What Real-Language Features Does Vulgarlang Model?

Updated

Vulgarlang models the phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and irregular quirks of natural languages, and it lets you anchor a generated conlang to the word structure of a real reference language. According to the site's own description, it "models the rules, irregularities and quirks of real languages: from grammar, to sounds, to vocabulary." That means the output is not just a random letter generator — it tries to behave like a language with consistent internal logic. The main caveat: the demo caps output at 200 words, while signing up unlocks a 4,000-word vocabulary and extra features.

Sounds and phonology

This is where Vulgarlang leans hardest on real linguistic structure.

  • IPA-based input. Custom phonemes are entered as IPA symbols separated by spaces, and you can toggle "Show IPA symbols." The tool explicitly states it "uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and various other linguistic terminology."
  • Consonant and vowel inventories. You define consonants and vowels directly, or let the generator add random phonemes to your custom selection.
  • Syllable and word structure rules. You set max consonants before and after a vowel (1–3 each), plus word-initial, mid-word, and word-final consonants and clusters.
  • Vowel harmony. A dedicated option adds vowel harmony, with a second vowel group so each word draws vowels from one group or the other — the same kind of constraint found in Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian.
  • Phoneme frequencies. Choose fast dropoff, medium dropoff, or equiprobable, which mirrors how real languages favour some sounds over others.
  • Illegal combinations. Ban the same vowel twice in a row, or the same syllable twice in a row.
  • Vowel probabilities and tones. Set the rough likelihood of a vowel at the start or end of a word, and apply tone (extra high through extra low, plus rising and falling) represented with tone letters, superscript numbers, or diacritics.
  • Sound changes. You can reflect sound changes in spelling, show changes in square brackets, and remove the forward slashes around IPA.

Grammar, stress, and morphology

  • Stress patterns. Choose initial, second, antepenult, penultimate, or ultimate stress, or select a predictable pattern, no stress, or no fixed stress. The site notes the stress pattern can be changed in the full version.
  • Feet. A foot is defined as a group of 2 or 3 syllables, which is the unit real stress systems are built on.
  • Affix patterns. You define affix patterns that the generator then uses to create randomly generated affixes — the basis for morphology rather than fixed word lists.
  • Word and phoneme patterns. Phoneme classes, word patterns, and affix patterns are all configurable, so the grammar layer is rule-driven rather than a lookup table.

Vocabulary and reference languages

Vocabulary generation is tied to the word-structure rules above, so words inherit the phonotactics you set. The demo produces up to 200 words; a signup account raises this to a 4,000-word vocabulary with extra features.

For grounding, Vulgarlang offers a reference list of real languages whose word structure you can analyse and borrow from:

Arabic, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Mandarin, Mongolian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh, and Zulu.

You can also analyse the word structure of your own language. Selecting a reference is the fastest way to get natural-feeling phonotactics without hand-specifying every cluster.

What this means in practice

If you want a language that sounds like it belongs to a real family, the reference-language analysis plus vowel harmony, stress, and illegal-combination rules do most of the work. If you want something deliberately alien, you can switch off those constraints and set custom phonemes and clusters by hand.

The trade-off is depth versus access: the demo is enough to test whether the phonology and word-shape settings produce something you like, but the 4,000-word vocabulary and features like changing the stress pattern sit behind signup.