Ceallaigh's Blog
I've written the final post in the ConLangs 101 series, ConLangs 101: The Primordial World Sea People, which covers the biological, syntactical, historical and cultural components of the languages I created for the Primordial World Sea People (PWSP) and their descendants. However, I've realized in doing so that I've tipped my hand more than I'd like in advance of the sale and publication of Twilight of the World Sea People. Also, strategically speaking, the post will have more impact and generate more interest in the book once it's published. So I'm holding it in reserve for now, with apologies.
In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed the series so far! Here's what I've covered:
In the third and fourth installments of this series, I discussed the biological and linguistic components of language construction. In this post, I'll be discussing the intersection between language and culture. The study of this relationship is called ethnolinguistics or cultural linguistics, which might be of interest to you if you want to delve more deeply into language theory. But my focus here is on conlang development for world-building, so I'll be offering you a more practical approach to the topic.
In this fourth post of the ConLangs 101 series, we'll be looking at the way language is communicated. I'll be using the terms 'immediate communication' and 'permanent communication' alongside 'speech' and 'writing' by way of description, since this series is designed to aid in the construction of both human and non-human languages, and I don't want for your imaginations to get stuck in the easy or familiar. I'll also be discussing the importance of building relationships between your language systems and providing you with a few more resources for your own conlang development.
This third post in the ConLangs 101 series is intended to introduce you to the biology of sending and receiving communication as it relates to constructed languages. I'll be covering speech production and reception along with other biological mechanisms capable of participating in the communication process. I'll also be introducing you to the Primordial World Sea People, the ancient species from which my World Sea People, Twilight Sea Old People and Day Sea New People descend.
Sending Communication
Speech Production
Let's start with speech, the most common method of sending communication signals among human beings. We're putting the cart before the horse a bit here, since the very first organ involved in speech production is the brain. But I write about the brain below, so we'll table that discussion for now. Instead, let's take a look at the apparatuses involved in human speech production and how they work.
This second post in the ConLangs 101 series is intended to help English monoglots begin to think outside the structure of English-language communication. It isn't comprehensive by any means, but I hope that by the end if it you'll feel a little less dependent upon your mother tongue as you begin to experiment with language construction. You polyglots will have already internalized many of these concepts, but I hope you might be encouraged to range even farther afield with the languages you construct.
I'm an intermediate Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) speaker with a background in Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) and Cymraeg (Welsh), both medieval and modern. I've interviewed professors of linguistics and researchers in bioacoustics for the sake of the constructed languages in the Petals of the Twenty Thousand Blossom series, and I've done a fair bit of reading in linguistics on my own. I love language, I love creating languages for fiction and I love it when authors bring linguistic diversity to their work. So I've decided to participate in that process by consolidating some of what I've learned, some of what I've enjoyed and some of what I've created into a series of blog entries about constructed languages with writers in mind.