Build Your Conlang | Language Cafe

Conlang Workshop

Session by Jam Ham

Unlock the art of language creation with our Constructed Language Workshop, designed for writers, linguists, and worldbuilders alike. This structured series will guide you through the fundamentals of conlanging, helping you design a unique and fully functional language from the ground up. Learn the different types of constructed languages, explore phonetics and phonology to craft authentic sounds, and develop a natural syllable structure and phonotactics for your conlang.

Dive into morphology and syntax, mastering the building blocks of grammar, parts of speech, gender/class systems, and inflection to create a language that feels rich and real. Experiment with writing systems and orthography, from alphabets to logograms, and explore the role of figurative language, semantics, pragmatics, and translation to add depth and nuance to your linguistic creation.

With step-by-step guidance and practical exercises, this workshop will provide the tools to bring your conlang to life.

Introduction to Conlangs

What defines a conlang and how it differs from natural languages
The different types of conlangs (artlangs, auxlangs, engelangs, and more)
The difference between a priori and a posteriori languages
What conlangs aren’t (codes, relexes, or "fake" languages)
Exploration of existing conlangs like High Valyrian, Klingon, and Esperanto
Jam Ham’s personal conlangs – a look into his creations, thought processes, and anecdotes behind their languages
First step in the conlanging process—ideating your own language!

Practical Tasks to Build Your Own Conlang

Submit your entries in our #conlang-table channel!

Task #1: Ideate Your Conlang!

For this week, please ideate an idea you have for a conlang that you would be working on throughout the workshop series! For the task, please mention: The purpose of your conlang. - Why do you plan on making this conlang? What kind of conlang are you making? Who speaks your conlang? - Is this for a worldbuiding project, and if so, who in your world speaks it? If this is a personal conlang, you can just mention yourself. Start conceptualizing grammatical/written aspects! - What do you want the sounds, grammar, or writing system to look like (if applicable)? Are you taking inspiration from other natlangs (natural languages), and if so, what languages? Are you deriving from other natlangs? You're not making a fully-fledged grammatical system here; you're just brainstorming ideas. Please use complete sentences in either bullet points or in [short] paragraph form, and feel free to describe or show us an image of your ideation process! Are you making random doodles to think more about your conlang? Are you making a bunch of connected sticky notes? Whatever it may be to get your creative juices flowing, tell us more about how you brainstorm your conlang idea!

The Sounds of Your Conlang

Phonetics, consonants and vowels
Phonology, phoemes, and sound systems
Phonotactics and allophony
Intonation, stress, tone and length
The next step to building your own conlang: defining its sound inventory!
Jam Ham’s personal conlang – a look into its sound inventory

Task #2: Develop Your Conlang's Sounds!

For this week, please come up with a phonological inventory (the consonant and vowel phonemes) for your conlang! For the task, please mention what phonemic sounds your conlang exhibits. If you don't know IPA, that's perfectly fine! You can simply compare certain sounds to that of existing languages (e.g. Sound X sounds like German ch). If you do know some IPA OR are willing to learn, however, I would recommend coming up with consonant and vowel charts displaying the phonemes of your language. Also examine the sound systems of the languages you’re taking inspiration from (if applicable). Look up the phonemic inventories of what languages you are inspired by, and as an extra challenge, you can try to include at least one speech sound that you wouldn't expect in your natlang inspos! If you would like to, also mention any of the following: Phonotactic rules - e.g. How is a syllable structured in your conlang? Can consonant clusters exist? If so, what are its constraints? Can diphthongs / adjacent vowels exist in your language? Can your syllables end in a coda? Allophonic rules - e.g. How can certain phonemes be pronounced differently in your conlang depending on its environment (where it is in a syllable or in proximity to other phonemes)? Prosodic features - e.g. Does syllable stress influence meaning? Does your conlang have tone? What does intonation look like?

Here are also some helpful links for you to learn or use the IPA in case you need it:

Interactive IPA Chart (IPA chart with audio recordings of each speech sound!): https://www.ipachart.com/
Online IPA Keyboard: https://ipa.typeit.org/full/
Consonant pronunciation tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olM1mm66YPw
Vowel pronunciation tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpR5GdKXpGc

The Words of Your Conlang

How nouns inflect for number and case
How verbs inflect for person, number, tense, and mood
Word order and sentence structure (VSO vs. SVO, head-initial vs. head-final)
How adjectives interact with nouns in a sentence
Examples from existing conlangs and Jam Ham’s personal conlang

Task #3: Develop Your Conlang's Morphology & Syntax!

For this week, please come up with the morphological and/or syntactic rules of your conlang (p much the rest of your grammar!)! Remember to also browse such rules from the inspo languages you've mentioned in workshop #1 (if you have any)! Also, here's last week's workshop task in case you missed it: ⁠conlang-table⁠ For the task, work on at least one aspect of the following: The inflectional and derivational morphology of your conlang. How are words derived? How is a word's part of speech changed, or how are totally new words formed from existing morphemes? Are words derived through affixing? Apophony? A mix of different tactics? Does your language inflect nouns and verbs (or other parts of speech)? If so, what categories are nouns and/or verbs inflected by? (i.e. case, number, or gender? tense, aspect, or mood? Do verbs agree with the subject (and/or the object), and if so, through which of these categories?) How are these inflections shown? Are words inflected through affixing? Apophony? Separate words? A mix of different tactics? I would also suggest to work out allomorphic rules, but this is not required! The word order (syntax) of your conlang. How does your language arrange the subject, object, and verb of a sentence? Is your conlang mostly head-initial or head-final (or a more even mix)? Make sure to use charts (if you can) or use sample phrases and sentences to demonstrate these rules in context (which means you get to make more words yaaay!). REMINDER: The topic of this week occupies a large aspect of your conlang, so you do not have to make a fully-fledged grammar this week! You can spread your work throughout the entire workshop series, and you just have to show us what things you've been cooking up this week! Please submit your responses in this channel and tag it with #CW_Week3 so I can find your responses more easily!

For nouns specifically, I found these Wikipedia links helpful if you want to browse different noun class systems or different noun cases. You may find something interesting that you'd want to put in your conlang:

The Ortography of Your Conlang

Understanding orthography, graphemes, and glyphs
Exploring types of writing systems (alphabets, syllabaries, abugidas, etc.)
Designing your conlang’s writing system
Considering factors like directionality, spacing, and punctuation

Task #4: Develop Your Conlang's Orthography!

For this week, we will be working on your conlang's orthography! Please answer the following questions: Does your conlang use an existing orthography? If so, what script does it use, and what are its rules? If it uses its own orthography, what type of writing system does it use? Is it an alphabet? Abjad? Abugida? Syllabary? Logographic system? A mix of these? For either your very own writing system or an already-existing writing system, please show us a chart and/or sample words or sentences to show your orthographic rules! For either creating your own or using an existing set of glyphs, you may also want to consider: Writing direction - Do you read it left-to-right? Right-to-left? Top-to-bottom? Differently in certain contexts? A mix of directions in the same pieces of text? Spacing - Are spaces used at all? Do they separate words? Phrases? Clauses? Punctuation - Is punctuation used? What do they separate, or what else does it indicate? Representing prosody - How are things like vowel length, gemination, tone, stress, or intonation represented (if you want them to be represented in writing at all)?

In case you missed it, here are some useful links for your conlanging process! (FontStruct was added as per the discussion we had after the workshop)

ConWorkShop - A useful site to store any info about whatever conlang you have!
Language Cafe Clan in ConWorkShop
FontStruct - A free and easy tool for you to create fonts in case you want your orthography seen typed! (You can upload your orthography font to ConWorkShop too!)

Your Conlang in Context

The many uses of language beyond describing the physical world
How meaning changes based on tone, culture, and context
Figurative language, idioms, and how they evolve
Phatic expressions and their role in social interaction

Task #5: Translate Phrases Into Your Conlang!

For this week, to better prepare you guys for the final workshop assignment where we'd be setting up a phrasebook, translate at least 5 phrases into your conlang! This exercise is to also get you to think more about the pragmatics of your language as well as the speakers of your language (if applicable). Think about how context and social/cultural considerations affect what is said and how it's said (and vice versa!). I'd like to see at least one phrase from each of the following categories: Greetings e.g.: Hello! Good morning/afternoon/evening! How's it going? Introductions e.g.: What's your name? My name is ___. Where are you from? I'm from ___." Parting Phrases e.g.: It was nice meeting you! Goodbye! See you soon! Other Common Expressions e.g.: expressions of gratitude (Thank you! You're welcome!), event greetings (Happy Birthday! Happy ___!), directions (Where is the ___? Just head ___ to find it.) Some Fun Expressions e.g.: "My hovercraft is full of eels." "Houston, we have a problem." "May the force be with you." You can also find other media quotes or make your own! Be creative when translating some of these! What if your conpeople don't know what a hovercraft or an eel is? How would they describe one if it was their first time seeing one? What exactly is the force to your conpeople? If you can, include: A phonemic or phonetic transcription of each phrase (transcribe it /phonemically/ or take [allophonic rules] into consideration). An outline, explanation, or detailed breakdown of each morpheme component of the phrase (what is each morpheme doing in the sentence?).

Also, I'd like to redirect you to ConWorkShop, which is a website where you can document and showcase your conlang! If you're having trouble finding phrases to translate:

There's a handy page that lists phrases for you to translate right here (CWS phrasebook).
You can also check out other texts to translate, which include commonly translated excerpts as well as ones submitted by the community!
Remember that we have a clan page on ConWorkShop too! I'm still trying to figure out what fun stuff we should do there at the moment, but for now you can use it as a handy badge :)