I've recently come to the conclusion that the reason I keep running into problems with my grammars is that I'm trying to make conlangs with features I'm not experienced with. I only really know English and German deeply, but since those two languages are so closely related knowing German doesn't help give me any experience with anything that would be foreign to me (besides a somewhat vestigial case system). I realized that when I tried to come up with something based purely off of German and English (the only two languages I know deeply), and the result just looks way too much like English (at least grammar-wise). Its actually surprising how similar the two are when you really think about it. Before I only ever really noticed the differences.
I'm actually finding some of the tips I've read about conlanging to be false. Grammatical features can't just be mixed and matched. A language is a complex machine and the parts all have to line and work together for the thing to be functional. Having a verb-initial order for instance has a cascading effect on the rest of the grammar. Assuming you have a VSO order, you're required to have a direct object preposition. I also had problems for years figuring out how a copular statement works (mostly because natural VSO languages are rare). The only answer I was able to find was to just move the entire predicate to the front. So instead of saying 'He is a linguist', you would say 'is linguist he'. Note that I got this from Maori, which has a nominative preposition. And then of course there's the Celtic languages which have this weird and annoying particle that serves no purpose other than to act as a boundary between the subject-verb and the other objects.
Yeah, I'm lost, and I'm questioning whether or not I can even do this. I'm thinking I simply don't have the requirements to make a conlang. Yes, I know a lot about linguistcis and various grammatical features, but I have little experience actually using these features. I mean, a while back I tried to make a language with a case system based off of Latin. I was really struggling to figure out how a lot of things would be said, when it occured to me that real languages have rely solely on noun cases (as in no prepositions) tend to have a much larger list than just 7 or 8; they typically have a dozen or two like you see in the Finno-Ugric languages. My case system was based off of Latin's, which also makes (or made?) use of prepositions.
I also was going to make a website about conlanging, but I decided that I shouldn't do that, if I don't have a conlang of my own to show off. Even if I do know a lot about linguistics (I could make a lot of additions to the LCK books, to give you an idea), I'd feel like a fat guy trying to sell a weight loss program. I mean, how can I really be sure of what I'm doing when I've never actually succeeded in doing it?
Can I actually make a conlang? I feel like I've just been fumbling in the dark all these years not knowing truly what I was doing. I'm really thinking that I'm just doomed to make conlangs based off of English my whole life, since I simply don't know anything outside the Germanic family. Yes, I've tried to study Japanese and Korean, but I never really got anywhere with those. I still can't get past the fact that there's no singular answer to how to pronounce Korean's tense consonants. Yes, I bought a living language set and haven't made it past the first chapter yet, all because I can't force myself to go further until I can pronounce things 100% right, when I have no way to gauge if I am doing so or not.