"cheating" in making a conlang

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LinguistCat
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"cheating" in making a conlang

Post by LinguistCat »

I know there isn't actually a way to "cheat" in making conlangs, as long as you don't rip off someone else's conlang and claim it as your own (but that's more akin to plagiarism I'd think). But the idea I had feels like cheating and I think I just need someone outside my own head to remind me it's not.

I'd like to make a conlang for some aliens I'm working on. It'll mostly be a naming language with a few phrases here and there that are longer, or used for "untranslatable" concepts from their culture. I have a hard time coming up with roots for languages that aren't supposed to be related to human languages, so I was going to take roots from a few different sources, put them into some kind of substitution cypher, then rework things as needed to fit the feel that I want. Maybe the results of the substitution cypher would even be a proto-language so I could derive multiple modern languages if needed.

After that the language(s) would have its own grammar rules and the like, but it's really the roots and stems that I have a hard time coming up with in the first place. Any thoughts outside of if these seems a viable strategy to get past that issue?
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Re: "cheating" in making a conlang

Post by Salmoneus »

It seems like you're making things vastly more difficult than they need to be.

If all you want is an arbitrary sequence of letters, just make one up yourself, in your head. [it's not as though "it doesn't FEEL like the right set of random letters!" is an issue, because that problem will still apply no matter where you get the random set of letters from].

If you have some weird mental block that prevents you from making up some random sequences of letters, you can very easily do so automatically on a computer - you can write your own algorithm, or use one of the many programmes and websites that do this. This actually has an advantage in that you can usually set the frequencies yourself and it follows them more faithfully than your subconscious would - which is good if you know what frequencies you want. But bad if you don't know (because your subconscious can produce frequency distributions unintentionally, whereas you have to actually instruct the programme).

It seems to me that carefully gathering roots from multiple source languages, creating a substitution cipher, and then enciphering the source words to produce results indistinguishable from randomly-generated roots (but with weird phonotactics!) would be an awful lot more work for no obvious benefit!
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Re: "cheating" in making a conlang

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Salmoneus wrote: 21 Mar 2023 21:52 It seems to me that carefully gathering roots from multiple source languages, creating a substitution cipher, and then enciphering the source words to produce results indistinguishable from randomly-generated roots (but with weird phonotactics!) would be an awful lot more work for no obvious benefit!
Well, I tried "just come up with roots" and they sounded too similar. So I tried "use a program/algorithm to make roots" but my brain decided it didn't like ANY of them because they weren't personal enough? I guess. So if this actually gets the roots I make stick and feel right, then the effort is worth it.

Not to mention I've been making ciphers since I was approximately 8 years old if not before then. That's like negative effort for me.
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Re: "cheating" in making a conlang

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LinguistCat wrote: 22 Mar 2023 06:10
Salmoneus wrote: 21 Mar 2023 21:52 It seems to me that carefully gathering roots from multiple source languages, creating a substitution cipher, and then enciphering the source words to produce results indistinguishable from randomly-generated roots (but with weird phonotactics!) would be an awful lot more work for no obvious benefit!
Well, I tried "just come up with roots" and they sounded too similar. So I tried "use a program/algorithm to make roots" but my brain decided it didn't like ANY of them because they weren't personal enough? I guess. So if this actually gets the roots I make stick and feel right, then the effort is worth it.
*shrugs*
Sure, if this ritual makes you happier, I guess. But I don't see why it would, since you're still ending up with 'impersonal', pseudo-random strings of letters. It's also going to produce phonotactics that aren't plausible for humans, and probably not for any humans with sufficiently humanoid vocal apparatus to merit using the Latin alphabet for their language.

Since your problem appears to be psychological, I'd suggest just dealing with that problem directly, so that the process becomes easier for you in future, rather than creating an elaborate and time-consuming workaround so that you don't have to deal with your problem, which makes the process harder for you in the long run. But, it's up to you, of course.

EDIT:
In terms of how to deal with your problem, the 'my brain doesn't like these random words' problem is easiest to address. I'd suggest a) thinking about it (and how all words are random anyway), b) just doing it repeatedly so that it doesn't feel new and strange), c) actually using the words you create in translations and grammar examples until your brain recognises them as just as meaningful as any other, and d) creating a proto-language with a derivational system, so that in your actual target language there are still echoes of those derivations, so that the words feel less disconnected from one another. I think almost everybody feels like this, and it just goes away.

The problem of insufficient randomisation in 'made-up' words is trickier, but you generally get better at it when you just reflect on what you're doing. Have an actual target frequency list and periodically compare your words to that list to see what you need to lean toward more.

These solutions of course require some effort, but the point is that applying some effort now solves (or greatly reduces) the problems in the future, whereas creating a comforting ritual now creates more work for you every time you have to apply it in the future (and makes it harder if you ever do want to do it without the ritual).
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Re: "cheating" in making a conlang

Post by Creyeditor »

I think 'reflect on what you're doing' is great advice.
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Re: "cheating" in making a conlang

Post by LinguistCat »

I assume you think I haven't done any of that in the 20 or so years I've been a conlanger. Granted, most of that was on the zbb under the name vampyre_smiles, so I understand if you thought I was a newbie making things harder on myself than needed. But, if any of that worked I'd think it would have stuck by now.

I actually put "cheating" in the title because I felt this was TOO easy, while still being somewhat hands on.
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