What is a language and what does it mean to construct a language? In this session, you’ll learn enough of the basics of linguistics to figure out what we need to do to make our first conlang. We’ll use this knowledge to break the task into chunks and set up a logical progression which will guide the rest of the course.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 1

What gives a language its unique sound? In this session, you’ll learn how to classify different types of sounds and use that information to create a palette of sounds for your language to draw on. Then you’ll learn how to combine these sounds to make words according to a unique blueprint that you’ll develop for your language.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 2

This session is about going from your language’s first words to your language’s first sentences. To do this, we’ll learn the different strategies languages use to package meaning into words. Then we’ll learn about the different ways languages express relationships between words. This will give us the tools to start making sentences.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 3

In this session, we expand the grammar we created in the previous class to do the things a language needs to express beyond the simple sentence. By the end of this class you'll be able to tell little stories in your language.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 4

This week we will take your nicely laid-out rules and start adding complications and exceptions. We'll look at how irregularity in language is the most regular process of all. We'll also examine how words change their form and meaning over time and see how we can express aspects of the culture and history of the language's speakers through the language.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 5

This week we'll share the results of the translations and get feedback on how the languages have turned out. Most importantly, we'll get a chance to try out speaking each others' languages! We'll end with some suggestions on how to develop the languages from this starting point.

Language Construction Workshop - Week 6

Learn about how language works by building your own! Create your own language from scratch for world-building, personal use, or simply as an artistic pursuit.

Language Construction Workshop

Create your own language from scratch for world-building, personal use, or simply as an artistic pursuit. Using tools and concepts from linguistics, you'll build a language that looks and feels real.

This is a template for collecting the artifact resulting from this cohort — a final, publicly viewable summary of what participants learned or created during the course.

❗️**Important:** The contents of this post will appear on the cohort page, visible to everyone. Don't post anything you don't want to be publicly shared.

Please edit this topic with an artifact that makes sense for your course.

## [Artifact Title]

Replace with: summary description of what the cohort created or learned together.

This may be a final writeup, a summary of each participant's project, a link roundup to externally hosted  assignments — whatever makes sense for your course.

Note that participants can reply to this post, but only this initial post of the topic will be published to the cohort page as its public artifact.

Artifact

This is a template for an assignment you want to give participants in this cohort.

Please edit this topic with description, instructions, or anything else that makes sense for the assignment you'd like to share. The text below is just a starting point.

## [Assignment Title]

Replace with: summary description of the assignment. What are participants creating? What's the learning goal in the context of this course?

## Instructions

Replace with: details on the expected format or process for completing the assignment.

Example (for a final writeup):

- Please post a link to a Google Doc with 500 words on what you learned
- Make sure that sharing is turned on so others can comment

Example (for a photography workshop)

- Select your three favorite photos from the week's theme
- Upload them to a post here, each preceded with a one-paragraph description

Assignment

This is a template for scheduling an event — a synchronous session with the participants of the cohort.

This can be a group meeting for everyone to attend, or you can use to schedule optional office hours or one-on-one meetings.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the elements listed below!

❗️**Important:** Once you publish this event topic, edit the topic on the forum and insert an Event:

- In the composer, hit the gear icon above the text box and select "Create an Event"
- Fill out the time and hit "Create" (you can leave the name blank), then save the topic

## [Event Title]

Replace with: short description of the event, and how to join

Be sure to include a live call link! You can insert a Jitsi link by editing the topic on the forum and clicking the video icon in the composer toolbar. Or you can user any other service of your choice, like Zoom or Google Meet.

## Details

Replace with: further details about the event. Do participants need Zoom or a Google account to join the call? Anything else they need to do to prepare?

Event

Welcome to a new cohort of **Language Construction Workshop**!

## Live sessions

The Zoom links are to be found in the events themselves. Each week, there are three meeting "sections" to accommodate different schedules and time zones: feel free to attend as many as you want!

**Be sure to sync your [Hyperlink calendar](https://hyperlink.academy/calendar) to your calendar app so you don't miss any events due to time zone confusion.**

## Communicating between sessions

For those of you who use Discord, I've set up a space for us to ask each other questions in between sessions. It's not mandatory to join but it will be beneficial and fun, so what's not to like? :slight_smile:

Here's the link to join: https://discord.gg/WnHJjwcYYG

## Shared workspace

This course uses Google Sheets as a shared canvas to work in. In the first class, I'll collect email addresses (associated with a Google account) so I can share our workspace with you.

## Textbook

I've written a textbook to be used with this class. It will be sent out a week before the class begins.

It is **essential** to read the week's accompanying chapter before the next time we meet so that you understand the basics of the week's topic: e.g. read Chapter 1 and do the assignment before Week 2's meeting.  This way, we can focus our time together on **learning by doing**, aka the fun part.

Don't worry, the chapters are not too long and the assignments are not too onerous. I estimate you'll spend 1–2 hours a week completing them.

Getting Started

Nothing out of the ordinary for this cohort.

Notes

This is a template for your cohort to run a retrospective — collecting valuable feedback from participants that will help the course improve over time.

Please edit this topic to include most or all of the following elements — or anything else you like!

## Questions

Replace with: particular questions you'd like students to answer at the end of the cohort, aimed at helping your course improve.

The questions below are just examples. You'll get better feedback if you ask targeted questions about specific aspects of your course. Tweak these questions, or write your own!

- What did you expect to get out of this course? Were those expectations met? If not, how do you feel about the progress you made in this course (if any)?
- What specific things (moments, techniques, conversations) did you feel were most useful to learning in this course?
- What do you wish we'd spent more time on? Anything you felt we should add?
- What's one thing you'd suggest we change or remove?
- Please share anything else you'd like us to know!

Participants: you can quote some or all of these questions to structure your replies below.

## Sharing the Retro

Replace with: how the info from this retrospective will be used to improve the course. For example:

The maintainers of this course will review all feedback collected in this retrospective process. We'll think hard about how we can improve the course structure, specific processes, even particular assignments, questions, or readings.

We may follow up if we want to get more detail on anything mentioned below. 

Thanks so much for taking the time to help us improve this course — we really appreciate it!

Retrospective

Using your sound inventory and syllable template, make up words in your language for the following concepts and post them in this thread.

## Nouns

- horse
- person

## Verbs

- flee
- grieve, mourn
- see

## Interjections

*Note: Do these have literal meanings in your language?*

- hello
- thank you

Week 2 - Assignment

Make up words for the following concepts in your language. Then, translate some simple sentences using the grammar rules you decided on in class.

## Nouns

- sheep
- plain, flatlands
- garment, clothing
- hill
- load, burden
- wagon
- wool

## Verbs

- carry
- drive
- listen
- say

## Sentences

Don't worry about translating *the* or *a*. Of course, if you want to do so, you can!

1. (The) horse flees.
2. (The) horses flee.
3. (The) horse fled.
4. (The) horses fled.
5. Flee! (imperative)
6. (The) horse sees (a) person.
7. (The) person sees (a) horse.
8. (The) person carries wool.
9. Carry wool! (imperative)


Week 3 - Assignment

# Week 4

Keep making up words and translating sentences using the grammar you've been developing in class.

## Verbs

- pull
- take
- hear

## Adpositions

- on
- into
- with

## Conjunctions

- when
- and
- that

## Sentences

1. I grieve.
2. The horse fled into the plain.
3. The horse fled and the people grieved.
4. When the horses flee, I grieve.
5. I see this.
6. When we see this, we grieve.
7. The person said that he sees this.

Week 4 - Assignment

# Week 5

The final stretch! Here are the last words you'll need, along with all the sentences in the fable.

## Verbs

*Note: these verbs are often irregular.*

- make
- have
- be

## Adjectives/Stative Verbs

- big
- heavy
- quick
- warm

## Misc.

- one (number)
- not

## Sentences

1. On a hill, a sheep that did not have wool saw horses.
2. One horse pulled a heavy wagon.
3. One horse carried a big load.
4. One horse carried a person.
5. The sheep said to the horses:
6. "I grieve when I see a person who drives horses."
7. The horses said:
8. We grieve when we see this:
9. "A person takes the wool of the sheep and makes a warm garment with it.
10. And the sheep does not have wool."
11. When the sheep heard this, it fled into the plain.

Week 5 - Assignment

## Course Goals

This course is a hands-on introduction to making constructed languages (or **conlangs**) as a creative pursuit, taught by a linguist and experienced conlanger. The course also serves as an introduction to linguistics, but instead of learning the material in a dry, lecture style, you'll learn it all by doing. By the end of the course, you'll not only have created a language of your own, but you'll also have the ability to repeat the process and create whole worlds full of languages.

> Colin is an absolute genius, a patient teacher, and a thrilling linguist.
>
> He encouraged our cohort to explore unique directions and was able to facilitate everyone’s different ideas. Throughout the course, Colin brought each of our projects from a handful of lip-and-tongue noises to a complex, beautiful, and unique language. I hope to take another course with him soon!
> —Jake

## Length / Commitment

- Length: 8 weeks
- Classes: 1 hour live workshop sessions, offered 2 times a week
  - Come to at least 1 a week (or more if you want!)
  - Offered at a variety of times to accommodate different timezones/schedules.
  - These are live session but are recorded for you to review if you need to miss a session.
- Homework: Approx. 1 hour per week
- Also includes:
  - Course textbook written by me, Colin (~90pp)
  - Membership in private Discord channel for asking questions between sessions (optional)

## Syllabus / Schedule
### Week 1: Introduction

What is a language and what does it mean to construct a language? In this session you’ll learn enough of the basics of linguistics to figure out what we need to do to make our first conlang. We’ll use this knowledge to break the task into chunks and set up a logical progression which will guide the rest of the course. Finally I’ll send you away with a mission to find a spark of inspiration for your first language that will guide you throughout the process.

### Week 2: Sounds

What gives a language its unique sound? In this session, you'll learn about the range of sounds made by the languages of the world. You'll also learn a system of classifying sounds and use that information to create a palette of sounds for your language to draw on.

### Week 3: From Sounds to Words

In this chapter, you'll learn how to combine sounds to make words according to a blueprint that you'll develop for your language. This is where your language starts develop its unique flavour.

### Week 4: From Words to Sentences

This session is about going from your language’s first words to your language’s first sentences. To do this, we’ll learn the different strategies languages use to package meaning into words. Then we’ll learn about the different ways languages express relationships between words. This will give us the tools to start making sentences.

### Weeks 5–6: A More Powerful Grammar, Parts 1 and 2

In these sessions we will start to increase the expressive power of your language by introducing the many things you can do with sentences that are not so simple. You'll learn thrilling grammatical strategies for adding additional details about when, where, and why something happened. You'll marvel at the ease with which you'll be combining sentences – ok, look: it's hard to write a captivating description of grammatical topics. But trust me, we'll have fun making your language capable of doing more.

### Week 7: Languages with a Past and Present

This week we will take your nicely laid-out rules and start adding complications and exceptions. We'll look at how irregularity in language is the most regular process of all. We'll also examine how words change their form and meaning over time and see how we can express aspects of the culture and history of the language's speakers through the language.

### Week 8: Show and Tell

This week we'll share the results of the translations and get feedback on how the languages have turned out. Most importantly, we'll get a chance to try out speaking each others' languages! We'll end with some suggestions on how to develop the languages from this starting point.

## Artifacts

By the end of the course, you will have created a set of core reference material for a new language:

- A short guide to your language, including information on spelling, pronunciation, as well as how to form words and sentences.
- A small dictionary for your language
- A translation of a short fable (< 100 words in English)

> I must say I was really curious before we started the course - and all of my expectations went completely fulfilled. I think the course is really well structured as a sort of path that guides the student through the basic steps of building a conlang. At week 0, I knew nothing about conlangs and in just two months I got to write a sample story, how exciting!
> —Sandro

## Who Should Sign Up

This course is for you if you:

- Have a creative project you'd like to make a realistic language for (e.g. authors, game designers, worldbuilders).
- Want to learn to conlang as a creative pursuit.
- Are curious about linguistics and want to learn it in a fun and creative way.

But it's probably not for you if you...

- Are an experienced conlanger (this will be too basic for you).
- Are most interested in making a planned language for international communication (i.e. an auxlang) or to explore a logical idea (i.e. a logical language). This course focuses on naturalistic conlangs.

## Requirements

- No linguistics background is assumed.
- You'll need a Google account to participate in shared Google Docs/Sheets.

Cohort #3