next »

[Schoq]

same. yet I waste my time on a video game website, oops

[jolene]

your avatar is disgusting looks like someones butt after taking a shit and not cleaning up
a fake language is a waste of time because the objective of a language is communication, dumbass. video games are made for entertainment, therefore it fulfills its task by existing and a fake language doesnt
dnt even think about replying how a fake language could make communication because otherwise it wouldnt be called FAKE

dont talk about kitty like that >:[

[oahda]

"its fake cuz its called (i.e. i call it) fake" pls dum

also it entertains me *:

nice to see you back btw eva

I work at university doing IT work in a linguistics department. I'm surrounded by nerdy linguists who love that kinda stuff.

You need to let them drag you into their dark realm.

Personally I think it's cool. A friend of mine tried his hand at making a language (that was useable!) years ago, back when we were at school, for a fantasy setting we came up with and messed around in. Interestingly, I dropped all the language stuff despite revisiting the rest of the setting since then 

Perhaps you could limit yourself to what's called a "naming language", i.e. not really very grammatically fleshed out, but a consistent phonology to produce placenames et c. that actually mean something and have a consistent flavour.

[jolene]

hi girl who stole my name

[oahda]

is it only jolene now

[jolene]

no "eva" is name banned on this forum

[s0]

i should probably change that lol

[oahda]

What happened to the guy who posted a conlang thingy YouTube link? s: Was it Catguy? Was gonna check it out now but it seems to have been removed (entire message or edited?). Boo.

[Henry_Oswald]

Thanks to Prinsessa for referring me to this. Personally I find making languages to be really interesting, especially when they have an actual structure and stuff. It really adds to the immersiveness of a universe. One of my personal favorites was Cyan Studio's D'ni. So much thought was put into the Myst series and that language really helps it shine through even more.

[oahda]

Wasn't aware of any language in Myst, so thanks to you too! I'll have a peek.

[Nillo]

I heard that the new RTS on Steam "Grey Goo" has a conlang in it, created by an enthusiast on the topic. Might be worth checking out.

[Miziziziz]

For some reason I was expecting this to be a thread on making programming languages

[Tanner]

does aliceffekt still post stuff here? aliceffekt is all about conlang

[DCoward]

Not a conlanger specifically, but I am a Linguistics grad student, and I have researched hella lots about language typology and all that jazz.

I have dabbled with creation quite a lot, and I've been working on making working languages for my game. A lot of them are lexically starved right now, but have the phonological work up finished, as well as some of them having loose phonotactics done.

Honestly I don't get what a lot of the murmurs from earlier posters were getting at. I love a game that actually has effort and thought put into it, and I think fleshed out languages are small, but significant examples of that.

/Shrug

I think it's awesome, and I think if you're in a fantasy environment, you're likely ignoring an aspect that can make your game really awesome if you just flat out say "languages are a waste of time, everyone shall speak English/Common because I say so!"

I mean I'm biased as hell, but whatever. I live for story fluff and fleshed out background stuff, so shoot me.

[dany69burton]

I made up a conlang a few years ago, and still kinda use it for stuff occasionally, but the grammar is pretty clunky so it's not much fun to use. Either that or I just never got enough practice at using it.

[case81]

I use a conlang in my video game. I borrowed from Latin and Old Norse for grammar because those are the old languages I learned in school / in university. I also grew up with German, which is similar grammatically to those two.

I didn't construct the language from scratch. Not the grammar anyway. I'm not sure if that is even possible. What I mean is, I started by coming up with cool sounding gibberish and then sort of discovering structures in it and developing it from there. The vocabulary is largely limited to military commands etc. because that's what the faction using the language is mostly about. The game script doesn't have more than maybe 30 lines in this language, it's mostly used for shouts / grunts during combat.

The reason for developing the language is to make this faction seem even more - and believably - alien.

I was of course inspired by Tolkien, but also by various conlangs in Star Trek (not just Klingon).

https://spawnhost.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/conlangs-in-games/

[DCoward]

I use a conlang in my video game. I borrowed from Latin and Old Norse for grammar because those are the old languages I learned in school / in university. I also grew up with German, which is similar grammatically to those two.

I didn't construct the language from scratch. Not the grammar anyway. I'm not sure if that is even possible. What I mean is, I started by coming up with cool sounding gibberish and then sort of discovering structures in it and developing it from there. The vocabulary is largely limited to military commands etc. because that's what the faction using the language is mostly about. The game script doesn't have more than maybe 30 lines in this language, it's mostly used for shouts / grunts during combat.

The reason for developing the language is to make this faction seem even more - and believably - alien.

I was of course inspired by Tolkien, but also by various conlangs in Star Trek (not just Klingon).

https://spawnhost.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/conlangs-in-games/

You can always make the grammar for it legit, you just have to look at what you've got and go from there (doesn't mean it's simple, to be fair).

Most languages aren't clean at all, so the fact that some of your words differing would not only make sense, but there are like at least 5 different explanations you could give for why they're different.

[case81]

Most languages aren't clean at all, so the fact that some of your words differing would not only make sense, but there are like at least 5 different explanations you could give for why they're different.

Yes, this occurred to me too. It's probably realistic if it's a little fuzzy around the edges.

Not sure if I want to develop it into a full language or anything close to it, because it really serves a very limited purpose. I might extend it here and there and of course add more words as needed.

It just needs to look and sound legit to 99% of players.

[DCoward]

Most languages aren't clean at all, so the fact that some of your words differing would not only make sense, but there are like at least 5 different explanations you could give for why they're different.

Yes, this occurred to me too. It's probably realistic if it's a little fuzzy around the edges.

Not sure if I want to develop it into a full language or anything close to it, because it really serves a very limited purpose. I might extend it here and there and of course add more words as needed.

It just needs to look and sound legit to 99% of players.

IMO, the best way to make it sound legit is to, well, focus on sounds. At the very least, anyway, since there are lots of ways to work with it.

Make sure the sounds are consistent with barely any deviation, aside from what is phonologically sound (like unvoiced consonants becoming voiced between vowels, now and again.

Etc and so forth.

If you're interested I can definitely point you in the direction of some helpful stuff -- this goes for anyone, for what it's worth.

[quantumpotato]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374830/