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Building languages

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 dwarf names sound dwarfish?

I actually have a BA in Linguistics and I'm working on a master's in Computational Linguistics, so I'm curious what other people's methods and approaches are. Also, I'm starting the discussion in case anybody has any questions about linguistics and features of languages.
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
I don't have the expertise to develop a full language, and I find it is often apparent when authors try to create languages and don't really know what they're doing. I have one non-human race in my current stories, and for them I have a few words here and there that I can use for flavor, but nothing resembling a full language.
 
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 would handle the grammar business automatically. It glues together verb stems with tense morphemes and pastes words together in the intended order. Then after I built it, I didn't really add any vocabulary to it, so I've barely ever used it for anything. (I suppose a more robust version of that spreadsheet could have adjustable settings so an author can decide basic linguistic features like "gender inflection" or "no verb conjugation" or "subject-verb-object order." I have no idea who would use such a thing, though.)
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
I write historical fantasy, so make use of regional (European) languages. When it comes to the non-humans, so far I've been able to dance around it. For example, I have characters speak of Old Dwarvish, but so far I've been able to avoid actually having anyone speak in it.

I don't have linguistics, but I'm a medieval historian and have knocked around languages enough to know when someone is lifting words. It's mostly just distracting. Even place names pop up for me like lights on a model train set, and I wind up looking at them instead. When it comes to whole phrases or sentences in an invented language, I just skip over it. If it's important, the author has to translate. If it's not important, it can be ignored. I did that even when reading Tolkien. Yeah, okay, elvish. Drive through. Now, once I'd finished the book and came to the addenda, then I did look more closely and admire the craftsmanship. But that was a separate work, at least for me.
 

elemtilas

Inkling
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 dwarf names sound dwarfish?

I actually have a BA in Linguistics and I'm working on a master's in Computational Linguistics, so I'm curious what other people's methods and approaches are. Also, I'm starting the discussion in case anybody has any questions about linguistics and features of languages.

BA in linguistics certainly gives you a leg up (in other words, you already know what phonology & syntax and generative grammar are); but that won't necessarily help you make a language. That, glossopoesy, is an art all its own! (Curiously, it works the other way very well: kids who begin toying with language and making languages in a fairly serious way find the study of linguistics much easier. If only because they go into LING 101 knowing what phonology & syntax & Sapir-Whorf are!)

I am not a linguist and never studied it in a formal way. My philology came second hand through studying a number of interesting languages in college.

What I generally do, when it comes to building a fantasy language for The World is, quite simply, to discover the language that is already there. Seems simplistic, but that's the long and short of it. Sometimes, I have worked to uncover rather a lot of a language, to the point where I can (and do) write stories or poetry in it. Other times, I've just brushed a bit of dust off a tiny corner.

Having some idea of language aesthetics is a really good idea for a fantasy writer. It keeps you from committing the sin of naming your characters or cities sdkfnaslf'we'rc'we''q'''. Dreadful. You're in a good position to create small jewels we call "naming languages" which are basically a few names and words that share an aesthetic quality. You don't need to delve into grammar and syntax and so forth to do this.

As for snippets and antiquated forms: I don't think that is important, generally speaking for a general fantasy writer. And in fact might be detrimental if you don't know what you're doing. It might be important to you, as a linguist, to go down that road, to express your creativity in a linguistic as well as a literary mode. Even though I have made a number of languages, I can't recall ever using more than the odd word of an invented language in any of them.

If making languages, either as an adjunct to writing or just because it is of interest to you, I'd recommend you look into joining the Conlang List and also, perhaps the Language Creation Society. There are a number of other language invention forums, but those two are the most linguistically oriented places.

For those who want a language in their work, but don't want to bother with the work of making a good one, the LCS can (and does) help pair up writers with competent language inventors.
 

elemtilas

Inkling
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.

Right. Although, if your work becomes famous...

What an invented language will do is provide a cultural subcontext. Your Elves speak some language, and it probably isn't American English! They have their own words for things; their own ways of organising the world around them and those schemes have particular words. They also have their own turns of phrase and their own proverbs. Expressing these things within their native language, even if you never publish that language, really does shed much light on individual's characters, and the perspective of any given ethnos or culture.

I actually developed a primitive spreadsheet for my elvish language that would handle the grammar business automatically. It glues together verb stems with tense morphemes and pastes words together in the intended order. Then after I built it, I didn't really add any vocabulary to it, so I've barely ever used it for anything. (I suppose a more robust version of that spreadsheet could have adjustable settings so an author can decide basic linguistic features like "gender inflection" or "no verb conjugation" or "subject-verb-object order." I have no idea who would use such a thing, though.)

I wouldn't, but you might actually be surprised how people out there are searching for the next great thing in text generation applets!
 
In response to the portion of the question, of whether it's important to include snippets of other languages or antiquated forms of your language, I just wanted to say...the one thing that always bothers me about made-up languages is that I very rarely have any idea how to pronounce them. Thus, when books include actual snatches of a made-up language, I will almost always skim over them. It's like they detract from the story, rather than add to it, because they get in the way of the story and cause me to skim and possibly miss things. But that's just me! Some people enjoy them! I, however, and many others I know of, really don't find that they add much to the story - *in most cases*. I am sure there are exceptions! Just though tit was worth noting.

With that said, while I won't read whole sentences in a made up language, I do like it when people use single-word exclamations and or expressions in their native tongues, as long as they are easy enough to sound-out. It sort of acts like an accent, reminding you that a character is from another culture - without having them babble on in words you can't (and may not care to) understand.
 

ScaryMJDiamcreep

Troubadour
I don't think I've ever read any story that had a made up language that it didn't just have it translated apart from a few small rude words. And because I'm not very attracted towards linguistics, I wouldn't know the first step in making a proper made up language. Closest I've got is setting a couple of small rules to help me make magic sentences.

Of course, I don't think any human would be able to help in constructing a language for a race that has two bodies and utilises both bodies to speak that language. Which, unfortunately, is something I seem to have found myself having to do.
 
Of course, I don't think any human would be able to help in constructing a language for a race that has two bodies and utilises both bodies to speak that language. Which, unfortunately, is something I seem to have found myself having to do.
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 Japanese (a highly gendered language in which male and female speakers use a slightly different vocabulary for social reasons, but are not prohibited by biological ones) but it would exclude such communication systems as pheremones (in which males are capable of merely detecting the chemical signals that only the females can secrete).

A language based on two different bodies communicating simultaneously could potentially break this rule, because it might include morphemes where two bodies are required to broadcast but not necessarily to receive. For instance, if the two voices were used to produce a particular harmonic interval (say, a minor third) or contrasting tones (rising + falling) or contrasting vowels lengths or coordinating gestures (two arms up, two arms down), then a single-bodied listener could comprehend it without necessarily being able to duplicate it. There are additional complications if the bodies don't have to be present together; how far apart can they be? If it always takes two bodies to communicate, then one body could never fully express what the other body is doing unless the listener was also in both places at once.

If you want to talk more about this, there's a lot more I could observe about the potential for a linguistic system here.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
For my sprites there's a type of "feel" that I'm shooting for, and I often look at words through Google translate in Irish, Finnish, Welsh and Scottish as a starting point. And I use a couple of accent marks on the a, e and o - sometimes it helps with pronunciation, but other times I think it feels spritely to highlight the vowels. I didn't use accent marks for any of the main character names. I thought that would feel like too much.

But that's for names. In terms of a language which might help guide the way they think, feel and perceive the world, I have a few ideas floating around my head, and I don't know yet if I'll make use of them, or how I would if I want to. I saw in a "weird language quirks" list that some languages have a lot of different conjugations, including one that has a special way of conjugating words just for speaking with the king or about the king on the news. Since my sprites have a history as pranksters, I thought they might have a special conjugation they use for talking about a prank and their mark. But what would I actually do with that? I'm not sure.

Real languages have a lot of words that don't translate well, so there's always this moment of suspense - it's probably a named trope - where the characters talk about a word, then pause before mumbling out the long-winded super-dramatic translation. It happens in real life of course, but it also feels kind of played out in stories. I've resolved to keep an eye out for an opportunity to do something different with the untranslatable word.

As for accents, it's too awkward, and I've mostly shelved the thought of trying to develop one. I once read a transcript someone had written of myself talking, and they left out g's and contracted unusual words, and I thought reading it made me sound stupid. But I'm fairly sure I did leave off the g's and speak that way, technically. But the transcript called far too much attention those extremely minor features of my language and made it look my language was abrupt and broken. Nobody reading that would get a clear impression of how I speak. That said, I'm looking to come up with a basic phrase I can use to describe the fairy accent. I saw in a youtube video, for example, that (and I paraphrase) "The French kind of speak through their lips, their words are kind of forward, their lips tend to pucker when they speak." So finding the right phrase to describe them like "guttural" or "nasally" or I guess "forward and lippy"? is the goal.

I also saw something like, "The Irish don't tend to emphasize words with their tone, so they'll rearrange the sentence structure to do that for them. Instead of "the kids are at home with grandma," they might say, "Tis grandma the kids are at home with.'" Right now I'm considering a notion like that to be the golden grail for languages, but I haven't found one that works for my story.
 
For my sprites ... I use a couple of accent marks on the a, e and o - sometimes it helps with pronunciation, but other times I think it feels spritely to highlight the vowels.
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 make your use of them consistent. For instance, you could have a fairy name like Anwen that you want pronounced an-WEN (not AN-wen), so you mark it like Anwén.

I saw in a "weird language quirks" list that some languages have a lot of different conjugations, including one that has a special way of conjugating words just for speaking with the king or about the king on the news. Since my sprites have a history as pranksters, I thought they might have a special conjugation they use for talking about a prank and their mark. But what would I actually do with that? I'm not sure.
It would enable the sprites to talk openly in front of the mark without the mark necessarily understanding, a process akin to code-switching. To go back to the idea of stress, some languages (like English) use word stress to differentiate between different forms. We say record [ˈɹɛk.ɚd] or REH-krd when we mean the noun, and record [ɹɪˈkɔːd] or re-KORD when we mean the verb. A person who doesn't speak a stressed language wouldn't necessarily realize they're different words. Your fairies could do some very simple changes in stress, which you could show by the use of accent marks. An alert reader might pick up that "stress marks = fairies are lying."

Real languages have a lot of words that don't translate well, so there's always this moment of suspense - it's probably a named trope - where the characters talk about a word, then pause before mumbling out the long-winded super-dramatic translation. It happens in real life of course, but it also feels kind of played out in stories. I've resolved to keep an eye out for an opportunity to do something different with the untranslatable word.
I dislike this trope most when the word isn't untranslatable. "It's the Klingon word meaning honor," says the Klingon. So why didn't he just say honor if it means the same freakin' thing?

Some words aren't untranslatable, but the translated version just has less information in the other language. Doctor in English translates to doctor (m) and doctora (f) in Spanish, so the translation may just lack information, or contain an unspoken assumption. Likewise, there are languages with "inclusive we" and "exclusive we." In English, it is ambiguous whether the speaker intends to include the listener or not. And there are some phrases which have so little information — ambiguous even in the starting language — that you literally can't translate it without knowing what is meant. Does the English phrase Japanese prisoner of war camp mean a Japanese camp full of prisoners of war, or a camp full of Japanese prisoners of war?

I also saw something like, "The Irish don't tend to emphasize words with their tone, so they'll rearrange the sentence structure to do that for them. Instead of "the kids are at home with grandma," they might say, "Tis grandma the kids are at home with.'"
Languages where word order can be freely changed around tend to have case markings, like German, Russian or Latin. Each word is marked as subject, object, possessive, or whatever. It doesn't matter where the words appear in the sentence because no information is lost. However, it's not a requirement. Some languages (like English and Chinese) allow sentence topicalization by putting the object first ("Black beans, I like").
 

ScaryMJDiamcreep

Troubadour
With the details I currently have for what I want to do for the language of my two-bodied race(they're called Duongels), I have it that humans can be taught to understand it, but could never replicate it, both bodies have to be present for them to speak that language, and they know how to speak the language humans speak.
 

Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
I live in a part of the Netherlands that borders Belgium and Germany, where the local dialects are a merger of german, dutch and french. This gives me a varied base understanding of language, but I have no clue whatsoever when it comes to actual linguistic theory, os whenever I create a language, I try to base it off of a language that I am familiar with, then poke it with a stick so often that it sounds different.
 
BA in linguistics certainly gives you a leg up (in other words, you already know what phonology & syntax and generative grammar are); but that won't necessarily help you make a language.
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 languages. Professor of linguistics JRR Tolkien created all of his languages. Linguist Mark Okrand created Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek (each based on a few words and sounds invented by James Doohan) and Atlantean for a Disney movie. Linguist David J Peterson created Dothraki and Valyrian for the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones (based on words given by GRR Martin in the books). Paul Frommer (doctorate in linguistics) created Na'vi for Avatar.

I don't doubt that anyone who focuses on building languages will get better at that skill with time; or that anyone could, with time and study, invent a functioning language themselves. (Esperanto, for instance, was created not by a linguist, but by an ophthalmologist. In a broader sense, nearly all languages of the world were invented by unskilled labor—just not alone and within a single lifetime.) I'm not sure I take your point that a background in linguistics won't necessarily help create a language if one were inclined to do so. It certainly does. The evidence suggests this is so.
 

elemtilas

Inkling
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.

What it means is making a language is an art in and of itself. Being a linguist means that you are knowledgeable in the tools and the materials. But unless you are also an artist, that's not going to help you create a linguistic work of art.

Perhaps a writer or an actor made up a few sounds to start with, but it was linguists who made them into languages. Professor of linguistics JRR Tolkien created all of his languages. Linguist Mark Okrand created Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek (each based on a few words and sounds invented by James Doohan) and Atlantean for a Disney movie. Linguist David J Peterson created Dothraki and Valyrian for the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones (based on words given by GRR Martin in the books). Paul Frommer (doctorate in linguistics) created Na'vi for Avatar.

David Peterson was conlanging before he became a linguist. A nontrivial number of Conlang-L members have in fact launched linguistics careers from their desire to make languages. Others that you list have generally been contacted by a production house because they are linguists and there was no other place for (Paramount, e.g.) to go to have a language made. This was also the case for Pakuni (created by Victoria Fromkin in the 1970s).

I don't doubt that anyone who focuses on building languages will get better at that skill with time; or that anyone could, with time and study, invent a functioning language themselves. (Esperanto, for instance, was created not by a linguist, but by an ophthalmologist. In a broader sense, nearly all languages of the world were invented by unskilled labor—just not alone and within a single lifetime.) I'm not sure I take your point that a background in linguistics won't necessarily help create a language if one were inclined to do so. It certainly does. The evidence suggests this is so.

What the evidence suggests especially re Esperanto is that indeed anyone can cobble together a rubegoldbergian device that functions as a system of communication. And it functions well enough. If you want art, you go looking where the artists are. If you're very lucky (in the case of Tolkien and Peterson), you'll get both at the same time!
 
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 the letters and lots of apostrophes in every word, sure, contact an artist.

You're saying that people who make conlangs get a good understanding of linguistics in the process of their task; I can accept that, because they're standing on the shoulders of centuries of prior investigation into the phenomenon of language. But you're also somehow alleging that knowing a lot about linguistics isn't necessarily useful for making a language (a statement that denigrates the degree I spent 4 years acquiring), which seems to invalidate your first point, except that you hand-wave at me something about how language-creation is an "art." I consider myself an artist in many ways — I draw, I act, I sing, I play 3 musical instruments, I cook, and I write — but art is not relevant here, in the same way that drawing a picture of a dog doesn't teach you about biology. Conlangers have adopted a lot of the knowledge acquired by linguists, knowledge which you somehow say isn't pertinent to their task.

I'm just going to leave it at that.
 
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Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I'm going to take a second to comment on this conlang as art vs. profession thing. I have only in the last two months or so really started thinking about conlangs, and even then mostly kind of in the back of my head, very occasionally writing down notes. So my opinion on conlangs isn't worth much. But I have read a bit about creativity, so I'm going to repeat some of that

If you're looking for a conlang that is really, really different, you want someone who was creative before they learned most of the info about the profession, kind of like elementilas says. For the most part, as you learn the higher levels of a field, you start to build resistance to ideas that are new and different. And that's perfectly normal because most "new" ideas aren't. An expert could probably point to old reasoning dismissing the new idea, completely unaware that something may have changed (maybe outside the field) which makes the old idea relevant again.

The thing is.... what are you looking for in a conlang? In my brief reading about languages recently, I learned that Klingon is an absolutely unspeakable language, to the point that fewer than 10 people are believed to actually be fluent. That's because there's something like two dozen ways to conjugate every verb (imo, that sounds like fake creativity, taking one item and pushing it beyond rationality). Elvish sounds beautiful, but it's all based on Finnish - how "creative" is it? I haven't seen anything to suggest that it is.... or needs to be.

And then there's other things. Does a linguist know some rules for making a language sound beautiful? An amateur could have trouble finding much about them. And someone could appear creative because they have broader experience. Someone who can pick and pull from 30 different languages can have something more robust and different than someone with a creative hunch, a wiki article, and a template language.

There's also a creative technique which requires an expert to focus on a single, small problem, studying it from every angle and becoming immensely well-read on the subject, and finding a solution that draws from the wide readings on a focused topic. If you want someone to fix Klingon, for example, that's who you would would want.

All that said, being the amateur, I have one language thing that I chose not to mention above, partly because it is more on the creative side. The way my sprites write down names. Imagine a rectangle grid that's a bit wider than it is tall. The name is kind of a thin cursive-looking line running through the middle. All around this name are like two dozen imaginary little circles filling out the rest of the grid. Every adjective has a symbol that takes prominence in 1-3 of the circles, then a tail that swings through the name, with a thickness and length and swirl that suggests how intense that adjective applies (if the adjective takes more than 1 circle, the tail links them, forming a complete glyph). So a name, depending on where it's written, would have several adjective glyphs on top of it, and each glyph would have a semi-unique tail that's already like a signature if you're writing it or a judgement if someone else is writing your name.

I wouldn't expect a linguist to come up with this for a story. Among other things, there probably aren't enough spaces on the grid for all the adjectives you would really need to include, so I wouldn't think the thought of writing lots of words in one space would get very far with an expert. It's also only a tiny part of a written language, and I would have no idea how to continue with it if I wanted to (since there is no template to follow, it would take expertise to address all the problems and needs to develop into a real written language).

So to recap, in my opinion, if you want a really creative and different idea, the expert is less likely to find it, but for anything else, and especially if you want something that feels smooth and robust, an amateur just can't be expected to do it.
 
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Riva

Minstrel
So far I've never created a fictional language, this is the first language wich I try to create (although it's the second attempt).

I started out selecting some phones from the IPA trying to be a bit consistent and not selecting random ones. For example letting out entire manners or places of articulation. Then I selected a bit of random phones to not make it too artificial.
For the vocals I selected a bunch wich I think sounded good.
Maybe it's important to note that I selected sounds wich I can pronounce quite comfortably.

Then I laid down a syllabic structure. It is (C/V) C V (C) (C). The brackets meaning that is optional.
After this I will start to make a basic vocabulary and grammatic rules.
My aim is not to make a fully fleshed language, something lika a proto-language would already be a nice result.

As for snippets of other language; I don't think I will bring in real languages in the setting, except for the language in wich the story will be told (italian).
Regarding antiquated forms of my main language, I don't think it's very important. Maybe from time to time I use some sought expression but the rest I think it's pretty regular. The thing is that if it's too antiquated it would sound straight up weird and out of place: "omo" (or even more antiquated: "homo") instead of "uomo" (man), "aere" instead of "aria" (air), ecc...
Some words even changed meaning: "gentile" wich today means kind compared to "gentile" wich in the middle ages meant noble.
What I have done however is trying to emulate the feeling of the latin versions that I had to translate when I still took latin classes. It works quite well for myths: generally there are no long descriptions and periods are short, this result in a short story that can fit in a page or two.

Considering that you have some qualification in lignuistics, could you give me some advice for creating languages? Would you change something in my methodology wich might be superfluous? And also: what about sounds produced from non human vocal tracts?
 
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