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[jamesprimate]

Ah really cool thread! Im not usually all that interested in the big fantasy languages (Elvish, Klingon, etc), because other than as decoration / world building background stuff they feel kind of... sterile? One-dimensional? Made-up? Idk, just my opinion. Tolkien definitely does this better than im giving him credit for, building the world history around the various languages etc., but still it seems more like set extensive decoration than anything "meaningful" (if that even applies.)

But reading about "Belter" from The Expanse is really really fascinating to me. The show is set a few hundred years in the future, and this language is spoken by the socio-political underclass from all over the world who found work in the asteroid belt as laborers, and so the language (and culture) is a creole made up of Cantonese, Russian, Polish, Welsh English, Arabic and dozens more. Its basically the future history of humanities lower classes, and is set in contrast with English which is used by the U.N.-like upper classes of Earth and Mars.

In execution it works... mostly just like a fantasy language does, and with the same problems. But definite props for that level of depth and thought put into it. That's next level.

Read about it here in you are interested: http://arstechnica.com/the-multiverse/2016/02/nick-farmer-knows-dozens-of-languages-so-he-invented-one-for-the-expanse/

[oahda]

Yay, nice to see this thread suddenly waking up again.

James: For a lot of people, conlanging itself is an art. Not necessarily a setpiece in something bigger. For some, the language is a work in and of itself. And it can take looooads of time.

I'd post the currently 50 pages long textbook-style treatise of my current language to give you an idea of how serious some of us nerds take this and how much formal linguistics can be involved, but I need to find somewhere to upload it first. And probably export the latest version.

[jamesprimate]

oh yeah i get that and totally agree. the potential for it as a creative medium is really amazing. i just dont think the most commonly talked about ones live up to that potential! (much like videogames)

[oahda]

Nah, can't say many games have taken it that seriously. Something like Skyrim dragon language doesn't even really qualify, it's what the community refers to as a cypher or a relex, which is basically English (or some other language) with the words changed into gibberish but the grammar staying absolutely the same, so it's not a properly made conlang, it's just an existing language with its vocabulary replaced.

Movies seem to be where it's really at ATM. Na'vi and Dothraki are thoroughly worked out languages with linguistic minds behind them, for example. Klingon sort of, but it was a bit too early to be taken entirely seriously, I think.

Considering how Nintendo has played with its Hylian script for a long time, then gave Midna and Fi gibberish voices and finally a "Hylian" (probably not a proper conlang yet) song to Zelda in SS, and Zelda players are so used to having to read everything anyway, I was really disappointed to hear the English voice acting in the new Zelda. In a climate where conlangs are getting so popular, and Nintendo has already played with it for this IP before, it felt like such bizarre regression. Then again, the whole game feels regressive and conformist and generic as opposed to earlier entries in the series, even tho Nintendo seems to be trying to claim the opposite... Meh. Such a lost opportunity.

[nnyei]

I can't believe I managed to overlook this thread until now. Learning about languages and linguistics is a big hobby of mine. I think it's fascinating to see how different languages handle certain things, how they're constructed, and how they differ in "feeling" once you've reached something akin to proficiency. Fun tidbit about me: I actually really disliked reading books — or anything, really — before I became fluent in English; now I love it.

I've never had much of an interest in learning conlangers (except for Esperanto, which I'm currently learning) for all the reasons that have already been mentioned in this thread, but I really like the idea and the thought process behind it. I think if I were to constuct a language, I'd strive to make it as simple and easy to acquire as possible. It'd be a really nice thought experiment.

I'd post the currently 50 pages long textbook-style treatise of my current language to give you an idea of how serious some of us nerds take this and how much formal linguistics can be involved, but I need to find somewhere to upload it first. And probably export the latest version.

I'd love to take a look at that. :>

Then again, the whole game feels regressive and conformist and generic as opposed to earlier entries in the series, even tho Nintendo seems to be trying to claim the opposite... Meh. Such a lost opportunity.

Yeah... It's a shame that they aren't setting the trends anymore and are instead desperately trying to catch up.

[DCoward]

The interesting thing is there are lots of ways to use Conlangs.

You have the equivalent of scripting in Comp Sci (as opposed to more fleshed out code), which is seen in small bits of developed ConLangs, then you have even less than that (like Cyphers), but there's a huge gradient of development beyond that.

It's fascinating because it could be something as well documented as English, or something as starved for documentation as Modern Arabic (surprisingly there is much to be desired for that, in case you were curious).

And the levels of fleshing out go a long way towards how you can use them in your game. Do you want it to be fleshed out enough to be consistent, but ultimately is a lost language? Or do you want it to be something a person can straight up translate a language into it and then be able to speak it like Klingon?

For me, I have a lot of languages that are on the less developed side because of their use, but there's one in particular I'm working on that is already nearing 10 pages of dev work with complete scripts and everything. The irony is that one is, at best, going to be engraved on things and not spoken directly to the player much if at all.

Oh well 

[oahda]

Weekend. Here we go.

My thing (first page is where I dump things to copypaste when writing on tablet, ignore that):
https://app.box.com/s/q55utl4uq189c3nbnyw0crp99z2tio0t

And a lot of other ones can be found on this wiki:
http://linguifex.com/wiki/Main_Page