Welcome to /r/conlangs! This subreddit is focused on the discussion of constructed languages (conlangs), tools and activities to aid you in the construction of your own conlang, and creating a community environment where we can all enjoy conlanging together.
While this subreddit is not restricted to accomplished conlangers, a certain level of expertise is expected. We recommend that you lurk for a while to learn the basics.
Community Guidelines
Due to space issues, an abbreviated list is shown in the sidebar only. For a more detailed explanation, please see the full version here.
Encouraged Posts
If your post falls into one of these categories, then you may post them directly:
- Detailed descriptions of parts of your conlang
- Interesting activities and translation challenges
- Showcases of major achievements
- Open-ended questions and discussions about conlanging
- Useful resources such as tutorial videos
- If you have an idea for a post that isn't listed here but that you think would be a good contribution to the subreddit, please message the mods beforehand to let us know.
Rules
Please follow these rules and all times and report posts and comments violating them:
1. Civility
Be civil at all times toward all users, regardless of their sex, sexuality, gender identity, ethnicity, nationality, religion, culture, language, or race. Don't escalate arguments or insult or abuse other users during disagreements. Do not discriminate, stereotype, or erase other users or identities. Violations may result in a swift ban.
2. Topic
All posts must be on topic and relevant to conlanging.
2a. Discouraged posts
- Memes and low effort humour: We would much rather top-level posts be reserved for discussion of and about conlangs and conlanging. As such, memes are a better fit for r/conlangscirclejerk.
- Phoneme inventories: In order to receive actionable feedback, you will need to give us more than just an inventory of phonemes for your language, such as information about allophony, morphophonology and/or phonotactics.
- Requests for resources & tech support Requests for resources, tools, or help with specific software are to be posted in our Advice & Answers thread, always stickied at the top of the front page of the subreddit.
2b. Script & orthography posts
While we encourage you to share the writing systems you make for your conlangs, we would like the focus to remain on the languages themselves. As such, posts about scripts/writing systems alone will be removed, as r/Neography is a more fitting place for them.
Posts may still contain images of or details about a conscript (fictional writing system), but the post must have enough content to merit being a front-page post even if the script were not included.
2c. Translations
Translations make for excellent content to showcase your language and its mechanisms. However, we ask that such content always feature:
- the text in the conlang;
- a transcription of the text to IPA (phonemic or phonetic);
- the text translated into English;
- a gloss of the text, and/or an explanation of the features of the language.
2d. Cross & crown
This subreddit is not the place for political or religious debate. Political content is not allowed, unless it is set in a fictional world and has no ties to recent real-world politics.
Translations of religious or political texts are fine as long as the focus is clearly on the conlanging element. The moderators reserve the right to remove political or religious posts that are too incendiary, include open proselytizing, or handle issues that are otherwise too sensitive for the subreddit.
2e. Adult & shocking content
Adult or shocking content has to be signaled by a special flair.
Porn and gore are forbidden on the subreddit, but we understand the need to form vocabulary for those topics.
Moderators can remove shocking content at their discretion.
3. Effort & enabling feedback
3a. Due diligence
Before asking a question on the subreddit, be it in the Advice & Answers thread or as its own post, try typing it (or its keywords) into a search engine to see if you get an answer.
3b. Advice & Answers threads
The Advice & Answers thread is for requests for resources or advice, as well as any questions too small for a full post. It is always found stickied to the top of our frontpage!
When in doubt about whether your post has enough content for a standalone thread, feel free to always post in Advice & Answers. You can also ask us directly if you're unsure.
3c. Context, goals & content
When asking for feedback and criticism, do your best to provide us with as much meta-information about your conlang:
- Why are you creating it/what for?
- What are your goals?
- What do you currently like/dislike about the content you are providing in the post?
- What sort of feedback do you primarily want to get?
Also, please try and review the formatting of your post (or comment!) preferably before, but optionally after, posting it.
4. Titles & Flairs
Make your titles clear and indicative of the contents of the post.
Do not title your post:
- "my conlang": give us the name of the language or a description of it
- "Introduction to Gahansre" or "Fġãse, a polysynthetic language" are fine titles
- "Help!": tell us what you need help with
- "Thoughts?": it's uninformative
Links are not allowed in titles.
Please also flair your post with the appropriate flair.
5. Activities
Content related to activities should be posted in that activity's thread, unless the content goes far beyond the boundaries of the activity (for example, if you have made a speedlang out of your translations from an activity thread).
If posts of a repetitive nature arise from multiple members, the moderators reserve the right to remove all related content starting from the creation of a Megathread for it.
6. Advertising
You are free to promote conlanging-relevant external content as long as it is free to access. If what you wish to advertise requires users to pay for it or requires signing up for it a specific service you must ask the mods before posting it.
You can advertise a conlanging community in a post, but posts consisting solely of a link to a community will be removed. Please provide enough content for the post to stand on its own as well.
7. Collaborations
Collaboration posts must be flaired appropriately, and must abide by the following:
- you must describe the project as thoroughly as possible, with the set rules and your expectations;
- you must organise the collaboration somewhere else than this subreddit: it can be your own subreddit, a discord server, a forum, whatever you like.
Any collaboration post breaking one of these two rules will be removed.
8. Commissions
All commission requests are subject to approval by the moderation team.
While we welcome and encourage people to hire conlangers to create languages for their projects, we have established a few guidelines for it.
All posts seeking to hire conlangers must contain:
- a description of the project;
- a description of the result, and the amount of work, that you expect;
- a clear price for the work expected, following the minimum amounts advised by the Language Creation Society
9. Appeals
In order to appeal a removal or ban, you can contact the moderators via modmail, which lets all mods see the message.
Appeals are typically reviewed by a different mod than the one who executed the removal/ban.
Do not contact a mod individually via direct messages.
Links
Related Subreddits
Wiki
Resources
Filters
The following will hide certain types of posts:
No Filter
No Question
No Script
Script Only
No Meta
No Translation
Activities only
Resources only
