ConLangs: How to Construct a Language
Constructed languages, from Esperanto and Tolkien's Elvish to Klingon, anchor this MIT linguistics course on building a language from scratch. Students study the phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and writing systems of real and invented languages, then apply those categories to a language of their own design through a sequence of regular assignments. Each assignment tackles one layer of the new language's structure, building toward a final project: a full grammatical description of the student's constructed language. The course draws on MIT's OpenCourseWare materials, including assignment sheets and course structure, and treats conlanging as a rigorous way to test linguistic theory by building a working system rather than just analyzing existing ones. No enrollment fee and no certificate are involved since this is a self-paced OpenCourseWare release.