Created 2024-8-20
For my first blog post I was gonna do an introduction but then I wrote it and remembered I hate thinking about myself so Im making this instead.
This post is gonna be an overview of my history with conlanging.
The Beginning
The first time I made what can be considered a conlang of sorts was around 5th grade. Me and one of my friends had made our own country, Alia, and I wanted to make a language for it. I had also created a cipher for writing english which is what I used to make this language. I dont think the language ever got beyond a few words though. To find the first proper and somewhat fleshed out conlang I made we have to skip forward to the middle of the covid pandemic and the start of 7th grade. During the lockdown Id gotten into Biblaridions alien biosphere series and while looking around his channel one day I stumbled upon his series on how to make a language. After watching that series I created my first conlang proper, Ormescian.
Ormescian Most people hate their first conlangs, and to some degree I do as well. But more than anything Ormescian is just kinda weird. The phonology is made up of the sounds I liked and is for the most part pretty realistic. But it doesn't really have anything super interesting or distinct aside from /tɬ/ (but no /ɬ/, because I couldnt pronounce it). Im just gonna let you see for yourself :
| Labial | Alveolar | Post-Alveolar | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | |||
| Stop | p, b | t, d | k, g | ʔ <'> | |
| Affricate | pf, bv | ts, tɬ <ch> | |||
| Fricative | f, v | s, z | ʃ <sh>, ʒ <j> | h | |
| Approximant | l | ɹ <r'> |
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| Open | i, i: | u, u: |
| Mid | e̞ <e>, e: | o, o: |
| Close | ʌ <a>, a: |
So yeah its not that bad but theres just those weird bits like some of the vowels and the postalveolar rhotic. The same trend continues throughout the rest of Ormescian. Most notably, the TAM system has distinguishes imperfective and perfective using some sort of adverb (it was never specified so I dont know how it was actually marked), but theres also seperate markers for the "imperfective habitual" and "imperfective continuous" which dont include tense like the other markers. Overall Ormescian is just :/, but as my first conlang it still holds a very important place in my conlanging history.
A brief look at my conlanging over the past several years After Ormescian Ive made a ton of conlangs, although they rarely developed very far. At that time a was very much a scrapper, though now I tend to keep my langs alive for quite a bit longer. After about a year of making and scrapping langs I ended up making Vwissin and then several other langs to accompany it in a shared conworld. Vwissin and its descendent Vuisi are the first of my langs that I find genuinely good. Those two langs, and most other langs I mention from here on will receive their own pages at some point. This conworld also houses the many iterations of Northlang. Northlang is a language positioned (fittingly) in the North of the conworld. It is also the language I have remade the most times. In two years I'd remade it 4 times (and will likely remake it more times). The most fleshed out of the Northlangs is Hɛlcɛso, Northlang 3. The Northlangs mark an important step on my journey of conlanging. They are where I first stepped into more advanced topics, particularly diachronics (Vuisi was evolved diachronnically before the Northlangs but it is much less thorough, so Im not counting it) and more detailed grammar. Hɛlcɛso also ended up being the first lang I talked about substantially (Ive posted bits of Vwissin before but not much) online (I posted it on the CBB and the first response was actually from Arayaz (check my links) !) and it was one of the langs I participated with for my first year doing Lexember. Hɛlcɛso was also the start of my longest time conlanging (a year and counting ^^) and the creation of some of my favorite conlangs (notably 'ai'u and the Awloyan langs Ive made for conlang year). This brings us very close to the modern day. But before we arrive in the present, there is one more important event to this story.
The CBB, Arayaz, and Tyuns As mentioned above, the CBB (conlang bulletin board) is one of the first places I posted my conlangs. Its also the first conlang community I became involved in and got to know people in. One of those people is Arayaz. Arayaz is someones I'd seen a lot on the CBB (although at the time she had been under the name Üdj). Eventually I also found her on tumblr, where we became mutuals. Later we ended up making a conlang together and through that we became friends. Then one day, April 1st, 2024, she invited me to Tyuns. Tyuns is a map-based collaborative conlanging and worldbuilding game. It is incredibly fun and a (mostly) great community. I highly reccomend you join (and if you do join P realm bc we're the best B3). My time in Tyuns has helped me become a far better conlanger and worldbuilder, and due to the nature of the game its helped me maintain langs for longer than I have before. My tyunslangs are the only currently active langs I have, but they are also my best langs ^^. Tyuns is amazing and I love it and this paragraph has just become me fangirling about Tyuns.
The end or smth I love conlanging (that should be clear by now lol), its been one of my main hobbies for the past 4 years. Conlanging has also been a struggle. It takes a lot of time to make langs youre proud of (and even then it feels like theres always something to improve). But even my bad langs are still a step to get where I am now. Im glad Ive been able to conlang for so long and I hope Ill be conlanging for years to come !! If youve read this whole thing and never made a conlang (how did you make it this far ??) I highly encourage you to do so. It may seem daunting but its a ton of fun and theres plenty of places to get help. Also even a "bad" conlang helps you grow. So go on and try conlanging if youd like to. Id love to see what anyone who sees this makes !!
Thats the post, You can go do something else now ^^