Guide:Table of Contents

Work-in-progress

Introduction

What's the deal with Orian, anyway?

Orian is a conlang (constructed language) that was created to sound as smooth and cute as possible... Though it's not really evident if it does its job well. Another purpose of Orian is to be used as a native language in fictitious works.

The Orian language is basically a mix of concepts from various languages, from Japanese to Korean, English, Spanish and Portuguese. For instance, the syllable writing system concept is borrowed from the Japanese Katakana, while the characters per se are inspired by Korean Hangul. Some borrow words, such as shanpuru (lit. sample/example), were borrowed from Romance languages, such as English, Spanish and Portuguese.

How this guide will work

This guide will not just be about translating phrases from English to Orian: it will also teach how the language works, and how to use it in practical ways. Most language guides out there try to push you into learning how to say "hello, I am <name>" as quickly as possible, without even explaining how a sentence is organized and the decisions that take you to structure a sentence in a way others can understand it.

The root of the problem is assuming every phrase or sentence is gonna be said formally, with all the context into it and yada yada yada: like saying "Hello, how are you? My name is <name>". Learning the formal form of a sentence is kind of necessary, but if you want it to be practical, you have to understand how it works, as said earlier. And the truth is, since the Orian language is mostly context-driven, most -- if not all -- sentences won't need context built into them! So basically you could shorten "Hello, my name is <name>" to a small and very manageable "I'm <name>".