Recent content by Maria Heath

Please keep in mind, if you end up taking elements directly from an existing human language, what kind of statement you're making by equating that language with "alien-ness". This goes for everyone in this thread who suggested "less common" languages as a basis for reversing or taking spelling...

How important to you is it that you find actual Old Tagalog words to use? If you're having trouble finding old versions of words in a modern language (which is often difficult if there's not a lot of written material from that era), you could instead take modern Tagalog words and apply general...

Sign languages are an under-used and often misunderstood type of language, so it's cool that you might use one! Make sure you look into some of the basics of how signed languages work (there are a lot of them, but they often share general features such as inclusion of facial expression or body...

I love this! Very cool, and it sounds like you have a lot of good ideas. Yeah, there's always the difficulty with storytelling in one language about a group that presumably speaks another language, but I think you're right that the best way to deal with this is to have names and a few important...

This is where keeping in mind the social implications of language is important, even when you think what you're talking about is structure. I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but it sounds like you're suggesting that Korean is so exotic that it's practically non-human. This is a very common...

Out of curiosity, in what sense do you think it's misconstrued? My understanding is that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis does suggest that language is a limitation, which is why most linguists reject all but the very weakest versions of it (linguistic relativity). I did look into E Prime, out of...

Thanks for asking about this! I feel like this topic is one that deserves more attention, since it's relevant in any story, but that people don't often realize is even something they should consider. There's a lot to say about this topic, so I'll just give a broad overview of common issues, but...

First, I would say that having few verbs and robust adverbs is more of a lexical feature than a grammatical one. If you want to think about how this might fit in to the culture, this kind of structure would suggest that they value creatively descriptive language and make lots of fine-grained...

Yes, bring me your conlangs! I'm experimenting with building my own, but I really want to help others start or polish their own conlangs!

Are you writing a story in which characters use language to communicate? Then you may need to think about linguistic worldbuilding! (While I debated about whether to post this here or in Worldbuilding, I think here is more appropriate, since I intend to draw on my knowledge of a real-world...

May I ask what your native language is? Because translating between different languages can be a very different experience depending on what the two languages in question are, especially how closely related they are and how similar the cultures of the speakers tend to be. I know others in this...

Favorite trope: I'm always a sucker for ancient or immortal beings who have grown cold and jaded with time suddenly re-discovering their humanity upon spending time with a plucky mortal who doesn't follow the rules. Least favorite: Indicating that a setting is supposed to be medieval by having...

This is a good point. Is your main character even speaking the same language as these new people? You could say no, in which case you have the whole issue of learning another language, and the ways this language expresses measurements would come along with that. Or you could say yes, for the...

It's true that human signed languages would be restricted to species with hands and human faces, but if there's any possibility that your bird species could be deaf or need to communicate non-verbally, they might have a visual modality as well. Maybe something to do with feather configuration...