What goes into a language? - Writers Forum

Monkuta · 04-05-2008, 03:00 PM

This may already have a topic for it, but I did a few searches and nothing came up, so here's my question for y'all:

I'm a fantasy writer. I've read a lot of fantasy books. One thing I've noticed in many books is that the author created a languages and names specific to each race or nationality in their story.
I'm wondering what goes into doing something like that? What needs to be done to create names and dialects based on real ones or to invent one from scratch?

I know a little bit about the subject. I know, for example, that Tolkien used a lot of old English (ex: Mordor, old way of saying Murdur) in the names and places of Middle-Earth. However, things like elvish and dwarfish, etc... The confuse me a bit.

Could anyone enlighten me?

lin · 04-05-2008, 04:18 PM

You can get into it as deeply as you want, depending on how much of it is used.

I did a novel last fall that uses an invented language. I just kind of dashed it off, using a sort of seat-of-the-pants pre-Latin/Greek/Sanskrit. (Language scholars posti the existence of "Proto IndoEuropean, but no body really knows any words. We could presume it was more highly inflected since there has been a decline in conjugation over time. (My language is allegedely what PIE is degenerated from, so I have a lot of lattitude)

Nadsat, the street slang in "A Clockwork Orange" was based largely on Russian, and English puns on Russian words like "horrorshow" for "cool", from the Russian "horosho=good"

If you really want to get into it, study linguistics, get some foreign stuff and read it until you pick up the "accent".

Monkuta · 04-05-2008, 04:47 PM

I see, you're saying I should find a language I like, learn it as well as I need to, then edit it? Awhile ago I tried making a language for an old story. It as french but all the words were backwards. I think it worked rather well, but others disagreed.

lin · 04-05-2008, 07:39 PM

Quote:

I think it worked rather well, but others disagreed.

Boy, go figure

You can just make up whatever you want, you know. Gutteral words full of k's and G's f's for the warrior race, smooth Hawaiian sounding words with m's and l's for the peaceful victims, etc.

Look around on the net for Finnish or Basque (possibly the weirdest language on earth) or Swahili or what ever, pick one, absorb it and kick out the jams.

Ilasir Maroa · 04-05-2008, 08:11 PM

What you are describing is called "conlanging". Your supposed language was not a language at all, but merely a "cipher", which is a complete grammar from a natural language(natlang), with lexicon(set of words) altered. Toklien did not in fact use Old English for his languages, but rather Welsh and Finnish for Quenya and Sindarin, general principles of the Semitic languages for Dwarven, and Gaelic for the black speech. Even then, those languages were mostly a basis. What he really borrowed were parts of the grammar and the basic phonologies(groups of sounds).

Actually creating a language involves a great knowledge of linguistics, and many months to many years depending on how far you want to go for it. For what you are proposing, it would probably be better to set up a "phonectic inventory", or group of allowable sounds, and just create names rather randomly.

Shawn · 04-05-2008, 08:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lin

Gutteral words full of k's and G's f's for the warrior race, smooth Hawaiian sounding words with m's and l's for the peaceful victims, etc.

Yes, and then have the peaceful "victims" blackmail the violent warriors.

That'd be cool.

Non Serviam · 04-05-2008, 10:01 PM

Basque is pretty weird. But phonetically, it's positively normal compared to the !kung language.

If you want a really alien-sounding tongue, try mixing !kung sounds onto Basque grammar with Finnish inflections.

Ilasir Maroa · 04-05-2008, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Non Serviam

Basque is pretty weird. But phonetically, it's positively normal compared to the !kung language.

If you want a really alien-sounding tongue, try mixing !kung sounds onto Basque grammar with Finnish inflections.

Talk about incompatibility issues. And would still be more of a cipher and less of a language.

Non Serviam · 04-06-2008, 05:16 AM

There are practically no complete artificial languages. There's Esperanto and Volapuk (ciphers rather than languages, if I understand the view Ilasir just posted), plus Quendi, Sindarin, and Klingon. And even they have minuscule vocabularies and practically no speakers compared to natural languages. Because you can spend a lifetime designing a proper language, and still not finish.

Shawn · 04-06-2008, 10:09 AM

Yes, it's terribly hard to duplicate thousands of years of linguistic evolution in a life-time.

I think the best rule of thumb for fantasy writers is to make mention of the other languages in the world, but not to speak it. For instance, someone asks the name of some carry-on luggage and it replies, with a thick Russian accent, "You would not understand it in my native language. Just call me Bob."

Monkuta · 04-06-2008, 10:26 AM

So it's better to just write the story and create the different words of the language as I need them instead of going into depth with it?

Shawn · 04-06-2008, 10:28 AM

I'd say so. But that's your choice.

Monkuta · 04-06-2008, 10:40 AM

Alright. Thanks for the advice everyone. It really helped.

lin · 04-06-2008, 02:36 PM

Swahili, by thw way, is not a natural language. It's like Bantu words on Arabic syntax (or the other way around?) A pidgin that developed from the early African slave trade...which was mostly Arabs buying slaves already on the market.

Which is why I always thought it was so hilarious that all the "radical blacks" back in the sixties started learning Swahili...and decided the non-whitedevil relgion was Islam.

lin · 04-06-2008, 02:46 PM

Quote:

So it's better to just write the story and create the different words of the language as I need them instead of going into depth with it?

OHHHH yeah. Sorry if I gave a different impression. You don't really need to create the grammatical structure of an alien language (and are apparently not a powerful linguistic scholar like Burroughs or Tolkein) You just need a few lines, right? (If not, rethink: how good is it to have long passages of something nobody understands?)

By the way, there is a glossary for nadsat at the end of Clockwork Orange. You look up words as you read and by the end are "fluent in future-punk slang".

I'd say what you would do (if you don't just make it up out of whole cloth) would be cast around for something like Finnish or Basque or PIE on the web and just check it out, then write based on that. It's not like you're learning a language, more like an accent or dialect. You read a Brer Rabbit novel or some Irish brogue-bog and you see how it works, just like you talk Frenchy or Bombayish when telling a joke.

Then you generate lines based on that.
When a character who only speaks a language that I mention as being a pastiche on "proto-PIE" first meets our heroes she says, “Os bhrat crischapi, amichin?”

No need for anybody to understand it, but it has the "proto-latinate" feel, with a Sanskrit "bh" tossed in. And the last word might be realized as a variation of "ami", "amigo", etc.

This is probably easier because it's similar to Earth languages. To create something truly alien would be more fun, and require a little more thought. But not a major committment to linquistics scholarship.