Have you designed a language?

[Asmor]

Simple question... How much have you played around with designing languages?

 

[kitsune9]

Simple question... How much have you played around with designing languages?

Just a few simple words and phrases in an ancient language that I bring into play from time to time. Nothing comprehensive or even remotely using grammar rules and structure. My players would find such a thing very boring.

Though I think DM's or writers who want to put in that kind of effort is a pretty cool thing to do.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

Big big respect to anyone who designs their own language, but if I may humbly point out that learning a new language that your players don't speak and incorporating that into the game is more rewarding and practical then inventing a new one.

I know few words of Arabic and also speak passable Portuguese, in my modern games I use these to flesh out the campaign. Of course in a fantasy setting they are not so useful, but they are not useless either.

My boring, unimaginative and lazy suggestion:
Go to Google Translator. Choose English to Basque. Type anything. You have yourself an ancient language for strange creatures/aliens.

Honey, I'm going to the store. Do you need anything? =
Eztia gordetzeko naiz joan. Ez duzu ezer?

 

[Hautamaki]

I think your poll option needs to include inventing an alphabet. Who among us has not created their own set of ancient runes for players to decipher in order to open the door/disable the trap/whatever?

In addition to that very common usage of language creation, when high school was not taking up nearly enough of my time, I actually invented a whole language for magic. I forced my players to learn the correct magic words for all spells and say them when casting; mispronunciations or hesitations resulted in spell misfires >8]

When my players started to figure out the underlying grammar and vocabulary of the spells for themselves (for example ghast was the word for Fire) they could start to invent their own spells. That was really cool at first but within days completely broke my magic system when the player figured out how to say 'total mass mind control' in my magic language and used his powers to wantonly depopulate cities 8[

 

[nedjer]

Yeah. The RPG Treasure is based entirely on a visual and semantic language that models cognitive interactions. That necessitates very simple grammar and syntax, which form the building blocks for more complex small world networking interactions.

Which, for new players, translates to 'you can RPG with fantasy hieroglyphics if you want to'.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

I got interested in this a fews years back. Not so much for gaming, but because I'm interested in the topic. The following site was a fun read in this direction.

The Language Construction Kit

 

[Bedrockgames]

I designed alphabets and a basic prefix and suffix list to get consistency of sound. That is about as far as I'd go with language.

 

[Huw]

I've designed several languages and writing systems. The ones I use in games just tend to provide names for places, but many of the languages are fully fleshed out just for the fun of it.

Many vocabulary taken straight from Proto-Indo-European, but I've pinched grammatical constructs from a whole range of language families.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

I used to do quite a bit, though mainly starting with a handful of vocabulary and a fairly well fleshed out grammar, then throwing in new vocab as needed. The big problem with that was that, while I enjoyed doing it, it was mostly wasted effort since most players imxp don't to bother with elaborate placenames, titles, translation errors or the like.

And of course, more recently real life allows less time, and the internet has made it almost trivial to access real languages, so fully inventing new languages now does little more than take time away from other world-building tasks. Nowadays I restrict my in-world languages to be real-world languages, possibly slightly twisted by grammar, vocab and pronunciation quirks, and written in invented alphabets.

 

[wingsandsword]

A handful of words and phrases here and there, coupled with nonsense filler sounds and an appropriate accent (gutteral, clipped, melodic, soft, ect.).

I really wouldn't call it "language design" but it was an option on the poll.