The Language Construction Kit (1996, 2012)

One of my favorite single pages on the web is this author’s take on what it would look like if English were spelled with characters inspired by (but not copied from) Chinese hanzi. He calls it yingzi (“English writing” in Chinese) but it's designed entirely for English. The point of the page is not to create a new writing system (it doesn't go nearly that far) but simply to give an impression of what Chinese writing is actually like and what effect it has had on its speakers’ perception of their own language. Give it a read, it's super fascinating.

https://zompist.com/yingzi/yingzi.htm

Zompist is a bit unusual these days: one guy working on one project (his Constructed World Almea) for over 40 years now, with 30 of those on the web. It's a beautiful relic of the early web. Most of the sites from my old "conlang" bookmark folder are dead now, but not zompist.com

This document was hugely influential to me. It got me interested in linguistics (one of the "immaterial sciences" alongside math, comp sci). My username includes "kisone" which is from the conlang I made as a kid. It is wonderful to see it again and I hope folks still enjoy it!

How nice to see this here! When I first got interested in language creation, the LCK was one of the first books I read (followed shortly by Mark/zompist’s other books on linguistics and worldbuilding). It is an excellent introduction to conlanging — as well as to the whole field of linguistics, in fact. I recommend it without hesitation to anyone who is interested in making their own language.

Zompist is great. I also tried making an auxlang at one point. This is actually what got me into programming. I was saddened by Esperanto's Euro-centric phonetic inventory so I wanted to take a data-centric approach using Glottolog's incredible collection of phonetic inventories of all languages and try to come up with an inventory that is accessible to as much of the world's population as possible

Ultimately I think I decided Toki Pona was "good enough" and I still use the orthography that came out of it to write in my private diaries but the exercises it got me doing is what got me into programming (and linguistics!).

This was my introduction to conlanging, a hobby that has been incredibly rewarding for me over the years. I still haven’t found a better introduction to the scene.

Related. Others?

The Language Construction Kit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32124388 - July 2022 (5 comments)

The Language Construction Kit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8019118 - July 2014 (6 comments)

I've been creating a conlang, it's a rewarding activity even if it's never "used" for anything. I majored in linguistics but there are things about language I've learned from doing this that I never really understood in school. Like reading about math vs actually doing problems.

Fascinating! Could this be used to create something like Klingon or Belter Creole?

I thought this was related to compilers, probably ocaml lisp or something.

Gotta love zompist!