text:
Conlang/Intermediate/Writing

(All phonemic and phonetic transcriptions mentioned here are in X-SAMPA)

Scripts, or writing systems, are one of the first things many people notice when they come in contact with another language. Many people, at some point in their life, have tried making some sort of "code", with a one-to-one correspondence between their symbols and their native language's letters. Read on to learn how to make a realistic script for a language.

Types of Script
There are five main types of scripts. This page lists them in order from most to least evolved. All these systems have different advantages and disadvantages, for example, the logographic writing system would be useful if a language had many different dialects, but an alphabet would be useful if you want to have a higher literacy rate among the speakers in your conlang.

 * 1) Alphabets are the type you may be more familiar with. They consist of a series of symbols, usually between 10 and 45, where each symbol represents a consonant or vowel in the language. Some may have some duplicate letters (e.g., English C, K, and Q), but these usually have some historical meaning, discussed later on. Other will have symbols for consonant clusters, such as Greek "Ξ" /ks/, Cyrillic "Ц" /ts/, or even English "X" /ks, gz/.
 * 2) Abjads, also known as Consonantal Alphabets, mark consonants but not vowels. Arabic and Hebrew are examples. While these do have a means of showing vowels, via diacritics, they usually are not shown, except in children's books, books for foreigners, or religious texts. Some, such as Phoenician, had no system for marking vowels at all! They usually contain between 15 and 35 symbols.
 * 3) Abugidas contain consonants paired with vowels that can be changed with diacritics. Hindi and many other South Asian languages are examples. Each symbol has an "inherent vowel", commonly /a/, so you have each individual symbol meaning /pa/, /ba/, /ta/, /da/, etc. The vowels can be changed or muted with diacritics. They usually contain between 30 and 60 symbols, not counting diacritics.
 * 4) Syllabaries contain different symbols for every syllable in the language, such as Amharic, Yi, or Cherokee. In other words, there is a separate syllable for /ka/, /ke/, /ki/, /ko/, etc., for each vowel and consonant. The symbols standing for the same consonant may be related (as in Ojibwe, where symbols are rotated), or may bear no resemblance to other symbols, such as in Yi or Cherokee. Syllabaries generally range in size between about 40 symbols and up to 400, with Yi being the largest standardized one, with over 800.
 * 5) Logographic systems contain symbols that represent single, or the smallest meaningful unit in language. (e.g. "hand", "-er", "un-" in English.) Many languages contain some logographic symbols, such as "1", "@", and "&", but there are some languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, and Mayan, that use(d) logographs to represent much or all of their entire language.

Ideographic systems use one symbol for one thought or idea. Since languages aren't made up directly of thoughts and ideas, and writing systems represent language, true ideographic systems do not exist. They will be covered for the purposes of "alien" languages, though. Chinese is often described as "ideographic" — this is either just a loose use of the term to mean "logographic", or it is a misunderstanding — Chinese characters do not represent ideas directly. Japanese kanji come closer to the "ideographic" ideal, with one symbol representing any of several synonyms in context.

Alphabets
Alphabets are the dominant writing system in use in Europe and areas formerly colonized by Europe. Basically, they represent one symbol per sound, including vowel sounds.

All too often, however, alphabets, especially the Latin alphabet, are more complex. Each symbol often represents more than one sound, sometimes distinguished in the language, sometimes not. For example, English  represents /k/ and /s/,  /ks/ and /gz/ (as in e x ist), or  /a/, /A/, /{/, /O/, or /@/. The main reason for this is that the Latin alphabet was made for Latin and simply adapted for later languages. English itself had originally used a runic script, as did the Scandinavian languages. Latin written in the Latin script is entirely phonetic.

Many alphabets also have combinations of letters representing a completely different sound. These are called digraphs. In English, the main consonant digraphs are  /S/,  /tS/, and  /N/, plus many others. Diphthongs, or vowel-combinations, also occur often. English <i> represents /aj/ as well as /i/ or /I/. Some languages make use of digraphs for diphthongs, such as  for /ej/.

Note that situations like the above happen very often. As languages change, their orthography (writing system) may adapt, but not always grow to match it. Almost never does a language have letters that represent only one sound but no others. A realistic con-script should not have a direct correspondence between English and itself as well.

Diacritics are another method alphabets may use. Creating new symbols can be difficult and hard to remember, so many languages created "diacritics", or small, additional strokes, to letters to mark new sounds. The main diacritics used in Latin script languages are the acute: ' (á,é, etc., and usually mark stress), the grave (à, è, etc.), the circumflex (â, ê), the diaeresis (ä, ë), the tilde (ã, ñ, usually marking nasalization on vowels), the cedilla (ç), and many others. "Ligatures", or combinations of letters, may also be brought in, such as "æ". The symbol "&" is actually a heavily-modified ligature of  and , making "et", the Latin word for "and".

Some languages, though, do make new letters, which are often based on previous systems. Examples include the "þ" (thorn, /T/), which was derived from a rune (ᚦ) and "ð" (eth, /D/), developed in the Middle Ages, which are used in Icelandic, Old English, and several related languages.

Some letters may not make a sound themselves, but do affect other letters. For example, the Cyrillic <Ь> (soft sign) palatalizes the consonant before it. Some letters can perform both a function and a sound, such as the Russian <Я> ("ya"), which both palatalizes the previous consonant and is pronounced /a/.

There are a few scripts termed featural which tend to be similar to alphabets but show phonemic features rather than phonemes themselves. The best example is undoubtedly Korean hangul, though featural elements also occur in a few other scripts, such as Japanese hiragana and katakana, which are mostly syllabaries but take diacritics to indicate voicing.

Examples of Natlang Alphabets

 * Latin (includes English, German, French, Spanish, Romanian, Polish, Czech, Swahili, Finnish, Vietnamese, Nahuatl and many others)
 * Cyrillic (includes Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Kazakh, and several others)
 * Greek
 * Georgian
 * Armenian
 * Mongolian

Abjads
Abjads are the main writing system of the Middle East. Basically, they mark consonants in an alphabetic fashion, but vowels are not typically marked.

The Arabic and Hebrew abjads are entirely composed of consonants. Vowels can be marked, but generally aren't. Arabic has six vowel marks. Three of them, the 'short vowels', are only marked with diacritics. The other three, the 'long vowels', share symbols with some of the consonants. /a/ shares 'alif /?/, /i/ shares yaa /j/, and /u/ shares waaw /w/. When they are treated as consonants or as vowels can be more clearly seen when vowels are shown.

Arabic has an additional diacritic called the "sukuun", meaning the letter it is placed over does not have a vowel over it. If the sukuun is placed over 'alif, yaa, or waaw, they function as consonants. If there is no sukuun, but instead a vowel marker, they become long vowels. They can also become diphthongs if they have a sukuun, but the previous consonant has a vowel. So, the following form is pronounced /kaj/:

Ø a

Y K

(where Ø is the sukuun, and remember that Arabic is read from right to left).

Since vowels aren't usually marked, pronunciation has to be inferred by context. The sequence "KY" (using English order) can be pronounced:

/ kaja kajI kajV kIja kIjI kIjV kVja kVjI kVjV kaj /

Examples of Natlang Abjads

 * Arabic (including Arabic, Iranian, and Pashto)
 * Urdu
 * Hebrew (including Hebrew and Yiddish)
 * Syriac (used by modern Syriac/Aramaic)
 * Phoenician and Demotic, all extinct.

Abugidas
Abugidas are the main writing system of India, other South Asian countries, and South-East Asia. They are basically a group of syllables with a common inherent vowel, which has to be changed with diacritics.

All syllables start out with an inherent vowel, usually /a/, and a different consonant: ka, ca, t a, ta, pa, etc. These each have their own symbol. So, say you want to make the syllable . The  diacritic is then added to the  symbol, and negates the /a/. Note that in the Indian and South-East Asian languages diacritics can come before and after a letter instead of only above or below.

Hindi has diacritics for all of its vowels and diphthongs — a, e, i, o, u, r, ai, and au. But what if a word or syllable begins with a vowel? There are two ways you could potentially handle this. In most of the abugidas of Asia, there is a set of "independent vowels", which are full letters just like any of the other consonants, and their purpose is only for syllable-initial vowels.

The other way is not done in any of the South Asian abugidas, but still doable. Just make a "vowel carrier", a letter that makes no sound, but can carry vowel diacritics, like the Hebrew aleph.

Many of these abugidas also contain "Conjunct Consonants", which you don't have to do too. These are basically ligatures, where the form of two letters are combined into one "space", and they together can take a vowel. For example, when "ta" and "ka" are combined, they become "tka", which can take diacritics like any other consonant.

Examples of Natlang Abugidas

 * Devanagari, used by Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, and many other languages
 * Malayalam, used by Malayalam, Konkani, and sometimes Kodagu.
 * Bengali, used by Bengali and Assamese.
 * Gurmukhi, used by Punjabi.
 * Gujarati, used by Gujarati and Kachchi.
 * Oriya, used by Oriya and several other languages.
 * Tamil, used by the Tamil language, and sometimes for liturgical Sanskrit.
 * Sinhala, used by Sinhalese.
 * Kannada, used by Kannada and Tulu.
 * Telugu, used by Telugu.
 * Tibetan, used by Tibetan and Dzongkha
 * Thai, used by Thai, Southern Thai, and several other languages.
 * Khmer, used by Khmer and sometimes Pali.
 * Lao, used by Lao and some other languages in Laos.
 * Burmese, used by Burmese, Mon, and the Karen languages.

Syllabaries
Syllabaries are spread around the world in use. They contain separate symbols for every CV (consonant + vowel) combination in the language, although final consonants have many ways of being done.

Here is an example of a typical syllabary, romanized. This is the Cree system:

ê pê tê kê cê mê nê sê šê yê wê rê lê i pi ti ki ci mi ni si ši yi wi ri li î pî tî kî cî mî nî sî šî yî wî rî lî o po to ko co mo no so šo yo wo ro lo ô pô tô kô cô mô nô sô šô yô wô rô lô a pa ta ka ca ma na sa ša ya wa ra la â pâ tâ kâ câ mâ nâ sâ šâ yâ wâ râ lâ -h -p -t -k -c -m -n -s -š -y -w -r -l

Note that there are also symbols for the vowels alone. To make final consonants (of the CVC form), the last row of symbols, called the "Finals", are added. So, "tak" would be written with two symbols:  and <-k>. Many syllabaries use this method, and it is basically limited to languages with a small number of legal final consonants.

Another system for finals, used by the Mayan syllabary system, is the "Principle of Synharmony". This states that a final vowel is marked by reduplicating the previous vowel. For example, a word like "kalo" is done with two symbols, as usual: ka-lo. But, if you want the syllable "kal", the previous vowel is repeated: ka-la. Since the vowel was repeated, it is ignored on the second syllable. This applies for any vowel. But what if you want to make the syllable "kala"? That requires three syllables, adding in a simple vowel: ka-la-a. The second "a" is negated, but returned by the next syllable.

A third system, used by Hittite, comprised of two sets of syllables, one set in CV form, and another set in VC form. This way, when a syllable of the form C1VC2 was needed, one would write C1V-VC2, for instance, <ka><al> for "kal". Additionally, when the vowel in question needed to be made long, like "kāl", the pattern became C1V-V-VC2: <ka><a><al>. For "kala" one would simply write <ka><la> as the /l/ would move onto the next syllable.

Sometimes, though not always, syllables with a relation, such as the same consonant, look similar. For example, the syllables "ka", "ke", "ki", etc., may look similar. In systems such as in Ojibwe, the vowel signs are changed by simply rotating the symbol around.

Examples of Natlang Syllabaries

 * Cree (rotational), used by Ojibwe, Cree, Inuktitut, and many other Native American languages; collectively may be known as "Aboriginal Syllabics".
 * Cherokee
 * Ethiopian, used by Amharic, Ge'ez, Tigrinya, and several other languages
 * Katakana and Hiragana, used by Japanese
 * Yi
 * Cypriot, Linear B, and Celtiberian, all extinct

And many more systems.

Semisyllabaries
There is a set of scripts from pre-Roman Spain that sit in an intermediate category between true alphabets and syllabaries. In those scripts, the plosives combine with the following vowels in a single syllabogram — for instance, there is a single symbol for PA, another for PI, another for PE, etc. — but all other consonants and vowels also have single symbols. In such a system, for example, the phrase "barenarkenti" would be spelled with the nine symbols <ba> <r> <e> <n> <a> <r> <ke> <n> <ti>. In fact, it's likely that such systems evolved out of so-called redundant alphabets, where the stops had separate signs depending on the vowel that followed them, much like the ancient Etruscan alphabet, where the /k/ sound was written <K> before <A>, <C> before <E> or <I>, and <Q> before <U> (the Etruscan language lacked an /o/ sound).

Logographic systems
Logographic systems are/were used to write Chinese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, Mayan, Sumerian, and many other languages. Ancient civilizations created logography first, and then evolved them into other systems.

In a pure logographic system (if there were such a thing in nature), each symbol represents a morpheme, or the smallest meaningful part of language. For example, "hand", "red", "place", "-er", "-ist", "un-" and "anti-" are all morphemes. In a logographic system, each of these would get its own symbol. As you can probably imagine, there are thousands of morphemes in most languages, and hence thousands of symbols exist in any logographic system.

These symbols are not all random. In general, symbols of words that represent visible ideas or things are often little drawings. (Remember though that writing constantly develops, so after a few thousand years, there wouldn't be too much resemblance left!) For example, words like "sun", "moon", "man", "child", "water", "fire", "left", "right", "dog", "horse", "tree", "flower", etc. are likely to be drawn as pictures.

Not all words can be drawn this way. How are you going to draw "love", or "-er", or "anti-"? Different languages had different approaches. In some cases a word with a similar pronunciation is substituted, for example, writing "ant" to mean "anti-". If you do this often enough, you're on your way to a syllabary, an abugida, or an abjad. In some cases however, another picture is drawn to "explain" the new word: for example, you might draw a spear next to "ant" to mean "anti-" — spear means you're opposed, right? In ancient Egyptian, the spear would be set aside as a separate symbol, while in Chinese the spear would be incorporated into the "ant" symbol to make a new symbol for "anti-". (This is why scripts like Egyptian are sometimes called logophonetic, a name also applied to languages using a mix of logographs and some other system.) The choice here is really up to you.

In fact, it is estimated that 90%+ of Chinese characters are formed using the above method: taking an existing symbol with a similar pronunciation, and incorporating another symbol to explain the meaning. Over time, however, these characters' shapes have fossilized, and a lot of sound and meaning changes occur, so some characters are made up of symbols that really don't represent their meanings or sounds very well any more.

The sheer size of such a system guarantees it won't be pure; bits of it, or whole sections of it, may be sliding toward some other sort of system, and different parts of it may be sliding in different directions. There will be morphemes represented by multiple symbols that don't have independent meanings, and symbols that represent multiple words.

Languages using Logographic systems

 * Chinese
 * Japanese Kanji, Korean Hanja, and Vietnamese Chu-Nom, all borrowings of Chinese logographs
 * Khitan, an extinct Altaic language of ancient northeastern Asia
 * Jurchen, the precursor to the Manchu language
 * Tangut, an ancient language of northwestern China
 * Naxi, a Burmese-Lolo language of Yunnan, China

Languages using Logophonetic systems

 * Japanese
 * Korean (mixed Hangul and Hanja form)
 * Ancient Egyptian
 * Luwian (in ancient Asia Minor)
 * Sumerian
 * Akkadian
 * Mayan
 * Zapotec
 * Mixtec
 * Aztec

Now, if you have decided what kind of writing system you want, there are three more steps left to take: Writing Direction, Script History, and Mediums of Writing. Then you can get on to the actual script-making.

Writing direction
All scripts have a certain writing direction. Latin writes from left-to-right. Hebrew and Arabic write from right-to-left. Mongolian is top-to-bottom. These are the main types of directions accounted for in real Earth scripts:

 * Left-to-Right: English, Cyrillic, Greek, and many other systems.
 * Right-to-Left: Hebrew, Arabic, Urdu, Assyrian, and several other systems.
 * Top-to-Bottom: Mongolian, and sometimes in Chinese
 * Boustrophedon: Ancient Greek

"Boustrophedon" is where on one line a text is read left-to-right, on the next right-to-left, on the next left-to-right again, and so forth.

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE ИI HƧI˩GИƎ FO BOUSTROPHEDON .Ǝ˩YTƧ

Note that in Ancient Greek, a Boustrophedon language, sometimes the letters would literally be flipped over when reading in the other direction. So, for example, the Greek letter  ('digamma') would be  when read left-to-right, but the prongs would face left when reading right-to-left.

If you would like to stick with one of the above methods, go ahead. Most scripts use them. A few more complex systems are described below:

Some scripts can be written in many directions, that is, left-to-right, right-to-left, and top-to-bottom are all acceptable. Chinese and Ancient Egyptian do/did this. In Ancient Egyptian, all of the hieroglyphs with a face would face toward the direction in which to start reading. So, if you were reading right-to-left, all of the hieroglyphs that had a face (or a discernible front side) would 'face' right. In Chinese, it must be determined by context.

Another system is the "Rotational" system, a very rare one. As far as we've heard, only one script ever used it, (the Easter Island script). It is similar to boustrophedon, except that the letters also rotate 180 degrees after each line! If you rotate the reading board around after each line, they would look normal. Here is an example of this using English letters:

Some other ideas that, so far as we've heard, have not yet been used:

 * Spiraling in or out
 * Writing in clockwise or counterclockwise circles, rotating each character as you write; essentially left to right or right to left but with each sentence on a separate ring outside the last.
 * Vertexual; each part of the sentence is on its own line, which points towards a vertex that the entire sentence converges at.

Script history
Scripts are not static. They change constantly, just as language does. Compare writing like Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and modern Latin script. Believe it or not, modern Latin script ultimately derives from Proto-Sinaitic, a small collection of Egyptian hieroglyphs. These hieroglyphs were later adopted into Phoenician, where they were drastically simplified and each assigned a single sound. Through heavy contact with the Phoenicians, soon the Greeks adopted their alphabet, but changed some of their consonant letters, representing sounds that don't exist in Greek, into the Greek vowel signs. Sometime, though we're not entirely sure why, Greek started being written in boustrophedon instead of right-to-left, and then ultimately stuck with left-to-right. When this switch occurred, all of the letters were 'flipped' over horizontally, giving the modern-day Greek alphabet. Then the Etruscans and Latins in the Italian peninsula adopted the Greek alphabet with minor modifications, the Latin one ultimately becoming the script now used throughout most of Europe. Cyrillic script also came from Greek, after the Russians' conversion to Orthodox Christianity, and after about 1,000 years of change, the modern Cyrillic alphabet came to be.

In Proto-Sinaitic and Phoenician the letter stood for the glottal stop /?/, but Greek lacked this sound, so it became /a/.

"A" originally started out as 'aleph, the ox. Later the body disappeared, leaving only the head. Then the head was simplified to a simple line, leaving the most distinctive parts (the horns) intact. Eventually the horns pierced the line, and the letter flipped on its side in Phoenician. In Greek, it was flipped again, and after several lines were trimmed down, it became the modern Latin/Greek/Cyrillic "A".

Note the change of complexity. Early writing is almost guaranteed to be some sort of picture-writing like hieroglyphics, where each symbol represents exactly what it looks like. But, as time goes on and writing spreads, for many this just became pointless complexity. The symbols start to simplify and sometimes turn into alphabets. When one literate people start to trade with an illiterate one, their writing system has a very good opportunity to spread. Sometimes one script wins over another. For example, in ancient India, there were two main scripts used: Brahmi and Kharosthi, but Kharosthi fell out of use and now all of the major scripts of India and parts of South-East Asia are descended from it.

Sometimes the early pictographic systems never simplify that much. In the Ancient Chinese writing, the characters did change, but many did not simplify as significantly as the Proto-Sinaitic ones. The modern Chinese logographic system is still very complex. The major reform in 1949 was instituted by the Chinese government.

One thing to note is the diversity of scripts in Europe compared to South-East Asia. Almost all of Europe uses Latin script or Cyrillic script, but in South-East Asia every country has at least one of its own scripts. This was probably because of the Roman Empire. The Romans unified most of Europe and had their script well established before they fell, and their script stayed. Such an empire did not exist in South-East Asia, leading to the vast diversity of scripts. So, basically, the ancient hieroglyphic systems simplify when they are no longer only for priestly use, and therefore can be abbreviated. For the common person, carefully elaborating each symbol is just a major waste of time. This is still true today, to a lesser extent, but that is where cursive came from. Even the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs had heavily-reduced forms, known as "Demotic", and this was used by the common person. You can see demotic, for example, in the middle section of the (image at right).

Here's a link to a good chart (external to wikimedia) showing the evolution of a single symbol through the South-East Asian languages:

Medium of Writing
The surface upon which a script is written actually does influence the script a great deal. When carved into stone, such as in the Fuþark or other Runic scripts, the letters tend to be very angular and composed of straight lines. Curves are harder to do in stone than on paper. Also, despite being carved on stone in the Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian Demotic script is much more 'fluid' than the hieroglyphs, and it generally was written on papyrus.

The ancient Sumerians wrote on clay, using a reed stylus to impress symbols on it. This also gives it a very unique look. This type of writing is known as "Cuneiform".

Some modern languages, such as, retain their unique scripts from the past. The rounded shape of Burmese stems from the fact that it was originally written on palm leaves, which would tear if there were too many straight lines.

In the mixed-case systems of Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts (meaning there is both an "upper-case" (majuscule) and a "lower-case" (minuscule)), the lower-case forms came from cursive versions of the capital letters.

Now, if you have thought about your script and chosen a script type, writing direction, and a medium, now you are ready to create your own script.

title: Conlang/Intermediate/Writing


text:
Conplanet

If you want to create your own cultures and societies, they will need a ConPlanet, or at least a local geography, to influence their beliefs, culture, and interactions. The materials provided in this section deal with how to create a realistic world for your peoples to inhabit.

Geoff Eddy has an excellent guide for creating planets, which can be extremely helpful. Another website that deals with the scientific side of creating worlds is Anne Viau's World-Builders.org.

The members at Unilang started a wiki online called ConPlanet allowing users to participate and interactively construct their con-nation alongside others in the conworld.

Table of Contents

 * Introduction
 * Astronomy
 * Stars and Sun
 * Solar matters
 * Lunar matters
 * Days, years, and time
 * Geography
 * Climate and Weather
 * /Life/
 * Plants
 * Animals
 * Sentient Species

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Conplanet


text:
Conmap

If you've thought about the geography of your planet, you'll eventually need a ConMap to organize the information. This section deals with how to make good, realistic, and eye-pleasing maps.

Table of Contents

 * Getting Ready
 * Projections
 * The Basic Outline
 * Nations
 * Mountains
 * Thematic Maps
 * Finishing Touches
 * Examples of Conworld Maps

Computerized mapping
Mapping software tools provide a wide array of options for creating maps at many different levels as well as rendered scenes of landscapes based on those maps.

Free software

 * TerraJ by Martin Smith, an open source Java cross-platform solar system generator combining Fractal Planet, StarGen, and Planet Generator
 * GeoMorph relief editor
 * G.Projector by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, a free cross-platform Java application that can reproject a map from a cylindrical projection to a Mercator projection, for example
 * AutoRealm is an open source mapping utility for creating maps of castles, dungeons, and cities

Commercial software

 * L3DT by Bundysoft, a comprehensive commercial terrain modeling solution.
 * Fractal Mapper by Nbos Software, targeted at maps more similar to human-drawn maps
 * AstroSynthesis by Nbos Software, a star-mapping tool that maps the positions of groups of nearby stars in 3D
 * Daylon Leveller by Daylon Graphics, a terrain sculpting application for Windows
 * Terragen by Planetside Software, a terrain generator and rendering application

Unknown status

 * Wilbur by Joe Slayton, a free digital terrain sculpting application for Windows
 * The Galaxy galaxy generator by Dmytry Lavrov

title: Conmap


text:
Talk:Conlang/Intermediate/Writing

Untitled
I think Header could be advantageously used. More internal links, or even a synopsis table would also be great. (there's no way to know that the resume at the top of the page are extended below.) - Circéus

 * I'm sorry, what do you mean by a "synopsis table" and "resume at the top"? -- Maknas 16:45, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I've added some headers and altered some of the formatting. The page is now easier to navigate. What do you think? --Ingolemo 16:56, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, It's done now anyway. I'm just not familiar enough with the correct wikivocabulary, I guess. Circeus

 * Oh, wow, that's nice. I didn't know how to do the codeboxes in Wiki before, that's why I had to drop them. Thanks Ingolemo! -- Maknas 17:20, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Romanization
How about a romanization section? Maybe it should go into it's own beginner section? I'll write it if you're okay with me adding it. --Circeus 19:47, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I just noticed there was a small note on it at the end of Sounds, we might want to expand it into it's own section. --Circeus 12:28, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Logographic Systems
The following is written about logographic systems: "In a logographic system, each symbol represents a morpheme, or the smallest meaningful part of language." That's nowhere even close to true, and very misleading. In no natural logographic system is this true. Even in Chinese, there are some glyphs used for more than one word, and some words comprised of more than one glyph (where each glyph either has no independent meaning, or has a meaning that's separate from the meaning produced by combining it with the other). And that's just Chinese. In Egyptian, glyphs were used: (1) to stand for words; (2) to stand for phoneme strings; (3) to stand for sounds; (4) to stand for syllables; and (5) to stand for ideas. Most often, what a Chomskyan linguist would call an inflectional "morpheme" was rendered with a phoneme glyph (though, of course, that same glyph could be used, in combination with a line determinative, to stand for whatever picture it resembled). In short, this section is, at the very least, biased, and, at worst, hopelessly inaccurate, and I think it should be changed. Dedalvs (talk) 21:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

 * The whole organizational plan of the module starts to fall apart after the first four of the main types of script (which may be related to the notice at the top, The text in its current form is incomplete). Wikipedia gives, yonder, six types and also admits that systems are apt not to be purely of one type.  The confusion seems to be compounded by a disparity in common usage between logographic system and logograph — apparently, under this usage, symbols in a logographic system are not necessarily logographs.  The question isn't whether such usage is "right" or "wrong", but how this module ought to finesse it.  IMO the point about mixed types really ought to be made here. Perhaps the six-type scheme should be adopted.  There are also some topics that are now just sort-of hanging — off hand, I see ideographic system and logophonetic system mentioned but not very well addressed (both closely related to logographic system).  Pi zero (talk) 15:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Meaningless Alphabet
Does any conlang or natlang have an alphabet where a letter doesn't represent anything alone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 22:58, 10 April 2013

title: Talk:Conlang/Intermediate/Writing


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Talk:Macroeconomics/Contents

What's the Australian perspective? Are you sure you don't mean Austrian school perspective? --Waxmop 16:39, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Money Supply
Wikipedia has a pretty decent article on the Money Supply, shouldn't this be added to this project?

AE or AD
I've always been brought up with Aggregate Demand (AD), not AE (Aggregate Expenditure?). Advice? Opinion? --Mark Lewis 22:54, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Change
I've created a proposal list of chapters to change to, a Template:Macrobar to be used as navigation, and a basic first chapter that gives an overview of economics. I think the present structure throws out the windows any logical order of learning concepts and breaks it down into chunks which are too small. I don't recommonmend just throwing it out however, but integrating it into the new scheme, which can expand or change easily based on others' input.--Naryathegreat|(talk) 03:25, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I have renamed the template to /bar, in keeping with recent naming conventions. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:50, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Update
Is anyone currently working on this wikibook? I can't seem to see many recent changes in the economics bookshelf.... DettoAltrimenti 04:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that these subjects be covered under a section for GDP, not Aggregate Demand (these are all listed under Aggregate Demand in the pre-change TOC). DettoAltrimenti 18:34, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Consumption
 * Investment
 * Government Spending –almost empty
 * Imports-Exports –almost empty

Content
It would seem that a book should be viewed in it's entirety and not as a semblance of the whole, therefore I believe there should be some information on the history of macroeconomics including subjects such as Keynes Eroyce 15:00:34, 15 December 2005

I would agree- in most books I've read, the history of economics was brought up in the introduction, and again as it was necessary. An example would be explaining keynesian and classical economics with the aggregate supply curve, and maybe throw something in there about the 1929 stock market crash. Most of this book needs to be looked over and edited fairly heavily, though. DettoAltrimenti 21:04, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Organization
this book should be organized, and links made, before any major changes are added. Also, the name of this book should be 'Principles of Macroeconomics'- to avoid confusion- there is no macroeconomic theory in this book. DettoAltrimenti 16:58, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Macroeconomics/Contents


text:
Conhistory

Our history has determined almost every aspect of lives. It has influenced where we live, our religious beliefs, the languages we speak, how we govern ourselves, relations with others around the world, and many other things. Just as Earth has thousands of years of human history shaping the modern world, so would a conworld have its own ConHistory, whether it is longer or shorter. The information in this wikibook will help you develop your own conworld's history and to shape its present.

Table of Contents

 * The Basics of ConHistory
 * How Geography Affects History
 * Prehistory
 * /Prehistory/
 * Rise of Agriculture
 * The First States
 * The Ancient World
 * Warfare
 * Cultural Interaction
 * Advancements Made in the Ancient Age
 * Migration
 * Barbarians
 * Push and Pull Factors
 * Exploration
 * Colonialism
 * Rise and Fall of Empires
 * How Empires Work
 * The Rise of an Empire
 * The Fall of an Empire
 * Ups and Downs of Cultures
 * Cultures
 * How Science Develops
 * How Economies Develop
 * How Art Develops
 * How Thought Develops
 * Industrialization
 * Industrialized Nations
 * Tides of Ideology
 * Cultural Interaction
 * Industrial Warfare
 * The Modern World
 * The Modern World
 * Modern Warfare
 * Cultural Interaction
 * Making the Third Leap
 * The Future World
 * Some What Ifs to get your mind working
 * Examples of ConHistories

title: Conhistory


text:
Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Grammar/Forming words

Untitled
Didn't someone post an article that Jeff wrote about Polylangs on ConlangResource? I thought he said we could use it for the CR Wiki. -- Maknas 17:22, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, Jeff did write that article, and he did say we could use it. I'm going to go ahead and add it to this page.

--Whimemsz

Noun incorporation + reanalysis = not poly anymore
From the module:

Be careful when trying to demonstrate noun incorporation, as the reader might reanalyze an utterance like this as a less exotic inflecting SOV clause: --Damian Yerrick (talk) 22:42, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Greetings
How can greetings be formed, how might they change, and how are they affected by history? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 11:43, 10 April 2013


text:
Conlang/Types

Conlangs are classified into types and subtypes based mainly on why they are created. The three basic types are engelangs (engineered languages), auxlangs (auxiliary languages), and artlangs (artistic languages).

Whatever your reason for making a language, it's good to keep always in mind why you started it in the first place.

Engineered languages
Engelangs, sometimes called englangs, are conlangs designed to meet objective criteria, rather than subjective goals like "elegance" or "ease of use". For example, one might design an engelang so that the arrangement of sounds in a word classifies its meaning; or so that its grammatical structure imitates formal logic; or so that its expressions conform to a certain ideology or point of view (say, Taoism, or feminism). Subjective goals are always around — motivating the choice of objective criteria, and filling in gaps in the language design that the objective criteria don't address. As long as the technical criteria take precedence when deciding features of the language design, it's an engelang.

Be aware (and beware) that the names for this type of conlang and its subtypes vary a bit across the conlanging community. What we're calling engelangs here, some conlangers call loglangs (a term we're using just for the ones that implement formal logic); and some other conlangers call them philosophical languages (a term we're using for a subtype of engelangs distinct from loglangs).

Logical languages
Loglangs are conlangs built around the structure of formal logic. They are usually designed to investigate how the human mind would work when using a language with that structure. Logical languages tend to have few or no irregularities and be similar in style to computer programming or markup languages. They advocate a logical and consistent architectural structure of utterances. Lojban, a language created to test the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis (the idea that language shapes the operation of the mind), is considered archetypal of the genre. Others are like Ithkuil, a language created by John Quijada: Ithkuil exists as an exercise in how human languages could function. These often overlap with philosophical languages.

Some examples of loglangs:
 * — developed in the mid-twentieth century, originally as a tool with which to test the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis.
 * — a community-driven offshoot of Loglan. Its development is ongoing.
 * — originally inspired by Loglan, then took a turn toward the naturalistic.
 * — a knowledge representation language, for an attempt to create artificial intelligence through vast accumulation of knowledge.
 * — intended to express thoughts precisely and densely.

Philosophical languages
Philosophical languages are conlangs constructed to meet some philosophical goal. This goal can be to explore how the mind works by altering the fundamental structure of the language (which is the aim of some loglangs, such as Ithkuil), or it can be to see if language is even possible when certain elements are changed. In general, philosophical languages are experimental.

In some of them, for example, all the words for manmade objects (artifacts) might begin with the same letter, t for instance, all the words for pieces of furniture would begin with to-, the word for "chair" would be tod, words for different types of chairs would begin with tod-, organisms with v, plant species with ve- while animals would begin with vu-, all vertebrates with vuz-, mammals with vuzu- and rodents with vuzum-.

A common criticism of languages that use such a word categorization system is that the words that are most similar in meaning and topic, and will therefore most need to be distinguished from each other, will sound too alike, and become too confusable to learn, even though the goal of these languages is usually to make memorization easier. In a few of these languages a single phoneme or very short (two-letter) syllable will indicate an element of meaning, such as "light/vision", "female", or "many".

Some examples of philosophical languages:

 * — seventeenth century classification language. It has been described as paving the way for Roget's Thesaurus.
 * — 1960s. Each sound has a meaning, and the meanings of words are built up from the meanings of the sounds.
 * — early twentieth century classification language. One of its supporters was Melvil Dewey, creator of the Dewey Decimal System.
 * — twenty-first century. Two-letter morphemes carry meaning, and longer words are built up as compounds.
 * — twenty-first century. Designed to facilitate Taoist thinking.  Very few words with no inflections and uncomplicated meanings, and very simple grammar.
 * —1982. Designed to support women's perceptions and thoughts.

Auxiliary languages
Auxlangs are designed to help ease communication between two or more linguistically diverse communities. They use simple phonology and grammar to try to make them easy to learn. Their grammars are made in such a way as to express the widest range of meanings possible. There are many Auxlangs, and some of them were among the first constructed languages ever made.

Some examples of auxlangs:

 * — probably the most widely known auxlang. It includes words from languages of several Indo-European branches and has a highly developed system of word derivation.
 * — the most successful auxlang prior to Esperanto. Its vocabulary is derived from Germanic roots.
 * — derived from Esperanto, separating in an event called the schism (or even the Great Schism) from which resentments have not entirely faded more than a century later. Ido uses a Romance-derived vocabulary.
 * — based on without inflections.
 * — based on modern West European languages.
 * — based on the musical scale. It can be sung and played.
 * — based on modern Slavic languages and Old Church Slavonic; designed to be intelligible to all speakers of the former.

Many auxlangs borrow their vocabulary entirely from the Indo-European languages — often from a mix of Romance and Germanic languages, but most often entirely from Romance languages. As a result, the vocabulary and general method of reaching the goal of universality sound a lot alike from auxlang to auxlang. These auxlangs are often called "Euroclones". More recent auxlangs that take their vocabulary from more diverse sources and use non-Indo-European grammar include, , , and.

Artistic languages
Artlangs are created for a wide range of reasons: fleshing out works of fiction, fun, experimentation, or even historical study (colloquially called "if-langs"). Most people who create artlangs do so simply because they enjoy it. Several artlangs have gained high visibility in popular culture in recent years, such as Klingon, created for the Star Trek franchise by professional linguist Marc Okrand; the many Elvish languages, especially Quenya and Sindarin, in Tolkien's Middle-earth; and Dothraki, created by conlanger David J. Peterson for the Game of Thrones television series.

Fictional languages
The most familiar and general subset of artlangs are fictional languages. These are spoken by the inhabitants of the fictional worlds of a book, movie, television show, video game, comic, or toy, such as Middle-earth, the Star Trek universe, or the game Myst. These worlds in which they are spoken are called conworlds, inhabited by fictional concultures. The conworld influences what words the language will have for flora and fauna, articles of clothing, foods, objects of technology (such as bricks, cannons, or telephones), sports, music genres, ethnic groups, religious concepts, and place names.

The culture will also have an influence on some things like verb tenses (how your people view the future and the past, or whether time should even be grammatically indicated at all any more than place should), pronouns (whether the speakers need fine enough shades of "we" to distinguish the concept of "you and I" from "them and I", or whether they have different levels of formality for "you"), and how kinship terms are split up (some languages have different words for older and younger brothers, others do not distinguish "brother" from "sister", and some have different words for the sister of a sister and the sister of a brother). Tolkien started out inventing languages for his amusement and then retroengineered a fictional universe to have a world in which these languages would be spoken.

Since the Internet became popular, many people have now become able to put up information on their conlangs and associated conworlds on their sites, and these have become famous. Verdurian, the language of Mark Rosenfelder's Verduria on the planet of Almea, is often invoked as a symbolic representative of these Net-based fictional languages.

Some examples of fictional languages:

 * — created for the Star Trek franchise by linguist Marc Okrand; meant to have a harsh sound, but be pronounceable by actors, and to reflect a suitably bellicose worldview.
 * — created for the movie Avatar by professor Paul Frommer; meant to fit the film concept, and be pronounceable by actors, but not sound like any particular human language.
 * — created for the television series Game of Thrones by conlanger David J. Peterson.
 * — described in George Orwell's novel 1984; supposed to prevent dissident thoughts by not allowing them to be expressed.
 * and — the most prominent of J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish languages; designed to Tolkien's personal taste.  He created Middle-earth as background for the languages.
 * — created by Mark Rosenfelder for a Dungeons & Dragons world; borrows from various European languages, but doesn't closely resemble any of them.

Altlangs
Altlangs are also known as What if? languages or if-langs. They speculate on an alternate history and try to reconstruct how a family of natural languages would have evolved if things had been different. What if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings? What if the Polynesians had settled in Central America during the time of Meso-American Empires? What if Alexander the Great had not been able to conquer Egypt? What if Greek civilization went on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving Greek and not Latin to develop several modern descendants? The language that would have evolved is then traced step by step in its evolution, to reach its final form.

The revered grandfather of this genre is Andrew Smith's Brithenig, which attempts to determine what Romance languages would have evolved into had the Romans displaced the Celtic people in Great Britain. The vocabulary of Latin is altered through the same evolution that befell Welsh from the evolution of the Celtic languages through the present day. An altlang will typically base itself on the core vocabulary of one language and the phonology of another. An altlang will ideally have meticulous understanding and admirable imagination as to world history, sturdy knowledge of linguistics, and ingenious improvisation when it becomes necessary to "toss it up".

Some examples of altlangs:
 * — might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language in Great Britain.
 * — might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language in Ireland.
 * — might have evolved if the Romans had conquered Poland.

Personal languages
Personal languages are languages that are created by and belong just to the inventor, for just the inventor to see, or perhaps to show off. A personal language is created for the ultimate purpose of creating a language. There is no conworld motivating it, no people whom the creator actually expects to speak it, no product that will be manufactured in its language. A personal language is considered by many to be artlanging in its purest form, although a personal language may well have no artistic intention behind it. A personal language may be invented to create a beautiful language or for self-expression. It may be invented to give out a tribute to a language or language family the creator really likes, attempting to capture the flavor of the original as much as possible, or it may be created just for the fun that there is in creating a language.

Personal languages are often created as practices in linguistics; a conlanger learning about ergativity might write out the grammar of an ergative conlang in order to understand how ergative languages work. Some exist to test outlandish phonologies or orthographic systems, or have hundreds of noun cases or tens of millions of possible verb forms. Many are invented simply because people love constructing languages! The creators of personal languages often share their languages and update their progress over the Internet, and many habitually scrap an old conlang project that hasn't gotten beyond a lexicon of 50 words and start a new one. These personal languages tend to have short lifespans, but others are developed for years on end as their creators try to become truly fluent in them, perhaps using them for diaries and other writings.

 * — well-known personal language of conlanger Sally Caves. Winner of the 2007 Smiley Award.

Micronational languages
Some artlangs are micronational languages — like fictional languages, but their creators make them real. They declare territory, issue official flags and currency, and recruit citizens, then have the citizens learn the language. These are the languages of micronations, sometimes created for entertainment, but often breakaway nations that are created for political purposes, declaring themselves to exist alongside UN-recognized nations (such as Sealand, the Conch Republic, or Atlantium). The members of these micronations meet up and speak the language they have learned when they are participating in these meets. The language and its creation belong to all the citizens of these micronations. They determine the direction of its evolution, invent new grammatical constructions when they discover it is necessary, and coin new words as they speak.

 * — created in 1980 by Robert Ben Madison for his micronation Talosa. Has its own ISO language code.

In-between goals
The three broad kinds of goals we've described — technical features, cross-cultural communication, and art — aren't mutually exclusive. What if your goal is to see whether a certain technical goal can be successfully combined with your personal aesthetics? Is that an engelang or an artlang? is a conlang with just that sort of goals, and its author has suggested that conlangs should be placed on the interior of a triangle, with the three pure types of conlangs at its corners (the ).

Even if a conlang has a single, pure primary goal, there are enough details in any conlang that the primary goal probably doesn't cover all of them. Auxlangs have some artistry in their making — it's been argued (see sources) that artistic merit is part of why Esperanto has succeeded so much better than its competitors. Engelangs may have some artistry in them, too; and artlangs often have some technical aspirations lurking under the surface.

A particular class of mixed-goal conlangs with its own name is the fauxlangs, short for fictional auxlangs. These are supposed auxlangs created by characters in a fictional setting, often in an alternative history. Examples include
 * Rex May's — created by L.L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, in an alternative history where he emigrated to the Republic of Texas.
 * At one time, Ray Brown's ("Greek without inflections") was a fauxlang — the analog, in an alternative history where Alexander the Great conquered Rome, of Giuseppe Peano's 1903 auxlang .  It was revised a few years ago, though, to be more of an englang because the fictional setting was found too limiting.

Relexes
A relex is a conlang generated from a pre-existing language by replacing the forms of the words, while leaving most of the rest of the original language unchanged — especially, With both of these unchanged, the conlang is a sort of word-replacement code for the original language. By extension, relex is sometimes used as a broad criticism of any conlang seen as too closely copying another language.
 * the exact meanings of the words from the original language, and/or
 * the grammar of the original language.

The largest class of relexes are (by reputation, at least) artlangs whose authors failed to notice that they were copying most of the look and feel of their native language. Not all relexes are artlangs, though, and not all are unintentional. Auxlangs and  have both been criticized as relexes of English. The loglang started as a deliberate relex of, since which their grammars and vocabularies have gradually diverged as both languages underwent further development (see sources).

Some relexes may be used for specific purposes. For example, the Israeli military uses a relex of Hebrew called "NADBAR".

The conlanging term relex is a shortening of the term relexification, borrowed and adapted from linguistics proper. The linguistic term has a narrower meaning: in linguistic, a pre-existing language keeps its grammar but replaces its vocabulary from another pre-existing language. The language from which the vocabulary is taken is called the lexifier.

A priori and a posteriori
Particular features of a conlang can be a posteriori — meaning borrowed from natural languages, rather than invented — or a priori, meaning invented rather than borrowed from natural languages. These terms are most often used to describe the forms of words, as with the words toki, from the Pidgin word toki (talk), and pona, from Esperanto bona (good). An entire conlang may also be described as a priori/posteriori if most of its grammar and vocabulary are of that type. A conlang described as a posteriori usually borrows from several, or even many, different natlangs; relexes are not normally called a posteriori.

Classification-based vocabulary is an a priori strategy that has been used in a number of engelangs (e.g., ) and some auxlangs (e.g., ). Most auxlangs make extensive use of a posteriori vocabulary.

Diachronic languages
A diachronic conlang is equipped with an internal, i.e., fictional, linguistic history. Since the internal history is fictional, all diachronic conlangs are artlangs; but most subtypes of artlangs include both diachronic and non-diachronic (synchronic) languages.

Tolkien's Elvish languages are the most famous example of diachronic conlanging, with an entire family of languages descended from a common ancestor,. Many artlangs, though by no means all, have at least some suggestions of internal history about them, even if no parent language has been fully worked out.

Altlangs are diachronic, by definition.

Kitchen sink languages
A kitchen sink conlang is one that has way too many exotic features, all at once for no apparent reason — "everything including the kitchen sink" in an uncoordinated mishmash. Unlike relex, kitchen sink has no neutral technical sense; it's always a strong term of opprobrium.

Kitchen sink languages are at the opposite end of a spectrum from relexes: where too little tinkering can produce a relex (that lacks interest), too much tinkering can produce a kitchen sink language (that lacks plausibility). It has been suggested that a conlanger's second conlang — after they've made a relex for their first — is often a kitchen sink language; but even experienced conlangers, tempted by the lure of exotic features, can sometimes fall into the trap of kitchen-sink-ism.

Caution should also be exercised, though, in applying the term kitchen sink to a conlang — not only because it's such a strong term, but because just having many unusual features doesn't necessarily make it a kitchen sink language (which is why the term is so strong). For proper use of the term, the many unusual features should be unjustified; in principle, at least, it's possible for many unusual features to occur in a smoothly coherent design, so that they all feel quite natural in context. The catch is that — as David Peterson remarked when awarding the 2007 to, a highly respected conlang with several unusual features — there is a double standard at work between natlangs and conlangs:  any bizarre features of a natlang are natural by definition, but the same features in a conlang would have to persuade on their own merits. His case in point is, a natlang with no way of expressing time; no way of counting; a culture with no storytelling, oral history, or art; it can be spoken, whistled, hummed, or drummed; and it has different phonologies for men and women. If it were a conlang instead of a natlang, its creator would have a hard time passing it off as naturalistic.

title: Conlang/Types


text:
User:Circeus

Oy! After a lot of hesitation, I decided to join Wikibooks to help on the conworld book. Currently working on
 * Conworld

title: User:Circeus


text:
Talk:Conlang/Types

Initial content
I tried to explain as best as I could (after all, it's not such a big issue to explain) but I feel I fell seriously short, especially on my definition of Loglang. Circeus 17:56, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I fleshed it out but the article still needs work IMO (This is Ingolemo BTW, I can't log in here). — preceding comment added 13:30, 20 September 2004 (UTC)

Too many examples?
IMO, this page is not supposed to be a list of conlangs. The examples given are only there to emphasize the differences between the types of conlang, and I think that two or three examples are sufficiant to do this. -- Ingolemo 13:00, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I support that. While the added material is much better than my feeble attempt, I do think it could use more paragraph divisions. Also, I believe we'd ideally want to limit ourselves to a few exemples that can be linked to as to provide actually accessible exemples, especially in the Artlang section, where it makes little sense to repeat in the list some languages mentionned in the upper section...--Circeus 21:52, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Feel free to break up the paragraphs, but in a whole book on conlangs we'd want to have our list of conlangs somewhere, wouldn't we? 24.4.127.164 23:31, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I disagree with some of the recent removals, and the reasoning given (if they don't have a Wikipedia article they should be listed here either). For one, some of the Wikipedia links were bad but the articles do exist (I've added one of them back).  Two, in the nature of things personal languages are probably not going to be notable enough for Wikipedia; but should we list no examples here?  Wikipedia does talk briefly about several personal languages in the text of the article on Constructed language, even though none of those languages have nor will probably ever have their own article - I mean Taneraic, Vabungula, and so forth.  I'll leave it up to others whether gjâ-zym-byn deserves a mention here (although it has an article in the Esperanto Wikipedia, in spite of my nominating it for deletion).

 * I do agree that we don't want the list to get too long, and that the list was probably a bit too long before Ingolemo's recent deletions. --Jim Henry 14:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

 * I was mostly just trying to justify my trimming of the list and didn't mean to delete any of the more notable conlangs. If the wikipedia authors feel that a particular conlang is notable enough to mention there (whether in it's own article or not) then I have no objection to it's inclusion here. --Ingolemo 19:34, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Linguistics
We can share data between this and the linguistics department at Wikiversity, since a lot of the introductory material is pretty complementary. -- Spack 15:05, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Do you have anything particular in mind? --Ingolemo 14:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

(imported from Talk:Conlang/Relex) Page adds nothing to Conlang that wikipedia cannot provide
This page doesn't fit into the rest of the structure of the Conlang Wikibook. I'd like to either try to make it fit in (by reorienting it towards a How to avoid making a relex-like goal) or redirect to Relexification. Opinions? - Ingolemo — preceding comment added 15:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

 * The WP article is about linguistic term relexification, not conlanging term relex. Moreover, the fact that the conlanging term has a somewhat different meaning is, reasonably, not mentioned in the lead of the WP article, so that sending Conlang readers there would probably leave them misunderstanding what a relex is.  Even if we sent them directly to the "Conlangs and jargon" section of the WP article, that section is, again reasonably, not tutorial for conlangers.  I've tried to adjust this page so that it is about the conlanging term, and tutorial for conlangers.

 * All that said, this is still the only page in the Wikibook (that I know of) that has no fixed place in the outline. Having just significantly adjusted the page, though, I'm inclined to give it some time to settle in in its new form.  Pi zero (talk) 14:04, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

 * I've integrated relexes into Conlang/Types (here). Pi zero (talk) 05:00, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

TAKE is no longer a fauxlang
Since the mention of fauxlangs was added, the author of TAKE has decided the fictional timeline was too limiting, and divorced the conlang from it. So TAKE should be removed from that section. (I'd do so now, but must dash, so am noting it here instead.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:42, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Taken care of; didn't remove it, but noted the change. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

history merge
I've (finally) history-merged the old Conlang/Relex page; the content merge took place several years ago (as noted in a talk thread above, which I just now merged). The downside of history merge is that there's no easy way to tell which revisions in the merged history belong to which of the original pages; but the history of the other page is pretty short, so here it is (I didn't bother to prune the unimportant stuff).

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Natrualistic
Nowadays naturalistic conlangs are a much-discussed class. They should have a section somewhere on this page. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:52, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Conlang/Types


text:
Talk:Conlang

ZBB: Project Fix-The-Wikibook
Hello all! A bunch of members from the ZBB are joining me in Project Fix-The-Wikibook, where we are going to help update lots of the sections here. Project Members: we can discuss our work here :) - Kalor —The preceding undated comment was added 16:05, 9 December 2007.

 * It's me, Zoris, from the ZBB. Just want to say I've done a couple edits, really just to improve the quality of the writing. I plan to focus on improving the beginner sections to get beginners started on track. I also will work on the intermediate sections, but there are people out there who have more expertise than I, so I doubt I will be able to contribute much on the most advanced topics. Anyways, here I am. -Zoris (talk) 23:51, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Splitoff Project: Constructive Linguistics 101
Hello fellow conlangers. I am starting a similar project but with a significantly different drive. See here for the details.

The Overview and Style Guide should give all the relevant info.

The basic distinction is that this wikibook is (per below) *not* a linguistics textbook; it's more akin to e.g. the Language Construction Kit. Whereas my project *is* intended as a bona fide linguistics textbook... of a very innovative sort. It teaches constructive linguistics (rather than descriptive).

Take a look at the website and email me if you'd like to participate. -- Sai —The preceding undated comment was added 22:46, 4 October 2006.

Expert vs. Advanced
I think there needs to be some clarification of the exact differences between the Intermediate and Expert levels. I would consider Polisynthetic and Trigger languages to be in the realm of the expert. --Ingolemo 18:36, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * True. Personally I am finding these categories a bit too shaky. We should probably reorganize. By the way, please sign your comments . -- Maknas 18:21, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Ok. I'll move them down to advanced for the time being. --Ingolemo 18:36, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

IPA or SAMPA
I think it's best if we use one of the systems consistantly across all pages. We have a link to an IPA tutorial at the bottom of this page, but most of the articles are written using SAMPA. Can we use one or the other? --Ingolemo 22:07, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * We're using X-SAMPA because most browsers can't really display IPA by default. -- Maknas 02:45, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * How about adding a link toward the Wikipedia X-SAMPA article or something like that? The X-SAmpa/IPA chart would be a great addition too for explaining sounds!--Circeus 17:13, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree. Whatever is decided, It needs to be introduced to the students before they take the intermediate course as all the articles in there already use SAMPA. -- Ingolemo 12:06, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Added the section. How about renaming it "Sound notation"? That way we could have "Beginner Sound Notation", "Intermediate Sound Notation" etc. --Circeus 12:23, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * X-SAMPA is hardly an advanced topic and I think it would be a little too overwhelming for beginners. I don't think it needs seperate pages for other levels. -- Ingolemo 19:21, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

 * Okay, whoever that Vladisdead is, he needs to be pointed here! Now I've got to switch everything back to X-SAMPA. Damnit!--Circeus 23:11, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Oops. :) I really think it should be in IPA, but I'm not gonna argue. --Vladisdead 06:34, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm proposing, in a separate thread, to slightly amend this usage to CXS. Here.  Pi zero (talk) 13:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not a linguistics textbook
I think everyone, me included, tends to treat this as a linguistics textbook, explaining as many things as possible, and so forth. Well — it's not. It's a conlanging textbook. People come here to find out how to make their conlangs better, not how real languages work. -- Ran 02:39, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Agreed. The articles need to be less based about "the way things are (on earth)" and more about "the way things could be (in your conlang)". -- Ingolemo 12:27, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * And yet, I think we should always state weather a feature actually happens in a real language. Some people add some features based on this fact. -- Jotomicron 13:23, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * But keep in mind that "there are more things in heaven and earth than you dream of in your [conlang]". I.e. natlangs often turn out to be far more weird than the average beginner's conlang. Apart from which conlanging can provide an excellent 'hands on' way into linguistics for some people. (Marconatrix on ZB) 91.84.119.164 (talk) 05:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

 * The situation is even more frought than that. Sometimes a really good way to get insights into the way real languages work — both for beginners and for linguists — is to build, or study, a conlang that works differently from real languages.  To design a conlang like that, you need to know how real languages work without being funneled into someone's notion of how real languages "have" to be.  There's an excellent discussion of conlang naturalness in the 2007 Smiley Award essay.  --Pi zero (talk) 16:27, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Glossing
Do we have a standard for format and abbreviations to use in glossing examples? If not already, what about the Leipzig Glossing Rules ? --Jim Henry 15:08, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Naming Policy
Now that there is some agreement as to the wikibooks naming policy, I think it would be a good idea to begin bringing the Conlang wikibook up to scratch on it. Unless anyone has any objections or someone beats me to it, I'll go ahead in about 2–3 weeks. Comments? Agreements? Objections? - Ingolemo 15:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I've finished converting. I don't know how to get the navigation template to show the SUBPAGENAME of the pages that are being linked to, so for the moment, it looks a little ugly. - Ingolemo 10:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Derivational morphology
Just wrote a stubby outline for Conlang/Intermediate/Grammar/Derivational Morphology; take a look and see what needs more work. --Jim Henry 19:28, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Words?
Maybe a list of the basic 1000 - 2000 words should be included? Or sample texts to translate, so that one knows when hir conlang is missing words that sie needs to include - or to decide on which words should they start on creating, etc. Nfwu 10:05, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

When will this book done?
I want to learn conlanging and I am waiting a long time, is there another ebooks or books that I can learn it from? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.125.89.181 (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2008

 * Material on conlanging is fragmented all over the web. If you're looking for a single introductory resource to get you up and running quickly, you might try Jeffrey Henning's Model Languages Newsletter.  You'll probably want to move on from that to broader and deeper coverage, and IMO for that a good branching-off point would be David Peterson's Notes on Language Creation.  (The second link from Peterson's preface is, in fact, Henning's newsletter.)  As for completion, or even semi-completion, of this wikibook, I wouldn't recommend waiting for it; the people with most expertise to contribute are most likely to have other demands on their time.  I suspect the wikibook will pull together gradually, in fits and starts, over a number of years.  Pi zero (talk) 23:01, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

 * so much time?? =( 77.127.126.85 (talk) 13:50, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Consider the range of scales possible for conlang projects; in this respect, conlanging is very like model railroading (which Henning compared it to). You can have lots of fun with a small project, but ranging continuously upward from there, a conlang project can become a lifelong hobby.  In fact, the more fun a small project is, the more likely it is to grow into a lifelong hobby.  Set beside that time scale, crafting a high-quality how-to book on conlanging — where none previously existed — isn't likely to take less than a few years, is it?  That said, I'd be happy to have overestimated how long it will take.  If the right people decided to make a big effort, it could be moderately complete by the end of this summer.  I'm guessing from the progress I've seen in the past year or so, and the seemingly (to me, anyway) formidable nature of the sections that haven't even been started yet.  Pi zero (talk) 15:56, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

WHEN WILL THIS BOOK BE DONE? 77.127.77.102 (talk) 15:17, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Ingressive airstream
I noticed that there was no section on ingressive airstream, I made a little one, but was wondering if it should be merged with clicks, or have clicks merged with it, since all clicks are ingressive? Ave matthew (talk) 16:13, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

 * Since both sections are currently so small, for now I'd say there should be just one section; later, when there's a lot more material, it can be split up again if that seems important enough. The file should probably be called "Ingressive", since that's more inclusive.  The title, though, should probably mention clicks prominently, consistent with the style of the preceding section title, "Pharyngeals and their ilk".  Perhaps "Clicks and their kin" (but that may be a bit too folksy), or "Clicks and other ingressives"?  The content... at a guess, it'd probably work well to have a lead sentence on what ingressive means, then a subsection on clicks, then a subsection (or two) on other ingressives.  Pi zero (talk) 18:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Explaining the overall organization
The introduction to the Beginner section specifies three things: I have written lead sentences, trying to follow this pattern, for the introductions to the Intermediate and Advanced sections. Pi zero (talk) 13:29, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Minimal background: no prior knowledge of conlanging or linguistics.
 * Practical objective: allow the reader to build a conlang that isn't a relex.
 * What content is appropriate: basic principles of different aspects of language.

What to do with Intermediate syntax

 * I've moved this thread to the talk page for the section. — Pi zero (talk) 13:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Intermediate/Sounds
Here's what I've just done. The place of Intermediate/Sounds (Phonetics and phonology) in the outline was fraying, with a piece of it broken off into a separate file, and another effective subsection (on Sandhi) started separately; and Intermediate/Sounds also had more internal structure than other parts of the wikibook. I've tried to fix both problems at once, by splitting off virtually all the content of Intermediate/Sounds into separate files Intermediate/Sounds/*. (I also botched the job slightly, as I meant to rename Allophony to Sounds/Phones and bring in the surrounding content from Sounds, but instead I created a new page Sounds/Phones — which I plastered over by doing what I'd meant to do with Allophony but calling the file Sounds/Phonetics, and making Sounds/Phones a redirect to it. Ideally, Sounds/Phonetics should be moved to Sounds/Phones, destroying the redirect page.)  Pi zero (talk) 20:09, 30 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed — Sounds/Phonetics is now Sounds/Phones. Pi zero (talk) 16:54, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

How to Contribute
I have made a surgical adjustment to the content of the How to Contribute section on the main page. Realizing this could be an extraordinarily consensus-sensitive element of the book, I considered for a long time before doing this (though I'd done some very modest rephrasing once before); but as I've struggled with the overall organization of the book, I've seen how the long-term trend throughout is toward bloating low-level sections with slowly but monotonically increasing detail. Finally I decided that something really had to be done to try to redirect the long-term trend. Pi zero (talk) 14:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation: Conlang or Conworld
Hey all, I found that all of the Conlang pages were in |Category:Conworld, rather than its sub-category, |Category:Conlang. I started recategorising, but then thought again, wondering whether there might be a reason why you might prefer having them in the parent category. Anyone object to this recategorisation? Cheers, --Swift (talk) 14:07, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm in favor of this change; it sounds like a great idea to me. Pi zero (talk) 04:24, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

I spoke too soon. Here's a variant proposal. Replace with  throughout. Apparently, does the same thing as but makes it quite obvious that it's following a broadly practiced convention. Having just discovered this template, I'm comfortable enough with the implied standardness of the arrangement to do it myself, if I find time.

It occurred to me that I really should be a bit more informative in my response to your proposal, and I discovered that template in the process of further investigating the use of Category:Conworld for all pages of all Conworld books. All the Conworld books do seem to use that convention, which was implemented on 24 June 2006 by Jguk, though this book seems to be the only one of them that's really not a stub. Jguk, by the way, is no longer active. I found the template because the one exception to the convention seems to be page Conhistory (but not its subpages).

In the past few months that I've been working slowly-but-steadily on this book, I've been generally cautious in my changes — an example being that I didn't rock the boat on the Category:Conworld convention — partly because I was still learning my way around the book's organization, but also because there have been no other regular editors here in all that time (and some months before), so if I do something really stupid there's been no-one to catch it. About once a year there's a flurry of activity here, but it doesn't last too long, and then you can hear a pin drop. Pi zero (talk) 13:20, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 19:05, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

I've done some recategorizing. I'm reforming category names project-wide, and book categories are now named in a way that identifies them unambiguously as book categories. There's some precedent for treating a book series category as a subject category, so I've created Subject:Conworld series, which now contains the series instead of making the various book categories subcategories of the book category for Conworld. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:55, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Statement of book objectives
I've replaced the statement of book objectives, at the top of the main page.

The old statement said that the purpose of the book is to help you make the language you'd like to make, rather than the language you already speak. There were two problems with that. It put rather too much emphasis on a negative objective — to help you not do something — and it was really too weak an objective to cover what is apparently being attempted here. The Beginner section alone should be sufficient to help you not create an accidental relex; and the positive part of the statement, help you make the language you want, is too vague to be informative to readers or authors.

After meditating on the overall organization and content of this book over the past several months of work, the new statement is what I believe to be the essence of it. I'd like to think it's a more sharply focused version of what the authors here have been doing, rather than just a reflection of my own biases (though I surely can't have entirely filtered out my own biases).

Since authors come and go here over a long timeframe rather than a short one, I decided to put up my new statement on the main page now, where it may do some good, and then invite discussion here on the talk page, rather than propose it here and wait for what could easily be many months. Pi zero (talk) 00:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Phonetic notation
Backstory: To my knowledge, there has been exactly one discussion of what notation to use, here. The consensus reached at that time was X-SAMPA. In the aftermath of that decision, the editor who was going to undo the stuff that had been changed to IPA never actually did so, and since then some other editors have done stuff using IPA rather than X-SAMPA — but no-one ever reopened the discussion, and the state of the book is inconsistent, with some places using X-SAMPA and others using IPA. Although one might take the more recent editors using IPA as a sort of "vote for IPA", one might also figure that their choice is largely white noise, since there's no evidence they were even aware of the earlier consensus decision, or they would have either reopened it or at least added a note to the end of it. In my own assessment of past authors' positions on this issue, the later editors' failure to acknowledge the earlier consensus inclines me to give them less weight.

There is another twist to all this: CXS, a.k.a. Conlang X-SAMPA. It's designed, by and for the conlanging community, to be more convenient than X-SAMPA. The rise of CXS seems to postdate the consensus discussion here.

My own preference is for CXS. As a short list of reasons — I don't claim this is all there is to be said for it, or even all of why it appeals to me, but these are summaries of the top reasons that occur to me just now — it's easy to generate (no special techniques, just standard use of a standard keyboard); it's easy to display (again, no special techniques, everything already knows how to display ASCII); it's easy to read (because the characters are familiar and they're reliably well displayed); and readers of this book have more call to use CXS than IPA, or even X-SAMPA, in communication with other conlangers.

I propose to use CXS for this book. The process of implementing this has five steps (well, six if you count this talk posting as one).
 * Add a notice to the main page that the book is being normalized to use CXS, with a link to this talk thread. This will both make other editors aware of the issue so they don't step in it (in retrospect, there should have been a notice put on the main page way back when the consensus was originally reached; cf. the main page of featured book Latin), and it will enable the  possibility of a real discussion.  Later steps of the process are likely to take some time, which should allow about as much opportunity to start a dialog as I can see profitably allowing (since I don't see any profit in deliberately delaying the process beyond the time it's going to take anyway — somewhat similarly to my much smaller redesign of the lead on the main page, discussed here).
 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 02:50, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Revise Conlang/Intermediate/IPA and X-SAMPA accordingly. I'm putting this step before all other content changes, even though the next major step will be earlier in the book, because this page contains the most blatant statement of IPA preference in the book.
 * ✅ Pi zero (talk) 22:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

 * Create a local table of sound files using CXS, to replace the external link now used by Conlang/Beginner/Sounds; I envision placing the new table in the book outline as an appendix. The external link needs to be replaced anyway, because a wikibook should be self-contained, and the use of an IPA table there has probably contributed to later editors assuming, without checking, that the book is going to use IPA.
 * ✅ although a second appendix on IPA (including comparison with CXS) has emerged as a new subtask now at the front of the queue. Pi zero (talk) 12:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Comb through all the other pages converting to consistent use of CXS.
 * ✅ afaik. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Replace the tentative notice on the main page with a more definite one, saying that the book does use CXS.
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:17, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Pi zero (talk) 23:08, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

 * For some reason, I've been under the impression that the original discussion settled on using IPA for phonetic notation. It was a while ago so my memory may be inaccurate, but I believe some discussion on this topic took place off-site and that's what was ultimately decided. I personally believe IPA to be the best option, but if you insist on CXS then that's as good a standard as any. Ingolemo (talk) 15:11, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Honestly, I'd like to try CXS on the book as a whole and see how it works. If it doesn't work out (though I suspect it will be fine), it should be remarkably straightforward to change later — because by the time I've finished with the IPA appendix, I mean it to give ascii HTML code for all the IPA symbols (including the ones that you can't easily get that for from the wikipedia articles).  Given that appendix, switching the book to IPA would consist mostly of doing those ascii-only substitutions, reversing the order of the two appendices and revising a few sentences in them, and rewriting "Intermediate/Sound notation".  Pi zero (talk) 00:02, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

 * (Okay, on reflection the changes to the appendices would be more extensive than that... but still straightforward, thought tedious.) Pi zero (talk) 02:34, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Ultimately, I'm not concerned which notation is used, so long as we're consistent. I'll start converting some stuff to CXS Ingolemo (talk) 06:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Table of contents
I'm trying something different, which I'm hoping will simplify maintenance work in the long run — but the only way to know, really, is to try it out for a while and see. The idea is to have a single master file containing the "table of contents" data, in a format that is straightforward enough for technically unsophisticated authors, and is also usable by a set of templates that automatically generate both the visible TOC on the main page and navboxes for the top and bottom of each module. (Whether the format is simple enough is critical; most of the design time on this was to devise the simplest format that would do the job, and it may yet turn out to be the weak point at which the whole scheme fails.) When an author changes the master list, the visible TOC and the navboxes will all change automatically (once the caches clear) without any painstaking manual adjustment of navbox links. (Left to its own devices, the system might wait hours before updating the template calls that generate the TOC and navboxes; this can be made to happen immediately on a given module page, or on the main page, by making a no-change edit to that page.)

The documentation for the whole suite of templates is too technical; that's a point that will surely need improvement, but my initial priority was to preserve the information at all, deferring niceties of presentation.

For now I've set up fairly simple navbox templates ( and  ). More elaborate navboxes could be generated — well, I could figure out how to generate them, anyway :-) — but more elaborate doesn't necessarily mean better, so for now I've chosen something that's pretty similar to the pre-existing navboxes. (This whole arrangement really comes on line when the individual modules are converted to use the new templates, which I expect to do as I find time...)  Pi zero (talk) 15:42, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Awesome. Ingolemo (talk) 05:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

no links
the only links are links to the TOC and links on the TOC. All links are broken on the pages!--White wizard (talk) 15:36, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Should be fixed now. It was an unanticipated side-effect of adding category markup to the navlist page.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:04, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Orphaned pages
Linking to these to take them off the orphaned page list. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:03, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Clicks
 * 2) Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Ingressive
 * 3) Conlang/Appendix/IPA
 * 4) Conlang/Relex history merged --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

examples?
i dont know if this is a good idea, so stop me at any time (just give me a warning). I will make a new "step-by-step" section that will as it sounds be step-by-step, but with a small conlang being formed as an example. please comment. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Baconator (talk • contribs) 20:56, 25 September 2009.

 * Comment: We should be careful, I think, not to lead our readers into thinking of conlanging as following a recipe.  That would only produce conlangs that are relexes of a given pattern.

 * Questions (hoping to better understand what you have in mind): Would you say that the current Beginner section —which is the most complete material, so far— is, or is not, arranged in a step-by-step manner?  Where would you imagine such a thing fitting into the existing outline?

 * --Pi zero (talk) 22:52, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Never mind it, making a whole book for it. Trust me, it will work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Baconator (talk • contribs) 12:19, 26 September 2009.

Alien Phonolgy
What are some examples of animal vocal organs, and how could I design alien vocal organs so that it could make sensible and consistent sounds? How could I even figure out the sounds its vocal organs would make up the language.

 * Commented at Talk:Conlang/Advanced/Sounds/Alien Sounds. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Languages not spoken
There should be a little more about sign languages, 'smell' languages, 'taste' languages, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.85.166.212 (discuss • contribs) 11:37, 10 April 2013

Person
Has there been a language without person, and how might some ideas be expressed in it because of it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.86.159.232 (discuss • contribs) 01:01, 28 April 2013

Book subdivision terminology
The three major subdivisions of the book are sometimes called "levels", but often called "sections" which can be confusing. So I'm going to go through the book finding places where they're called "sections" and chaning those to call them something else, usually "levels". --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:09, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:27, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Sonority
An explanation of sonority is missing. Please add it to the advanced or intermediate levels. Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 15:00, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I couldn't find it where I expected it to be. Me being stupid… Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 15:02, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

 * @Columbus240: Yeah, we did manage to slip it in, but, I'm wondering where you'd first expected to find it? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:33, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe on it's own page. The concept of sonority seems more important to me, than just a small table at the end of a page. It influences (as far as I understand) a big part of how a language sounds, and how phonotactic rules are done (no 'p' after 'n', whatever). Maybe also putt it in an appendix, and/or mention how sonority influences language on other pages like syllables or phonotactics. Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 19:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

 * @Columbus240: I felt I was already pushing the bounaries of what belongs in the Intermediate level rather than the Advanced level as it was. What you're describing sounds Advanced, to me.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:41, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Would it be possible for you to add a page/draft about sonority to the advanced level?

 * The Intermediate phonology section was actually drastically cut back at one point because there was a massive glut of information about phonology and almost nothing about anything else. I don't remember if we cut anything about sonority at that time, but the existing stuff could certainly be improved. I would welcome an expansion of the syllables page, though I don't think sonority needs a page to itself.

 * As to writing a page about sonority in the Advanced level; honestly, if I'm going to do anything I'd rather focus on getting the Intermediate level finished. But there's nothing stopping you from adding that page; you seem to know something about the subject and you definitely care about it. We would welcome the contribution. Doesn't matter if it's not very good; even laying down an outline for a page can be helpful.

 * We need to sit down and decide on a structure for the Advanced level. The way I see it, while the Beginner and Intermediate levels have a sort of tutorial feel to them, pages in the advanced level should be more scattered. Since the Advanced level can assume Intermediate knowledge, it should just be a collection of essays about topics relevant to creating a language that go deep into those topics and don't try too hard to be in any particular order or to link up with one another. Less hierarchy and more just random useful stuff. Just some thoughts. Ingolemo (discuss • contribs) 21:36, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

 * It's a common pattern to have university classes on a subject start with an introductory class that gives the beginning student an overview, then a coherent set of intermediate-level classes that cover the various aspects of the subject, and then some advanced-topics classes (or even a single class called "advanced topics in [subject]") that offer a sort of grab bag of miscellaneous high-powered particulars. The advanced topics may vary from semester to semester depending on what the professors or their grad students are interested in.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:29, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Word generation and structure
The only part about making up words and is in the Basic level. I have no experience with it, so it would be helpful to me to also have it explained on higher levels. Today a language teacher of mine explained the etymology of a word (milk) with reference to the indo-germanic root m-l-k. How could a thing like this be done for a (family of) conlang? Columbus240 (discuss • contribs) 19:43, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

 * I had intended to write about word formation and etymology a little bit in the intermediate section but, like everything else, I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll see if I can do something. Might take a while. Probably won't be very good. Ingolemo (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

TODO List
Is there one being maintained? If yes where is it, if no, why not create one. It maybe would be easier to get organized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Columbus240 (talk • contribs) 16:05, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

 * I don't think there is one, no. There's a question of how to go about such a thing.  I think there's at least one device in-use on en.wb for "automatically" maintaining TODO lists, but I've found myself wanting to avoid any book that has such a thing because it seems to require some expertise to use it.  I don't want to have to learn yet another specialized tool in order to become more productive; specialized tools requiring expertise to use them are, I think, in general not ideal for wikis.  (I concluded some years ago that the wikis need a general tool for managing expertise — which, ironically but not surprisingly, could only be created in the first place by a wiki user with certain kinds of technical expertise.  The WMF being inherently incapable of doing such a thing right.  I'm actually working on that problem.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

taxa
Atm, the three major segments of the book are called "levels", and individual pages usually call each other "sections" but occasionally "chapters". The term "section" is usual wiki terminology for headings within a page, and "chapter" is an iffy usage for pages of variable size. Alternatively, the standard project-wide term for content pages within a book, though not (in my experience) used by most wikibooks, is "module". --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:17, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Conlang


text:
User:Maknas

I am currently working on the "ConWorld" set of WikiBooks.

I'm also on Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Maknas

title: User:Maknas


text:
Conart

No, not the doings of con artists.

Art has long been a way for humans to express themselves. Why not have your conpeople make their own ConArt as well?

Remember:
 * There is a definite connection between religion and art. Keep this in mind when creating your own personal ConArt.

Table of Contents

 * /Music/
 * /Calligraphy/ or Manuscript Illumination
 * /Drawings and Paintings/
 * Literature
 * /Performing Art/ or acting, dancing, martial arts, etc.

title: Conart


text:
Conlang/Intermediate/Sounds

All spoken languages use systems of sounds (called a phonology), and most of these aren't anything like English, including, hopefully, the conlang that you'll soon have. This section should help you.

What's in this section?
The parts of this section are:
 * Phones: The difference between phones and phonemes, and between consonants and vowels.
 * Syllables: The units of sound that can be pronounced.
 * Phonotactics: How sounds can be arranged into syllables.
 * Sandhi rules: How morphemes may change their sound because of their neighbors.

title: Conlang/Intermediate/Sounds