Language advice + Nicknames

[OGone]

1) I want to use a created language in my world which follows the same structure as the romance languages. My setting is basically Renaissance Italy towards the south (although the capital city has Brazilian favelas as well as Venice's canals...), Hispania in the north and a small section of desert resembles early Ottoman Empire. I think the language might be too glaringly obvious where it is borrowed from and come off a little cheesy, though.

The language is a combination of Italian/Portuguese/Spanish with some words just being straight loan words. The language is phasing out in the story, becoming somewhat archaic one although some older inhabitants speaking it. Most have converted to speaking "New Asterian" (*cough*English*cough*) but names, places and titles remain the same. Also some phrases such as please, thank you, yes & no, etc are used colloquially.

I've mapped out the pronunciation, everything is consistent but that's not too important for the question I have.

Anyways, here's a random sample of the language:

O = The
Di/Dia = Of
Dião/Diava = Of the
Des/Das = From
Mio/Mia = My
É = And
Señor/ Señorita = Sir/Lady
Capitão/Capitava = Captain
Lagono= Lake
Layos = Far
Ceras = Near
Queda = Canyon
Sol = Son
Villa = Palace
Casa = Noble houses

Few names: Capitão Barbosa, Presido Musso Marveaux, Giupatsi Marveaux, Kassio Contiello, Giovanni Salvoré des Lucia
Few places: O Arideo, Refugio diava Spirimatre, Piacho, Lucia, Venhicho, Janero, Leyos Lagano, Campiagri

Question: based on the sample, does it resemble real life languages too much? Would it be confusing for anybody who speaks Portuguese/Spanish/Italian? If not what could I do to make it seem more like a fantasy language and not just a poor person's Esperanto? At the same time, the language needs to *feel* like the cultures I'm trying to emulate.

2) When writing from third person limited, is using shortened names fine? I don't mean nicknames (I've been using "Van" for Giovanni and "Enzo" for Lorenzo). I have a character called Rrotiquozarritus who is always referred to by full name and, well, I can see how it could get kind of tedious reading the name repeatedly. Would "Rrot" be acceptable even though nobody in the story refers to him as that (only one character actually knows his name and they're not really on first name terms)?

 

[The Unseemly]

I suppose it rounds down on how you approach it. The language is important, because it reflects culture. Is it too obviously "snipped" from a real life language. Well, ask yourself: how much can you divert a fictional language off an actual language so that you still get the feel of the culture/users?
Personally, I don't really think there's anything wrong with your language, under the criteria you put it under. For me, the "issue" (if you like) is rather that I see a Spanish/Portuguese notion when I looked at your language, rather than a South Italian one. As a personal observation, Spanish/Portuguese are relatively far fetched from Italian, and just don't blend together.
Of course, this does not necessarily have to be a bad thing, and you can play around with the Spaniard/Italian language feature. I'm actually quite interested on what someone (like yourself) can do with it.

As for nicknames... Personally, I've never encountered the problem, because I prefer (if for the sake of simplicity) to keep my names at 2 consonants. This means in that "narration 3rd person" sections, the issue doesn't arise. However, I've seen authors get around this by using titles in replacement of names, or just clever use of him/her or he/she.

 

[OGone]

I suppose it rounds down on how you approach it. The language is important, because it reflects culture. Is it too obviously "snipped" from a real life language. Well, ask yourself: how much can you divert a fictional language off an actual language so that you still get the feel of the culture/users?
Personally, I don't really think there's anything wrong with your language, under the criteria you put it under. For me, the "issue" (if you like) is rather that I see a Spanish/Portuguese notion when I looked at your language, rather than a South Italian one. As a personal observation, Spanish/Portuguese are relatively far fetched from Italian, and just don't blend together.
Of course, this does not necessarily have to be a bad thing, and you can play around with the Spaniard/Italian language feature. I'm actually quite interested on what someone (like yourself) can do with it.

That's a good thing actually because the indigenous people (who spoke the language) are the darker skinned Hispanic types, the fairer skinned "Italians" came in afterwards and colonized them. I think I can describe the architecture of the two main cities which are meant to be more leaned towards the Italian side of things well enough to create the vibe. One of them, the capital city, has one side which is pretty much Venice and the other side is rammed with overpopulated favelas, that contrast and the description of their fairer skin and stereotypical bigger noses (sorry Italians, lol) will help differentiate them from the natives, I think?

 

[advait98]

I agree with the Unseemly, your language seems mostly a construction of Spanish and Portuguese, which are far from Italian, though it's just a sample and the rest of your language... Yes, maybe. As a person who speaks no european language other than english, I can hardly give an expert opinion about whether Spanish/Portuguese/Italian people would be confused, though in a layman's opinion... they might be. I would suggest that you place a distinct difference in most words to make it clear that it is indeed a different language. Like you said, it shouldn't seem like a poor man's Esperanto. IMHO, it is coming across as a little too similar to Spanish and Portuguese, so you should make every effort to make it seem that the words of your language are distinguishably different from them.

Other than that, the language seems to suit your cultures.

2) Well, I, as a reader would be comfortable with it. I have seen other writers employ this, and I don't think there's any problem with it. Dan Brown would address characters in his narrative with a different name than used in the dialogues or thought by the other characters, and while I brooded on this for a second, I didn't see anything wrong with it.

So, in my opinion, go ahead and do it. If it appears out of place or awkward to you, then remove it. It's a small thing and can be edited easily.

These are strictly my views and if you don't find them suitable, ignore. (This is a precaution I employ in my every post that I think others might take too seriously, so I apologize if it seemed too curt or rude.)

 

[Jessquoi]

I'm trilingual English/German/Spanish so I hope I can help with this. In answer to your first question, I do think it might be a little confusing if someone Spanish/Portuguese/Italian speaking came across your story. You say you have the pronunciation mapped out, but anyone who speaks those languages will just pronounce them in their head the way they're used to doing it. Then it might seem like you were just throwing some languages together to make your story cool. (I mean, it IS cool, who doesn't want their own language for their story?) I would try to deviate from them a little further, as they are too similar to real life Spanish and Portuguese with a little Italian to make it seem like fantasy. It's a great idea to base your own language of Romance languages, but I think there's room to deviate from the norm and still give the reader a picture of those places/eras you're trying to create. Might I suggest that looking into the derivation of these words might give you some ideas of how make them sound a little more different without actually changing the word to much.

I'm also a little bit worried about English becoming widespread and the 'natives' being darker etc. It might evoke some historical anger that people might take offence to. I guess it depends how close to our actual history you want to get to, if you stick with same idea, you'll just have to write it so it's not too much in close relation to what's actually happened on our planet to make the reader think more of that than your story.

I think the nicknames are fine. People tend to skip over long names in their mind so I would strongly suggest using them for the third person limited. Rrotiquozarritus is a bit over the top, maybe you could split it up so it makes up a first and last name?

Just some notes on word examples you gave:
In Spanish 'Señorita' is used to address a woman who is not yet married. It literally means 'little woman'. No matter how outdated, do you plan to use Señora for married women?
By Sol do you really mean son or sun? (See, that's where a Spanish speaker might get confused)
Are you going to use 'A' for female nouns as well as O? You could use 'An' (Uh-n) to imply female if you wanted to deviate a little bit.

Marveaux sounds French. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it might get a little confusing if you're trying to stick with Italian/Spanish/Portuguese. It makes me ask myself whether this person has different heritage to everyone else.

OK, one last question, do you plan to outline any of the words or pronunciation in the book or are you going to let the reader figure it out?

Rereading this I feel like maybe I'm being a bit pedantic, but that's just my background with languages coming in. It would be good to get some feedback from just English speakers to see how they feel about it.

 

[OGone]

I'm trilingual English/German/Spanish so I hope I can help with this. In answer to your first question, I do think it might be a little confusing if someone Spanish/Portuguese/Italian speaking came across your story. You say you have the pronunciation mapped out, but anyone who speaks those languages will just pronounce them in their head the way they're used to doing it. Then it might seem like you were just throwing some languages together to make your story cool. (I mean, it IS cool, who doesn't want their own language for their story?) I would try to deviate from them a little further, as they are too similar to real life Spanish and Portuguese with a little Italian to make it seem like fantasy. It's a great idea to base your own language of Romance languages, but I think there's room to deviate from the norm and still give the reader a picture of those places/eras you're trying to create. Might I suggest that looking into the derivation of these words might give you some ideas of how make them sound a little more different without actually changing the word to much.

I'm also a little bit worried about English becoming widespread and the 'natives' being darker etc. It might evoke some historical anger that people might take offence to. I guess it depends how close to our actual history you want to get to, if you stick with same idea, you'll just have to write it so it's not too much in close relation to what's actually happened on our planet to make the reader think more of that than your story.

I think the nicknames are fine. People tend to skip over long names in their mind so I would strongly suggest using them for the third person limited. Rrotiquozarritus is a bit over the top, maybe you could split it up so it makes up a first and last name?

Just some notes on word examples you gave:
In Spanish 'Señorita' is used to address a woman who is not yet married. It literally means 'little woman'. No matter how outdated, do you plan to use Señora for married women?
By Sol do you really mean son or sun? (See, that's where a Spanish speaker might get confused)
Are you going to use 'A' for female nouns as well as O? You could use 'An' (Uh-n) to imply female if you wanted to deviate a little bit.

Marveaux sounds French. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it might get a little confusing if you're trying to stick with Italian/Spanish/Portuguese. It makes me ask myself whether this person has different heritage to everyone else.

OK, one last question, do you plan to outline any of the words or pronunciation in the book or are you going to let the reader figure it out?

Rereading this I feel like maybe I'm being a bit pedantic, but that's just my background with languages coming in. It would be good to get some feedback from just English speakers to see how they feel about it.

You're right, actually, and no I am not explaining the pronunciation in the book. I feel it's something too large for an appendix, plus the words themselves are not differentiated enough. I definitely need to deviate a little more and need to scrap loan words completely.

I don't think there's really a worry on the whole racial side of things, there's little reference to it in the story as it's set quite a while after the colonization and the 'Italian' and 'darker' races are pretty mixed together, there's no racial divide, only a class divide.

Rrotiquozarritus means something in a different made up language, it's meant to sound pretty over the top and ancient. It's the name of a living artifact. I guess it could be split into two names but I feel keeping it all tangled together as one really helps to straight away give the expression of something ancient and alien to the rest of the story.

I was actually using Señorita pretty much equivalent to princess, but unmarried. I think I'll completely change this though. Same for sol, it meant son but this would definitely garner confusion. I don't have many feminine nouns, they do all seem to be -a, -ava, - el though...

Marveaux originate from somewhere else, yes.

I don't really want to include an appendix concerning the language in the book considering it is only used for place names and full sentences aren't used by anyone. Primarily using the language to name places and people, characters do occasionally refer to each other by their "old" titles or use single words like please and thanks... but in terms of actual communication the language is pretty dead.

Pedanticism confused is welcome, lol. Thanks for the thoughts!!

 

[Nihal]

Yeah, using Señorita for princess would be definitively confusing. It would take a while to get the real meaning from the context, and it would be a little disturbing anyway. Avoid using too many common words and giving them new meanings, you can do it with titles and some specific words, but if overdone things will get ugly pretty quickly.

 

[Jessquoi]

Sounds like you got it under control And now the the name Rrotiquozarritus makes sense to me. I definitely think you've got a good idea with using this language for naming and places. Throwing it in here and there in words of thanks or greetings etc. will make the world that much more interesting!