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My first piece of advice is to get off of Biblaridion. He's an okay resource, but sometimes get's his facts wrong and has the tendency to make his opinions sound like universal consensus. As for other resources, I would highly recommend picking up some books (which are better than YT videos in every way) such as David J. Peterson's The Art of Language Invention. I'd also encourage you to find an intro to linguistics textbook and also find some good language grammars (you can find a lot online for free), as these can give you infinite ideas for your conlangs.

As for what you've shared... I'll be entirely honest, there's nothing very interesting to me about this grammar. Your vowels are pretty neat, though, and I like the idea of lengthening a vowel to indicate distant past. Your verbs seem fairly cookie-cutter - not that it's unnaturalistic, just not interesting. Also, if your goal is naturalism, I would strongly encourage introducing some irregularity to your verbal and nominal morphology, as well as your syntax. E.g., is your word order always VSO? Or are there instances where it switches to SVO or OSV?

I also strongly encourage taking a few days to think about what all these things mean. For example, what does the "simple" verb do? How do the speakers use it? It what contexts would it be appropriate or inappropriate? Same with the future tense - does it only apply to actions the speaker is sure will happen, or can it be applied if the speaker is unsure? What's the difference between habitual and continuous?

Also, check out your parts of speech as well. How are adjectives and adverbs formed? Are they derived from other words? Should they even exist (because some languages don't have one or the other or either.)? What prepositions are there and how are they used (essentially no two languages are alike with preposition usage.)? How do you mark possessor and/or possessee, if at all?

I'm bombarding you with questions here, but there's no pressure to answer them all right away. Just some things to make you think. The big takeaways here is to expand your pool of resources beyond Biblaridion and to ask yourself what each element of your language really is and how it's used by the speakers of the language.

>The grammar simplifies itself the more people use it.

How are you defining grammar? I would highly recommend cracking a textbook on historical linguistics (Introduction to Historical Linguistics by Crowley and Bowern is great, as is Historical Linguistics by R.L. Trask).

You seem to be specifically referring to the tendency of highly synthetic languages to become more analytic over time -- but seem to be forgetting (or are unaware of) the fact that analytic languages become agglutinating and then synthetic over time. The whole process is referred to as the grammaticalization cycle.

>Language carries with it a certain amount of entropy; if it's taught properly it can maintain itself, but most people don't have the time or need.

Again, I highly recommend consulting an introductory textbook for historical linguistics.

>So gradually people start playing fast and loose with the syntax and what not.

This is flat-out wrong. Either of the books I mention above will explain why.

>Lexical complexity is only the result of introducing more words though conquest or immigration which is common enough but it doesn't happen on it's own.

This is also wrong. Seriously, both of the above books are great -- both are very readable, and Trask has the excellent quality of being charmingly (and intentionally) hilarious.

You're clearly interested in language, otherwise you wouldn't be posting in this subreddit. I think you'll find the scientific study of language to be incredibly interesting and fun -- and more rewarding than just positing unsubstantiated suppositions.

Building off of what others have said— it helps to look at bilingual dictionaries and see the varied ways terms translate. As an example, see the English Wiktionary entry for French gentil. This word is what English borrowed 'gentle' from, but there are still senses and differences from what you get with the related English word. Ideally, just about every word will have at least a bit of complexity- even words that translate to very concrete concepts like 'tree' or 'rock' may have metaphorical extensions, idiomatic uses, etc.


For more 'grammatical' parts of the language, it's good to remember that labels like 'accusative' or 'passive' only refer to one aspect of a construction's use. In Latin, the accusative and ablative both appeared with prepositions, and which case was used determined whether the sense was location or movement, like 'in' vs 'into' (sorry, I don't remember which case is which). You'd never get that just by reading the definition of an accusative case though.

In English, there are two main possessive constructions: X's Y and Y of X. However the usage of each is somewhat different, and both include usages that wouldn't be considered ownership. Your language should have some way of expressing all of the senses these English constructions do, but they should have different distributions and range of semantics.

Wikipedia can be a good resource for learning about some of the possibilities of various grammatical categories. If you can, I'd recommend grabbing a copy of Describing Morphosyntax - it goes through many possibilities for different constructions and gives plenty of examples.

This may or may not be a helpful answer to you, but I find that possibly both of your questions might be helped if you take a look at Role and Reference Grammar. It's an attempt (that works mostly pretty well IMO) to make an integrated syntax and semantics framework that is very explicitly not based on Indo-European prototypes - a lot of it is based on the mechanics of languages like Lakhota, Dyirbal and Tagalog. RRG should give you both a good framework to talk about case relations and an expansion of your understanding of what syntax should look like. (I don't at all like the notation RRG uses for semantics and case relations, but the concepts are good.)

It's not necessarily an easy topic to read up on, though; the guy who came up with it doesn't always have the clearest writing style. The class I took on it used this book; I read this book first, though, and thought it somewhat unintentionally functioned as a pretty decent introduction (ignore its title, though; and beware that some aspects of RRG have changed since it was written).

Start off reading about linguistics and some things which interest you in language.

Learn the international phonetic alphabet ^optional ^but ^it ^makes ^things ^much ^easier

Super useful videos for learning it

In that playlist there are also videos on how to actually start your language, DON'T DO THEM YET.

First you need to decide what your language will be for

Now use either the artifexian video in the earlier playlist or this video which is a bit more in depth to start making a phonetic inventory for your language.

The next things you need develop are:

• Phonotactic rules
  
• A writing system
  
• A grammar system
  
• A vocabulary
  
  You can find resources for those yourself
  
  I would highly recommend getting a book like the art of language invention or the language construction kit. I can't speak for the latter but the former was an excellent guide for me through parts of linguistics which I was totally unaware of and how to use them in a language ^the ^author's ^youtube ^channel ^is ^not ^a ^substitute ^for ^the ^book ^more ^an ^expansion
  
  I hope that helps

A better question might be how much more expensive it is to learn how to conlanger than pay someone to conlang for you? Good conlanging books never exceed $20 dollars, but to pay an experienced conlanger who knows what they're doing and will deliver something of quality to you will cost no less than $300, per the LCS Job Board pricing guidelines. In a sense, it's like an art commission; something like a sketch will be half as much, but the deliverables will be half as exhaustively written. You get what you pay for, and a full masterpiece might be out of budget for a writer or worldbuilder doing what they love as a hobby rather than as a means of income.

Go and buy these three books: The Language Construction Kit, Advanced Language Construction (don't worry, it's not that advanced), and The Conlanger's Lexipedia. And if your conlangs are designed for made-up worlds, then get [The Planet Construction Kit] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Planet-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/0984470034/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_3?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=W79ND56BKPK8EKXT2VQZ) too. If you want to make cultures that are not European then I'd also suggest The China Construction Kit!

Of all of these I'd suggest that you definitely buy The Language Construction Kit and see how you get on. I'd also suggest buying some grammar books of languages you're interested in, and even go so far as to learn a second language if you don't speak one. Having knowledge of at least one other language will help you a great deal.

Language building and world building go hand in hand in my opinion. The world, its geography, history, politics, culture, flora and fauna, all and more inspire uniqueness in languages.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984470034/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_op7Pub04GQYCT

This is a book I got for christmas. It's a fantastic read for conworlding.

I'm working on one (vaguely inspired by them, at least) myself, I know u/non_clever_name had some ideas for one. Both of us were going more North Australia/Daly River inspired than Pama-Nyungan though. u/opipik has done some stuff with Aboriginal languages as well. There's a couple other people who's reddit names I can't remember who've worked on australianeqsue stuff too.

As for what to use, the Oxford Handbook of Polysynthesis has been helpful in my case. This as well. Sealang in general has lots of good resources. If you want to do something more PN-y (or anything really) the pile has lots of grammars and some are even good. I highly recommended the Upper Arrernte grammar since it is designed for beginners. Dixon has written (despite his controversial opinions) a very good book on this, which I was able to borrow from my university library.

It's not easy to find resources for Australian languages, but they are out there. Go, try, and ask questions here. There are definitely some people who can sort of answer!

David Peterson, who makes the conlangs for Game of Thrones and a number of other movies and TV shows, just published a really great book called The Art of Language Invention – it's really entertaining, and a great introduction to how to start making a conlang. Also, he has a tumblr.

Yeah, looking back at that thread some of the complaints are pretty stupid IMO. But the LCK is still a good book to start off with.

You might also want to check out its sequel, Advanced Language Construction. It's pretty good and covers some other interesting topics like creoles, sign languages, and NW Caucasian verbs.

Here are links for the Thai, I used this one for Khmer (not the best). I also used textbooks from the University of Washington and SEASSI. They might tell you where you can buy the resources even if not in the program. (SEASSI is a great place for heritage speakers to do intensive summer language programs, btw, and they offer scholarships - or did - when I went years ago.)

I think all of the languages work really well with abugidas, so I would stick to that. Lao is probably the best script for an interlingua if the goal is simplicity and basic communication. But any of the three scripts could be pared down to basics - and for that, Thai is the most widely understood by all three language speakers due to its economic and cultural dominance. Just my two cents!

Gonna repost my reply to a similar question in last weeks SQ thread:

If you have some cash to spare, I hightly recommend getting the Conlanger's Lexipedia, which goes into all sorts of details about creating vocabulary.

Other than that, there is a lot of creativity that goes into it. Thinking about the etymological histories of your words can help create more real vocab. As a cheap example from my own language, the words for "tea" "to boil" and "culinary/medicinal pine needles" are all related. Derivations are another useful strategy. Rather than just making a new root for a word you come across, ask yourself if you can derive it from a root you already have. Maybe "puppy" is just the diminutive of "dog", "table" might be derived from the word for "to eat".

And that's another thing to think about, the semantic space. In English, desk and table are separate words, but maybe in your language they're the same. Think about your people and what's important to them. A seafaring people living on a chain of tropical islands may have many different roots for types of marine life and nautical terminology. But a desert people may only have one term for "fish" that covers all marine life - "turtle", "Crab", "shark" "Whale" "trout" etc could all be the same word, possibly only distinguished by some adjective or other adverbial. The conlanger's thesaurus is a good resource to check out to get some ideas about dividing up your semantic space.

David Peterson, who develops conlangs for TV shows like Game of Thrones, has a youtube series that I find really interesting and helpful. It's made as a companion to his book. I haven't read the book yet, but if it's anything like the video series, I'm sure it's worth a buy.

For clarification: is this for you to get gifts for another conlanger in your family or for people in your family to get you stuff?

I have various ideas for books, though I haven't personally read all of these.

• Mark Rosenfelder of LCK fame also has the Advanced Language Construction Kit and The Conlanger's Lexipedia.
  
  
• Describing Morphosyntax tells you how to do just that in over 400 pages.
  
  
• In The Land of Invented Languages is a nice overview of the history of conlangs.
  
  
• Andrew Robinson's written a fair amount of books on writing systems; I particularly like Lost Languages about undeciphered writing systems.
  
  
• You could get a nice thick reference grammar for whatever language(s) the conlanger's interested in.
  
  Of the top of my head I can also think of getting nice calligraphy pens, though I wouldn't know specifically which kind. There's probably also some expensive software out there that's useful for conlanging, but I can't think of it.

Reading Describing Morphosyntax may result in something a bit more complicated than what you're looking for, but the end product will be awesome, and you'll probably learn a ton along the way. I certainly have been.

EDIT: Also, the final section of the Language Construction Kit offers some advice and a possible outline.

If you're interested enough to shell out some dough for it, I reccomend getting this book and this book (the second is a bit more of an interesting read imo because David J Peterson has actual relevant anecdotes about conlanging professionally to tell.) Neither one will answer all the questions you'll have, but they will help show you different things to consider you may not have thought of.

>i wanna make one based on Finnish, Hungarian and ice/Greenlandic with Slavic influences


Greenlandic and Icelandic are very very different, Icelandic is a north germanic language which is more closely related to Slavic languages than it is baltic or Inuit languages. You're looking at merging three language families.

also, you'd best learn a tonne about conlanging before making a conlang, I recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Language-Invention-Horse-Lords-World-Building/dp/0143126466


and/or these youtube channels:
https://www.youtube.com/user/Artifexian

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgJSf-fmdfUsSlcr7A92-aA

also, check out the resources on the side bar.

While I couldn't find a pdf of the book, I found a much cheaper (although still quite expensive) listing on Amazon. I don't understand why so many linguistically oriented books are priced this way. Why are you interested in this book, though? Perhaps there's another more reasonably priced option that would be helpful. Have you tried In the Land of Invented Languages? Both seem to cover a similar thrust.

If your understanding of grammar needs work, I highly recommend at a minimum picking up a used Latin grammar (like this one or this one) and reading through the grammar explanation bits. That should give you more solid ground, especially with declensions.

edit: Oh, or maybe this.

I found this book on Amazon on syntactic change for Proto Germanic specifically- maybe it'll help. I can't speak for it personally since I was gonna wait awhile to order it
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0198783582/ref=ox_sc_saved_image_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

> abugida : a type of writing system whose basic characters denote consonants followed by a particular vowel, and in which diacritics denote the other vowels

this is the Daniels and Bright definition (on pg. xxxix) which corresponds to what I was taught. they use "particular vowel" where I used "inherent". Wikipedia's wording seems kinda vague... though I will to concede that perhaps the definition is more open to interpretation ?

Oh yeah, i see the a = you now. For some reason I saw the a and thought it meant 'to' even though 'a' was used twice and the word 'to' only once.
https://www.amazon.com/Please-patient-have-autism-Flat/dp/B07559T69G

The easiest way: read the language construction kit, or this book. It will give you the basics.

Other than that, lurk on this sub and read some wikipedia.

You might want to check some things

xkcd's comic on standards is applicable here: https://xkcd.com/927/

You may be interested in this book, which among other things, describes a Esperanto meeting and the struggles that arise: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Land-Invented-Languages-Arika-Okrent/dp/0812980891

To Construct a Language: http://www.lulu.com/shop/dan-gaynes/to-construct-a-language/paperback/product-23167868.html

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Language-Invention-Horse-Lords-World-Building/dp/0143126466

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Construction-Kit-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/098447000X

https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Language-Construction-Mark-Rosenfelder-ebook/dp/B008XTOV8C

https://www.amazon.com/Conlangers-Lexipedia-Mark-Rosenfelder/dp/1493733001

There are also lots of conlang books at Lulu: https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=conlang&type=

Print. They are:

https://www.amazon.com/Uralic-Languages-Routledge-Language-Family/dp/0415412641

https://www.amazon.com/Uralic-Languages-Description-Influences-Orientalistik/dp/9004077413

https://www.amazon.ca/Survey-Uralic-languages-B-Collinder/dp/B0006C1E3E

There's this pdf, too:

http://www.helsinki.fi/~tasalmin/SW.pdf

Thanks! I was just thinking back to my linguistics classes and discussions of how noun classes expand from non-arbitrary to arbitrary. Much mention was made of Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things."

One example that stuck with me through the years is (I can't remember which natlang it is) one language that puts "airplane" in the same noun class as "tree". It seems ludicrous at first until you follow the path it took. First, they started with trees and whatever noun class they belong to. Then from trees they made boats, which inherited the tree's noun class. Then later on came airplanes, and since an airplane is a vehicle, and a boat is a vehicle, airplanes inherited the noun class that boats belong to. And suddenly it all makes sense.

As to the title of the book, if memory serves (and this may or may not be the same language as the other example) one population's traditional division of labor had women tend the fire. And fire is a dangerous thing.

As my language's vocabulary grows, I look forward to finding things that I can classify in more arbitrary ways based on this natural drift.