Lexember Drafting

It's commonly accepted that our man JRR to the Tolkien was the father of not just modern fantasy, but specifically a little thing we like to call worldbuilding. Most people know that he developed several languages for the different peoples of his world, but before an author, Tolkien was a professional studier of how languages relate to history and culture, who began inventing languages since he was literally a kid (he started Elvish when he was 18, and there are suggestions he'd invented others well before he was 13). Tolkien considered his languages inextricable from his world if not the motivation for his worldbuilding in the first place, yet language is one of the least considered elements of most modern worldbuilding.

There is a good reason for this. Brandon Sanderson says at one point in his lectures on creative writing that "every genre has a worldbuilding points limit like a Warhammer army, and usually languages are so far down the priority tree for your story that you've run out of points you can use by the time you think languages so most authors ignore them." And he is not wrong. Detailed worldbuilding is a huge endeavor, and language in particular is one of those things that most of your audience is going to accept your logic on. Have a world where everybody speaks the same language in exactly the same way despite being oceans away and sometimes even of entirely different species? Nobody's gonna blink. But just thinking about the languages in your world is a beautiful, and honestly simple way to add depth to your world and make it feel more alive.

 

Language and Geography

A lot of worldbuilders don't realize that language is alive, in a way, and it evolves just as species do. It changes gradually, but constantly, and given enough time, that change can become significant. Perhaps the simplest and most obvious thing to consider in thinking about a world with multiple languages is ease of communication.

• What are the geographical barriers between peoples in your world? [Remember that distance is its own kind of geographical barrier.]
  • Example: Peoples on either side of an impassable mountain are bound to have very different languages, even if their root languages were the same.
• Are there technological or magical advancements that mitigate geographical barriers?
  • Example: Magic that allows people to pass through a mountain easily, or technology that allows people to communicate despite physical barriers will reduce the differences that can form between them.
• What are some non-geographical barriers to communication?
  • Example: A country's isolation policy or a magical barrier that's limited travel for 100 years would encourage that country's language (and culture) to diverge from that of their surroundings.
• Which languages are close enough to influence each other in your world?
  • Example: If your PoV character is a native of an island with a nearby mainland, maybe the overall language of the mainland is very different and difficult to learn, but they recognize certain words from a mainlander. Or maybe islanders can speak both languages fluently. (Think Britain and Hong Kong.)
• Are there any creoles or mixed languages in you world?
  • Creoles and mixed languages are languages that develop naturally from a merging of two disparate languages. Example: A heavy hub of trade on the side of a river that allows influx from another country forces the people to communicate, and a pidgin develops (a hypersimplified mashing of the two languages), which then is taken up by the next generation and turned into a creole (a full-fledged language with native speakers derived from a pidgin).

 

Language and Class

Language has always had a relationship with class and image. Foreign languages, regional accents and dialects, and the ability to read and write can all become status symbols in their own way, and even be used to actively enforce class barriers.

• Who knows foreign languages in your world, and which ones?
  • Example: Men of the gentry in the Georgian era of Britain were expected to know French, German, Italian, Latin, and Greek, while the women were meant to learn the contemporary languages (French, German, and Italian) as a symbol of sophistication, but not Latin and Greek, because that indicated too much education to be proper.
• How are foreigners treated based on the languages they can or can't speak?
  • Example: Native English speakers in America often look down on immigrants who speak broken English as stupid or lesser, as though these people don't already have their own native language they're perfectly fluent and intelligible in, but speakers of certain European languages such as French may get a pass.
• How do foreign languages "rank" to your PoV people?
  • Example: Perhaps only royalty learn a certain foreign language because it is considered especially difficult to learn. (Arabic and the East Asian languages are generally considered in America to be the most difficult languages to learn in our world, indicating some kind of special mystique and intelligence attached to being able to learn those languages, but this is actually just a ranking based on native English speakers with no childhood or environmental exposure to them.)
• What do people assume about speakers of regional accents and variants of their language?
  • Example: High use of slang (informal, largely colloquial speech) among a certain community can be used as "proof" that this members of this community are less sophisticated, intelligent, or even trustworthy.
• How do these biases concretely impact speakers of that regional accent or variant?
  • Example: Speakers may force themselves to learn the "standard" variant in order to be basically accepted, or even to gain access to education, jobs, and clientele that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. Speakers who can't learn the "standard" form may be taken less seriously in legal cases, or even struggle to deal with formal documentation in the government. (The "standard," "official," or "formal" language a country or region has is typically the most socially acceptable form of the language, even if it's not the form a majority of the population necessarily speaks.)
• Are any languages intentionally taught or eradicated to maintain one people's superiority?
  • Example: A colonizing power may prohibit speaking of an indigenous language, change place names, or intentionally make legal and government functions inaccessible except through the colonizing power's language in order to "civilize" the "savage," "pitiful" natives. This is not always intentionally malicious, but it DOES always benefit the colonizing power at the expense of the natives. (And in case you think I'm pointing any fingers, this has occurred in basically every continent on the planet.)
• What are the notable impediments to learning to read and write (especially for those with less access to formalized education)?
  • Example: The Académie Française - a part of the government that regulates French spelling among other things - has made a large number of changes to French spelling over the years, which makes reading and writing unusually inconsistent and therefore more difficult to learn.
• Does written language have a political bent to it?
  • Example: The Korean alphabetical system was created intentionally for peasants, as a phonetic system is a little easier to learn than the character system (Chinese) that was used to write Korean previously, but it became the written language of protest particularly for women and illegitimate sons - people with high education, but minimal rights.

 

Language, History, and Culture

Native speakers of any language begin to add to and reflect their culture and historical events within that language, and in turn, language gains some of its own unique connotations and history.

• What historical events are reflected in phrases or ways of speaking?
  • Example: "Close, but no cigar" comes from 20th century American carnivals passing out cigars as carnival prizes.
• Which bits of folklore, religion, or mythology is reflect in phrases or ways of speaking?
  • Example: Saying someone "cried wolf" references a folktale we learn as children about a boy who repeatedly told people a wolf was coming as a prank, and then had no one to help when wolves actually came (though usually we ignore the second half, and are referencing the practice of repeatedly lying about something).
• What words or phrases have gained their own history and connotation?
  • Example: Racial slurs such as the N word may not start inherently offensive definitionally, but the way speakers have used them historically has permanently changed its meaning and use now. Note that this can also occur in the opposite direction, with formally negative or specifically-coded words becoming somewhat reclaimed actively or neutralized by a history of benign use. (Think "queer" - formally a slur now mostly considered reclaimed at least by younger LGBTQIA+ folk.)
• Are "ancient" languages at all intelligible to modern speakers, and how are they treated?
  • Example: Latin and Olde English are probably similar levels of understandable to modern English speakers, but Latin is treated as a prestige language, and Olde English as merely incomprehensible and obsolete. English from older eras is not treated as "ancient" but in its historical form, a lot of modern speakers find it difficult but not impossible to understand.

 

Language and Cultural Identity

Both which language a certain people speak, and the phrases or history unique to their interaction with that language can often be extremely important to different cultures. Though we sometimes like to think different, none of us have a neutral reaction to the language we consider most native to us, and it can often speak to both individual and collective values or history. (If your spouse grew up with another language near and dear to their heart in some way, learn it. It will make a difference.)

• Which words and phrases are interpreted differently by different subcommunities that speak the same language?
  • Example: The recent uproar around Jamie Foxx saying "They killed Jesus, what would they do to you?" showcases how the black Christian and Jewish communities interact differently with the same phrase, with the black community using it more as a generalized term to call out those who pretend to be your friends, while the Jewish community has had to deal with centuries of "they killed Jesus" being used as an excuse to persecute them.
• Does language in and of itself serve as a marker of cultural identity for certain groups?
  • Example: Although the Romani are spread throughout Europe (and even a bit further), most of them still fluently speak a dialect of the Romani language, and communities at the border of country lines may primarily speak the language of the other country, particularly if they consider themselves more a part of that other country.
• Does language itself serve as a marker of cultural identity against oppression or colonization?
  • Example: In direct opposition to particularly prohibitions to speak or use their native language, colonized peoples may intentionally use their language as a rallying symbol, and speak and teach their language to their children illegally.

 

Bonus!! Language and Personality

One of the most interesting reasons to think about languages in your worldbuilding is that it can affect how characters from different areas relate to each other. Of course there's the obvious "do they need an interpreter" and "what words do they recognize" but it extends beyond that. We all have specific ways of using language that reveal our character and beliefs, which is why everyone loves writing dialogue, and this is also true of how characters interact with foreign languages or secondary languages they're fluent in.

• How do different characters portray the same concepts with different phrasing or connotations? What does that reveal about their core values and beliefs?
  • Example: A youtuber reviewing Fifty Shades pointed out how Christian Grey characterizes Ana leaving him as “running” giving a potential breakup a “you’re a coward” coat of paint.
• How does your character specifically react to foreign languages and accents?
  • Example: Maybe your main character immediately makes an assumption about another character when they hear them speak a foreign language or with a certain accent, particularly if their accent changes when they’re at home or with family (we see this a lot in fictions set in the real world, but for some reason not in a lot of fictionally-set works).
• How do your bilingual characters interact with the different languages they speak?
  • Remember that bilingual characters are BI-lingual. They should not treat one as their native language, and the other as an exotic special thing. That said, they can still have different reactions and balances between the languages they speak. Example: One of my colleagues is bilingual with Spanish and English, and while very intelligent (she’s getting her PhD in a hard science, yo), struggles with formal writing in English. My dad’s been speaking primarily English for four decades, but still becomes much more expressive and animated in Korean (I swear he even laughs more, lol). Some studies even suggest people change their actions based on the language they’re speaking at the moment (such as someone being more likely to place a bet in English that they may not have if it had been presented in Spanish).

To be completely honest with you, if you hate grammar - don't wanna think about it, much less touch it in your own work - you're never going to be able to develop a full conlang. There's just a point at which you're going to have to think about the rules on which your language operates if you want to create a full language, because all languages operate on SOME kind of rules (or else we wouldn't be able to understand one another). THAT SAID, there are ways you can make hints of your fiction's language feel unique and thought-through. Some of these things are going to look familiar if you've already read through the Beginner's Guide to Conlangs.

 

Sounds

• Pick your sounds and stick to them in all your words and names.
  • Look for sounds in foreign languages that seem really foreign or hard to pronounce for you!
  • Explore the International Phonetic Alphabet and listen to a lot of different samples of the different sounds.
  • Write out a list of the sounds you settle on, and reference it every time you make a new word or place name.
• Make some rules for how sounds go together. (Does this count as grammar? No worries, this is optional if it seems like too much.)
  • Example: In English, “st” is a combination of consonants that are allowed to go together, and start a word, but you can’t start a word with the “ng” sound, and you can’t combine “dz” for instance, which is perfectly acceptable in other languages.
  • If you’re going to do this as a native English speaker, I highly recommend trying to smash together as many consonants in a string as possible at some point just to try it. English really isn’t the most adventurous about its consonant combos.

 

Words

• Assemble bigger words from smaller words and concepts.
  • Examples: “Helpful” and “birthday” combine words directly, but prefixes and suffixes and pretty much any “Latin/Greek root thingy” can be used in the same way, such as in “androgynous.”
• Split up concepts among different words, or merge multiple concepts into one word.
  • Examples: The questions “how did it go” and “where did you go” both use the verb “go,” one indicating a state of being, the other a physical action of travel, but those are considered multiple uses of the same word, not homonyms (the way “bat” the stick and “bat” the animal are separate words). In the reverse, we normally think of smiling and laughing as separate words, but Japanese only has one proper verb for both.

 

Culture

• Make swear words out of what's taboo among the speakers.
  • A lot of swear words tend to revolve around animals, religion, ailments, or the physical body, and this will shift over time. Examples: “Cunt” used to be broadly used as a medical term in the Middle Ages, but legs were considered so private in the Victorian era that using the word “leg” itself was swearing, and “God” and “damn” were very serious swear words back when Christianity was taken very seriously by English speakers as a whole.
• In what ways do your speakers denote that they're speaking formally or casually?
  • It can vary as little as not using certain types of colloquial speech, or as much as having separate conjugations, pronouns, and vocabulary for people of different statuses.
• Ground concepts and phrases (such as greetings) in your speakers' realities.
  • Examples: In Korean, it’s not super uncommon to greet a friend by asking “have you eaten yet?” In English, phrases like “get back up on that horse” and “it’s just like riding a bicycle” and “easy as pie” and “like oil and water” all speak to or reference things that are or at least were at one point, very simple, basic, and tangible day-to-day things.

 

Script

If you DECIDE to make up a script for your language, there are some things you can think about for that, too.

• Pick a type of script.
• • Logogram: each symbol represents an idea and a sound. (Eg. Chinese)
  • Syllabary: each symbol represents a single full syllable” (Eg. Japanese alphabet)
  • Alphabet: each symbol represents either a consonant or vowel separately and with equal “weight.” (Eg. English)
  • Abugida: each symbol represents a consonant with one vowel implied, UNLESS something is added to indicate the vowel. (Eg. Devanagari, “p” would stand for “pa” unless you add a vowel like “pi”)
  • Abjad: each symbol represents a consonant. Vowel markers are almost completely optional or do not exist, and have to be inferred. (Eg. Arabic)
  • Plus you can kind of mix and match any of the above. Real languages definitely do.
  •  
• Decide a reading order.
• • Do you read it horizontally first or vertically first? English reads horizontally first, so you’re reading this line, and then AFTER you finish reading this row, you move down to the next row.
  • Do you read left-to-right (English), or right-to-left (Arabic), or even alternating left-right reading order every line (boustrophedon)?
  • You could also always just decide “screw everything” and have reading order go in a spiral (from in to out, or out to in).

The number one rule in building any conlang, as far as I'm concerned, is to relax and enjoy yourself. Conlangs take a lot of work, and it can be easy to get wrapped up in making the "perfect" language, which is just never gonna happen. If you start thinking it's boring or anxiety-inducing, it's going to make all that work feel hard instead of fun, and there's never any good reason to make a conlang if it feels like a burden to you.

 

Pick a type of conlang

• Is it a engineered lang, an auxlang, a pure artlang, or meant to be a natlang?
  • Engineered language: really more of a thought experiment in some form of logic, philosophy, or linguistics. I have run across an example before, but honestly I don’t understand any of it.
  • Auxiliary language: used to facilitate international communication. Esperanto is an excellent example. A good way to go about it is to create a language that taps as much as possible into the commonalities between the native languages of the people it’s trying to connect, but you can also just make a language that’s a bit more streamlined, straightforward, and intentional than a natural language.
  • Artistic language: just created for aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect. I figure most worldbuilding conlangs fall into this category technically, but you can also just make a conlang for no particular reason.
  • Natural language: cannot actually be created, and are naturally developed through people speaking. When making a conlang for a fictional world, most people are trying to make as close to a natlang for their fictional people as possible. I… don’t do this, because I find it stressful to try that hard to make a “natlang” since you have to think about its evolution and intentionally make it messy.

 

Pick your sounds

• The International Phonetic Alphabet encompasses most of the sounds found in human languages, and is a good place to start.
• Listen to sounds in foreign languages or even conlangs, look out for sounds that feel really foreign or difficult for you to pronounce. (It's probably best not to START with sounds you can't pronounce, however.)
• Think about modified versions of sounds you're already familiar with.
  • Examples: Na'vi features somewhat rarer "aspirated" consonants, so that "k" comes with a really hard popping noise when pronounced. Irish accents have a soft, breathy "t" they sometimes use instead of the hard "t" (or sudden stop) an American like me would pronounce it as.
• Consider adding clicks or guttural stops. Don't feel restricted just by obvious letter sounds.
  • Example: In Korean, consonants aren't fully pronounced if there's no other vowel after them, so instead of saying "pe-tuh" the way we do with "pet," they'd just end it with the tongue in the "t" position.
• Note some languages will have different modified versions of the same sound, which YOU may not be able to easily distinguish, but the native speakers will. (If you want to incorporate that, you may just have to train your ear on those sounds in other languages first.)
  • Example: Arabic has a more standard “d” and “s” but also something they call “dark” versions of both sounds.
• Feel free to LIMIT the number of sounds in your language. Take away a sound you think of as integral to speaking, and see how it changes the auditory landscape of your language.

 

Start on your basic syntax

• Choose your word order: SOV, SVO, VSO, VOS, OVS, OSV
  • Word order is how you assemble your subject, verb, and object. The verb is the action word, the subject is the person or thing DOING the action, and the object is the person or thing RECEIVING the action. Example: In "Polly likes peanuts," Polly is the subject, peanut is the object.
  • You can choose any word order you like, but the most common in our world is Subject Object Verb, and it is extremely rare for the object to come before the subject.
  • All languages have a typical word order, but word order can be flexible in some languages, and can change especially for emphasis. Usually languages with flexible word orders have some way of marking what is the subject, what is the object, and often also don't need to use pronouns. Examples: In Japanese, "ha" is tacked onto the end of the subject, and "wo" is tacked onto the end of the object right before the verb, so it's obvious which is which and they can be moved around more easily. "I like you" needs to include the "I" and "you" in English, because it has a strict word order, whereas in Japanese the "I" and "you" are implied and unnecessary.
• Make noun modifiers - by adjectives, number, and if you're feeling jiggy, noun class
  • Adjectives - Does anything mark your adjectives (like "ly") and do you put them before or after your noun?
  • Number. Examples: English tacks an "s" onto most nouns to indicate any plural, while Modern Hebrew will tack a "áyim" onto the end of time words specifically for "two." "Yom" is day, for instance, while "yomáyim" is two days. Plurals can be indicated with prefixes as well, they do not need to be restricted to suffixes.
  • Noun class: a way of grouping nouns into two or more categories. Examples: French grammatical gender marks every noun as either feminine or masculine, whether it makes logical sense or not (the word for cat is always masculine), and some words have multiple forms based on which they are. "Serveur" is for male waiters, "serveuse" for female. Other classes include animate vs inanimate, strong vs weak, countable vs uncountable. You can decide any classes you want, with any rules for how they're noted, which nouns are in which class, and how they change other parts of the grammar.
• Make verb modifiers - with adverbs, tense, and mood
  • Adverbs - consider what marks your adverbs, and whether they're placed before or after the verb.
  • Tense: anchors verbs in time. Examples: Chinese does not use tenses at all, but English has past (liked), present (like), future (will like), ongoing present (is/am liking), and so on and so forth. "Liked" is a direct modification of verbs, while "will like" adds a word to change the tense.
  • Mood: gives verbs an attitude. Examples: "If you'd just do this, I WOULD help you" is an example of the conditional mood. "I COULD have fallen to my death," the hypothetical mood. Japanese directly changes its verbs for moods. "Tabero" is the "imperative" (command) of the informal verb "taberu," and the "potential" (indicating something is likely, but not necessarily true) is "taberudeshou."
• How does your language indicate relationship between things? "In" "on" "under" "after" "towards" "of" "for" "from" "throughout" "until" "with" and "ago" are all words that note some kind of relationship, and those, along with possession, can be indicated with separate words or direct modifications.
  • Examples: When you say "the paper is on the table" you indicate a specifical physical relationship between the paper and the table, and "I ate AFTER exercising" indicates a specific temporal relationship between the actions of eating and exercising.
  • These indicators can be separate words or modifications of nouns. "Kit's plushy" involves a possessive marker directly on "Kit," but Japanese and Chinese only use separate short words to indicate possession ("no" and "de" respectively, "my dog" is "watashi(me) no inu(dog)" in Japanese, and "wo(me) de gou(dog)" in Chinese).
  • Where you PUT the relational markers is not always going to be exactly the same as in English. We say "I talk ABOUT that" whereas Japanese does the opposite "I thisthing NITSUITE talk" with "nitsuite" being the "about" word, following the thing talked about.
• When do your modifiers have to agree?
  • Examples: "I am" and "we are" is an example of the verb changing to match the plurality of the subject. In French, "a man" is "un homme" while "a woman" is "une femme." "Un" matches the gender of the noun it's attached to. In one of my conlangs, the subject of a sentence is given a "d" at the end of the word, and every adjective attached to the subject is given the same ending, but the verbs aren't affected by the nouns in any way.

 

Build your words

• Decide if there are any rules for how sounds are allowed to go together in words, and if there are any combinatorial sounds within them.
  • Example: In English, “st” is a combination of consonants that are allowed to go together, and start a word, but you can’t start a word with the “ng” sound, and you can’t combine “dz” for instance, which is perfectly acceptable in other languages.
  • Some sounds merge into each other based on what sound follows it, so "ingot" is pronounced "ing-git" because when "n" is followed by the "g," the throat posture changes the "n" to a "ng" sound.
  • Some languages don't require syllables to have a vowel sound, so a combination of consonants like "sqw" or "kst" can stop suddenly and be considered its own syllable.
• Make bigger words and concepts out of smaller words and concepts.
  • Examples: “Helpful” and “birthday” combine words directly, but prefixes and suffixes and pretty much any “Latin/Greek root thingy” can be used in the same way, such as in “androgynous.”
• Make some words do double-duty. Find words in your own language that are secretly doing double-duty and split them into separate words.
  • Examples: The questions “how did it go” and “where did you go” both use the verb “go,” one indicating a state of being, the other a physical action of travel, but those are considered multiple uses of the same word, not homonyms (the way “bat” the stick and “bat” the animal are separate words). In the reverse, we normally think of smiling and laughing as separate words, but Japanese only has one proper verb for both.
• Have words and phrases reflect (in big OR small ways) cultural priorities of any expected native speakers.
  • Cultures where hierarchies are very important may have more prominent levels of formality, perhaps language only the upper crust use or more formal language based on who you're talking to.
  • Certain titles may have more importance than others, and it may be more or less common to refer to someone by name (first OR last) or title, or some combination of the two.
  • Some languages will have fairly unique or culturally specific words. Concepts such as filial piety and individualism are core cultural values that may have special words, and the Korean word "han" has no singular English translation, as it broadly refers to a larger cultural angst and resentment brought on by a deep injustice being inflicted upon them as a people. The word "arirang" has no known translation at all, and instead is tacked onto multiple things because it's the name of a folk song that evokes a mixture of nostalgia and yearning in that culture.
  • Languages may have multiple words for the same concept if, for instance, something is especially common to encounter, or distinguishing among certain nuances is very important. We have tons of different words with the same direct meaning based on things we can have various feelings about (club, group, clique), and many distinct words for various bodies of water (lake, river, brook, pond).
• Make swear words based on what's taboo in your fictional culture, not YOUR REAL LIFE culture.
  • A lot of swear words tend to revolve around animals, religion, ailments, or the physical body, and this will shift over time. Examples: “Cunt” used to be broadly used as a medical term in the Middle Ages, but legs were considered so private in the Victorian era that using the word “leg” itself was swearing, and “God” and “damn” were very serious swear words back when Christianity was taken very seriously by English speakers as a whole.
• Ground words and phrases (like greetings) in real life and practical concerns: health, security, power, personal identity, the people we love, and having beliefs about meaning and purpose.
  • Examples: In Korean, it’s not super uncommon to greet a friend by asking “have you eaten yet?” In English, phrases like “get back up on that horse” and “it’s just like riding a bicycle” and “easy as pie” and “like oil and water” all speak to or reference things that are or at least were at one point, very simple, basic, and tangible day-to-day things.

 

Don’t forget to play, practice, and test in your language. It is the only way you will both enjoy it, keep it fresh in your mind, and notice places you still need to develop!

 

If you decide to make a script

• Pick a type of script.
  • Logogram: each symbol represents an idea and a sound. (Eg. Chinese, the symbol 天 refers to the sky (among other sky-ish things), but also represents the sound tian. When a speaker sees the character, both the sound and the meaning are evoked.)
  • Syllabary: each symbol represents a single full syllable” (Eg. Japanese, か sounds like "ka.")
  • Alphabet: each symbol represents either a consonant or vowel separately and with equal “weight.” (Eg. English, the letter e (a symbol representing a vowel) is given the same amount of space and emphasis in writing as n (a symbol representing a consonant).)
  • Abugida: each symbol represents a consonant with one vowel implied, UNLESS something is added to indicate the vowel. (Eg. Devanagari, प represents the syllable "pa." To make it represent a syllable with any other vowel sound, something has to modify the base letter, like पि (pi) and पे (pe).)
  • Abjad: each symbol represents a consonant. Vowel markers (whether full sized or just modifiers of the consonants) are almost completely optional or do not exist, and have to be inferred. (Eg. Arabic)
  • Plus you can kind of mix and match (and abuse) any of the above. Real languages definitely do. (Eg. English classifies as an alphabet, but it's not as though it's actually possible to correctly identify the sounds associated with a word purely through the written text.)
• Decide a reading order.
  • Do you read it horizontally first or vertically first? English reads horizontally first, so you’re reading this line, and then AFTER you finish reading this row, you move down to the next row.
  • Do you read left-to-right (English), or right-to-left (Arabic), or even alternating left-right reading order every line (boustrophedon)?
  • You could also always just decide “screw everything” and have reading order go in a spiral (from in to out, or out to in).
• If it's supposed to be for a natlang, what did your ancient people have available to write on, and how does that affect your modern script?
• Consider how words and sentences are separated - decide how many different types of punctuation there are and whether or not words or phrases are spaced.
• Do your letters have different forms, or a decorative version?
  • Examples: capital letters (which I never add to my conlangs bc screw that noise), italics, bold, cursive. One conlang assembles letters together into beautiful art.

 

Please let me know if you'd like any more details or explanations for anything above. I was trying to be as concise as possible and could certainly elaborate!

Exercises:

2xLanguage and Geography

2xLanguage and Class

2xLanguage, History, and Culture

2xLanguage and Cultural Identity

1xLanguage and Personality

(The PLAN is to do at least one new one each year, maybe even same as here each year.)

 

Sounds – pick sounds, make a rule

Words – make words from smaller words, make words that do double duty or split up double duty in your language, make a swear word, identify a core cultural thing to put in your language

Syntax – Pick a word order, decide broad rules for how adjectives and adverbs are indicated and how we know which verb and noun they refer to, decide if there are any plural indicators, pick a noun class, pick some tenses and how they're indicated on verbs, pick some moods to indicate and how they are indicated, decide broad rules for how relational markers are indicated, decide which things in your language have to agree

Script – Pick a script type, pick a reading order, decide punctuation and spaces, think of a simpler form it might have evolved from