Warnings

Error

There are not enough sounds in your language to generate a sufficient set of unique of words! Enter more consonants and/or vowels or turn off custom options.

Error

There are not engouh Word Patterns to create unique words. Try entering more multi-syllablic patterns and/or more phonemes.

Note

Error

Settings file is corrupted.

Note

Syllable Structure option is not compatible with Word Structure option, due to possibility of creating contradictory rules. It is only compatible with Custom Phonemes option (the one up the top).

Phonemes

Phonemes are the individual sounds of a language. This is not the same as the spelling of a language (which is the orthography). Phonemes are represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is used to transcribe the exact pronunciation of words in all languages worldwide. IPA is written between /forward slashes/.

Becoming familiar with some of the IPA sounds will enhance your understanding of the languages generated by Vulgar.

Seed numbers

Each language is generated from a seed number. To re-generate your langauge, go to Save Your Language > Generate this seeds’s language.

Important! To genearate the same language, all custom settings that you have used must be re-entered along with the seed number. Therefore, we strongly recommend Save Your Language > Save this language’s settings, rather than relying on writing down the settings yourself!

Syllable structure

Syllable structure refers to how many consonants are permitted to appear on either side of the vowel. A syllable structure of (C)V means the syllable must have one vowel and an optional consonant at the beginning. It permits patterns such as tito, raleo, ala. Languages with this kind of simple structure include Swahili and Fijian.

A syllable structure such as (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C) would allow more complex words such as strips, trainers. Most European languages have more complex structures.

Stress pattern

Stress pattern refers to which syllable in a word gets emphasis. English has no exact fixed pattern; the stress can fall on any syllable: VIGorous (first), emPLOYment (second to last), hoTEL (last). Most of the world's major languages have no fixed pattern, however some do. Finnish words have stress on the first syllable. Greek is second to last syllable. Persian has it on the last syllable.

IPA uses the ˈ symbol before the syllable to represent primary stress. The word siho /si ˈho/ would be pronounced siHO.

Sound change rules

All languages have phonemes that change slightly (or sometimes dramatically) based on the effects of other phonemes around it. These are known as phonological changes. We express them in rules, eg: e > i / _g = e turns into i before g.

For a more in-depth lesson on phonological rules, and the kinds of phonological rules that exist click here.

Diphthongs

A diphthong is when two vowel sounds combine into one. English has various diphthongs. For example, the word "light" /laɪt/ is comprised of /a/ and /ɪ/, but is perceived as one vowel.

Consider using diphthongs to expand your vowel inventory.

Adpositions

Adpositions are words that express spatial or temporal relations (in, on, under, towards, before) or mark various semantic roles (of, for). When adpositions come before the noun phrase they are called prepositions, i.e. in English: on the table. If they come after the noun phrase they are called postpositions. Languages that use postpositions include Chinese and Turkish.

Dropoff rate

Phonemes are ranked by frequency from left (most frequent) to right (least frequent). Medium makes the frequencies slightly more even than fast. When using equiprobable, phonemes can be custom weighted by writing *multiplier, eg: p*10 makes p ten times more common than a phoneme without a weighting. These options work for Custom phonemes and Word structure.

This checkbox also controls output from the Phonotactics Analyser.

Illegal combinations

Specify sequences that can't occur in a word. For example, although w and u do occur in Japanese, wu does not.

This field supports RegEx matching, so you can specify vowels that cannot occur word-initially or finally, among other things.

Notes: Separate rules by space or new line. Rules apply to base words only; words created by base word + affix may violate a rule, however custom conditional affixes can overcome this. Rules about diphthongs may need the diphthong diacritic (ia̯) to be correctly matched, regardless of whether they are entered in vowel field with the diacritic or not.

Change alphabet order

Input orthographic letters in the new order you want them to be alphabetized, separated by spaces. Diagraphs are permitted.

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