How to conlang without making readers cringe

Culture-first conlanging for fantasy writers who want their worlds to feel lived-in

When I tell people I’m building languages for my fantasy world, I usually get one of two reactions:

1. “Oh, like Tolkien!” (Yes, but also no.)

2. “Isn’t that just... making up words?” (Yes, but also very much no.)

Here it is: anyone can smash random syllables together and call it a language. Most fantasy writers do. And most of the time, it sounds like someone sneezed on a keyboard.

Kh’zarthyx’ul. Ae’tharion. Zyx’kael.

You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. And we’ve all quietly cringed.

But good conlanging—the kind that makes a world feel real—isn’t about sounding exotic. It’s about sounding inevitable. Like these words have been spoken by real people for hundreds of years, worn smooth by use, shaped by the needs of the culture that speaks them.

So how do you do that?

Here’s what I’ve learned from building two languages for my world (Arunaic and Low Aelhir), informed by a lifetime of being a bilingual, bidialectal weirdo who accidentally became a conlanger.

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Step 1: Start With Culture, Not Sounds

Most people start conlanging by picking “cool sounds” and mashing them together. That’s backwards.

Start with: Who are these people? What do they need to say?

Example: Arunaic (The Language of Sailors)

The Aruneans are a maritime culture. Their entire civilization is built on ships, trade, and naval power. So their language reflects that:

• 6+ words for wind (shao = breeze, shaul = gale, shaullue = wind caught in sails)

• Depth/distance is EVERYTHING (linne = shallows, laae = deep, drau = abyss)

• Time is measured by the sun’s passage (fenilasra = high passage/noon, feilasra = waking passage/morning)

The vocabulary tells you about the culture. Aruneans don’t just have “one word for ocean”—they have words for coastal waters, deep sea, drowning depths, and the horizon. Because those distinctions matter to them.

Even their color words are depth-based. They don’t see “blue”—they see where in the water column that blue exists:

• muirrine = sea-blue (the color of shallow or near-surface seas)

• laagerrine = deep loden green (the color of the mesopelagic zone)

• nadirrine = abyssal purple-black (the color of crush-depth)

When an Arunean describes something as muirrine, they’re not just saying it’s blue. They’re saying it has the quality of the sea itself—open, deep, unknowable.

But here’s where it gets interesting:

Aruneans don’t just have “a word for travel.” They have laaonarre.

Etymology:

• laae (deep, beyond the coast) + on (across, beyond) + maare (horizon)

• Meaning: Traveling beyond the coast and across the horizon—into the unknown.

What this tells you about Arunean culture:

To an Arunean, real travel isn’t just “going somewhere.” It’s leaving safety behind. It’s crossing into the deep (laae), beyond sight of land, where the horizon (maare) becomes your only guide.

There’s no single English word for this. “Voyage” is close, but it doesn’t carry the weight of risk, of leaving the known world. “Journey” is too generic. Laaonarre is specific. It’s sacred. It’s what separates a sailor (muirar) from someone who just owns a boat.

This is what good conlanging does. A single word reveals an entire philosophy. It shows you what a culture VALUES—and what they FEAR.

Even their military ranks encode this relationship to the sea:

• Maarendar = Captain (”horizon-commander” - master of the reach)

• Draumeir = Admiral (”abyss-master” - lord of crushing deep)

• Fendraumeir = Fleet Admiral (”high-abyss-master” - master of all depths)

Rank isn’t just hierarchy. It’s how deep you’re trusted to sail, how far from shore your authority extends. A captain commands the horizon, but an admiral commands the abyss itself.

Your language should do the same. If your culture is desert nomads, what’s THEIR word for the moment you leave the last oasis and head into open sand? What do mountain-dwellers call the act of descending into the lowlands? What do your characters call the thing they do that NO OTHER CULTURE has a word for?

That’s where language becomes world-building.

Culture shapes language. Always.

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Step 2: Choose Sounds That Fit the Vibe

Once you know WHO is speaking, figure out what they should SOUND like.

Arunaic is:

• Vowel-heavy (a, e, i, o, u dominate)

• Flowing, liquid consonants (l, r, n, m)

• Few harsh stops (no hard K or T clusters)

Why? Because it’s a language designed for speaking on ships—over wind, over waves, over distance. You need CARRYING sounds. Long vowels. Resonant consonants.

Compare that to Low Aelhir (my elven language):

• Sharper consonants (kh, th, zh, hard R)

• More guttural (especially in the Draihir dialect)

• Shorter vowels

Why? Because elves in my world are older, harsher, more warlike. Their language reflects that—it’s harder, more angular, less forgiving.

The sound should match the culture.

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Step 3: Build Derivation Rules (So You’re Not Just Making Shit Up)

This is where most conlangers fail.

They make up 50 random words, slap them in a glossary, and call it done. But then when they need a NEW word (which will happen constantly), they just... make up another random word. No consistency. No internal logic.

Good conlangs have RULES.

Example: Arunaic Compound Words

Arunaic builds new words by COMBINING root words:

• drau (abyss) + hessa (horse) = drauhessa (drown-horse, a mythological sea creature)

• shaul (gale) + lue (caught/captured) = shaullue (wind in the sails)

• thea (return) + lua (light/beacon) = Thealua (the Return-Light, the great lighthouse of Theastone)

This means I can generate NEW words whenever I need them. I’m not making shit up—I’m DERIVING words from the system I already built.

This compounds beautifully. Once you have hessa (horse) and drauhessa (drown-horse), you can build:

• hessar = rider, horseman

• drauhessir = of/relating to drown-horse heraldry

• allahessen = horse dressage, martial performance (from allan = graceful form + hessa)

Or take something like bibilausa—a word that combines bibi (cute, small, harmless) + lausa (beast, prey). It means “useless but endearing,” the kind of creature that’s too cute to hunt. It’s the Arunean word for a lapdog. One compound tells you that Aruneans view most animals through the lens of utility, and anything that fails that test is... well, adorably pointless.

Your conlang needs this. Otherwise, it’s just a list of random nouns.

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Step 4: Make It Speakable (Or It’s Just Decoration)

Here’s a test: Can you say your fantasy words out loud without sounding like you’re gargling gravel?

If the answer is no, you’ve failed.

Bad fantasy names:

• Kh’zarthyx (how do you even pronounce this?)

• Ae’thalos’kyr (three syllables? four? who knows?)

• Xyl’gothrim (unpronounceable)

These aren’t WORDS. They’re PUNCTUATION.

Good fantasy names:

• Muirrine (myoor-EEN)

• Drauhessa (DROW-hess-ah)

• Thealua (THAY-ah-loo-ah)

You can SAY these. They have rhythm. They have flow.

If your readers can’t pronounce your words, they’ll skip over them. And if they’re skipping over your words, your world-building has failed.

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Step 5: Let Your Own Linguistic Background Inform Your Work

Here’s my secret weapon: I grew up bilingual and bidialectal.

• Native Spanish speaker

• Native Midwestern American English speaker (from family)

• Native N/W London English speaker (from childhood friends)

This means I’ve spent my entire life code-switching—flipping between languages and accents depending on context. I can HEAR how languages work. I can FEEL when a sound pattern is wrong.

This is why I can build conlangs that feel real.

I’m not guessing. I’m drawing on a lifetime of linguistic immersion.

You don’t need to be bilingual to conlang well. But you DO need to:

• Listen to how real languages sound (not just English)

• Pay attention to rhythm, stress, intonation

• Study how languages EVOLVE (why do some sounds change? why do dialects diverge?)

The more you understand about real languages, the better your fake ones will be.

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The Takeaway

Good conlanging is:

1. Culture-first (what do these people need to say?)

2. Sound-appropriate (what should this language sound like?)

3. Rule-based (how do I generate new words consistently?)

4. Speakable (can I actually say this out loud?)

5. Informed by real linguistics (how do real languages work?)

Bad conlanging is:

• Random syllables with apostrophes

• Unpronounceable clusters

• No internal logic

• Just “sounding exotic” for its own sake

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If you’re building a fantasy world and you want your languages to feel REAL, start with culture. Build from there. And for the love of all that is holy, make sure your readers can actually PRONOUNCE your words.

Your world-building will thank you.

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Want to go deeper? Next time I discuss conlanging, I’ll break down the elven pronoun system I built for Low Aelhir—where ‘you’ and ‘I’ aren’t fixed identities, but shift based on who’s dominating the conversation. It’s a linguistic nightmare. It’s also one of my favorite things I’ve ever built.

If you want to see that (and more craft deep-dives), subscribe. I post every Tuesday.