First, you want to figure out how you want the language feel to readers. Determining and building the culture that it belongs to first should be your first step. Once you have that down, and know how you want your language to sound, you can move onto the first real part of building your language.
There are a couple of important things to consider before you start, though.
- The culture that you are making the language for; namely the values and religion of this culture.
- Is it purely written or spoken, or do those who use it both write and speak it?
- What language or language family is it going to be based off of?
- Current events and historical events that might have given rise to saying things certain ways.
If you haven't already made a complete culture, it is advisable to do so. This helps establish cultural values, which can and does influence language and how things are said. Likewise current and historical events can help determine slang words and profanities (though the latter is optional, of course.)
Grammatical Structure
Here you can basically choose a language or language family to build your language around. You can even blend aspects of various languages together to form a more unique grammatical system. The most common language families include the romance family and the germanic family.
Types of Words
In English, there are 8 types of words that are commonly used in grammar.
Nouns are people, places, and things. Objects and emotions are also nouns. Nouns can be singular, plural, and collective. Some languages have gendered nouns.
Pronouns
Pronouns are words like he, she, they, and it. Pronouns can also be singular or plural and gendered.
Verbs
Verbs are actions. Running, jumping, reading, and sleeping. Verbs are normally neutral (without gender), and have present, past, and future tenses.
Adjectives
Adjectives describe. Words like swift, fondly, and tragic are adjectives. Some languages change the gender of their adjectives to fit nouns, and others do not.
Adverbs
Adverbs are a little complicated. They modify another word, like an adjective or verb, and typically help answer questions like who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Prepositions
Prepositions are pretty easy. They don't typically change. Words like across and through are prepositions. I highly recommend finding a comprehensive list of these somewhere.
Conjunctions
Conjuctions connect clauses. And is a basic example of this, as well as but.
Interjections
Interjections interject. Phrases like ow! and cool! Are interjections. It's not really that complicated.
Root Words, Prefixes, and Suffixes
Root words are the base. These are the most basic word forms out there. Once you have a base/root word, you can build onto that and make variations for adjectives and more. Once you have a root word, you can add prefixes and suffixes to alter the exact meaning. For example, the words for "cold" and "box" could be combined to create a new word that means "refrigerator." Root words are the best place to start.
Prefixes are added in front of a word. In English, we have prefixes like "pre-" which means "before," and "micro-" which means "small." So the word "microfilm" means "small or tiny film." Likewise, suffixes go at the end of a word ot change the meaning. Common English suffixes include "-ment" which means "condition," and "-ness" which is "a state of being." Thus "enchantment" is "the condition of being enchanted" and "happiness" is "the state of being happy." Prefixes and suffixes make it much easier to translate words and cut down on the amount of completely original words that you need to make.
Alphabet
If you're not using a pre-made alphabet, then you'll have to make one yourself.
You can basically go one of three ways here. You can either make characters for each letter or for each word, or each syllable.
If you do characters for each word, then you need to be able to make a lot of unique characters. Think about 170,000 if you want it to be a fully functional language.
Making characters for each letter is easier, and you can essentially make a cipher if you want to.
Making a phonetic language makes reading a million times easier. Just make a list of all the sounds you want and then turn them into letters.
Other Things to Consider
One thing to note is that words that are more frequently used are typically shorter. This is because it makes them easier to say.
Language also devolves, so it'll become less complex as time goes on.
Honorifics
Honorifics are the part of language that we use to address other people. In English, honorifics would be words like "miss" or "mister." The Japanese and Korean have a much more complex system of honorifics, which take varying factors into account, including age and formality.
Slang
Slang is complicated. In English we have slang like "cool," or "jerk." Slang can mean many many things and is usually using a word as another word. Often nouns get new names that are slang. Slang heavily relies on culture, history, and the like.
Profanities
Cuss words, like slang, have a lot of cultural and historical background. Think worst insults and such.
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