Getting started
What Lemula does and the loop you work in — define a proto-language and its stages, write the changes between them, and read every derived word with its history.
Lemula models how a language changes across its vocabulary. You define a proto-language and the stages after it, write the changes between those stages, and Lemula derives every word at every stage. Each result keeps the history that produced it.
The loop you work in
Three moves, repeated as a language grows:
- Set the stages. A proto-language and the later forms that descend from it. A family can branch, so one stage can lead to several.
- Write the changes. Sound changes between stages, alongside compounding, derivation, semantic shift, borrowing, and obsolescence. Together they describe how words enter a language, change within it, and fall out of use.
- Read the results. Lemula applies the changes and derives each word at each stage, with a traceable history through the steps that produced it.
What you can build
Conlangers and worldbuilders describe how a language grows from an earlier form, then publish the result as a reference work. Historical linguists and students model documented change, test a sequence of rules, and inspect how each form was derived. Reference lexicons check derived results against attested or reconstructed forms, so agreements and differences stay visible.
Where to go next
- Stages and inventories — the skeleton a project is built on.
- Sound changes — the rules that carry a form from one stage to the next.
- Derivation kinds — compounding, borrowing, semantic shift, and the rest.
- Reference lexicons — checking derived forms against known ones.
- Publishing — turning a project into public reference pages.