Fantasist’s Scroll

There are many ways to test one’s constructed language.
There’s the infamous Babel Text, as suggested by Jeffery Henning. There are other religious texts that might be used, like the Lord’s Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount. There’s translating a “folk tale”. I’ve even seen the suggestion put forward to translate dinner menus, street signs, and adverstisments. I, myself, have suggested that, perhaps, creating a phrasebook might be the thing. All of these methods should highlight any flaw or under-developed section of your conlang. When translating, we find holes and errors and things we simply haven’t thought through yet. But, another “test” occurred to me yesterday…
I was talking to my dog in German, telling her “Du bist ein gutes Hund! Du bist ein hübsch Hund!” and watched her get all happy and wiggly. Then, it hit me. “Can you talk to your dog in your conlang?” Of course, it works for any pet, but you get the idea. So, from now on, if I work on a constructed language, I must be able to talk to my dog in it, or it’s just not good enough.
Harumph!

A conlang without a grammar is just a cipher.

Think about that for a minute. If you’re just transposing words, you haven’t created a new language so much as you’ve created a new code. Maybe that’s all you’re after. If so, that’s fine and you can stop reading now, but if you want more than that, think about your native language and your conlang for a minute.

Still with me? Great. I can make up words, either by hand or by machine, but making a grammar takes a lot more thought and work. Last month, I was reading the blog over at Langmaker.com, the Ultimate Constructed Language Resource which is maintained by Jeffrey Henning. He had several links to conlang grammars there, including: The Sixteen Rules of Esperanto Grammar, Syntax for Artificial Languages, and A Training Device for Translation Theory and Practice. Any of them are good places to start looking at what goes into a grammar. If you’re a little more advanced than that, and feeling brave, you can try reading Describing Morphosyntax : A Guide for Field Linguists. But, as good as it is, I have to warn you, this is NOT for he casual reader or the easily intimidated. It is a daunting book that damn near put me into a coma! But, if you can make it through this bad boy, you will have a really good grasp of what can go into a language’s grammar. You will also be able to endure incredible, mind-numbing torture as dosed out by mothers-in-law. Or, you will be a gibbering idiot. Either way, it’s all great fuel for conlanging.
I often find myself getting stuck in the “research phase” of my many creative projects. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the research that I never get the project started. This is where I’m at with my conlanging. I need to get past that. I hope that the inspiration from Langmaker, and Jeffery Henning will help me get started on those projects. As they say on the street, ‘aint nothing to but to do it. So, let’s all take some inspiration from those links up above and get started on that conlang that we’ve been putting off.

New and Improved!

Way back when I first put the ConLang Word Generator on this site, my ultimate goal was to have something that created an entire language via CGI. There were lots of tools available for making words and even languages, but they were all limited in some greater or lesser way. For instance, the very good LangMaker by Jeffery Henning, is for Windows only. Chris Pound’s Name/Vocabulary generators require going to the command line, and it helps if you know a bit of PERL, too. But, I wanted something that would crank out languages on the web. Originally, I have to admit, I was trying to figure out a way to charge for this, but it’s just too fun to keep it to myself, so it’s free.
My ConLang Generator is based on Chris Pound’s PERL scripts, but with heavy modification. My English source files come from a number of sources, but mainly from resources associated with LangMaker.

So, standing on the shoulders of giants, I have finally made a free ConLang Generator. Enjoy!