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October 10, 2022

Fantasy Language Generator: Create a Language in Seconds

Programming, Writing

creativity, fantasy, fiction, javascript, language, programming, writing

20 comments

Yboa Haeinaeiki Igiovalu. This means Fantasy Language Generator in… Sicrespind – a fantasy language I created with the help of my academic background, my creativity, and some JavaScript. If you’re a fantasy fiction author – or simply someone interested in a program that creates an entire language in a matter of seconds – this post is for you!

Fantasy Language Generator generates made-up words corresponding to the 30,000 most common English words, at the same time creating its own linguistic patterns – for instance, its own set of suffixes, prefixes, tense and noun markers, among others. I’ll show you more examples in this post.

All this can be extremely useful to fantasy fiction authors interested in creating a coherent, consistent fantasy language.

fantasy language generator
Fantasy Language generator comes with a detailed “How to Use” page

How Fantasy Language Generator Works

The basic idea is simple: The program begins by generating a word-to-word correspondence to its dictionary of the 30,000 most common English words. That is, in a matter of seconds, it generates a list of 30,000 made-up words, keeping a reference to the English word.

The rules used to generate the words are either (semi-)random or depend on the type of language you choose – in the context of the program these are called, somewhat misleadingly, dialects: Rural, Mountainous, Oceanic, North, Urban. Each dialect favors certain linguistic patterns – particularly interesting if you’d like to simulate different ethnicities in your fantasy novel.

Then, when you use the dictionary (more on this below), Fantasy Language Generator analyzes the words you enter for aspects such as tense, number, part of speech, etc. and assigns it its own suffix or prefix.

Let’s see an example!

Orange cats and white lions like you, but this white cat and this orange lion don’t like you.

Thghou eigroodoraz zai kyro osgoodoraz eigo shifru, cha oisq kyro eigro zai oisq thghou osgo sworipost eigo shifru.

I used the Mountainous dialect to generate this example. Notice how “eigro” (“cat”) becomes “eigroodoraz” in plural, the same way “osgo” (“lion”) becomes “osgoodoraz”, -odoraz being the plural marker in this fantasy language.

Fantasy Language Dialects

How about the same phrase in another dialect? Let’s see Oceanic, for instance:

Orange cats and white lions like you, but this white cat and this orange lion don’t like you.

Ueipie trtefraret yawi nlaki yawioueyukifraret pi ngie, scoc wa nlaki trte yawi wa ueipie yawioueyuki plichar pi ngie.

Another interesting thing is that each dialect has sets of markers for (some) nouns and verbs. Let’s see a list from the North dialect:

Bigotry, animation, plural, cigarette

Chocinen, honen, jnep, funen.

As you can surely conclude, the marker -nen often signifies nouns in the North dialect.

Another feature is the way Fantasy Language Generator creates common morphemes (in plain terms: the beginning of the word) for thematically similar words. Here’s an example:

Forest, wood, tree — apple, orange, fig

Oisphi, oismi, oispe — skosk, skousc, skoubr.

Of course this reflects real-world languages – think of the common origins of words such as “region”, “regal”, or “regulate”.

Other Functionality

There are two modes available in Fantasy Language Generator: Translation Mode and Live Mode.

In the former, you enter a block of text in the box and submit it all at once. The program translates the excerpt and displays it – translation can be both into and from your fantasy language. In Live Mode, you enter one English word at a time and the program displays the result in your created fantasy language as you type.

Fantasy Language Generator has certain ways of dealing with words that don’t have a direct match in its 30,000-word dictionary. First, it detects if the word you entered is still an English word – using my favorite RiTa library – and if so, it creates a new corresponding word on the fly. If there is no match, it attempts to see whether there is a near match (e.g. “super-market” vs “supermarket”). If everything else fails, it marks the word as unknown with a series of question marks.

Fantasy Language Generator: Writing System and Exporting Capabilities

Another intriguing aspect of this program is its writing system! What’s a fantasy language without its own ideographs, right? So I programmed a way to generate such characters, creating corresponding matches to the most common words (a bit like Kanji characters in Japanese), plus characters depicting phonemes.

It’s easier to see with an image (there’s a self-referential quality in this statement, if you noticed):

The Perfect Gray Fantasy Language Example
Note that each dialect features its own ideogram style. If this particular example feels familiar, you’ve read the excerpt in The Perfect Gray.

If you don’t like ideograms, there’s also the option to disable them. Of course, you can also save the dictionary of any language you create – including words created on the fly, as I described above. Ideograms are also saved. You can also export any text you generate, either in Live Mode or Translation Mode.

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Try It!

You can try Fantasy Language Generator following this link. For a full list of my available programs, see the relevant page on the main site.

Like all my apps, this too is free and ad-free. Please consider dedicating a few minutes of your time to read about the ways you could support my work and why this is important for both of us. Thanks!

20 Comments

  1. Passed your link on to a friend who writes SFF – I don’t, but many people do.

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      Many thanks!

  2. Raina Raina

    Hi, I’m unable to install the Fantasy Language Generator.

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      Hi. There’s nothing to install. Simply follow the link offered in the last paragraph of the post and boot the app using the relevant option of the interface. If you can’t see the interface or still can’t boot the app, check that you don’t have some browser plugin that blocks scripts and/or cookies.

  3. Ben Wasuki Ben Wasuki

    How do you work this?

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      To start using it, follow the link in the last paragraph of the post, as I explained in the comment above. For help using the program itself, see the help file of the relevant menu option in the program (click “How to Use” in the main program window).

  4. Philip Philip

    I’m looking for a program where you can select a language, for example, french, and have fantasy words created but also have the grammar follow that language. I know that Vulgarlang can do this, but it is tedious and requires you to manually input everything. Is there not a way to select Japanese, then randomize fake words but based on Japanese phonology and grammar?

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      That certainly sounds interesting, but it’s far beyond my abilities, first and foremost linguistically: My knowledge of Japanese is limited to sentences like 白 猫 が 好き です – you’d need a specialist in Japanese linguistics to set this up, and someone to program it.
      Thanks for your comment!

      1. Sasha Sasha

        Is there a way to create a language without pictographs for school homework ?

        1. Chris🚩 Chris

          As the blog post above, as well as the “How to Use” help file explicitly mention, you can disable the pictographs pressing the “Disable Ideograms” button (the fourth button, under “Save Text”)

  5. Tina Tina

    The link in the last paragraph isn’t working what do ii do?

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      I assume the link you mean is the one in “following this link”.
      It works fine on my end; it’s taking you to the boot screen, where you can choose to read more about my apps, ways to show support (and why), or simply boot the program. If any of this doesn’t work (i.e. you can’t even see this boot screen or clicking “Maybe Later, Boot the App” doesn’t take you to the program), check that you have a stable internet connection and you’re not blocking cookies and/or scripts – for example, using some script blocking plugin or having disabled cookies.
      If needed, provide more details regarding what exactly “isn’t working”.

  6. Suga 🌺 Suga 🌺

    I am currently writing a story and I needed a new language. I have tried so many times to make one and I just couldn’t. But this link helped me so much and I am going to use it! Thank you so much!

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      You’re very welcome, I’m glad to hear you found it useful!

  7. Mary Mary

    At first, I feared I had to pay for the generator so I’m happy to see it free and with really useful ideas of different languages and a large vocabulary to try different dialogs and situations. It’s really a good work and I’m amazed about this program.
    Just the only thing that bother me: if the proposed language doesn’t satisfy me, I have to go back to New Dictionnary and select again the dialect to have another choice.
    Otherwise, I have nothing else to say. Thank you very much !

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      Thank you for your comment and your kind words!

      About the issue you mentioned, I’m not 100% sure I understood. If, for whatever reason, you don’t like the newly generated language, you indeed have the choice to generate a new one, until you find one that you like. Help me understand, why is this a problem, how would you prefer it to be?

      Is it because you need to click the Menu button again? Is it because there is a confirmation dialog, warning you about losing any unsaved changes? If that’s the case, it’s a matter of balance between speed and aesthetics/functionality – in other words, though it would indeed be faster to leave the “New Dictionary” interface visible, it would also add visual clutter. As for the confirmation dialog, it’s generally best to warn the user before any action that will lead to losing unsaved changes (in this case, the currently generated dictionary).

      In any case, I’m open to suggestions! Thanks again for your comment.

  8. Linkoln Linkoln

    Well how do you make the language?

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      Not sure exactly what you might mean, but I feel in the mood for guessing, so here goes: In the main screen of the program, select “New Dictionary”, then one of the predefined dialects or “Random”. Ta-dah!

  9. M. F. M. F.

    Is not very good.

    1. Chris🚩 Chris

      Your thorough and elaborate analysis has been examined by the board of directors, who reached the decision – effective immediately – to no longer keep users of the program locked in a dungeon, their hands shackled to the keyboard. So you can freely navigate away from the page (by pressing the designated “Exit” icon of the window, usually an X or red mark, or the back button on mobile devices). If required, you can also move away from the computer screen (keep moving backward, verifying the screen becomes smaller).
      Then, just go for a walk and enjoy the fresh air. There are far more important things than this silly program.


Punning Walrus shrugging

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