(partly based on Mark Rosenfelder's Language Construction Kit)

[All the pages of How to create a language can be downloaded for offline browsing in a .zip file. That doesn't include multimedia content and style sheets.]

These pages are intended for people interested in creating languages for fictional purposes (or just for fun) and in linguistics in general. They're not meant to be an online linguistics course, but you sure can learn quite a few things about linguistics by reading them, the same way I, not being a linguist, learned from others. They're also not supposed to be a guide to the creation of auxiliary or international languages such as Esperanto.

The pages are divided into two main fields: sounds (phonology) and structure (grammar). These pages will cover both fields, in that order, and many others which are somewhere in the middle. It will explain linguistic technical terms when used.

Before starting, I'd like to give the credit deserved to Mark Rosenfelder, who gave me the first tool to engage myself in serious language development. The structure and main points on these pages are based on his work, although I have tried not to copy everything (which would be quite silly of me), but instead give some advice and go deeper into some details he didn't mention in the Language Construction Kit. Some material, especially in the Sound Change section, has also been drawn from the Model Languages newsletter, run by Jeffrey Henning. A fellow conlanger, Nik Taylor, suggested a lot of corrections and useful additions to the original version of this document. Some explanations in this document have been adapted from posts to the Conlang list, notably the explanation of trigger systems, by Kristian Jensen. A helpful reader, Miekko, provided some examples about moods and vowel harmony. The rest is from personal experience or learning.

I've used examples from (or mentioned) the following languages: English, Old English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, Hungarian, Latin, Greek, Russian, Nenets, Georgian, Estonian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Tibetan, Guarani, Quechua, Shilluk, Khoisan, Rotokas, Hotentot, Ful, Nootka, Chinook, Welsh, Irish, Proto-Indoeuropean, Germanic, Sanskrit, Quenya, Sindarin, Draseléq, Knarwaz, Khurwich -- the last five are invented languages; Quenya and Sindarin by J. R. R. Tolkien, and the last three created by me. These languages are mentioned or commented on. I have tried to be as accurate as I can; it all depends on my sources, which are sometimes books from a library that I took back months ago, so I have to cite from memory. This also explains the mentions of "an African language" (which may one of the above, or none) whose name I can't remember. Nevertheless, I have a good memory and I believe every piece of information is correct as far as I may know; I haven't included conjectures, or guesses which aren't noted as such.

If someone finds anything that seems to be a mistake, or wishes to make a suggestion, or wants a particular topic to be discussed here, please write to me. Additions and corrections are welcome.

These pages do not require any plug-in or fancy gadget in order to be viewed correctly (not Flash, not Shockwave, not even Java). However, it is recommended that you use a browser with the ability to interpret Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS specification). Also, a couple of topics are accompanied by sound samples in MP3 format, which was chosen since it produces compact files that can be listened to, recorded and/or modified with software tools anyone can access for free. These samples are not indispensable for the comprehension of the rest of the content.