Fuwa conlang project ?!?

[Thyndd]

Me and my crazy ideas  What's a conlang, you might ask? Let's go with the Wikipedia definition:

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A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language[2] and in some cases a fictional language. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language, such as: to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code), to give fiction or an associated constructed setting an added layer of realism, for experimentation in the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning, for artistic creation, and for language games.

During the course of the last few years conlanging grew in popularity mainly thanks to many series and movies that featured them (Na'vi from Avatar, Dothraki and Valyrian from GoT, to name a few). At least people now know that it's a thing, even if they only have a very vague idea of what it entails exactly. Before this popularity boom, conlanging was limited to a bunch of online communities; and J. R. R. Tolkien, of course. Any fan of his work knows how much care he put in his languages. He even went as far as to say that all the metaverse he built was in order to give his languages a place to be alive. He can be considered the godfather of artlangs (artistic conlangs), since prior to him the main goal for conlangers was to test cognitive principles to better understand what languages is (englangs, or engineered languages, such as Lojban), or you know, to serve as auxiliary languages, such as Volapük or Esperanto, the latter being probably the most well-known conlang in history.

But so much for an introduction. I'm well aware that this is not a linguistics community, let alone a conlanging one. However, I thought that if by some weird chance people were interested enough, it might be fun to get together and try to build a cute little conlang of our own. THE FUWA CONLANG  In the improbable case that we could take this project off the ground, I think there's a fairly good chance that we ended up with something at least decent for beginners not aiming at naturalism. Why is that? Well, some time ago I made a post about what languages the fuwa members spoke and what languages they feel attracted to the most. There was quite a bit of diversity there. This is a pretty multilingual forum indeed. One of the biggest blunders beginner conlangers made is to just make a relex (copy) of their native language. Understandably so, since for a monolingual person is really hard to think how it could be possible to codify a message differently. If we leave aside for a moment that we all speak English (though with different levels of proficiency, look at poor ol' me ) the sheer diversity of languages people speak around here should for the most part patch that issue, kind of like pidgins usually preserve the grammatical features of the languages people spoke before getting immersed in the dominant language speaking community.

That said, someone who never tried to create a conlang (most if not all of you, I would imagine) couldn't possibly know how to even start. Even if you have a clear picture in mind of a feature you want to implement, it's nearly impossible to convey that idea accurately if you lack the linguistic terminology and general knowledge to do so. Therefore, I'll provide some very, very light material for those who want to get started so to not overwhelm anyone. Depending on how deep you're williing to go down the rabbit hole, you can ask me for more advanced bibliography. And of course, I'm actually just an amateur enthusiast who happened to have a lot of free time back in the good ol' days. It's very likely that we have some professional linguists in the forum and their help would be of inestimable value if they'd be willing to lend us a hand.

Also, if this actually gets people interested I'm willing to commit myself to the task of organizing the project as well as compile and keep the information up to date. We could also create a discord server for ease of real time communication. For now, without knowing how much interest this will stir, I'll just limit myself to provide these free introductory resources:

How to create a language (by Pablo David Flores)

Zompist's Language Construction Kit (there's the free version, and you can also buy the book which goes more indepth)

/r/conlangs Crash Course (this is more of a guide index that contains a lot of useful topics you may want to read about in Wikipedia)

Now for paid resources... If this information seems too shallow for you and you want something more detailed but without going too technical, I recommend getting a hold of Describing Morphosyntax by Thomas E. Payne. If this however looks a little too intimidating for you (but really, that book is amazing, everyone should read it!) you can also get by with David Peterson's (yeah, the Dothraki guy) The art of language invention

No need to say that it's not compulsory to have any of this knowledge to participate in the potential project, but I consider that anyone interested enough to join in would probably appreciate this material nonetheless.

 

Edited April 10, 2018 by Thyndd

[Thyndd]

Just now, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Sounds complicated. I know conlangs are difficult to pull off, but reap great benefits for worldbuilding in fiction. However, a conlang for a community? I'm not sure if this would work in the grand scheme of things.

I mean, it IS complicated, and takes quite some effort and dedication (though it depends on how far are you willing to take it tbh). I'm convinced that it's doable as long as there's enough motivation. I've been in similar projects myself and some of them had great results, and most of them were a lot of fun anyway. Granted, people probably knew more about linguistics than what I suspect will be the average level in fuwa, but as long as you set realistic goals I definitely can see it working.

[Plk_Lesiak]

Hmmm... Sounds cool, I'm afraid that project of this scale is far beyond my current (or possibly imagined) amounts of free time.

...not that my duties aren't mostly self-inflicted fancies, but I'm pretty attached to them.

[Thyndd]

39 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:

Hmmm... Sounds cool, I'm afraid that project of this scale is far beyond my current (or possibly imagined) amounts of free time.

...not that my duties aren't mostly self-inflicted fancies, but I'm pretty attached to them.

Well, that's a shame, but if you ever find some time to contribute ever so little, that would be good enough. After all, there's no time limit nor any kind of pressure whatsoever  

Anyway, I opened this thread fully aware that it woud go something like this 

Spoiler

 

So yeah 

[Dreamysyu]

Hmmmm. The idea is pretty nice, but I don't know, I'm not particularly interested in taking part in it, to be honest. I guess, it could be fun if there's a decent amount of people interested in this project and motivated to make it happen, but I'm not sure there is a critical mass of such people here, or on any community not specifically dedicated to languages.