Fantasy languages

[Parqstu]

Have you made up your own fantasy language/s?

If you have, why not share abit with us or some tips on creating new languages.

If liniin ishi hakanpipiya akann ieing ishi shiakan akann liniin ishi ieing, wihakant ishi liniin akann wihakant ishi ieing.

Thats one language i made up a wile ago. Not as good at it as i was^^ (I didn't write it down that well).

[At Dusk I Reign]

No, I've never invented a fantasy language. There are a few 'fantasy' phrases in my novel, but they're exclusively based on Arabic. I can appreciate the hard work that authors put into creating new languages for their characters, but to be perfectly honest that particular aspect of world-building has never been of interest to me; as long as the story's a corker I can live without such things.

[Dwarven Gold]

I tried making a language once. It seemed genius at the time. But it didn't sound so good when sobered up.

[Meg the Healer]

I tried making a language once. It seemed genius at the time. But it didn't sound so good when sobered up.

That's hysterical!

I haven't been able to create my own language, but it is something I've been wanting to do. I tend to use Gaelic in my writings.

[Parqstu]

I haven't been able to create my own language, but it is something I've been wanting to do.

What's the problem Meg?

[Meg the Healer]

What's the problem Meg?

Not sure really. When I'm reading my chapters aloud or I'm talking dialogue thru, I feel like I can make a language for the Demons. But when I try to write it - it just doesn't look right on paper to me. I'm wondering if I've got a mental block because I think I should know more language and how dipthongs and accents and whatnot should work. Does that make sense?

[Ravana]

Oh, my. So much that could be said… for now, I'll limit it to two items: (1) if you're serious about having your own language, consult a linguist; and (2) my rates are very competitive. Heck, I even do basic tips for free.

[Meg the Healer]

Linguist.....thank you! I could not think of that word last night!

[Parqstu]

I feel like I can make a language for the Demons. But when I try to write it - it just doesn't look right on paper to me. I'm wondering if I've got a mental block because I think I should know more language and how dipthongs and accents and whatnot should work. Does that make sense?

I think i understand ya. I made a language up for Demons kind of, by kind of i mean who knows what being they were going to turn out as . I get mental blocks too.

Let me show you abit...

Gonoondeel lahanckof korkon ekonun more filriendeel. I dunno, you can say wether you think it sounds demon-ish?

[Ravana]

Well, Meg (and all)… how much you "should" know really depends on how extensively you plan on using the language. On one extreme, we have Tolkien, who made up significant portions of at least six languages I can think of off the top of my head, and probably one or two I've forgotten about… by "significant portion," I mean not just a handful of words, but a fairly extensive basic vocabulary and also grammatical rules. Then again, he was a linguist… and, as with the rest of his influences on fantasy writing, he set a high standard that subsequent authors often feel obliged to live up to.

You shouldn't.

If you do want a fairly "complete" language that will sound consistently like a language, then you probably will "need to seek professional help" (from a linguist, or from a psychiatrist, depending on whether you want to succeed or just be talked out of it ). But there are some fairly simple shortcuts you can use if all you want is a few words that sound like they're from the same language. Even there, the tips I might offer would far exceed the normal length of my posts (a topic that invariably becomes a standing joke in any forum I join…), so for now, I'll offer the most basic one, and see if it helps you out some.

Start by choosing what sounds are and are not possible as part of your language. For the moment, we'll assume you're limiting yourself to what humans can produce: demons, or any fantasy race, might have very different organs for sound production, but that will complicate matters beyond this basic step. How many sounds? Up to you: Hawaiian has the smallest inventory among human languages—thirteen: five vowels and eight consonants. I don't know what the maximum is: the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) includes 107 symbols, not counting diacritics, but no one language will use all or even most of these sounds.

Apropos of which: I would also strongly recommend that you decide early on what letters represent each of these sounds, and stick with your decisions; if you make changes later, make them systematically throughout your work, so that you (and your readers) don't get confused. (Keep in mind that, for most languages, one letter stands for one sound: English is a notorious exception. If we did that, we'd need as many as 48 letters, depending on your dialect. For a good display of just how bad it gets, check the Wikipedia article on English orthography; just scroll down to the tables that begin a third of the way down… then keep scrolling. It'll make you wonder how anybody ever learns to read and write in this language.…) Here I will use letters as they're commonly pronounced in Romance languages, for the sake of simplicity, along with a couple combinations of letters that you don't necessarily see written that way, but which allow me to avoid introducing non-standard symbols. Your needs may vary. I will use technical terms only so that I can talk about sounds in groups: you don't need to know these (there's no quiz at the end of class…), but it's a lot faster to be able to say "fricative" than it is to list them every time, just as it's faster to say "adverb" than to say "word that modifies a verb, adjective or adverb" over and over. (Besides, that definition is recursive, since you'd need to substitute it in again for "adverb".… )

Vowel sounds should generally include at least the five "cardinal" ones found in almost any human language: a (father), e (fate), i (feet), o (foal), u (food). (If you ever took Spanish, these are the sounds you learned on the first day of class as the "only" ones in the language.) Most languages will include a few others, but I'm not familiar with any that omit any of these.

Consonants are best handled in groups: stops (p, b, t, d, k, g), fricatives (f, v, th (thin), dh (this), s, z, sh, zh, h), affricates (ts, dz, ch, j), nasals (m, n, ng), liquids (l, r) and glides (y, w). Note that this doesn't even exhaust the English inventory. (I left out glottal stops, for instance… we don't use a separate letter for those. The sound occurs in the middle of the word cotton: you don't actually say “t” here, no matter what you might think you're saying.) Also, these can be classed as voiced or voiceless (voiced sounds are b, d, g, v, z, zh, dz, j, plus all nasals, liquids and glides). You'll note, as you sound your way through them, that most of these appear in pairs: p and b are made the same way with your mouth, the only difference between them being that p is voiceless, b voiced.

So what you do is choose some of these groups as possible for your language, others forbidden. Want it smooth and flowing? Lots of liquids, glides and nasals, minimal stops and affricates, possibly only voiced ones. Want it harsh and grating? Reverse this: lots of stops, fricatives and affricates, emphasis on voiceless ones. Your species has no lips? Then you need a different grouping—labials: p, b, f, v, m, all of which get dropped. No tongue? You'd lose just about everything except those letters, plus h and a glottal stop; it would also become difficult to explain how different vowel sounds were created… you might still have a and o, but not much else, assuming the rest of the anatomy mirrored human.

Set up your sound inventory and you're halfway to having something in which whatever word you make up will at least sound like it came from the same language as all the other words you've made up. The other half, as you might guess, is rules on how these sounds combine: consonant clusters, dipthongs, and so forth… but we'll save that for the second lecture. That'll give you time to experiment; you'll probably come up with a few such rules yourself, without any help. For now, forget about grammar completely: it’ll only matter if you’re going to be using the language extensively.