World-Building Starts with a Word: Why Conlangs Matter in Sci-Fi and Fantasy

In Episode 44 of Creatinuum, the conversation warps into the world of conlangs, constructed languages made for stories, games, and worlds beyond our own.

Photo by Nothing Ahead

More Than Made-Up Words

We’ve all encountered them: the guttural roars of Klingon, the elegant flow of Elvish, the eerie hissing of Parseltongue. But behind these constructed languages—conlangs—lies an enormous amount of linguistic and cultural design. A true conlang isn’t just a list of invented words. It comes with its own grammar, phonetics, structure, and most importantly, a worldview.

A well-designed conlang forces creators to think deeply about the societies that speak it. What do they value? What do they fear? A seafaring culture might have dozens of nuanced words for water. A war-driven nation may have entire verb systems dedicated to conquest. Even the choice of sounds—whether sharp and guttural or flowing and lyrical—can cue how we perceive a culture.

Language First, Story Second

It’s no accident that J.R.R. Tolkien, a trained linguist, created Elvish before writing The Lord of the Rings. The language didn’t emerge from the story—the story emerged to give the language a place to live. This approach flips the common method of world-building on its head. Rather than creating a world and then fitting a language into it, the language is the foundation. Culture, history, and character are all reverse-engineered from its linguistic DNA.

Beyond Fantasy: Tech, Code, and Gibberish

Not all conlangs come from ancient scrolls and elf-ruled forests. Some are built from the digital world. The language of Hymnos from Ar Tonelico is based on computer code and sung in rituals. Simlish, the nonsense-sounding language of The Sims, blends emotional cadence with syllabic gibberish to evoke meaning without translation.

These examples show how far conlangs can stretch the definition of communication. They don’t just reflect fictional societies—they also challenge assumptions about how real language works, evolves, and expresses identity.

Immersion Through Community

Conlangs also create communities. Fans gather to speak Klingon and High Valyrian, not just as a novelty but as an act of shared world participation. Entire courses exist for them on platforms like Duolingo. Pop songs have been officially re-recorded in Simlish by artists like Echosmith and Hwasa. Fictional languages, once relegated to books or screens, now live in playlists and Discord servers.

This kind of immersion turns conlangs into more than creative experiments—they become living languages, however small the speech population.

The Personal Language of Invention

For many, building a conlang is an act of reclaiming identity or constructing one from scratch. Some languages are born from lost heritage, imagined worlds, or the desire to craft something no one else owns. The process demands more than creativity; it calls for knowledge in phonetics, morphology, etymology, and semantics. Even dialects, tones, and borrowed words must be considered if the language is to feel authentic.

A well-formed conlang tells its own story—one rooted in culture, worldview, and lived experience, even if entirely fictional.

Final Word: Fictional Tongues, Real Power

Conlangs aren’t just for flair. They’re the foundation of believable storytelling and immersive worlds. They give fictional cultures weight and texture. They deepen narrative possibilities and stretch the bounds of imagination. And most of all, they remind us: you don’t just speak a language. A language speaks to you.

Listen in full to Creatinuum Episode 44: "Do You Speak Elvish?": The Wonders of Conlangs available on Simplecast, Spotify, Apple, and other platforms.