Ireth
Myth Weaver
Two of my WIPs at the moment deal heavily with language barriers between characters, in the form of a main character being unexpectedly thrust into another world/culture which uses a language the other character either does not know at all, or only knows a handful of words and phrases. Example A is the former, with a human among merfolk; example B is the latter, with a human among elves. Both characters at first have no means of translating to or from their native tongue, magical or otherwise, and are forced to learn via immersion.
My question is, especially in the latter case here the MC starts out with a handful of words at her disposal, how do I show their progression from that to conversational to reasonably fluent over the course of the story?
I've elected to avoid use of <these> to denote the language the POV character does not know (both stories go back and forth between the immersed character and their other-culture peers), and in the case of the human among elves (a LOTR fanfic) I had thought to just put the Elvish the MC knows/learns in English rather than write out all the elvish every time one of them speaks to the MC in scenes from her POV. Trouble is I can see it looking really choppy and hard to read early on, especially if I use ellipses to denote stuff that's not understood ("I don't know ... ... her name." "... her yours, and see if she ... ?"*). And I'm not sure I want to just narrate all the time ("they talked for a while and I picked out X, Y or Z word every so often"), as that wouldn't easily show the progression I'm after.
*"I don't know [how to ask] her name." "[Tell] her yours, and see if she [answers]?"**
**Maybe footnotes at the end of each chapter are the answer here? Thoughts?
My question is, especially in the latter case here the MC starts out with a handful of words at her disposal, how do I show their progression from that to conversational to reasonably fluent over the course of the story?
I've elected to avoid use of <these> to denote the language the POV character does not know (both stories go back and forth between the immersed character and their other-culture peers), and in the case of the human among elves (a LOTR fanfic) I had thought to just put the Elvish the MC knows/learns in English rather than write out all the elvish every time one of them speaks to the MC in scenes from her POV. Trouble is I can see it looking really choppy and hard to read early on, especially if I use ellipses to denote stuff that's not understood ("I don't know ... ... her name." "... her yours, and see if she ... ?"*). And I'm not sure I want to just narrate all the time ("they talked for a while and I picked out X, Y or Z word every so often"), as that wouldn't easily show the progression I'm after.
*"I don't know [how to ask] her name." "[Tell] her yours, and see if she [answers]?"**
**Maybe footnotes at the end of each chapter are the answer here? Thoughts?