Niccijade Reeves-Alhark
Staff Reporter
ConLang is, according to Oxford Languages, an artificially made language. The term is short for “constructed language”. This type of language can be created and used for novels, TV shows, and movies. ConLang has been famously used in the Game of Thrones books and TV series, the Star Trek franchise, and in the Marvel universe.
A constructed language can do a lot for a story, it can add lore, create depth for characters, and create cultures. It tends to be more than a few surface words, having its own verb and adjective structures and dictionaries; they’re literally a whole different language.
To build a language for a creative project takes a few steps and processes, and usually takes a few months to a year to develop, according to a video made by FakeLifeLore.
The process usually starts with looking at other languages and then trying to get a goal for what the language should sound like. This consists of looking at phonic charts, symbols and structures from other languages. For example, language can use the phonics from German and Korean at the same time.
The creator then starts to create or associate symbols to the sounds they have chosen for their language. They can use grammar structures from other languages, like the verb structure used in Spanish for example, or create their own unique one. After that it is just revising and creating words with the new symbols and chosen structures.
My favorite part of the process is making the symbols, they can be as complicated or as simple as I want to be and can mean anything. I also love the idea of creating phrases that are unique to the language and a structure that is not seen in others.
Even though I started off without knowing the first steps, my language is turning out great. So far I have a verb structure down, a completed alphabet with 37 letters, along with a few basic words for greetings, pronouns, verbs, etc. It has turned into more of a big creative project because I have started making lore and a culture around the language, which I named Fvavian for now.
Image Credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
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