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O Kit de Construção de Línguas (em português; traduzido por Gustavo Pereira)
Il Kit di Costruzione di Linguaggi (in italiano; tradotto per Daniele "MadMage" Calisi)
Der Sprachbaukasten (auf Deutsch; übersetzt von Carsten Becker)
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The LCK is also available in a print edition, four times the length, published by Yonagu Books on Amazon.
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This set of webpages (what's a set of webpages? a webchapter?) is intended for anyone who wants to create artificial languages— for a fantasy or an alien world, as a hobby, as an interlanguage. It presents linguistically sound methods for creating naturalistic languages— which can be reversed to create non-naturalistic languages. It suggests further reading for those who want to know more, and shortcuts for those who want to know less.
—Mark Rosenfelder
The above is a sample of an artificial language of my own, Verdurian. If you're curious, it reads, "Ďitelán mu cum pén vea
en er mësan so Sannam", meaning "Go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord." The accented sounds like the th in then; the vowels should be pronounced more or less as in Spanish.
How about a suite of webpages? Does that sound better?
Chico: OK, you're the Swede of Webpages, an' I'll be the Mexican of Usenet.
Before I could write this little inscription I had to:
You may have two reactions to this:
The order of the steps above is significant. Working backwards (e.g. creating a text and then devising a grammar to match) will lead to an inconsistent if not incoherent work. A bad example is Hergé's Syldavian; since he basically made it up in pieces, as he needed it, it's impossible to create a consistent phonology or morphology for it, based on the scraps of the language provided in the Tintin books. (This didn't prevent me from coming up with my best attempt at a Syldavian grammar.)If you're looking for a quick download, this scary outline
reduces to just two files, this one and
this one.
I get plenty of mail saying roughly "OK, but how exactly do I do it?" I advise reading the Kit again, and working on the language as you go, section by section: i.e. create a phonology, establish phonological constraints, work on nouns, verbs, etc., ending with complex clauses. Don't be afraid to go back and revise. Don't look for shortcuts; if you don't enjoy the process of creating a language, this may not be the hobby for you.
There's a list of web resources here.
And for plenty more information, check out the print version!
