The Language Construction Kit

Rosenfelder does it again. This man with his admittedly niche hobby of creating languages for his fictional worlds, has produced a superlative volume explaining, in great detail, how languages are put together, how they work and how they evolve over time. All elements, from the creation and modification of the sounds of languages, syntax, grammar and vernacular usages are all covered in great depth. Much of the stuff covered seems so obvious that you wonder why he covers it, until you discover that language features integral, even fundamental, to the use of English are entirely lacking in other languages.If you have any interest in how languages work, evolve or are created, or if you want to populate a novel or a map with names and places which have more consistency than the semi-random letter clusters many authors use, you simply cannot do without this excellent book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I'm really enjoying this, but it's a little bit kooky on Kindle. There's no chapters or navigation - none of the contents headings work, so the whole book is just one long chapter. This makes navigation difficult. Also, the Kindle is doing weird things with characters with accents, e.g. the Japanese word Hyōgo turns up something like Hy ō g o. If the chapters get fixed, this is an easy 5/5, for an accessible, interesting and useful reference guide for conlanging. Until then, it's a promising 4.

Being a linguist I found this a great read, couldn't put it down. A non-linguist might find it challenging to follow at times. I enjoyed the author's insight into what real languages do and also how he pointed out the links between language and culture.

This is a really fun book and very well put together. There is some good learning behind the book and there are elements of academic insight too, so serious language nerds are not turned off. It's really helped me approach inventing my own language in a more rigorous and logical way.

Loved the book. I was expecting a superficial romp through inventing a mini Klingon, which was fine as I saw it all as a bit of fun. But it went deep enough to prompt deeper research which has turned into a real fascination with the subject of linguistics.

An informative and interesting introduction to conlanging, bringing together everything that a novice needs to know as well as providing more experienced conlangers with a good checklist - definitely worth the price!

Very good tutorial for those who have no linguistic background at all, I particularly liked the chapter on pragmatics. I recommend it

Now I can make my own languages with the help of this.