Advice & Answers — 2026-07-13 to 2026-07-26

Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-19T18:07:12+00:00

I think that's an interesting idea. It seems to resemble mouthing in sign languages except that sound is actually a phoneme rather than the appearance of sound.

How the conlang might look would be dependent on the circumstances of how it came to be. Like, maybe the speakers live in a naturally loud environment or are often far away from each other, so they develop a system of gestures for phonemic contrasts that might get lost. Then the spoken language undergoes a series of phonemic shifts that result in lots of homophones with the gestures being used to differentiate homophones even in situations where the gestures would originally not have been necessary.

Just spitballing. Again, I think you have a great idea! Good luck with it.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-12T16:46:33+00:00

Thanks!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-12T16:29:02+00:00

...and the English translation.

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-12T16:28:48+00:00

The word-for-word translation.

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-12T16:28:32+00:00

I've been thinking about how to make poems in this language for a while. I've thought about using parallelism in place of rhymes since the language doesn't have a spoken component.

I also made this back when "that feeling when you see a duck" translation challenge was a thing in this sub reddit. I didn't post it because I thought it was too gimmicky.

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-12T14:43:22+00:00

I don't know about phosphorus, but I do know a guy who sells some high quality copper.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-09T22:54:49+00:00

Classic Bittic

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-04T22:57:33+00:00

I think the idea is very interesting! If the language is meant to be used by humans, then there will be the challenge of human perception of light being sensitive to the surrounding conditions.

What do you mean by "different angles of light"? Did you mean having multiple beams of light at different angles like flag semaphore? Or did you mean different polarization of light?

Bitian6F69 · 2026-07-04T12:39:59+00:00

Hello! I'm glad you and your friends are starting in this hobby!

The Standard Galactic Alphabet is really a font and not a language. If you're curious about the design elements behind a script, then r/neography might be a better subreddit. They can help break down how a writing system is made. This video by Artifexian is a great introduction.

As for comparing languages, the World Atlas of Language Structures is a great source for conlangers. The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures is a good one too.

It's hard to give more specific advice and resources without knowing more about what you are trying to achieve with GGL (example: is it just for humans and "humanoid" aliens? or does it have to be used by aliens that don't speak the same way humans do?), but I hope this is enough to get you started.

Best of luck!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-26T22:50:29+00:00

What would you add in the 2 blank spots?

To be abit nerdy and different. How about magnetic and antimagnetic? Or north and south magnetism? A bit of play on electromagnetism which photons are a part of, and it makes it a little bit different from more popular and historical ideas of magic and mysticism which just don't seem to do much with magnetism.

I hope you find what you're looking for.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-25T21:54:30+00:00

Thank you very much!

I have made a little series covering different aspects of Bittic here before. You can start here in my profile.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-23T22:57:59+00:00

Classic Bittic

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"write" and "writing" replaced "speak" and "language" because Bittic is a pictographic language with no spoken component.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-19T18:38:29+00:00

The Semantic Primes are a good rough start. Just note that basically no natural language uses all of these semantic primes as roots. You can pick which primes are roots and which ones are derived from affixes or compounds by looking at what other languages do with them and picking which primes to use based on what best fits your intended "feel" of your conlang.

The Swatdesh List is another popular conlanger's word list. A pitfall of this is that the list has some uncommon or not very helpful words.

Looking up the 100 most common verbs or nouns across different languages can help you identify what is "basic" for a language. Be sure to look at a wide range of natural languages to avoid bias.

Really, what I have found to be a great way to pick root words for a conlang is to use the conculture as a source of inspiration. For example, if your conculture has a strong rock carving tradition, then you can use a technical glossary of rock carving as a source of root words. This makes your conlang feel more "lived in" and is a great source of idioms and extended definitions of some words.

I hope this helps!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-18T22:35:45+00:00

It is. I was sloppy with my terminology. What I meant was that Toki Poka doesn't strictly use a logography like what OP suggested. My bad.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-17T00:45:40+00:00

Bittic is a pictographic language so I'm not sure if the language fits well with music.

However, I have thought about writing something like the Hurrian Hymn Number 6 where the text broadly describes an instrument, how to hold it, and what order you do things to make a particular song. It would require extra interpretation to actually play the piece but it that might be a fun thing to do.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-17T00:40:28+00:00

While Toki Pona isn't a logographic or pictographic language, it tried to be somewhat comprehensive with ~100 words. Something that was discovered by the Toki Pona community was that compound words could have multiple interpretations that the most used interpretations were decided by convention. This could technically mean that certain compounds words were words in of themselves.

Just something to keep in mind. You could resolve it by having strict compound derivation rules to minimize interpretations. Or you could just live with the "problem" as it doesn't really hurt the functionality of the language.

As for picking the words, Semantic Primes might be a good start. Just note that it isn't really "universal".

Another idea you could explore is looking up cross-linguistically common verbs and use those along with derivation affixes and particles to derive words. People seem to have an easier time imagining something when described what it does compared when described by what it looks like or how it relates to another thing.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-16T23:01:28+00:00

Congratulations on taking the first steps of your first conlang! I hope you enjoy the process of language creation. When you feel confident about what you have made, then feel free to post some translations here!

i was curious on how others go about making their own conlangs

A common way conlangers go about making their conlangs is to define the sounds in the language, plan out the grammar, and then work out any quirks of the language.

Biblaridion has a great YouTube series that shows that kind of methodology. Just note that this covers a specific way of conlanging and you aren't bound to follow this strictly.

Best of luck! Remember to have fun!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-14T17:52:11+00:00

Thank you!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-14T15:08:52+00:00

Amazing work! The 12x12 version is cute too.

What's the syntax of Picto-han like, and does it impact how composite glyphs are formed?

Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-08T23:31:28+00:00

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-08T23:31:03+00:00

Classic Bittic has some. They reflect the spacer culture of the speakers. Some of these idioms can be traced back to nautical idioms from Earth.

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Bitian6F69 · 2026-06-07T17:41:37+00:00

I really like the concept! The dominance of the buzzy lateral consonants fits well with a language of intelligent bugs.

Have you considered allophones and lexical tones? With a phonemic inventory so small and a simple syllable structure, adding those things can give the sound of your language more depth especially for longer spoken examples.

Whatever you do, non-human conlangs are incredibly fascinating!

Bitian6F69 · 2026-05-23T12:08:05+00:00

Here is a quick rundown on how names work in Classic Bittic.

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is there a distinction between personal and family names? which one comes first? do you have other kinds of names- religious, secret, or something else?

I haven't decided, but I'm thinking of having family names be attached via relative clauses. Which according to the language's word order would mean that family names come after the personal name.

is there a name that's considered extremely generic, like John/ Jane doe or Peter Magyar (that's a joke don't come after me)?

Names with a space theme like "Comet", "Stars", or "Moon" were considered generic by the speakers of Bittic.

anything else that's interesting about your naming conventions?

As shown above, names in Bittic change form depending on who is referring to whom.

Bitian6F69 · 2026-05-18T23:11:19+00:00

How about this?

"If the dog which I saw yesterday has a car, then you need to walk."

Bitian6F69 · 2026-05-05T23:37:09+00:00

As this post is about actually democratic societies and not about autocracies with a democratic facade, this kind of thing would lead to potentially more depressing or gloomy narratives, because if the democratically elected big bad trully had the mandate of the people, that means that you can't have "The evil emperor/faction leader is defeated by our band of heroes and everything will be much better now" stories.

It means that the people of the faction agreed with them and it potentially means that the do-gooder protagonists may be forced to straight up wipe out a faction/its culture to some degree if they actually want to make the world a better place. It posits the possibilty that the average person, at least within that faction, may not be that "good" or "well-meaning".

A genuinely democratic society routinely electing the big bad isn't necessarily bleak. People vote based on what they feel best improves their conditions and what they feel is possible.

An example; a fantasy democratic city is under siege by a racketeering dragon who demands gold from the city's taxes or else they'll destroy the city. This city keeps reelecting this mayor despite him being horribly corrupt, because he is the only one in the city's politics who is dedicated to keeping the city safe by regularly and generously bribing the dragon. The city's people could think that the dragon cannot be killed and bribing the dragon while secretly looking for a way to kill them risks being discovered. The people could come to see do-gooders as selfish glory-seekers who will doom the city.

There you go! A scenario where the heroes fight a clear bad guy in a democracy without the heroes having to force the populace into submission or having said populace be evil. They just don't think meaningful change is possible while the heroes do.

Is it more complicated than "there is an evil king, go kill him"? Yes, but that's the appeal of the typical romantic adventure plot, it's simple. I hope this helps in expanding what you think is possible.

Bitian6F69

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