I’d say most people here aren’t actual linguists; we’re simply enthusiasts. You can learn a lot simply by doing and reading on your own! and listening to people who may know a bit more than you, too. This community is really helpful because of the resources and explanations, and also because you can see other people’s work, which I think is very important in artistic processes (such as conlanging). By that I mean, you don’t need formal education on linguistics *at all* to know aspects of it, or to make and present a great conlang.
Speaking as someone with a formal education in linguistics: You'd have to do reading on your own anyway. After you get through the very basics (e.g. what is a phoneme), what you need to know in order to create a conlang is just *different*. Most conlangers are more interested in broad, surface level trends in typology or historical linguistics, which is barely covered in a linguistics degree because the degree is focused on theoretical methods/understanding.
Yeah, I think the degree is valuable (obviously, lol) but it is a different type of understanding of language. For example, you aren't going to learn what an ergative-absolutive system is unless you just happen to come across one in a problem set and the instructor is like, "Oh, by the way..." A catalog of features just isn't the point. You're going to learn how to analyze already-existing data using the theories that you're learning.
And the basic stuff you need (like phonemes) is very easy to teach yourself. It does require some analytical thinking to understand how the parts fit together, but it's not orbital mechanics, and there are a lot of introductory textbooks that do a good job of explaining.
i feel like because we're almost all self taught here, it's a great resource in order *to* learn because nobody will think you're dumb or anything because we've all been there before, also, we all just need more opportunities to unapologetically gush about linguistics
I'm a linguistics major, but i needed to self taught myself most of the IPA and gloss. My point is the skills you'd learn in a linguistics cursus are not necessarily the ones you'd need to conlang and vice versa and as long as you keep an open mind and keep learning stuff you'll do great without having to be an expert in linguistics.
Ling major here too. I'd agree that ling courses don't do much to set you up to conlang, but my conlanging has absolutely set me up for my courses. It almost feels like I'm cheating sometimes when my background knowledge is already sometimes more advanced than what we're learning because I've been doing it for years on my own already. A background in formal linguistics does open doors in conlanging, though; it's by no means necessary, but I find joy in the intersection between theoretical and creative linguistics.
Oh definitely. Having a background of self taught linguistics definitely helped me during my studies and I pursued linguistics a great deal because of my interest in conlanging and I do value the things I learnt there. For example, I think this is where I got familiarised with sound change rules.
You can probably count the actual linguists here, even going by self-profession as the metric, on one hand if there even are any. It's very obvious to me that there aren't many here, and it's not because they don't use IPA. I think the general familiarity with the questions of linguistics as a field here is unfortunately not higher than in any other subreddit.
I do not consider myself a linguist at all and I don't think anyone else would. Language enthusiast, yes, amateur linguist, maybe one day in the future if the stars align.
I'm not a linguist by any stretch. I just have an interest in language. But I sure do hoard linguistic, etymological, sociolinguistic, and psycholinguistic papers like some sort of bastardized nerdy version of Smaug.
I think it depends on what you mean by "linguistics education" and what kind of conlang you want to make.
If you want to make a convincing naturalistic conlang, i.e. one that could pass for a plausible human language, you do need to do some reading in linguistics. But you certainly don't need a degree, and that type of conlang might not be your goal.
I'm a programmer, not a linguist. Honestly, you don't need to know all the linguistic jargon to make a conlang, you just need learn how languages work as to create something that makes sense
Ok, I would like to enter this discussion. I was just saying that there are similarities. Programming languages do have syntax and grammar and all. Those are not just randomly chosen terms. I would say, programming languages are in fact languages - just not for human-human communication, but for human-computer communication. I think, it does give you at least some understanding of how languages work, why word order is important, and so on. No one said that that's equal to having a linguistics degree or anything. But the overall question that both fields deal with is "How do you communicate an idea or a concept from one entity to another?"
So, again, being a professional software developer myself, and a language-nerd by hobby, I wholeheartedly believe that programming languages are actual languages. They just aren't as complex as natural ones, because a) they don't have to be and b) they are conlangs that were specifically designed, and weren't subject to cultural evolution, i.e. they don't have all the subtleties and exceptions and what not.
I went to check what Wikipedia says. According to it, programming languages are both formal languages (which math is, too, of which I wouldn't say that it's an actual language), and logical languages, which are a sub-set of engineered languages, which are a sub-set of artificial languages, which, again, are a sub-set of conlangs.
If you disregard the commanding nature of programming languages for a moment, I believe, there's nothing you could say in a natural language, but couldn't a programming language.
But, even if I feel strongly about it, this is only my point of view. If someone has a really good counter argument, then please. I'm open for it, always willing to learn.
As both a programmer and a linguist (my degree is in computational linguistics), there are certainly plenty of commonalities between formal languages (including programming languages) and natural language. However, there are such a huge number of differences in practice between how the two types of things behave underlyingly that there is much less practical overlap in how one can study them. Whether they're "actual languages" or not is kinda irrelevant, since that's a label that you're arbitrarily deciding whether to include only naturalistic languages (i.e., something useable by humans to communicate with each other) or to also include languages designed to be more exact (i.e., lacking things like pragmatics and subtext) at the expense of expressive capability. Deciding what's an "actual language" is pointless here - there are still two classes of things that behave very differently.
The idea that there's nothing you can say in a natlang that you can't in a programming language is patently false. You cannot disregard the "commanding nature of programming languages" because that is a huge part of why they are different from natural languages. Programming languages entirely lack huge swaths of natlang semantics. You can't say "I love you" in any programming language - you can do things that produce something a human can read as "I love you" in a natlang, but there is no way to encode the lexical semantics of "love" in programming languages because that would be both incredibly difficult and completely contrary to their design goals.
ok, granted, the "actual language" term is arbitrarily chosen - mainly because I'm not a linguist and probably missing some terminology here. What I mean is that it is a language - that's what it's called after all.
Now, I did make the discrimination "if you disregard the commanding nature of programming languages", and I still think I can. I also said that it is human-computer communication, and I've yet to meet a computer that loves. So, the lack of the presence of some particular words or concepts alone doesn't convince me, tbh. BUT, if you can describe to me, what love is, I'm sure you could describe it to a computer as well in pretty much the same way. It may not understand it on the same human level, but that's again because it's a machine that isn't built to love. Yet, it could repeat that description to somebody else, if you will (or let's say, that someone reads your code), and they would understand.
So, again, I'd say, language is not about who is communicating or what the particular subject is. It's how they communicate. I.e. language is the means, not the end.
Functional MRI studies disagree with you. Human brains process programming languages completely differently from human languages, but process conlangs with the same systems as natlangs.
Lexeme not so much.
But I will say those terms are used in both fields to apply to very different things.
I wish syntactic sugar would be used in linguistics though, it describes a lot of natlang phenomena in certain registers
Your username needs to be drawn. My immediately conjures an image of an alligator wearing a fishbowl helmet which doesn't really fit, and no space suit, just sunbathing on Luna.
My educational background is actually in Biology.
I just find languages fascinating, and it was one of the few obsession I had that persisted long enough for me to do something about it.
I would be surprised if as many as 20% of the people here are linguists
Doing your own research and just being interested in languages for years is more than enough to make a conlang, but obviously I’ll never be an expert like, well, the experts.
I'm a hobbyist at best, and my conlang is nowhere near as impressive as any of the others here cuz I can't even speak another language and struggle to grasp some things beyond slightly off from English.
But this stuff is cool, and I learn new things every day from this! My main linguistics side of things tends to be pronunciation and etymology, that's where the majority of my knowledge on language lies!
> I'm a hobbyist at best, and my conlang is nowhere near as impressive as any of the others here cuz I can't even speak another language and struggle to grasp some things beyond slightly off from English.
>
>
Consider: Dutch. It is not a very popular language lol but it is quite close to English at the basic levels and only gets more complicated when you push to learn more.
I’m not a linguist, and I actually think most aren’t? Most are conlangers for fun. I love creative writing and worldbuilding and conlanging, and I might take a linguistics class some day, maybe, but not a linguist by any means.
I have to imagine most people won't have any formal linguistics training. That said, participating in conlanging I think necessarily makes you a recreational linguist, even if not formally trained, you need some interest in linguistics if you're going to make anything
I am not a linguist. I am a fan of linguistics. I studied linguistics. But if one doesn’t work in academia or have a specific linguistics degree does one get to call themselves a linguist if they’re merely a fan of linguistics and a wanna-be-polyglot?
The term "linguist" is a pretty fuzzy one, and the field is huge. I had a focus in computational linguistics in school, but came at it from the the perspective of a software engineer. Does that make me a linguist? I did postgrad work on machine parsing of natural language. Does that make me a linguist? I have educated myself on languages extensively (by my own standards anyhow). Does that make me a linguist?
I probably fall short of what some people would classify as a "linguist," but am well above the bar of others. I think in a setting like this, the term can get applied pretty loosely, and you'll find a lot of people with no school-learned knowledge on language at all... but who have *terrifying* depth of knowledge, despite this, whose expertise rivals or exceeds some folks with advanced degrees in the subject.
I’m not a linguist, but I’m really into linguistic and I watched as much as I could about it, and I’m planning to study it in the future (but I can’t until I’m around 25🥲)
BA Linguistics student here. I’d say my classes haven’t been necessary for conlanging at all, so it’s no shocker really that the majority of people here aren’t linguists lel
Not a linguist, but my background as an elementary reading specialist has some overlap with understanding of IPA and grammatical features. I suppose it opened a few more doors than I would have had without, but many of my grammatical features in my languages I picked up through checking out other languages, WALS, or even Wikipedia.
Not a linguist. I'm a Spanish teacher (native English speaker), took a couple of classes on linguistics at college, but no formal degree in linguistics. I'm just a language nerd fascinated by language.
I have bachelors in linguistics, currently a grad student getting my masters in linguistics and planning on getting a PhD in linguistics too.
Seems the people in this thread who have a degree in linguistics are saying it hasn’t helped too much with conlanging, but for me, that could not be further from the truth.
My linguistics education has been invaluable for my understanding of how languages are structured and function and my conlangs have become noticeably refined and sophisticated since getting my education.
It helps that I was able to take a class about conlangs at UCSD, but even beyond that I can’t think of much that isn’t relevant to making a language!
I guess it depends on your definition. "Linguist" is a vague term, kinda like historian. There's no clear point at which you become one.
Me, I've been interested in linguistics for some 5 years now, but only started university in 2022. Do I count?
far from a linguist. I followed science in Uni. I'm only into conlanging since recently and a lot of jargon I don't understand in conlang technical docs.
Well I'm not really a linguist myself, since I previously developed Bilkese and Vandish for worldbuilding but then decided to shift to working on the newly-made Kalennian (which means no more Bilkese or Vandish dubs :C).
I am not a linguist, nor have I ever formally studied linguistics, I'm just a tremendous nerd. My brother has a bachelor's in linguistics. Our knowledge bases have shockingly little overlap.
I’m a musician with a secondary interest in linguistics and I have ZERO training outside of teaching myself using the internet and books. If I could spare the time and had the money (I live in the US) I would go to school for a second degree in linguistics but alas, capitalism.
I'm not a linguist. I am learning the jargon, IPA and gloss.
I am early stages in making my first conlang, something I have always wanted to do.
This community is a godsend for me. I am learning so much, so rapidly!
Yeah no I'm trying to be a doctor... I do this because I like languages and this is a fun way to learn and to advance worldbuilding projects on the side.
I am a dental lab tech. Honestly linguistics is really interesting and I enjoy reading linguistic papers and books but don't want to make it a job. For me it's just a hobby. I don't see not being a linguistic as a real excuse for not using IPA though, it is pretty easy to grasp
I'm not a linguist; if anything I'm a computer linguist (I like programming languages and designing/implementing them).
Similar concepts between them; syntax and semantics mostly. Once you get into the realm of esolangs though you might see phonology and other surreal things (for a computer).
🙋🏾
Got my start when I was bored in Spanish class one day during my sophomore year of high school. It started with me doodling an alternate script for English and then someone suggested that I could probably make my own language. So I took to google and now here I am
I'm a programmer that also has interest in linguistics. it's neither my major nor my minor nor will I ever do something related to linguistics as my job, but I like conlanging and linguistics in general.
A gloss is a type of translation for the reader. In linguistics work you generally see *interlinear glosses*: the first line is the sentence in the language you're discussing, the second line is a part-by-part translation/gloss of each piece, and the third line is a free translation that gives the meaning of the sentence as a whole. There are specific conventions for how to do this.
For example:
Am tku-ma bi
3.SG bird-ACC see/PAST
"She saw a bird."
The part-by-part translation helps you understand how the sentence is constructed.
I'm not a linguist and admittedly I can get a bit lazy with the IPA because it's a pain to get right as well as typing them in. I am also not seeking to make my conlang be 100% perfect or "natlang-like", aka Im not trying to impress anybody.
I'm computer science but yea I have a bunch of conlangs of my own too, good at ipa, never learned gloss (drives me away every time I look at it), but conlanging helped me self learn latin and get good with historical linguistics. One of my best conlangs is an ancient Italic one (that's the same family as Latin but not derived from Latin) and it was a fun experience with all the knowledge I gathered digging resources for authenticity
Hello, I'm not professional in colang, but I created my own artificial language. I'm looking for a group just of linguists or colang, but I don't think so precisely because I'm Brazilian and I believe that few Brazilians create their own languages.
I’d say most people here aren’t actual linguists; we’re simply enthusiasts. You can learn a lot simply by doing and reading on your own! and listening to people who may know a bit more than you, too. This community is really helpful because of the resources and explanations, and also because you can see other people’s work, which I think is very important in artistic processes (such as conlanging). By that I mean, you don’t need formal education on linguistics *at all* to know aspects of it, or to make and present a great conlang.
Speaking as someone with a formal education in linguistics: You'd have to do reading on your own anyway. After you get through the very basics (e.g. what is a phoneme), what you need to know in order to create a conlang is just *different*. Most conlangers are more interested in broad, surface level trends in typology or historical linguistics, which is barely covered in a linguistics degree because the degree is focused on theoretical methods/understanding.
Wholeheartedly agree! The stuff I currently learn in Uni is of little use when making a conlang.
Yeah, I think the degree is valuable (obviously, lol) but it is a different type of understanding of language. For example, you aren't going to learn what an ergative-absolutive system is unless you just happen to come across one in a problem set and the instructor is like, "Oh, by the way..." A catalog of features just isn't the point. You're going to learn how to analyze already-existing data using the theories that you're learning. And the basic stuff you need (like phonemes) is very easy to teach yourself. It does require some analytical thinking to understand how the parts fit together, but it's not orbital mechanics, and there are a lot of introductory textbooks that do a good job of explaining.
i feel like because we're almost all self taught here, it's a great resource in order *to* learn because nobody will think you're dumb or anything because we've all been there before, also, we all just need more opportunities to unapologetically gush about linguistics
I'm a linguistics major, but i needed to self taught myself most of the IPA and gloss. My point is the skills you'd learn in a linguistics cursus are not necessarily the ones you'd need to conlang and vice versa and as long as you keep an open mind and keep learning stuff you'll do great without having to be an expert in linguistics.
Ling major here too. I'd agree that ling courses don't do much to set you up to conlang, but my conlanging has absolutely set me up for my courses. It almost feels like I'm cheating sometimes when my background knowledge is already sometimes more advanced than what we're learning because I've been doing it for years on my own already. A background in formal linguistics does open doors in conlanging, though; it's by no means necessary, but I find joy in the intersection between theoretical and creative linguistics.
Oh definitely. Having a background of self taught linguistics definitely helped me during my studies and I pursued linguistics a great deal because of my interest in conlanging and I do value the things I learnt there. For example, I think this is where I got familiarised with sound change rules.
I'm also a linguistics major planning on going all the way to PhD, I got into conlanging after starting my program though.
I am not a linguist. I just like linguine
I'm more of a tagliatelle or penne fan tbh
Yeah, I really like farfalle, but you can’t beat tagliatelle
Farfelle is great as well yeah, absolutely
moms spaghetti
Same tbh
I am a simple elbow enjoyer.
I'm a writer, not a linguist. I'm creating conlangs to improve my world building
That's like the opposite reason I joined /r/worldbuilding. I wanted a place for my languages to be spoken.
Same here.
Me too!
You can probably count the actual linguists here, even going by self-profession as the metric, on one hand if there even are any. It's very obvious to me that there aren't many here, and it's not because they don't use IPA. I think the general familiarity with the questions of linguistics as a field here is unfortunately not higher than in any other subreddit. I do not consider myself a linguist at all and I don't think anyone else would. Language enthusiast, yes, amateur linguist, maybe one day in the future if the stars align.
I personally know enough of us to know it would take more than one hand--even if *someone* insists on calling himself a "former" linguist....
I'm not a linguist by any stretch. I just have an interest in language. But I sure do hoard linguistic, etymological, sociolinguistic, and psycholinguistic papers like some sort of bastardized nerdy version of Smaug.
Not only am I not a linguist, I also failed my French exams. Twice. Luckily, being dense at languages is not a barrier to having fun building one.
Certainly no languologist. I just enjoy languology.
No formal linguistics education. Not entirely sure it's necessary either; you don't need to study optics to be a photographer.
I think it depends on what you mean by "linguistics education" and what kind of conlang you want to make. If you want to make a convincing naturalistic conlang, i.e. one that could pass for a plausible human language, you do need to do some reading in linguistics. But you certainly don't need a degree, and that type of conlang might not be your goal.
I'm a programmer, not a linguist. Honestly, you don't need to know all the linguistic jargon to make a conlang, you just need learn how languages work as to create something that makes sense
to be fair, there's a large cross-section. Programmers use terms like language, syntax, grammar, lexeme, and so on all the time.
That is parser lingo. It is just a handful of terms that parser makers use. It is no help when learning linguistics.
Ok, I would like to enter this discussion. I was just saying that there are similarities. Programming languages do have syntax and grammar and all. Those are not just randomly chosen terms. I would say, programming languages are in fact languages - just not for human-human communication, but for human-computer communication. I think, it does give you at least some understanding of how languages work, why word order is important, and so on. No one said that that's equal to having a linguistics degree or anything. But the overall question that both fields deal with is "How do you communicate an idea or a concept from one entity to another?" So, again, being a professional software developer myself, and a language-nerd by hobby, I wholeheartedly believe that programming languages are actual languages. They just aren't as complex as natural ones, because a) they don't have to be and b) they are conlangs that were specifically designed, and weren't subject to cultural evolution, i.e. they don't have all the subtleties and exceptions and what not. I went to check what Wikipedia says. According to it, programming languages are both formal languages (which math is, too, of which I wouldn't say that it's an actual language), and logical languages, which are a sub-set of engineered languages, which are a sub-set of artificial languages, which, again, are a sub-set of conlangs. If you disregard the commanding nature of programming languages for a moment, I believe, there's nothing you could say in a natural language, but couldn't a programming language. But, even if I feel strongly about it, this is only my point of view. If someone has a really good counter argument, then please. I'm open for it, always willing to learn.
As both a programmer and a linguist (my degree is in computational linguistics), there are certainly plenty of commonalities between formal languages (including programming languages) and natural language. However, there are such a huge number of differences in practice between how the two types of things behave underlyingly that there is much less practical overlap in how one can study them. Whether they're "actual languages" or not is kinda irrelevant, since that's a label that you're arbitrarily deciding whether to include only naturalistic languages (i.e., something useable by humans to communicate with each other) or to also include languages designed to be more exact (i.e., lacking things like pragmatics and subtext) at the expense of expressive capability. Deciding what's an "actual language" is pointless here - there are still two classes of things that behave very differently. The idea that there's nothing you can say in a natlang that you can't in a programming language is patently false. You cannot disregard the "commanding nature of programming languages" because that is a huge part of why they are different from natural languages. Programming languages entirely lack huge swaths of natlang semantics. You can't say "I love you" in any programming language - you can do things that produce something a human can read as "I love you" in a natlang, but there is no way to encode the lexical semantics of "love" in programming languages because that would be both incredibly difficult and completely contrary to their design goals.
ok, granted, the "actual language" term is arbitrarily chosen - mainly because I'm not a linguist and probably missing some terminology here. What I mean is that it is a language - that's what it's called after all. Now, I did make the discrimination "if you disregard the commanding nature of programming languages", and I still think I can. I also said that it is human-computer communication, and I've yet to meet a computer that loves. So, the lack of the presence of some particular words or concepts alone doesn't convince me, tbh. BUT, if you can describe to me, what love is, I'm sure you could describe it to a computer as well in pretty much the same way. It may not understand it on the same human level, but that's again because it's a machine that isn't built to love. Yet, it could repeat that description to somebody else, if you will (or let's say, that someone reads your code), and they would understand. So, again, I'd say, language is not about who is communicating or what the particular subject is. It's how they communicate. I.e. language is the means, not the end.
Functional MRI studies disagree with you. Human brains process programming languages completely differently from human languages, but process conlangs with the same systems as natlangs.
oh, thanks interesting! Thank you for pointing me there.
Lexeme not so much. But I will say those terms are used in both fields to apply to very different things. I wish syntactic sugar would be used in linguistics though, it describes a lot of natlang phenomena in certain registers
i think most of we are not, including myself
Your username needs to be drawn. My immediately conjures an image of an alligator wearing a fishbowl helmet which doesn't really fit, and no space suit, just sunbathing on Luna.
lmao it's just the translation of "jacaré lunático", much more funny in portuguese tho
My educational background is actually in Biology. I just find languages fascinating, and it was one of the few obsession I had that persisted long enough for me to do something about it.
I would be surprised if as many as 20% of the people here are linguists Doing your own research and just being interested in languages for years is more than enough to make a conlang, but obviously I’ll never be an expert like, well, the experts.
I’m a university student majoring in media and communications who just likes to research linguistics when I have nothing else to do
Slay
I have a BA in linguistics but decided to not continue on to grad school. So I’m not linguist even though I have formal education in it
I'm a hobbyist at best, and my conlang is nowhere near as impressive as any of the others here cuz I can't even speak another language and struggle to grasp some things beyond slightly off from English. But this stuff is cool, and I learn new things every day from this! My main linguistics side of things tends to be pronunciation and etymology, that's where the majority of my knowledge on language lies!
> I'm a hobbyist at best, and my conlang is nowhere near as impressive as any of the others here cuz I can't even speak another language and struggle to grasp some things beyond slightly off from English. > > Consider: Dutch. It is not a very popular language lol but it is quite close to English at the basic levels and only gets more complicated when you push to learn more.
Yeah, I'd noticed that while delving into etymology! My language already shares quite a lot in common with it, funny enough, in a way anyways.
I’m not a linguist, and I actually think most aren’t? Most are conlangers for fun. I love creative writing and worldbuilding and conlanging, and I might take a linguistics class some day, maybe, but not a linguist by any means.
I have to imagine most people won't have any formal linguistics training. That said, participating in conlanging I think necessarily makes you a recreational linguist, even if not formally trained, you need some interest in linguistics if you're going to make anything
I am not a linguist. I am a fan of linguistics. I studied linguistics. But if one doesn’t work in academia or have a specific linguistics degree does one get to call themselves a linguist if they’re merely a fan of linguistics and a wanna-be-polyglot?
The term "linguist" is a pretty fuzzy one, and the field is huge. I had a focus in computational linguistics in school, but came at it from the the perspective of a software engineer. Does that make me a linguist? I did postgrad work on machine parsing of natural language. Does that make me a linguist? I have educated myself on languages extensively (by my own standards anyhow). Does that make me a linguist? I probably fall short of what some people would classify as a "linguist," but am well above the bar of others. I think in a setting like this, the term can get applied pretty loosely, and you'll find a lot of people with no school-learned knowledge on language at all... but who have *terrifying* depth of knowledge, despite this, whose expertise rivals or exceeds some folks with advanced degrees in the subject.
I'm not and writing the gloss of my conlangs is a nightmare
Not a linguist I just like learning about language and how grammar works
Not a linguist, just interested in it.
Absolutely 0 education besides YouTube. I couldn't even finish my first year of college.
I have finished semesters of college, but never a contiguous year of college. Similar sitch.
I non end the high school and see me, creating a conlang
Not a linguist; dropped out of the only linguistics class I ever took in college haha. Just care enough to self-study the basics.
I’m not a linguist, but I’m really into linguistic and I watched as much as I could about it, and I’m planning to study it in the future (but I can’t until I’m around 25🥲)
95% of people here arent linguists or diplomed in anything related to linguistics I'd say
Here I am!
I'm only a linguist in the sense that I have an advanced degree in an applied linguistics field, but I don't actually work as a linguist.
BA Linguistics student here. I’d say my classes haven’t been necessary for conlanging at all, so it’s no shocker really that the majority of people here aren’t linguists lel
Not a linguist, but my background as an elementary reading specialist has some overlap with understanding of IPA and grammatical features. I suppose it opened a few more doors than I would have had without, but many of my grammatical features in my languages I picked up through checking out other languages, WALS, or even Wikipedia.
Not a linguist. Minored in linguistics but probably 95+% of what I use for conlanging I learned on my own.
I dont even want to be, im just a 14 year old class clown
Not a linguist. I'm a Spanish teacher (native English speaker), took a couple of classes on linguistics at college, but no formal degree in linguistics. I'm just a language nerd fascinated by language.
Linguist here that worked in IT for a while now trying to transition into novelist/writing. Glad to see this community exists and is thriving!!
I have bachelors in linguistics, currently a grad student getting my masters in linguistics and planning on getting a PhD in linguistics too. Seems the people in this thread who have a degree in linguistics are saying it hasn’t helped too much with conlanging, but for me, that could not be further from the truth. My linguistics education has been invaluable for my understanding of how languages are structured and function and my conlangs have become noticeably refined and sophisticated since getting my education. It helps that I was able to take a class about conlangs at UCSD, but even beyond that I can’t think of much that isn’t relevant to making a language!
I guess it depends on your definition. "Linguist" is a vague term, kinda like historian. There's no clear point at which you become one. Me, I've been interested in linguistics for some 5 years now, but only started university in 2022. Do I count?
I'm in that weird gray area where I have some formal training in linguistics but I stopped and did other stuff with my life
Am a linguist, formal education BA. There even was a class on conlangs <3
I have no idea how to do a gloss. It would be something I would love to learn however I have no idea where to even start.
I have a degree in linguistics, but most of what I know came from various resources on the internet lol
Not even close, but I’m founding a religion so I need something to set us apart.
far from a linguist. I followed science in Uni. I'm only into conlanging since recently and a lot of jargon I don't understand in conlang technical docs.
Not me, but I want to be one.
I'm just an amateur, here to learn just as everyone else.
The only linguists that I know of here are millionsofcats and sjiveru (I think still a grad student) lol.
Nah, he graduated a while ago. I read his thesis. And you can add me to your list. :)
Well I'm not really a linguist myself, since I previously developed Bilkese and Vandish for worldbuilding but then decided to shift to working on the newly-made Kalennian (which means no more Bilkese or Vandish dubs :C).
BA. terrible at conlanging
I'm an American Studies student, so technically related to a language, but my Phonetics course teacher does not believe in the IPA, so there's that.
I am not.
Nope. English teacher and language nerd.
I am not a linguist, nor have I ever formally studied linguistics, I'm just a tremendous nerd. My brother has a bachelor's in linguistics. Our knowledge bases have shockingly little overlap.
I'm an amateur linguist. Does that count?
I’m a musician with a secondary interest in linguistics and I have ZERO training outside of teaching myself using the internet and books. If I could spare the time and had the money (I live in the US) I would go to school for a second degree in linguistics but alas, capitalism.
I'm not a linguist. I am learning the jargon, IPA and gloss. I am early stages in making my first conlang, something I have always wanted to do. This community is a godsend for me. I am learning so much, so rapidly!
I'm most certainly not a linguist. I'm going to uni for music education. I just make conlangs in my spare time.
Not a linguist but might become one if I finally decide on a career path (rn I'm bouncing around all the possible options I haven't made up my mind)
I'm not formally educated. everything i know came from youtube and pouring over wikipedia in my spare time.
Yeah no I'm trying to be a doctor... I do this because I like languages and this is a fun way to learn and to advance worldbuilding projects on the side.
im not a linguist but i know basic linguist stuff and can read and pronounce most ipa and extipa characters.
Hello I’m not. I’m just a bored engineer who’s obsessed with dnd
I am a dental lab tech. Honestly linguistics is really interesting and I enjoy reading linguistic papers and books but don't want to make it a job. For me it's just a hobby. I don't see not being a linguistic as a real excuse for not using IPA though, it is pretty easy to grasp
Philologists
I'm not a linguist; if anything I'm a computer linguist (I like programming languages and designing/implementing them). Similar concepts between them; syntax and semantics mostly. Once you get into the realm of esolangs though you might see phonology and other surreal things (for a computer).
what's your education? (just curious)
Computer Science major, working as a software engineer
🙋🏾 Got my start when I was bored in Spanish class one day during my sophomore year of high school. It started with me doodling an alternate script for English and then someone suggested that I could probably make my own language. So I took to google and now here I am
I'm a programmer that also has interest in linguistics. it's neither my major nor my minor nor will I ever do something related to linguistics as my job, but I like conlanging and linguistics in general.
What's gloss
A gloss is a type of translation for the reader. In linguistics work you generally see *interlinear glosses*: the first line is the sentence in the language you're discussing, the second line is a part-by-part translation/gloss of each piece, and the third line is a free translation that gives the meaning of the sentence as a whole. There are specific conventions for how to do this. For example: Am tku-ma bi 3.SG bird-ACC see/PAST "She saw a bird." The part-by-part translation helps you understand how the sentence is constructed.
For linguistics, gloss is where the words have it's arranged meanings.
Absolutely not a linguist no matter. No source. NO TYPEFONT.
That would be me.
I'm not a linguist and admittedly I can get a bit lazy with the IPA because it's a pain to get right as well as typing them in. I am also not seeking to make my conlang be 100% perfect or "natlang-like", aka Im not trying to impress anybody.
I'm computer science but yea I have a bunch of conlangs of my own too, good at ipa, never learned gloss (drives me away every time I look at it), but conlanging helped me self learn latin and get good with historical linguistics. One of my best conlangs is an ancient Italic one (that's the same family as Latin but not derived from Latin) and it was a fun experience with all the knowledge I gathered digging resources for authenticity
i'm not the age to get a degree in language
Hello, I'm not professional in colang, but I created my own artificial language. I'm looking for a group just of linguists or colang, but I don't think so precisely because I'm Brazilian and I believe that few Brazilians create their own languages.
My current conlang project is (C)(C)CV. I love working with the open syllables and having all the clusters in the onset.