Community Profile

[This community is co-maintained by saizai [founder] and marikochan. Ask either of us when relevant.]

Winner of the Exolang Award!

An open community for the learning, practice, development, discussion, and analysis of constructed languages ("conlangs"), a.k.a. "artificial languages". Well-known examples include Esperanto, Klingon, Quenya, Lojban, etc. No previous linguistic experience needed.

Everything conlang-related - including constructed alphabets (conalphas) - is welcome. So is somewhat more general linguistic stuff, as long as it is relevant.

Here is a list of resources suggested by our members - books, websites, etc. of interest. Take a look.

You may also want to subscribe to conlang_podcast, the LJ-syndicated podcast of the Language Creation Society.

Format:
Please use English for general writing. Feel free to use linguistic or other jargon, but *do* explain it (at least in gloss) for our non-academic members.

Also, if you want to write random posts in any given conlang (e.g., poetry, political commentary, whatever), you are very welcome to do so... but please include an English "good faith" translation.

For phonetic writing, use IPA. The conlangs standards are ASCII (X-SAMPA) and inline Unicode; details here.

Suggested Introduction:

New to the group? Introduce yourself!

I know that sometimes people don't know what to say, so here is a suggestion. Obviously, this is only meant as a *possible* thing to discuss, not a limitation or a direct outline. We're not in class here. ;-)

This only applies to those of you who are working on your own conlang, or have previously done so. In this case, let's simplify the definition of "conlang" to anything that's not a "natural language", and somewhat more complex than Pig Latin or other simple resyllabifications.

Detail:
* the name of the conlang
* who worked on it, how long, and where (if relevant); whether it's still in development and/or use
* full description of it - grammar, vocab, writing forms (if not Roman-typeset), etc.
* any background info that seems relevant - how it came about, stuff that changed over time, its inclusion in other things (e.g., LotR for Tolkien's Quenya ;-)), etc.
* anything interesting related to it, like stories about your actually using it, trying to teach it to others, etc.
* what you have yet to do on it (as specifically as you can)

... and of course, anything else of interest to the group that I've somehow left off this list.

Our Languages

Here is a list of languages that are the creation of our community members.

Also, there are other conlang-related communities: conalphs, conculture, conlangs_decal, esperanto, fadelang, high_elven, klingon, laadan, learn_esperanto, learn_tolkien, lijou, nimyad, rikchiktalk, seraglia_jun, sindarin, sinnish, tengwar, tokipona, and worldbuilding. Check them out.

Members (741):

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