Creating a language

[TheokinsJ]

Since I watched the Lord of The Rings films and read the books, I have been fascinated by Tengwar, the elvish language created by Tolkien. In his lifetime Tolkien created several variations of elvish and dwarvish, which he developed throughout his books. Now writing my own fantasy series, I'd like to try to create an equally believable and fluid language for the people of my world. I realise creating a language is a monumental task, but I believe it would be fun and also pretty cool. Does anyone know of any techniques used in creating an alphabet for a language? I've already created some words, heavily based off old norse and icelandic, however creating the alphabet for my language seems to be my biggest obstacle. I originally thought about using the Eldar Futhrak, (The alphabet of the nords) but soon realised that it was similar to Tolkien's dwarvish alphabet far too much. Anyone have any tips or know of any resources/websites that could help me out?

 

[Jared]

Here is the summary of a discussion with some linguists with interest in fantasy-world languages. I'd suggest reading through and going to the lingusts' websites.

 

[The Unseemly]

If it helps, know that Tolkein based his languages of actual languages (Latin, I believe). I should think that people inventing their own languages, and making them believable, should have some sort of base off an actual language, because inventing a language, from scratch, is something not belonging to the easy. In Tolkein's elvish (I think), a lot of the grammatical rules, such as past/present/future tense or conjugation was based off Latin (or whatever the language he used was).

There's also a lot of language symbolism in his writing - "mord" in German means to murder, hece Mordor. This sort of thing helps with people relating to the text, and getting an idea of what is happening, what a place is. And, when you think or Mordor on the terms of mord, what image do you get?

Anyway, food for thought.

 

[Jessquoi]

Do you want your alphabet to be phonetic or pictorial? Meaning do you want the symbols used to represent sounds (as with our European alphabet) or whole concepts (like in Chinese)? That's the first step in my opinion. I've pointed out before that many authors use terms derived from other languages for their books which you said you're doing with old Norse and Icelandic, that's great. If you really want to create your own language (and I assume you are solidly devoted to the world you are creating to have embarked on such a thing) there are a couple of things you could do. You could invent your own symbols, loosely based of pictures, for example a picture of a tree, say a line with some dots around it, could mean a particular sound or concept. That is how alphabets formed after all, people first started writing with pictures. You could try looking for already existing alphabets and base your symbols off that. If your alphabet is phonetic, the amount symbols and combinations of symbols you need will depend on how many sounds you have.

A key thing to remember is that languages also change frequently, even within the same world or kingdom etc. I remember giving the example of Switzerland where you can drive for twenty minutes down the road and the dialect will be different. Those are some important things to think about when designing your language. It isn't likely that everyone will speak the same. Another good example of that is the wide variety of accents and dialects you can find in the UK.

Does that help? Let me know if there's anything else I can try to help with.

 

[Ireth]

If it helps, know that Tolkein based his languages of actual languages (Latin, I believe). I should think that people inventing their own languages, and making them believable, should have some sort of base off an actual language, because inventing a language, from scratch, is something not belonging to the easy. In Tolkein's elvish (I think), a lot of the grammatical rules, such as past/present/future tense or conjugation was based off Latin (or whatever the language he used was).

There's also a lot of language symbolism in his writing - "mord" in German means to murder, hece Mordor. This sort of thing helps with people relating to the text, and getting an idea of what is happening, what a place is. And, when you think or Mordor on the terms of mord, what image do you get?

Anyway, food for thought.

Tolkien used a number of real languages for his invented ones; the most prominent were Finnish (for Quenya) and Welsh (for Sindarin), with a smattering of Latin thrown in, especially when it came to vowels. I'm not sure about the German influence on names such as Mordor, but I know that some names like Gandalf and Balin were taken directly from Norse myth (this is much more pronounced in The Hobbit, which features far more dwarves than LotR).