How would YOU do this? (Conlanging)

[runa27]

Okay, I'm having fun with a fantasy story of mine. So much fun I started getting ahead of myself and had to stop to think about this. XD This isn't a terribly urgent question or set of questions rather, but it's been bugging me for a while and I'm kind of overwhelmed by the possibilities now that it finally hit me what a massive undertaking I was

Comments

[wind_hover]

Suggestion: have you tried looking at Sanskrit?

/not much help otherwise

[ubykhlives]

PIE goes back well further than that, probably to around 5500-6000 years ago - the Hellenic and Anatolian branches were already clearly distinct by 3600 BP (the rough point of the first solid attestations of both Hittite and Mycenaean Greek). And you might be surprised at the number of surviving obvious cognates in the basic vocabulary even just between Hittite and English: watar, newa, iukan, huelpi, wiyana, ed-, and luk- are all cognates and more or less identical in meaning to English water, new, yoke, whelp, wine, (to) eat and (to) light. Despite what the glottochronologists think, languages don't change at the same rate and sometimes that rate is pretty slow.

For the OP, in terms of conlanging resources, Zompist's Language Construction Kit is a great place to start for all of the things you mention.

[runa27]

Ah! Excellent. I'm sometimes reluctant to use Wiki for these things because... I'll be blunt: when it comes to scientific fields, it's often written by experts or devoted amateurs in their fields who have had years to learn the terminology (this is true of biology and chemistry topics as well sometimes!). When you're someone like me, who hasn't had so much as a single linguistics course, who can't read IPA without consulting a chart, and who is lucky she remembers what glottal and fricative mean, Wiki can actually get a little TOO informative

[orange_fell]

Try asking at conlangs.

[runa27]

Ooh! I didn't know that comm existed! :D Thank you!

I don't regret asking here, because there's already been some useful and interesting stuff posted in response, and it's always good to get to get as much input as possible on something like this, but it's a relief to know there's a comm for conlangers too. I hope they're as nice to linguistic noobs as you all are XD

[runa27]

Also, I totally just realized that icon is a screenshot of Inara from Serenity. That is awesome. :D If I had more icon slots not taken up by awesome Doctor Who icons, I would probably have a few from Firefly and Serenity. After all these years I'm still in love with the series. <3

[provencepuss]

I think Anthony Burgess wrote about how he created 'Nadsat' for Clockwork Orange and 'Ulam' for the movie 'Quest for Fire' but short of re-reading his autobiography (and once was enough!) I can't remember where. 'Ulam' was the subject of controversy when Quest for Fire was released because Burgess created the langauge for pre-fire-age man and plenty of people were sceptical about it.

[runa27]

Huh! Interesting. I'll have to check that out. I think Nadsat was supposed to be a pidgin or creole of Russian and English, but other than that I'm not sure I know much about it.