Thread: Has anyone else ever tried inventing an own language?

Over the course of some 10 years, I created my own written language. During one adventurous, insomnia fueled evening, one of my toddlers destroyed several pages I had stored in a box in a closet I lost the desire to work on it further.
Before that disastrous event, I wanted to turn it into a spoken language but I only know English. I couldn't think outside the box. My written language was made up of thousands of characters from basic letters to words, phrases, names, numbers and thing like punctuation and accent marks. It was also Phonics based. I couldn't find a way to turn characters into sounds. "R" should always be "r", "A's" are "a's" etc. I just couldn't do it *sigh*

I've always liked the idea though. Sounds like you're having fun and it IS a great mental exercise, so keep at it

When I was a lad, I invented many writing codes, most of which were just the English alphabet converted into new symbols. I originally started creating them in school so that, if the teacher caught us passing notes, he/she wouldn't be able to read it. Drove them mad. I also used the code to write mine personal notes and whatnot, so mine nosy sisters wouldn't be able to read them. I still have the paper on which I wrote mine first writing code over a decade ago--the paper's not even white anymore; it's a brownish yellow. I'm surprised it doesn't crumble in mine hands.

When I was younger I used to casually experiment with the idea of imaginary languages and what they might look like. A bit later on, I took Spanish in school and read some books about other languages and was fascinated and inspired by how they did things so differently from English (my only native language) that I never expected.

So I actually started constructing my own language borrowing ideas that I liked (like Spanish's verb inflections and optional sentence subjects), eliminating unnecessary irritations (irregular verbs and spellings, anyone?!), and adding elements I felt languages like English were lacking in (such as “undefined” number when singular/plural is unknown, a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, separate inclusive/exclusive “we” pronouns, etc.). I felt it would be fun to use for my diaries and such just to see how efficiently and concisely I could express a complex idea with a language that was 100% optimized for myself. Maybe I would even learn something about myself in the process.

Sadly, I always had way too many other projects/hobbies and never got very far with constructing it, let alone actually teaching it to myself, which, I discovered, takes almost as much time and effort as becoming proficient with any other foreign language.

Well...Back in my Q*Bert phase... I researched to see if it was possible to utilize the same method used to create Q*Bertese as an entirely fluent language. I still do not know if this method can be used as an actual way to communicate with one another but it wouldn't hurt to find out and try it.

...Hmmm....I could ask my friend if it's possible or has already been done before in some sort of fashion.

Electronomicon!: Mr. @#?%!...A 74xx based Q*Bert-ese Obscenity Generator

Silence, not many people understand that but some can take a hint.

Haha I'm not the only one... I never got very far though, it's stored on an old laptop of mine somehwere, might've been the one I smashed.