Inventing Languages

Provides an engaging, hands-on introduction to linguistics and language invention, making linguistic typology accessible to a wide audience.

Grounded on world building and the variation displayed by the world's languages, this book is an engaging, step-by-step guide to language invention. It presents a creative, interdisciplinary approach to conlanging that can be of interest to readers interested in language invention, particularly those without a previous background in linguistics.How are invented languages created? Artificially constructed languages ('conlangs') shed light on how we can apply the universal principles of language to produce whole new languages. Grounded on world building and linguistic typology, this engaging book provides a step-by-step guide to language invention, introducing the basic blocks of language building (such as sounds, morphemes and sentence structure) and demonstrating their use in both natural languages from English to Swahili, and invented languages from Esperanto to Klingon. An original conlang is developed throughout the book to bring the theory to life, accompanied with scaffolded, creative exercises that allow the reader to explore different linguistic options before incorporating them in their own conlang. Making conlanging accessible to readers with little or no background in linguistics, this guide is ideal for linguistics students, creative writers, and readers interested in language and language invention.