An absolute mountain of a man with a russet beard, cruel blue eyes and a booming voice that commanded attention.

But animals were still animals, and did what animals did.

Some animals ate their young. 2/2

It was a test balloon to see if he could get away with it.

We learn about the proxy wars fought between the US and the USSR during the Cold War in places like Angola and Zambia, but when you really look at the parties involved, you see that in a lot of cases, it was indigenous groups with Soviet support fighting against literal N*zis. 2/2

Hi! I should mention too there are tons of resources online for how to create a conlang.

Any introduction to linguistics text will have a discussion of what sound changes are more or less likely than others. 8/8

Even if you don't go full Tolkein and are just trying to name people and places in your story, it can be helpful in creating some internal consistency to think of what kinds of sounds you want and what historical changes could have taken place. 7/8

To further complicate matters, depending on how long ago the sound change happened and the literacy level of speakers of the language, that v sound could still be spelled with an f. 6/8

In our previous change if you had fl between two vowels ("aflame"), the f sound wouldn't have been affected because of the l. Now that the l drops, f is by itself between two vowels, but this time it stays an f, because the f to v sound change was in the past and isn't productive any more. 5/8

Not every sound change happens at the same time, though, so they pile up in layers, and later changes can obscure earlier ones. Again, in our same language, say you had a change were l (ell) dropped from consonant clusters. 4/8

For example, say you have a sound change in a language where f changes to v between two vowels. So "afar" would become "avar." Here's the thing people miss. If f changes to v in one word where it's between two vowels, it changes to v in *every* word where it's between two vowels. 3/8

In fact language change, particularly sound change, is very regular and systematic. It follows rules. Sound changes are triggered by the environment in which the sound occurs. Also, some sounds and environments are more stable than others, so some sound changes are more likely than others. 2/8