Where to start when creating a Constructed Language

Starting a new language is exciting, but you can easily get in a rut if you take the wrong first steps.

I have often read that you should start with Phonology, that is creating all the different sounds your language will use to produce words and distinguish them from one another. This makes perfect sense from a technical point of view. That is, all languages are first and foremost a spoken phenomenon. You can't produce a single phrase unless you know how to pronounce words and link them together. Fair enough. But what if you're not into phonology at all? What if you wanted to create a language with crazy plurals, a hundred different tenses or twelve different words to describe the sound of rain? Does it really matter how you pronounce them? It will, eventually, if you want to dig deep into every aspect of your language. But you may not want to. Maybe you just wanted to try out a few ideas, see how you liked your crazy plurals or tenses and then move on. You don't need to make every language you create perfect. And even if you do intend to go the disance with your new language, you can always go back to Phonology at a later stage. You will most likely have to make some changes and refine, say, some of your Morphology. But that's part of the trip!

This type of debate doesn't concern language creation alone. Nearly all creative tasks will have to focus either on the hierarchical structure (i.e. what's needed first) or the core idea from which everything else will come. These are sometimes referred to as Product Approach and Process Approach. Both processes are valid, but it really depends on how much of a clear idea you have of the language you want to create. A Process Approach will help you skim through your ideas and try out a few before you commit to one. If you try and create a whole phonological system around, say, your crazy plurals, and then you realise you actually don't like them that much, all that work on sounds will have been done for nothing.

So where do I start with a Process Approach? Start from what you like, from what inspired you to create the language. That may be Morphology, Lexis or even Syntax. It doesn't even need to be linguistic at all! That is, you can start by listing all the different tenses you know in a different language and see how many more you can come up with on your own. Perhaps your language has an immediate future tense that is used when giving instructions. So write that down. You don't need to produce a sentence straightaway. And if you feel you absolutely do need a phonological system, use your own native language as a baseline or a foreign language you speak well. That will do for the minute. And if you do decide eventually to go back and refine your phonological system, you will have an exciting reason to do it.