Recent content by Grant_Evermoore

I think you're overestimating the role of art. You can certainly cobble together something that looks like a language without any training, but that doesn't mean it actually has the same properties as a natural language. But sure, if you want some pretty swirly alphabets with fancy marks over...

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean. All of the well-known languages that I can think of, fully developed languages created for works of fiction, were largely built by linguists. Perhaps a writer or an actor made up a few sounds to start with, but it was linguists who made them into...

Sure. Obviously your word palette is going to be governed by your genre and tone. My current novel is high fantasy, so those are the limits I set for myself.

When I write fantasy I try to avoid immersion-breaking words of all sorts, not just profanity. For instance, I avoid words like "okay" because it just doesn't sound right in a fantasy story. To me. Your mileage may vary, etc.

Accent marks can do a couple of things: change which syllable gets the stress (as in Spanish), indicate tone in tonal languages (as in many Asian and African languages), change the characteristics vowel (length, pronunciation, etc). and so on. If you decide what the accent marks mean it'll help...

That's a very interesting problem. Normally, linguists consider that one of the hallmarks of language is a feature called interchangeability — that those who participate in the language have the ability to broadcast and receive the same speech signals. This would include such languages as...

I think what you're saying, and pardon me if I'm putting words in your mouth, is that too-modern language can be immersion-breaking. Your fantasy character might use a word like "fuck" because it's an English word like all the other English words in your book; but a term like "motherfucker" or...

I agree that authors who don't know language construction are quite often apparent. In most cases, developing the language doesn't really add anything to the story; you're not expecting the reader to learn these languages. I actually developed a primitive spreadsheet for my elvish language that...

What do you generally do when it comes to building fantasy languages in your world? Do you think it's important for your story to include snippets of other languages, or more antiquated forms of your main language? What about character naming conventions, so the elf names sound elvish and the...

Thank you! I should also mention that I have a B.A. in Linguistics, in case anybody has any questions about building a fantasy language.

Joining into this thread. Started with 67K words from September and October, added 17K in November so far. It's tough to write every day. That little stats graph, it taunts me.

This is one of those times that I wish I could have taken that course in taboo language when I got my BA in Linguistics. Yes, taboo language varies greatly by culture, which it means it also varies by time period. The words that are taboo today were not always so; and words that we are free...

Hello, everyone. I've been working on my fantasy novel in earnest this year, and I've got about 80K words so far. That puts me at around 60% complete. I'm looking forward to discussing writing with others.