until it all clicked
I think that because conlanging is an art in its own right, it takes a huge amount of effort to become good at it, just like digital art etc. If you're creating a conlang just for atmosphere, doing it by this video is more than enough. But if you're looking to go indepth, those video seminars are necessary
Omg the writing and font generators! I will be playing with these for days! Thank you!
ofc! They are so much fun - you will have ideas for dayssss
@@klgraywill hello, I'm creating a language that uses syllables. So my alphabet consists of things like "la, ka, ba", can I use calligrapher for this just like you showed in the video?
@@fugosfork7907 Yes you can easily create a syllabary with the free calligraphr template, just treat each syllable as a unique character on the keyboard.
@@klgraywill but how will I differentiate between Le, La, Lo etc? I can't put them all on L
@@fugosfork7907 Correct, you can only do that if you use the paid ligatures feature on calligraphr (ligatures will allow a certain character to appear if letter L is followed by e, a, o, etc etc). With the free version, you will have to assign le to "L", la to a different key like "X," lo to "Y" etc. - you have to utilize every possible key on the keyboard (if you have a lot of sounds you could also create two fonts). It's not ideal to type with but that's the limitation of using an accessible and free method like this. If you watch from 16:35 this is exactly what I did for my abugida. If you will be typing in the language a lot, it might be worth getting into proper fontbuilding (check out David Peterson's videos)
I really liked this! Its quite unusual to see tutorials for conlanging that are specifically for authors and artists, etc- really really great stuff
Also your art is lovely ;u;
thank you so much! glad you enjoyed :)
17:03 you can also do stacking characters in FontForge, just make the "start" line to the right instead of the left of the character. Fonts for Tolkein's Qenya use this kind of thing with four set 'locations' for the vowels, above a schwa-type stem for the vowel on its own "I", above a single luva (bow) like an n, above a mid size letter or one with a stem above like h, and above a double bow letter like m. Centered each time.
This was super inspiring, like I wasn't even sure about adding a language until I saw this. I wish you still made videos but I'm thankful for the ones that are here
I'm a filipino born in the uk and have been wanting to use baybayin and filipino languages as inspiration for various languages for a while now and this has been so much more helpful than the dothraki creators conlang video I saw before this
Cool im learning baybayin myself and its a cool but kind of confusing
Thank you so much for making this video! It broke things down a bit further for me and wasn't just overwhelming like most conlang tutorials or videos. It's also really nice to see it tailored for those who are on the more visual side of the arts!
I'm so glad it was helpful! Thank you for the kind comment, definitely encourages me to make more tutorials like this 💕
Thanks for this guide to conlangs. I originally watched this video out of curiosity, but now I have an idea of inventing a conlang that sounds similar to German or French but looks like Mandarin Chinese (but it has a lot of curved or calligraphic strokes).
Can you type the phonts on cellphones also%
This was extremely helpful! I always struggle with getting a good vocabulary into my language, and Awkwords is helping with that SO much!!!
Thank you!!
This was AWESOME!!! Thank you!
wow this was incredibly helpful....not only did you cover everything + but you actually gave me insight as to how I can research language...thanks again and great video!
also fonstruct is good for layering marks backwards to modify previous letters. You can make a no-width characters with shapes left of the character box. It's all grid-based though.
THANK YOU! These tools are Amazing!
Awesome to see all the process !
Glad you enjoyed!
My influence is either something that only i can pronounce or some kind of a reflex of a language so i can eadily calculate words into a new form.
But why do that when you can create an original conlang that sound also natural/fitting for the setting and also quirky and funny so the linguists around us can enjoy without cringing at another reflex of english.... yeah sorry for the rant the video was great
I really enjoyed this guide, this is exactly what I was looking for to generate conlangs for my worldbuilding project. I like how you included the tid bit about languages that read top to bottom, Im basing a conlang on Mongolian.
Subbed and thanks for all the links.
Thank you so much for this
I hope it was helpful!
This is very useful!
i like your art style, and how you simplified Conlangs',. i'm trying to make my own languge for a race of elves for my book so thanks again.
been wanting to redo a conlang for a wip webcomic, + make a few more for it. this could come in handy!
do itttt do it do it
I was literally just wondering how the hell I was going to further my current language. I thank you profusely for saving me from a future of many hours spent not knowing where to begin within the process.
Thank you sm! I was actually able to make a font for my conlang (though I can't get it to write right to left) I'll take any tips I can get for libre office writer
is it possible to make a ligature font for diacritics or syllabaries (where if you for example type t and a, it’ll turn into whatever symbol stands for “ta”) ? i have no idea if it’s a thing people can do but ligatures seemed like a way more sensible option than just making diacritics out of number keys or something
Yes most def! Calligraphr, the program I used in this vid, allows you to make custom characters for ligatures, but it's a paid feature. If you trawl the comments someone else shared a link that goes in depth on using ligatures with other softwares!
currently trying to write a character with a slightly middle eastern accent who speaks a different language than the other characters! so i think this will be very helpful :)
The fact that Welsh has an influence on your world is amazing, you make me proud to be Welsh. Diolch i chi am eich holl waith
cool video! i liked the parts about fontmaking due to me having an ostrich brain when it comes to remembering instructions becuse of the simplicity xd
omg aha not an ostrich brainnnn. I'm glad it was helpful tho!!
How do I think of symbols for the language, the language is supposed to be super dense so one word could translate to entire paragraphs but idk how to go about it. I’m trying to make it so many words can fit into smaller spaces
Okay, I have my custom font as a .otf and .ttf file, and I was planning on using Microsoft Word to type in my conlang, but apparently you have to pay a subscription service now to use the full version; as far as I can tell the free in-browser version doesn't support custom fonts. I've been looking for about 2 hours and I can't find any free word processors that support .otf or .ttf fonts. Can anyone either recommend a free word processor I can use, or a way to use custom fonts on the in-browser version of Microsoft Word? Thanks a million.
for me when i created the font for my conlang when i opened either file it was just the bulgarian alphabet and a sentance including all the letters. does anyone have tips on what and why it went wrong?
I actually want to create a font like hangul for my conlang. Because my conlang script is inspired from Arabic and korean. I thing I need to do a lot of ligatures for that.
Gracias 😄
Omg it’s you from TikTok, I commented about Making a Turkic Conlang.
omg yess I remember! on one of my earliest videos about conlangs I think!
Is there a way to build an entirely new language library or pack for an operating system to use? Not a font. But an entire language that is used for the operating system’s UI. Not for the coding.
Eh , I am conlanger and I wanted something more in the conlang font thingy but eh..
I kinda have this script that is basically an abjad alphabet kanji mix which is easy for me but I can't get it in like a keyboard
Thank u so much for this video! We'll said and so insightful!
thank you!! I'm glad you thought so ahhh
To have fonts represent abugidas and syllabaries more intuitively (as in, to be able to type two letters to have one single character appear), this video on contextual ligatures is helpful: czcams.com/video/ZuHYx0I5VJk/video.html
There was someone else who commented about David Peterson's series and I can't find that comment now that I'm looking again, so I guess they must have deleted it. So anyway, thank you for sharing it here again because it is a great resource! Calligraphr, the browser tool I use here, also has a ligatures function (I think it is for the Pro version only tho).
What if I just want to make a conlang for artistic purposes (a.k.a. artlangs)? Kinda like the artlang Tsevhu, which has ripples and koi fish for words and grammatical placement, respectively (I'm not sure if you heard of it, but oh well...).
Can you do a video on some websites to use for langauge making. (free websites too)
My language is based on stacking the alphabet in 3 blocks, one with the first consonant, the 2nd which always has a vowel and the last block contains a consonant that almost always changes its look, although I am a little disappointed how my conlang can't be typed, I can use the old form of my language which was written from left to right and it looked hideous and took up tons of space, so that's why I removed it
Im thinking about using the wistle language, Silbo Gomero, from the canary islands
Ohh this could come in handy for Ley Line.
ooo yes you could do some cool celtic inspired languages!
@@klgraywill might have to give it a try :P
The way avabic is written similar to the cistercian numbers is it partly inspired by cistercian numbers?
Not sure if it is covered, but I doubt it since I don't see anyone cover it. But, how would I go about creating custom phonetics? The species this language is for don't have the advanced vocal chords like humans. So, their speech is a lot more growly, less defined, and stuff like that.
This video was amazing thank you so much for this ;-;
glad it was helpful!
Can I make loanword in my conlang? as example : consequence -> konsekwunya, condition -> kondinya, sickplace(hospital) -> sakwifentrum.
Calligrphr doesn't want to work on my phone what should I do?
What if, like my conlangs, its an sylabbary or logography, with 100+ glyphs; how can I do that?
Yes!!!!
Is this about conlangs or naming languages because I don´t see you talking about grammar?
Hey k.l.Graywill can i get avabic and conlang font for free
i made my very first colang today, it’s called N’kshwavski, and i am going to use it for something maybe lmao
The orthography of your conlang Navenai is very similar to my conlang Suloriyas's orthography Itika.😃
It's undergone a few evolutions since this video but that's rad!
Do you maybe have any advice for making a more primitive language based on the noises an animal can make? Something not as defined as language today, but still obviously a language. Like the hypothesis on the beginnings of human language.
Just some ideas that I feel like can help give you the aesthetic you might be looking for
Maybe focus on using environmental sounds (onomatopoaeic sounds for animals, like something like "woof" for dog) or maybe descriptive words (like saying "brown-scary" meaning bear or something) and try to strip sentences down to the most basic parts of a sentence that you need to create meaning (minimal declensions and conjugations, don't use too many small words like "the" or "a", etc.). I think duplication (saying a word twice) to mark plurals could also be a cool choice for making a language that sounds simpler and more like "proto-language" (saying "cat" means one cat and saying "cat-cat" means multiple cats)
Cuneiform wasn't chiseled into stone, it was indented into soft clay, which is why it lacks lines. I actually can't figure out why lineless scripts never caught on, other than Braille I guess.
I'm writing a fiction novel, and the main character is the first to learn that magic is a language, and spells are just words or word fragments. Putting power and emotion into spells is what gives them power.
that sounds so cool!
I’m just scared that if I make a chapter talk in the language I created. In another language it could mean something bad...
The way I used to make up languages was just to jumble around the letters like a salad and write the matches down-
I mean it works, it’s just not very practical.
Like, here’s an example of one random jumble of letters I decided to make.
A=K
B=O
C=Z
D=A
E=T
F=S
G=E
H=L
I=G
J=P
K=D
L=Y
M=W
N=V
O=X
P=J
Q=I
R=M
S=E
T=B
U=C
V=F
W=R
X=U
Y=Z
Z=H
For example, “Hello” would be “Ltyyx”, but obviously that’s hard to say so it’s just pronounced “Ltyex”
This sucks lol
How do you use your fonts? I can’t get past installing them
Ahhh it kinda depends on your OS and what softwares. For me on a Mac, when I open the file it will install it (add it to my Mac's Font Book) and from there it just becomes a new option the text dropdown in any program like Word, Photoshop, etc. that uses text (or Procreate if I'm using my iPad) - it should do this automatically with any new font you install. It just functions like a normal font, so best bet is just search up how installing fonts works on your specific device cos I can't do that much as far as device troubleshooting goes!
Question: I'm not too into linguistics, so my only question is, does it *have* to be based off a real life language? I know that may help ground it into reality, but studying different languages to base your conlang off of seems much too tedious for me.
Hey sorry I've been hiatus so I didn't get around to this earlier! But ofc not - there's no right way to make a conlang! I do think studying natural languages is really important to understand what will make believable constructed languages, but that's just my process.
The Devnagari Text read Īstarī Andā which means Easter Egg .
How deep would I have to go if I just wanted to create a language for fun, not for a world or characters or anything? Just to teach my family/friends/cat?
It depends on context and how far you want to go. Also, maybe speakers can contribute. All you really need after your phonology and grammar is a few root words and then you can build bigger words and deeper concepts depending on the rules of the language. You can of course also always borrow from real world languages that you might be familiar with. But you need to think about what your goal is first so you can have a bit of a game plan
Imagine writin a language inspired off of kanji and not the indo-euro phonology
there's actually a fairly unknown conlang called Chinese that uses something similar to kanji
@@dyzphoriia very funny. I meant more so for fantasy or sci fi based stories.
I’m dumb as a donkey but how do you type with your font? I installed the my language?
if it's installed, you should be able to select it from the font dropdown list in any program that allows you to apply fonts to text (word, photoshop, etc).
@@klgraywill thanks so much I can use it now!
When are u gonna drop ur first apology video
lmk what I'm apologizing for and I'm on it asdfghj
@@klgraywill apologize for this czcams.com/video/9G3nMBBGU-k/video.html
@@jessepollack2815 OMFG STOPPPPP
Write dis phrase in avabic:
Vroom, vroom! i am driving a car!
What if my conlang removes a letter? do I just leave it blank?
I live on an Island that has a really similar shape to the Island Avabic is spoken on.
!!! I'm so curious
@@klgraywill There’s an Island off the coast of the UK (I hate the UK for multiple Reasons) it’s called the Isle of Wight.
@@user-cs1wi3fw5n Oh yeah! I've always thought about making a day trip there from London - looking at it again I can see the resemblance!
I live in Southampton and I went to the Isle of Wight when I was really little lol
Can you show us the whole alphabet for Avabic and Nevinai and the whole abjad for tzalí
Also it's because on my school laptop I wanna use the "Save Image" button to make a literall collection of these, so now I think I'm a conlang collector
Finally I can use my old Norse for a reason now
Ummm i have 28 letters and 10 diacritics, what should I do?
I want to create a language that combines Greek, ancient Egyptian, Arabic and Turkish into one language
I want to create a language for my alien characters "Psyfrogs" and the language will be called "PeltRaex" so this video will be useful for me.
Lol, in my current language (It's in testing phase really, nothing official yet, just playing around with cases) - there are exactly 26 cases, and words can get super cluttered because of this.
For an example:
“She” is “Sésva”
Is it a nominative case? Yes?
Then it would be “Sésvaa”
Is it a nominative case/plural? Yes?
Then it would be “Sésvaa'k”
Is it an object form? Yes?
Then it would be “Sésvae”
Alright, if it's a nominative case, as well as a plural, (it's also a possessive subject pronoun), it would be written as “Sésvaa'kej”
Yep. I'm even frying my brain with this one.
Also, there’s more! In this conlang, it likes to specify who is talking. So, for all these situations below, there is a case for it.
Me to you/You to me: “Na”
Us (me and you): “Ky”
Us (me excluding you): “Ke”
We (me but not you or them): “Ge”
We (Some others, me and you): “My”
We (Me and you): Jeg
Again, I'm just toying with things to see how it'll work out. In general this language is very similar to English, being never phonetically correct, but takes some aspects and spelling from European languages and others I admire. Lol.
Ljkþ nvvu ddjö 🤣🤣🤣
I want to TYPEEEEEEE
My language is spoken by one oc in my roster "aelora" but i call her "aeley"
Basicaly elvish cuz shes an elf
My elvish
wow nice vid kid
ty tyyyyy !
Dū thäpäzo äshama dafä - you be like crop grow - you, grow like a crop - have a good life
I want to say great video, but it was great only when the video feed didn't utterly distract from what you were saying. Your animation workflow video is interesting in itself, but nothing short of disruptive here. Other than that, I liked it a lot
that was literally one of my fav parts to actually see the world being built in what is essentially a WORLD BUILDING VIDEO lol
Great now I speak enchantment table
∆¶Π|¶∆~
If ur language is written top to bottom, u could do it like this:
Type a character, press enter, type a character, press enter, and do that until u sone with what u want to type. Which would be something like this:
H
i
g
u
y
s
I just made a dialect of estonian😊
When your syllabary has 122 characters but calligraphr is the only website that works remotely well 😔
*syntax left the chat*
*grammer left the chat*
I have spoken my Conlang (Ashoke [aka "Chok"], since I was about 7 years old (over 50 years). It is not based on a fictional realm. It was just a language which I created to express myself, and I taught my little sister to speak it with me as well. We used it for many years as a private language.
As time went by, she grew apart from my linguistic interests and she only Speaks Ashoke limitedly as an adult.
Meanwhile, I developed the language further, defining rules, identifying "irregulars" and so forth. I designed a script which I now use as a TTF font.
I share this only to provide you with a further perspective of Conlanging aside from fiction. I have used my Conlang outside of the fictional realm in diaries, personal notes, journals, staff meeting minutes and more. It is a part of my life.
I share with you a link to my "Ashoke album" which share many images from my Ashoke experience.
photos.app.goo.gl/gmYpctkH1t68T9ya6
So you're not covering grammar then? Even if a conlang is just a naming language grammar will logically be involved somewhere, e.g. plurals vs. singulars in the names for items, noun gender in men's and women's names. It's also arguable that grammar is a defining and necessary characteristic of something's being a language.
Gotta love how I'm listening but I don't understand wtf is going on 💀
Not only fantasy 😑
The sad part is that a few sounds from Swedish, which my fictional language draws inspiration from in pronunciation, doesn't exist in the IPA :')
That's highly unlikely. IPA even includes symbols for scores of different click consonants. It's more probable you simply haven't found a complete IPA chart or list.
You realise that people don't want to make conlangs just for that.
tfw my entire language is based on ligatures
Calligraphr has a ligatures function! It's paid but I might try remaking my abugida with it and make an update video. If you trawl the comments there are some other good resources mentioned that support ligatures like fontforge
Vocab isn't necessary.
Just let people use whatever word from anynothe rlanguage for lexemes. All you need is for vocab to be substitutable into the structure of your language.
Exa.ple in English:
Hindu-ify.
Hindu isn't a native English word, but we import that word, and treat it as a noun, which includes being able to add suffixes to it, like Hindu-ify.
this video made my fictional language look like stereotypical dutch/german 💀
eich sprecht fichtelangie (i speak fichtelang)
hejcht was auchrestten (he was arrested)
plural words have en with the last letter
for example:
apfellen
caurren
moterren
hejchtten
zeitchbrennen
I have an english based language and a completely fictional language with no real base in reality from the same place, the ancient colismoscria (pronounced sol- iss- moe- scry- ah) and cosmossian. Oh! And one was banned for many years so many don't know it!
If Avabic was inspired by Sanskrit why didn't you look at classical Sanskrit rather than Hindustani. In fact the for Vedic Sanskrit it would probably have been better to see how Chinese(Cantonese) works.
I swear some of y'all do not even watch the video lmao... like I said, the phonology is best compared to modern Hindustani, but most of the vocab for Avabic is derived from Sanskrit and especially important lore terminology has direct allusions to Vedic texts.