Intro to Conlangs

Conlangs are one of my passions. I could talk aboiut conlangs all day long, and hopefully at some point on this blog I will write more, but for now I just want to do a gentle introduction to this special interest.

A conlang (constructed language) is a language made by humans on purpose, as opposed to a natlang which is your known world languages formed through gradual sound shifts, and changes over long periods of time and across regions. Some examples of conlangs are Klingon, Dothraki, Esperanto, the elvish languages created by Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings books, etc. It’s language as craft — shaping grammar, sound, and meaning from scratch instead of inheriting them through time and accident.

Conlanging lives in this space between art, science, and play. It’s part linguistics, part worldbuilding, and part self-expression. You can approach it like an experiment (“what happens if a language has no adjectives?”), or use it for world-building in your fantasy RPG. Or just do it to play around with words.

There are a few main flavors of conlanging:

• Artlangs — created for aesthetic or fictional purposes. These make worlds breathe: Tolkien’s Elvish, the languages of Game of Thrones, a private language to keep secrets in your notebook.
• Auxlangs — built for international communication. Esperanto is the most famous example of this type, surely you've heard of that one.
• Engelangs — engineered to test ideas about logic, structure, or cognition. Lojban’s a good one if you like puzzles that make your brain ache (in a good way).

You don’t have to be a linguist to begin. Maybe start by inventing a few words. Try saying them out loud. See what sounds natural. Maybe try adding some sounds from a language that's not on e you speak. Then imagine how sentences might work, or how people in your imagined world might swear, flirt, or pray.

Tolkien famously said his stories existed to give his languages somewhere to live. That’s the magic of conlanging — you start designing words, and end up building a world.

Conlanging isn’t about perfection, and personally i don't think I've ever "finished" a conlang. Its more like a process. Once you start hearing how language moves and breathes, you’ll maybe start getting insights into natlangs that you know. It can be an excellent gateway to learning about linguistics. Indeed that's how I came to study ling in a broader sense, I started with the appendices at the end of Return of the King.

So anyways that conlanging in a nutshell, I have a few languages I've made, and I just started a new one the other day, and that's for a different post coming soon. Also I want to eventually talk about Vulgarlang, which is my favorite tool used to kickstart a conlang. Stay tuned for more!