For me, yes, an example I could use is transforming a generic language using an alphabet, formed using Turkish as the base, and evolving it based on Chinese influences and attempting to adopt logographic styles
This made me theorise on how Chinese works and the absolute role of context, where I could apply it and what not
But what about you?
I would say that 70-80% of what I know about linguistics comes from conlanging. Sure, the basics come up in school, both in literature and foreign language classes but there they are muddied by all the exceptions that real life languages have. In conlanging, we can apply linguistic concepts in their pure form and experiment with them.
It definitely helps, it helped me understand various linguistic concepts and it led me to learning the IPA, which is a HUGE help for learning languages, especially when figuring out how to make new sounds.
100% yes. A few things I’ve learned with conlanging:
- how information density works in practice
- why there’s no such thing as a fusional equivalent for case stacking
- how vertical vowel systems appear
- what exactly natural languages like Kaingang are doing with nasal allophony; e.g. /d/ as [d n͜d d͜n d]
- how consonants affect your pitch in a non-tonal language, and how to use it for tonogenesis
Definitely! I applied much of my conlanging knowledge when learning German.
Es hat mir sehr geholfen!
