COLL 139: CONLANGS: A LINGUISTIC DIVE
Fall 2025 · Section 001 · CRN 15007
Starting from Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin, all the way to the minions’ “Bello!”, constructed languages have been widely used in various forms of media for worldbuilding or entertainment purposes. It’s easy to think of them as cool-sounding gibberish, but many of them are in fact well-constructed languages that contain all the building blocks to a functional language. By looking at the process of constructing conlangs with a linguistic perspective, this course will seek to answer a key question in Linguistics: How do languages differ from one another on a surface level but achieve similar goals of communication? Students will learn about the building blocks of languages, including phonology, morphology, semantics, and syntax. In each section, students will be exposed to real world and conlang examples of how languages use these features. The course builds up to a semester-long final project, where students will use what they’ve learned during the semester to construct a language built around some hypothesis about the bounds of communication. No previous linguistic experience is needed, as all relevant concepts will be introduced during the class.
- Credits
- 1
- Instructors
- Guomin Xu