Designing a Conlang Backwards

For Doors to the Stars I invented an accent that sounded right for an alien pickpocket with violet eyes and writhing head-tendrils. Her name was Lari, and when she spoke, it came out like this: “I’s tryin’ t’ be you friend. You lookin’ bad, walkin’ dead girl.”

I kept writing, letting my ear guide me and making up the rules as I went along. She dropped her g’s from -ing endings, turned “the” into “da” and “that” into “dat,” said “you bag” instead of “your bag,” used “I’s” instead of “I’m.” It felt alien but comprehensible, and more importantly, it felt real. Beta readers connected with her voice, so I knew I’d done something right.

https://videopress.com/v/tCm45rn5?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true Lani is a girl who knows how to get things people need.

Later I wrote a second Vylaraian character—a twelve-year-old child soldier with an oversized helmet and a beat-up plasma carbine. When she snapped her fingers at another character, demanding attention, the words came out: “Oi! I’s talkin’ at you, chumbait.”

It was an accent that sounded distinctly Vylaraian to me, so I decided to run with it. It wasn’t just Lari’s personal accent, it was her entire race’s. Generally I don’t lean this heavy into portraying an accent in dialogue—that can quickly become unreadable and frustrating if you’re not careful (I’m looking at you, Wuthering Heights). But in this case I really dig it.

Fast forward several months, and now I’m working on a reader magnet for the novel. It heavily features a Vylaraian character, and I decided I needed to design a conlang so I could sprinkle in native words and phrases. Just a few for flavor. I always establish at least a rough language design for that purpose—make it up as you go along and readers will know you’re just typing gibberish, even if it’s just a few random lines. But I realized I couldn’t just invent any grammar and phonetic system. It had to be one that would naturally produce the accent I’d already established. The dialogue was the data. I needed to reverse-engineer the linguistic system that had created it.

“You bag look heavy. Lemme take it f’ you. Get you someplace safe, eh?”

So I started treating every “mistake” in Lari and the kid soliders’ dialogue as evidence, cataloging patterns systematically.

The first thing I noticed: possessives. Every single Vylaraian character avoided English possessive pronouns. Lari says “you bag look heavy.” The child soldier says “you ship here.” Never “your bag,” never “your ship.” That was one of the accent patterns I’d established. But what did it mean for their native language?

My first thought was maybe they just drop possessives randomly, but the consistency hinted at something deeper. Both characters did it identically, in every instance, without variation. Better answer, and this is where I started building backward from the evidence: English possessive pronouns—my, your, his, her—don’t exist as separate words in their language. They mark possession some other way.

I decided suffixes attached directly to the possessed noun. I worked out a system: wisa’ne would mean eyesight-your, literally “your eyesight.” sula’li would be knife-my, “my knife.” When Vylaraians speak English, they approximate with base pronouns because their mental grammar has no separate possessive words. They’re not making mistakes—they’re applying their native system to a foreign language. “You bag” is their best attempt at expressing what in Vylaraian would be bag’ne.

The second pattern: verb forms. Not once does either character say “I am” or “she gets.” Always base forms. “I’s talkin’,” never “I’m talking.” “Her lookin’ bad,” with the copula dropped entirely. “You int’rested,” no “are” in sight.

Why would native speakers consistently use “I is” instead of “I am”? Why can the copula just disappear? I decided to make up two rules: First, Vylaraian verbs don’t conjugate for person or number. One form serves all subjects. There’s no “am/is/are” distinction—just one base form. Second, the copula is optional in present tense affirmative statements. It can be there for emphasis or clarity, or it can vanish entirely when the meaning is obvious from context.

This pointed to something bigger: VSO word order—verb, subject, object. In Vylaraian, you’d say Mira li nu, literally “See I you.” The verb comes first, establishing what’s happening. The subject after the verb makes person clear without needing conjugation. When speaking English, this produces “I is/we is/she is”—the unconjugated base form, with subject pronouns doing all the heavy lifting.

The third pattern: plurals. Both characters avoided the plural -s when context made plurality clear. The child soldier says “Got stim, yeah?” and also “Best we do live ‘nother day”—no “best we do is live” with the expected verb agreement. The pattern held even in rapid-fire dialogue where you’d expect shortcuts.

This shouldn’t be random either. I needed a system that would make Vylaraian speakers feel like the English plural -s was redundant. Given the musical, flowing quality I’d already established in their accent, I tried reduplication—repeating the first syllable. So sula becomes su-sula for “knives,” and  kaine becomes ka-kaine for “girls.” Musical, distinctive, and it explained the pattern. When you say “three ship,” the number already conveys plurality. The -s is just noise.

The fourth pattern was simpler but absolute: every single instance of “th” became t or d, with zero exceptions. “Da” for “the,” “dat” for “that,” “dey” for “they.” Even in the child soldier’s line “Dat’s winnin’ ‘nough f’ I”—where she uses the subject pronoun “I” instead of “me”—the “that” became “dat.” The answer was obvious—the sound doesn’t exist in Vylaraian phonology. You can’t pronounce what your language doesn’t have.

“Watch you don’ get a shank in you ribs ’fore da Gys eat you right up.”

I also dropped final consonants everywhere—talkin’, doin’, wit’, ‘round, ‘fore, don’. Everything ended vowel-heavy, contributing to that flowing, musical quality I’d heard in my head. Looking at the pattern, I realized I’d been preferring CV syllables—consonant-vowel structure—without consciously choosing to. So I made it a rule: words end in vowels or simple consonants like -n, -l, -r. No consonant clusters at word ends. No -ng endings allowed.

Initial unstressed syllables vanished regularly in the dialogue—’round for “around,” ’fore for “before,” ‘nother for “another,” ‘nough for “enough”—and I dropped unstressed mid-word syllables, like “Ascend’ncy” as well. I decided that’s because Vylaraian has no unstressed or reduced vowels. All vowels are fully pronounced, clear and distinct. When speaking English, entire unstressed syllables disappear rather than reducing to schwa the way English does naturally.

Prepositions collapsed almost to nothing in my dialogue—f’ for “for,” t’ for “to,” wit’ for “with.” This suggested native Vylaraian prepositions needed to be very short, probably one, maybe two syllables at most. So I created them that way: do (for), le (with), ó (from), te (to).

For the overall phonological feel, I’d wanted something musical and flowing, not harsh or guttural. Looking at what I’d done, I saw soft consonants—lots of l, r, n, m, s, v—combined with open vowels and a rhythmic quality that reminded me of how Polynesian languages sound. I decided to base the phonology on Japanese and Polynesian patterns: clean syllable boundaries from Japanese, open vowel sounds from Polynesian, flapped r instead of the English hard r, all vowels fully pronounced. I added penultimate stress as a rule—stress always falls on the second-to-last syllable—which creates words like tikora (ti-KO-ra, “sharp”), sulavola (su-la-VO-la, “blade-folk”), orelano(o-re-LA-no, “speech”). Musical, alien, but still pronounceable.

“Galaxy’s jus’ ash an’ liars, eh.”

Once I understood the grammar I was uncovering, it started revealing things about the culture I’d been writing.

VSO word order—Mira li nu for “See I you”—puts action before actor. That felt right for a warrior culture where what’s happening matters more than who’s doing it. Verbs establish the situation immediately, which matches how I’d been writing these characters: direct, action-focused, no wasted time on preamble.

The complete lack of politeness registers—twelve-year-old and teen speaking identically—revealed something I’d intuited but hadn’t articulated: an egalitarian warrior society. No honorifics, no formal versus informal speech, no age-based hierarchy in language. Direct, practical communication at all levels. The child soldier with her plasma carbine speaks with the same grammatical authority as an adult, because in Vylaraian, grammar doesn’t encode status.

The constant “eh?” as a tag question showed up in both characters’ dialogue. Lari says “Lemme take it f’ you. Get you someplace safe, eh?” The child soldier says “We could jus’ grab ’em, eh.” It functions as a discourse particle seeking confirmation and agreement, which suggests communal values. Not aggressive—collaborative. These are people who value consensus even in conflict, who check for understanding and buy-in even when making threats.

“Ascend’ncy no be stopped. Best we do live ‘nother day. Dat’s winnin’ ‘nough f’ I.”

Traditional conlang creation works top-down: build grammar rules, create vocabulary, figure out how to use it in fiction, hope it sounds right. I’ve been working bottom-up for Vylaraian: write accented dialogue that sounds right, make it consistent, reverse-engineer the grammar that explains the patterns.

I know exactly how Vylaraians should sound—clipped, musical, distinctive. The grammar had to produce that specific output. Every rule I created was tested against actual dialogue I’d already written. Would possessive suffixes produce “you bag” when speaking English? Yes. Would CV syllable structure produce “talkin’” and “doin’”? Yes. Would VSO word order explain occasional verb-first constructions that slipped through in my dialogue? Yes—it’s the native structure bleeding through under stress.

https://videopress.com/v/Xg307NBD?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true “Best we can do is live another day. That’s winning enough for me.”

The system became self-validating. When I write new Vylaraian characters now, they automatically sound right because I can work systematically. I write standard English dialogue first, then apply transformation rules I codified from the original accent. Drop articles, simplify plurals, convert possessives to base pronouns, change all “th” sounds to t or d, drop final consonants, remove verb conjugations, add “eh?” where it feels natural.

Take this standard English: “I’m trying to be your friend. You look terrible.” Transform it: I’m becomes I’s (no conjugation), your becomes you (possessive suffix approximation), look terrible becomes lookin’ bad (simplified), add the tag question. Result: “I’s tryin’ t’ be you friend. You lookin’ bad, eh?”

That’s exactly what Lari says in the bazaar scene. The system works because it’s describing patterns that were already there.

“Don’ flatter youself. Told you Lari’d see you ’round. Lari always ’round.”

What I’ve been doing is modeling interference patterns. When you think in Grammar A but speak Language B, systematic patterns emerge. Vylaraians don’t make random errors when speaking English. They apply their native grammatical rules to a foreign language, which creates consistent “mistakes” that aren’t really mistakes at all.

Native rule: verbs don’t conjugate. English result: “Ascend’ncy no be stopped” not “can’t be stopped.”

Native rule: possession marked with suffixes. English result: “you bag” (approximating bag’ne).

Native rule: plurality via reduplication. English result: context shows plurality, suffix feels redundant.

Native rule: pronouns have no case distinction. English result: “winnin’ ‘nough f’ I” not “for me.”

That pronoun pattern deserves closer attention. In English, we distinguish subject pronouns (I, she, they) from object pronouns (me, her, them) based on grammatical role—who’s acting versus who’s receiving the action. Vylaraians don’t. There’s just one form, regardless of whether you’re the one doing or the one being done to. “I” is always “I,” whether you’re the subject acting or the object being acted upon.

I decided this ties directly into their warrior culture. In Vylaraian thought, your identity remains constant regardless of your role in an action. You’re always yourself, whether you’re the one swinging the blade or the one blocking it. No grammatical vulnerability, no linguistic submission. The grammar doesn’t encode power dynamics through pronoun case the way English does. It’s another way their egalitarian worldview shows up in the structure of their language—word order and context handle who’s doing what to whom, but the pronouns themselves remain fixed, immutable markers of identity.

The power of this approach is in the consistency. Two characters, different ages, different contexts—identical patterns. This reveals it’s not individual speech quirks or education level. It’s a complete linguistic system, a cultural identity marker. When I look at dialogue from the twelve-year-old soldier—“Ascend’ncy no be stopped. Best we do live ‘nother day. Dat’s winnin’ ‘nough f’ I”—every pattern is present. Dropped unstressed vowels (Ascend’ncy), dropped initial syllables (‘nother, ‘nough), th becoming d (Dat’s), subject pronoun where English needs object (f’ I), and that direct pragmatic worldview that comes through in the grammar itself.

“Need t’ know, an’ you don’, eh.”

Conlangs in fiction should be like an iceberg. Readers shouldn’t need a language guide or be taught the grammar. They only see this:

“I’s tryin’ t’ be you friend.”

They don’t see this:

Sikora li te isa virana’ne.

The actual Vylaraian sentence that would produce that English approximation remains invisible. The grammar is machinery hidden below the surface, unless I want to show a native word or phrase, and if I do, it sounds right. What readers experience is consistent character voice, distinctive cultural sound, and something multiple beta readers have mentioned—a sense that these people are real. That their way of speaking reflects how they actually think, not just a fictional accent I pasted on for flavor.

That’s because it absolutely reflects how they think. The grammar I reverse-engineered from the accent describes a genuine cognitive system, even if that system only exists in fiction. When Lari says “you bag” instead of “your bag,” she’s not being careless with English. She’s thinking in Vylaraian—a language where bag’ne is how you express possession—and approximating it in a foreign tongue as best she can.

The accent is the skeleton. The grammar is the anatomy. But I found the bones first, then figured out how the creature moved and breathed. That only worked because my ear stayed consistent, following patterns I intuitively created because I have an ear for accents. The fun part was designing a complete conlang in reverse, based on an established accent.

It also means that I’m going to be more conscious now of how I portray accents for characters with established conlangs, to make sure their “broken” English naturally follows from their native tongue.

Ómi sikora nu te li, tikora le vala, eh.

An’ if you askin’ I, dat’s damn cool, eh.

Doors to the Stars is an epic science fiction adventure for young adults who want space opera that makes them think, characters who carry real weight, and worldbuilding that doesn’t insult their intelligence.

Available February 24th, 2026.

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