The most difficult things about conlanging

[xxx]

As for the most difficult bit of conlanging— for me it's the lexicon, just because it takes so long. It's best when it expands as I work out the syntax and translate sample texts, but there always remains a slog of word creation at the end. I don't hate it or anything, but it's hard to do for hours on end.

using semantic primes is the great alternative for this (oligosynthesis as malloc said)...
with a regular morphosyntax, the language is ready out of the box except for exploring...
In fact, building a lexicon and speaking become a single task (my favorite in fact...)

[Raholeun]

This is a topic that is close to my heart, as I find conlanging very difficult. That is mostly because it just takes very long if you want to do it right. Right here being: finding a phonology that is coherent and accurately reflects what comes out of my mouth, coming up with fitting dictionary forms, finding a balance between aesthetically pleasing words and forms that should be there, fleshing out the diachronics of all the aforementioned, describing it in a way that would make sense for people that are not me, the whole nine yards.

the difficulty is the same as for a marathon...
keep your motivation to sustain the distance...

Thus xxx is right. It is a marathon. Often I get tired and take a breather, because otherwise I will crash before making it to the finish.

[dansoo]

I would say it's making sure that the language your grammar describes is actually the language you think it describes.

I mean, with natural language you can always refer to a native speaker and ask if your inheritance of the grammar is how people actually speak. But when it comes to conlangs, especially if you are trying out something non-naturalistic, I often find myself wondering if what my grammar describes would actually produce my example sentences, and if these sentences would mean the same thing to me and to a hypothetical native speaker.

[Alargule]

(long time lurker, first time poster)

Depends what you care about, I guess, and how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.[...]

In my experience, going deeper down the rabbit hole is just something that happens, if I want it to or not. And the deeper I go, the more difficult it tends to get. There's always another tunnel to explore, usually leading to a complex maze of burrows.

Another difficulty is in resisting the temptation to make everything too logical, or coming up with too many distinct ways to express subtle differences in meaning. 'Real' languages don't seem to work like that, are usually more ambiguous. So why shouldn't my conlang be (unless it was my intention to develop a logical conlang)?

I've found out that trying to develop a conlang by using a structured or 'waterfall' approach (for example: first flesh out the phonology, then the morphology, then cases, conjugations, then syntax) pins me down too much on choices I made earlier in the process. The further I get, the harder it gets to backtrack and revert something. So, for now I just use a log-style development approach: I write down every thought or idea that occurs to me, no matter if it contradicts something I decided upon earlier on (if it does contradict some earlier decisions, that's a good indication that that decision wasn't right or satisfying enough to begin with). That also helps me to stop mulling over ideas in my head. Just write it down, and move on to the next idea. Once that becomes stable enough, a could always decide to use a more structured approach to describe my conlang.

[TurkeySloth]

(long time lurker, first time poster)

Depends what you care about, I guess, and how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.[...]

In my experience, going deeper down the rabbit hole is just something that happens, if I want it to or not. And the deeper I go, the more difficult it tends to get. There's always another tunnel to explore, usually leading to a complex maze of burrows.

Another difficulty is in resisting the temptation to make everything too logical, or coming up with too many distinct ways to express subtle differences in meaning. 'Real' languages don't seem to work like that, are usually more ambiguous. So why shouldn't my conlang be (unless it was my intention to develop a logical conlang)?

I've found out that trying to develop a conlang by using a structured or 'waterfall' approach (for example: first flesh out the phonology, then the morphology, then cases, conjugations, then syntax) pins me down too much on choices I made earlier in the process. The further I get, the harder it gets to backtrack and revert something. So, for now I just use a log-style development approach: I write down every thought or idea that occurs to me, no matter if it contradicts something I decided upon earlier on (if it does contradict some earlier decisions, that's a good indication that that decision wasn't right or satisfying enough to begin with). That also helps me to stop mulling over ideas in my head. Just write it down, and move on to the next idea. Once that becomes stable enough, a could always decide to use a more structured approach to describe my conlang.

Is there any room for me on this boat? I've been jumping all over the place with my conlang, with the one exception being that it's always been intended to use O/XSV syntax.

[mèþru]

Personally, it's keeping track of things in a way that makes sense later or that I don't want to change.

My greatest difficulty as well

[chris_notts]

I've found out that trying to develop a conlang by using a structured or 'waterfall' approach (for example: first flesh out the phonology, then the morphology, then cases, conjugations, then syntax) pins me down too much on choices I made earlier in the process. The further I get, the harder it gets to backtrack and revert something. So, for now I just use a log-style development approach: I write down every thought or idea that occurs to me, no matter if it contradicts something I decided upon earlier on (if it does contradict some earlier decisions, that's a good indication that that decision wasn't right or satisfying enough to begin with). That also helps me to stop mulling over ideas in my head. Just write it down, and move on to the next idea. Once that becomes stable enough, a could always decide to use a more structured approach to describe my conlang.

We ditched waterfall development development at work years ago in favour of 'Agile', which is basically a load of buzzwords, nonsense processes and meaningless numbers around the very basic idea that you iteratively do small, independently useful bits of work until all the real requirements (you know, what the customer actually wanted, not what they said they wanted) are met. Of course, when you're conlanging the evaluation criteria are normally subjective (beauty) and not objective (utility), which makes it a bit harder. It's also very hard to translate most texts until almost everything is in place, which makes it hard to do a "sprint" and build a small, independently useful part of the language.

My own approach is generally to scribble down approximately what the end result should look like (e.g. "I want highly synthetic verbs, head marking, no non-finite clauses, ..."), and try to think ahead as I go. I usually write down ideas physically, scribble over pages and pages of my notebook, and when things feel right I then write them up. But even so, I do sometimes have to go back and revise a number of chapters if I get to a point where the final decision in one part of the grammar just doesn't fit with some of the provisional decisions that came before.

Incidentally, do you version control your grammar? I have all the source LaTeX files in git...

[zompist]

As for the most difficult bit of conlanging— for me it's the lexicon, just because it takes so long. It's best when it expands as I work out the syntax and translate sample texts, but there always remains a slog of word creation at the end. I don't hate it or anything, but it's hard to do for hours on end.

using semantic primes is the great alternative for this (oligosynthesis as malloc said)...
with a regular morphosyntax, the language is ready out of the box except for exploring...
In fact, building a lexicon and speaking become a single task (my favorite in fact...)

That doesn't help me, because I'm not interested in small numbers of primitives, and because even if I were, it's just another form of derivation. I like the etymologies of polysynthetic languages, but if anything they take more time to work out.

[Salmoneus]

Incidentally, do you version control your grammar? I have all the source LaTeX files in git...

Whereas I keep things in Word files, multiple versions of things sequentially, hopefully chronologically but not always, in the same file, and then twenty other almost-identically named files that I can't even see the date of because I end up opening them all to work out which is which and then saving them (because originally they crashed while open and were only autosaved) so everything has the same date.

I mean, I guess your version may be more better (iffen I knew what your words meants).

[chris_notts]

Incidentally, do you version control your grammar? I have all the source LaTeX files in git...

Whereas I keep things in Word files, multiple versions of things sequentially, hopefully chronologically but not always, in the same file, and then twenty other almost-identically named files that I can't even see the date of because I end up opening them all to work out which is which and then saving them (because originally they crashed while open and were only autosaved) so everything has the same date.

I mean, I guess your version may be more better (iffen I knew what your words meants).

Git is a version control system usually used for software development. It stores revisions to your files and can reconstruct the past state of your project or help you merge multiple independent changes. Instead of having multiple versions of the files in different directories or with different names, you just let git take care of it all for you.

It's most useful for team development of software where you need to manage the work of multiple people, but also works if all you want to do is keep a timeline of a one man project.

[TurkeySloth]

Good grief, Charlie Brown!

By far, the most difficult thing for me was finalizing the phoneme inventory. I think I went through, at least, seven iterations before settling on my now-final version.

Had to make an unexpected change to the phoneme inventory because there's a sister/daughter language that uses the same script for ease of translation is spoken by people without lips.

[HourouMusuko]

For me, the most difficult aspect of conlanging is creating a coherent and realistic lexicon. The natural derivational process that a language undergoes over time is difficult to replicate. One can create a phonological inventory or a morphological system, but creating new words is an ongoing process and I often find that derivational means in my conlang are inconsistent and erratic. I create new lexemes for words that a natlang would most likely derive from another, I create nouns from verbs that a natlang would probably create the verb from the noun, etc. I have a lot of derivational affixes that don't have any consistent meaning or function. Keeping all that consistent and straight isn't easy.