ancient language?

Is your story in the real world? If not, you can make a simple language based off of many fun ancient languages (since you only need it for spells, complication is unnecessary). If it is in the real world, I would advise finding a language that you like the sound of when you pronounce it phonetically - is your first language Arabic? Perhaps start by looking into the roots of that language and you may find something you love.

 

The beautiful things about languages are: they are constantly evolving, they mix and separate all the time, and (as you say) there are so many of them. Latin is a great choice for inspiration, but it's also probably one of the more common bases for modern magical languages.

Is there a 'feel' or sound you want to go for? Organic or scholarly? Familiar or completely alien? I used a mix of Latin/Spanish/Portuguese for one language in my book, and based another on Norse. I agree with Trick: try to find sounds you like to say that represent the magic in your story, and go from there. You'll more than likely find a source language to help you out!

 

I'm sure David Eddings wrote that when he was thinking up his magic system, he deliberately avoided using a real language or any language, just in case someone, thought they really could turn themselves into a bird and fly - Just like Garion did in the book - by uttering the magical phrase as they leapt off a cliff...
I like JKR's fake/cod Latin in HP, just the right about of strange and occult but still usually recognisable as to it's meaning... "Oculus Reparo"

 

Yes, I usually write D&L Eddings but if I remember correctly [from 20 years or more back - yikes closer to 30 - as it was for the start of The Malloreon set of books] this was in an article about DE. So it seemed most accurate to cite him.

 

One thing to consider is what cultural base your fantasy world has - if its European style world then latin/greek has its roots there. But if you have a world set in other cultures - eg India or China - then you could also draw on the ancient languages of those cultures for inspiration.

 

Why not Sumerian or Akkadian?

 

Try playing the White Album backwards on your turntable.

oops, just gave away my age. #9 #9 #9 #9