Can the ALC be read by itself?

[AI-student]

So basically what the title says: Can it be read by itself or should I first read the normal non-advanced Language Construction Kit?

[mèþru]

The ALC occasionally references pages from the LCK and assumes that you have the level of background in linguistics provided by the LCK (what is a phoneme, what are metaphors of basic cognition, etc.) I guess in theory it is doable, but you probably either know too little to understand it or know so much that the ALC isn't worth your time.

[Axiem]

The first LCK is, in my opinion, a much better introduction to conlanging. It's fairly broad in topic choice, but it gives you a reasonable start.

The ALCK delves more into depth on certain topics, which can be useful if you want more information on those topics.

[zompist]

Yeah, depends on how much you know already. If you've had some linguistics, you can certainly skip the LCK.

(If it was your first linguistics/conlanging book, well, make sure you read up on phonetics and the comparative method sometime... and I personally hope you'll return for the semantics and pragmatics.)