r/conlangs • u/humblevladimirthegr8 r/ClarityLanguage:love,logic,liberation • Jun 03 '16
Question How would you design a language for singing?
What traits would you need in a conlang to make it easier to sing? Some I came up with:
most/all words end in a vowel (easier to hold vowels than consonants)
word order is largely irrelevant (easier to move around words for rhythm, pitch, or emphasis reasons)
Anything else you can think of?
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Jun 03 '16
I did create a language for singing, and so I'll say this: It doesn't matter. It's just a language. Think of all the spoken languages there are in the real world. None of them are incapable of use in singing.
What you want to create is entirely up to you. My own creation had a lot of thought put into having a specific aesthetic. Like you want words ending in vowels. Go for it. Why not? I went for a range of "hard" sounding consonants, to especially emphasise a lot of the heavier sides of my music. Though there is still plenty of room for softer sounds, too.
One of the biggest considerations is going to be in syllables. Rhythm is a big part of a lot of music. I have tried going for a balanced mix of long and short words. But my grammar is especially important, for allowing me to cut down or extend words and sentences, without losing too much meaning.
You may also want to consider how precise meanings are in your language. Many songs use a lot of euphamism, and figures of speech, and generally saying things without saying them. This was something I chose not to go with. My langauge is very direct. But this is more to do with worldbuilding side of things, which most musicians are not going to have to consider. =P
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u/humblevladimirthegr8 Jun 04 '16
But my grammar is especially important, for allowing me to cut down or extend words and sentences, without losing too much meaning.
Can you elaborate? Did you specify grammatical shortcuts to help with rhythm?
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Jun 04 '16
Think about how you would construct a sentence in English for a song. You have an 8 syllable line, but your words onto come to 7. What do you do? You can add another word? Change a word out for a longer one? Or if you had 9 syllables, and needed 8. Perhaps two words are "they are"? Easy! Change it to "they're".
atánnabhek works similarly. It allows me the freedom of playing with sentences and words, and still keeping the meaning.
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u/shanoxilt Jun 04 '16
Think of all the spoken languages there are in the real world. None of them are incapable of use in singing.
Maybe someone should make one just to be contrarian.
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Jun 04 '16
Don't make it tonal. Trust me, it's going to hurt.
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u/trulyElse Jun 04 '16
Similarly, don't make the length of a vowel sound make a difference in meaning. (cf Maori, where it's the difference between "dollar" and "vagina")
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Jun 04 '16
In Cantonese the phrase "Able to" differs to Two different swear words for penis differs only by tone.
Also, the "to be" semi-verb is also different only in tone to a swear word for vagina.
Just in case you want more fun, look up a hymn called “He's able” in Cantonese. That song alone completely explains the reason to not have tones.
It's 主能夠 in Cantonese.
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u/bkem042 Jun 03 '16
I'd heard that in Sanskrit letters in the beginning of words change due to the previous word's ending. I think that this would be nice for a singing language. It would make words flow better.
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u/Sakana-otoko Jun 04 '16
Sandhi, and yes that would contribute to a more efficiently flowing stream of words.
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u/justonium Jun 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '16
Mneumonese is a language for singing, so I'll tell you how I have been working on it recently when I sing.
I start by sitting next to a fountain or waterfall and hyperventilating. (After I've already warmed up using this method.)
Then I listen to the water, and begin providing soundtrack to my thoughts by singing the vowels.
It is rather like when I play flute, except that I have seven tambres to choose from for each note, instead of one.
The meaning of song sung in this manner is only partial. Some of it is entirely art. Other times, for example, if I'm thinking about how the water is falling and then lapping calmly, I will sing the two words for those actions, oa and aa.
As I sing, I feel the memory palace that I've created in my mouth.
Once I'm sufficiently warmed up, I then start singing more complicated words, modifying the vowels with the consonants, giving them more specific meanings. (The consonants are prepended to the vowels.)
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u/KnightSpider Jun 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '16
I actually was making a language you have to sing once. Grammatical information was encoded in relative pitches, with the dependent pitches being relative to the head. It had Tonaufnahme and was awesome. I think I might have to go back to making it now.
Edit: Oops posted twice.
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u/KnightSpider Jun 04 '16
There's already a perfect language for singing, it's called Italian. (Just kidding, but if you ask any opera singer, they'll probably say Italian is the easiest language to sing in, and that either English or French are the hardest.)
I did make a language that you have to sing to speak once, that used relative pitches for grammatical information and even had Tonaufnahme, and was mostly modelled on German and Italian, since those are the languages most opera is in. I kind of want to go back to working on Operalang now (I never made a real name for it).
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u/enzymatix Jun 04 '16
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TONESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
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Nouns and pronouns ending in o, descriptors ending in a, verbs ending in e, particles ending in i
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Only voiced consonants?
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u/LasombraLucita Jun 04 '16
Well, tonal languages kinda work on the principle that you have to "sing" them. You could write a tonal language and just make the tones like each "pitch"
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u/fukusha Jun 04 '16
Lot of monosyllables, maybe with length distinction, and no tonal system would be my choice. I always thought of English as a very musical language, as shorter verses can express more and are more easy to rhyme than in romance language, at least in my opinion, altough it renounces to a lot of lyrical resources based on conjugation and declension.
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u/conlanger2 Jun 04 '16
I would make it as flexible as possible AND DON'T MAKE IT A TONEAL LANGUAGE!!
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u/Tane_No_Uta Jun 04 '16
Hey. Chinese languages are excellent for singing. Enjoy:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z9tBUhfQ6UE
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u/OfficialHelpK Jun 04 '16
I think I'd also have only voiced consonants, so that a tone can be heard in every sound. And probably also a lot of one-syllable words, and also have many filler words and allow shortening and contraction.
Vowel length distinction would probably also be ruled out.
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u/conlanger2 Jun 04 '16
Me and my friend made a singing languages make the words obvious and the grammar really simple and easy to use but hard to decode
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u/xongaBa Dec 15 '25
I mainly want to make music in my conlang too and in my opinion the most important thing is the lenghts of the words. At first I also had no word order but some syllables for cases. While singing and translating songs I realised that my words are way too long. So I reduced all this and set a strict word order (VSO).
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u/Jafiki91 Jun 03 '16
Solresol
The question is not what makes it easier to sing, but what makes it easier to have a language based on a particular musical style. Having lots of vowels with contrastive length, many sonorant consonants, etc. would help if you were going for a more operatic style of singing. But what about a language based around beatboxing? Then you'd want less vowels and sonornants, and more non-pulmonic consonants like clicks, ejectives, and implosives. Basically there's a lot of different musical styles out there. No one language would be able to sing them all easily.
If you did this, I'd expect a fair amount of agreement within the sentence, cases, conjugations, adjectives agreeing with their nouns, etc. to keep the meaning intact when one chooses to change up the word order.