 |
On the Creation of Languages
By  Kathleen McGowan
One of the biggest problems I've seen with many invented languages is that their creators are not interested in making them user-friendly; they're interested in making them look cool. They have seen how some foreign languages (from the perspective of English-speakers anyway) use different accent marks, apostrophes and dashes, for example, the tilde (ñ) that Spanish-speakers use. They decide that theirs should use the accents too, and rightfully so. They give pronunciation hints to the readers who don't speak and assumedly know nothing about the language. However, many make the mistake of squishing all of the following: å, ë, í, ò, û, ç, and ñ, a dash or two, and a handful of apostrophes into one word, which does not help the reader at all. It leads to a confusing mess.
The best way to bypass this sort of confusion is to familiarize yourself with the accents and to limit yourself. I usually stick to the following concepts when creating a language for fantasy/sci-fi.
Create the general idea of the race before the language, not vice versa. Language is just as much a part of a character as anything else, and it's much easier to find clothes to fit the character than a character to fit the clothes.
Know how the sounds of the letters are created (how you hold the tongue) and classified (nasal, hard palate, soft palate, etc.) Though it seems like a simple baby sound-making exercise, know how the sound of each letter is made will help you craft your own sound system better; the sounds must flow together or it will sound like gibberish.
Don't have too many irregularities. Make words at least vaguely pronounceable on sight, or it will disrupt the flow of reading.
Don't use more than two accents/dashes/apostrophes per word. Then your words will look like real language and not obviously made-up nonsense. The point of language is to communicate, and it should look realistic.
Study the phonetics/pronunciation of letters in foreign languages. Dead/dying languages are especially good for this, as they often use letter combinations and diphthongs that the modern world has assimilated or changed.
Follow and understand speech cadence/intonation. Some people's intonation goes down at the end of their sentences, while others' go up. Questions sound different than exclamations or statements. Make sure that your own words have a natural rhythm to them.
Reference pronunciation styles. Give readers a real-world reference for your pronunciations. For example: "ç pronounced like S in sun, as in French Provençal." (See next; do not actually include this example in-text. Use it either as a footnote or, preferably, indicate it in the pronunciation guide).
Include a pronunciation guide, rules list, and concise dictionary of common words. On Elfwood make this a separate item in the Library and preface the work that uses it with a reference to it. If you're really gung-ho you can create and add a grammar guide, verb list, conjugations, etc. The sky is the limit. Some people like to sit down with a guide to a given language and study its basics, learn some elementary phrases, et cetera. I've been known to speak in my smatterings of Gaelic, and I'm sure more extraordinary languages have popped up in similar situations. Give the readers a "toy" to play with.
Don't underestimate the power of roots and stems. As any student of Latin or Greek will tell you, if you know the roots and stems, the actual words are crazily simple. Creating words is much easier (not to mention incredibly consistent) if you have a system to work with.
Languages are based on rules. This is probably one of the most important rules of structured language. In order to function, in order to be coherent, a language MUST have rules. This is why grammar is taught and re-taught and why many English teachers are so strict about it (if this is a revelation to anyone let me know…); because the words must be in the proper relationship to each other to make any sense. A list of rules on the theme of, "This sound may only begin a word, this sound never ends a word, this sound only occurs after the letter H," etc. will be helpful to anyone caring to dissect the continuity of your creation.
In creating a language, one is by no means required to give it intricate grammatical structure enough to make English look like a joke, though it would be good if it had structure enough that a reader could piece together a few complete sentences that are not included in the original work. Some authors have achieved this; the most well known today is probably J.R.R. Tolkien, of whose fourteen languages is best known for Elvish. The language has two branches: the high-elven tongue called Quenya and the grey-elven tongue called Sindarin, both of which follow the same pattern. They are based on Finnish, but there are a few components of other languages incorporated into them, such as Old Norse and Middle English. Granted, Tolkien was a linguist, but he understood what many would do well to discover: language must be able to be used. Some colleges now offer classes that explore and teach Tolkien's languages with an emphasis on Elvish. Try speaking your own language when you have a few simple sentences. If you stumble over it a lot or find that it sounds too strange to mean anything, change it. Revise and work with it until it sounds like speech.
I began my language with the vowels, as they play a vital part in the sound of the language and usually do the most changing. Érachan (AIR-ah-khan, derived from the Gaelic Errakan meaning, "the people that come from the moon.") has seven vowels derived from various languages, and the irregularities are marked by accents. The consonants are relatively the same as in English except for a few. A full version of it will hopefully be appearing on Elfwood soon preceding its story and epic poetry.
Here follows a list of things that a languages should have and be presented in, but the long and short of it is that if you would buy it for a language class like Spanish or French, then you could make it for your own language.
- Pronunciation guide
- Verb list
- Concise dictionary
- Rules list
- Grammar guide
- Runic/writing system (this is a fun one to make if you don't use a pre-made one like Anglo-Saxon)
If anyone would like more advice not contained in this article, language critiquing, or to chat about languages (I'm a serious Tolkienophile) my email is bach36trombone@hotmail.com. I'm on Elfwood at Wyvvern's Library as Morgenstern.
 |
| |  | The Languages of Tolkien's Middle Earth By Ruth S. Noel
0 |  |
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 21 Jul 2006 |  Samantha L Houghton | Nice guide ^^ I think one thing that could be emphasised more is that in MOST, if not all cases, you will never need to construct a fictional language in its entirety. Tolkein is something of an exception - he was a professor of linguistics and had vast experience with language.
If you're writing a novel with a fictional race which speaks a fictional language, for the most part you probably won't need to construct a language in too much detail. Sort out the sounds, the general morphology and grammar, but as the book is primarily written in English, you probably won't need to use the language in too much depth. A good example for the kind of levels of detail that might be useful can be found in the back of the later Acorna novels by Anne McCaffrey - she added some notes about Linyaari language, including rudimentary grammar and phonology, but mostly a comprehensive list of relevant vocabulary items and root words etc. Her Linyaari language is one of the most convincing alien languages I've seen constructed, but it's far from possible to speak it in its entirety, as a valid language, outside the novels. There is not much more detail than is required for the language to be convincing within the novels themselves.
Remember, to make life easier for yourself and focus on what counts, if you're only going to be using the language in a novel or two, you only need to build it to a level that is useful for the writing. You don't need to be able to speak it outside of the novel XD | |
| 8 Aug 2006 |  Oreparma | Guys, I think what she was saying about the English joke comment is that English is one of the hardest languages to learn because there are so many rules and so many exceptions to rules (in contrast to other langauges like Spanish, whose exceptions are very few and you can count on your hands) If it's not a person's native tongue, English is very hard to learn. What she was saying was that when creating your langauge, don't make so many rules and exceptions and exceptions to exceptions that it makes English look incredibly simple by comparison.
I nice compact overveiw of langauge making. Excellent do and don't guide when working on making one. | |
| 15 Sep 2006 |  Ruth E. Morrison | Nice article, but I would add some things, namely: - I've found it simpler and more readable to not only avoid using hideous amounts of special characters, but use only just as many characters as necessary, and get rid of spelling weirdnesses and extra clarifying letters. For example, in my language, I use 'k' for XSAMPA /k/ and 's' for /s/, so there's no need for 'c', and I don't have the sound /z/, so 'z' isn't used either. Since the language also includes the sounds /tS/ (spelled 'ch' in English) and /Z/ (the "z" sound in the middle of "azure") I recycled 'c' and 'z' to represent those sounds respectively, without having to stick a lot of superfluous 'h's in there. (XSAMPA chart can be found in the wikipedia.) - That Ruth S. Noel book is hideously out-of-date as a source on Tolkien languages - there is a much better treatment of it at Ardalambion (http://www.uib.no/people/hnohf/) Personally, the only thing I use languages for is place-names and the like, though - if your story is already imagined to be in that language in actuality, there's no reason to translate what people say into it, but a good naming language can bring the world to life. I have yet to get my own stories up here, but I just had to comment on this.  | |
| 8 Apr 2007 | Anonymous | I think it's a better idea to base a made-up language on one that already exists. It provides an understanding of its structure and avoids a lingo with a name like gtha'wampr'z'a-hch'yaddayaddayadda. For example, I tried to base a language (Culain) vaguely on the sounds of Gaelic/northern Europe. | |
| 4 May 2007 | RobbieG | I just want to thank you for writing this. It's absolutely brilliant! I'm currently in the process of inventing several languages for a fantasy setting, and this tutorial was a great starting point for me.
Can I also say, if you want to make your language sound exotic, why not try basing it on a language that's totally unrelated to Indo-European languages (that's the language family that includes French, English, Urdu, German, Russian and Latin, among others). For example, I have been researching Japanese for inspiration, but Hebrew, Basque and Cherokee are probably all good bets. Such languages tend to have completely different rules from English, and can also be useful if you want to invent your own grammar rules. One of my languages, Elven, is based partly on Celtic languages and partly on Japanese.
Of course, on the flipside of this, if your native language is Indo-European, learning the grammar of an unrelated language is that much more difficult. I still can't get my head around Japanese at all!
Anyway, I'll look forward to reading your Érachan language. It sounds great! | |
| 27 Jun 2007 | Phoebe | This was a very helpful article. I just thought I'd point out another (article? book?) that was also very useful to me and could be of some use to others.
Its a writers workshop type thing created by fantasy/sci-fi author Holly Lisle. Its an ebook, though I think for a little more money you can purchase it in a print copy.
She breaks it down for you step by step to help you get a feel for creating languages. Its really wonderful.
The website is: http://shop.hollylisle.com/ and its under her Create A Language Clinic. Her other clinics are really helpful too!
Thanks for sharing this article, I get tired of being jolted out of a story by a strange crazy word. | |
| 2 Jan 2008 | Tolkien Freak | Thanks for the great article. I've read it several times, and have learned a few things from it. The only thing I think lacking is the basic 1 2 3's - or, how to BEGIN to create a language. I'm trying to do that now and finding very hard (perhaps coupled with the fact that I'm still under driving age). Where do I START? Creating vowels, some sort of alphabet, or basic pronunciation ... etc... what do I do first (and/or second), and how do I do it? I'm currently studying Spanish (Rosetta Stone), and plan to integrate some of their language rules into my fantasy one... the only thing is... where to begin? If you (or someone else kind enough to reply to my comment) could give me some sort of tip (or two; even better), I'll forever slave at your feet. Maybe.
And, yes, I probably sound like a complete fool, but... well, I'm an honest fool at least. | |
| 20 Jan 2008 | Hailey | Thanks for a great article! I’m attempting to write a fantasy trilogy and information on creating languages is so hard to find. It was so helpful! Thank you! | |
| 18 Feb 2008 |  René Alexander Frederiks | This stuff is great, and it helped me a lot in creating Eltharoth and Elrath, the two Languages found in my books (which I’m writing in Dutch) none-the-less it’s been of INCREDIBLE help!
unfortunately Elrath was 2/3 created before I read this, but thanks to that, it has a distinctly other feel to it then Eltharoth.
Despite my current inability to get any spelling right due to dislexia, I have a certain enthousiasm for languages that are "outworldly" to holland. such as English, Japanese, (not neccecarely French or German) but Latin and Greek is always fun to speak, and now I’ve got a sollid background to create my third language and I’m thinking about calling it "Thönwâr" <th-UH-nwhar>
And yes, when I first started working on Elrath, I started out with a phonetic alphabet, and a basic letter and sound combination. then I would say start with the Present-time <working words, I forgot the english word for it> and make up object-words as you go along, and try writing short texts, and find out when you need to insert a new rule or guide-line... | |
| 12 Apr 2008 | Alowyn | This is to Tolkien Freak above. I don’t know if you’ve given up getting an answer yet, but here goes anyway. I think the best place to start is with another, preexisting language. Take Tolkien as your example, he used bits and pieces of Finnish, along with a bit of Old Norse, and created the most famous structure(and most complete I might add) of languages the world has ever known. If you are taking Spanish, I suggest beginning with the vowels of Spanish, and using them as your starting point, but you don’t have to use all of them, nor do you have to limit yourself with only those vowels. Do the same with the consonants, and so on. Also, you should not be afraid to use some of the rules of Spanish, not saying you should steal them, but take your time changing them around a bit. I also suggest going over your rules and Alphabet (once you have them) and revising them over and over again. I know for a fact that J. R. R Tolkien was constantly changing his Languages around, and look at the result, Brilliant! Lastly, don’t ever get discouraged because people say you’re to young, and I know from experience, they will; I too am under the age of driving And perhaps we are both fools, but again, at least we are honest. | |
| Page: [1] 2 |
 Back to the FARP main page.
 The collection of art and writing tutorials in the Elfwood Fantasy Art Resource (F.A.R.P.) is a part of Elfwood.
The FARP logo was created by  Miguel Krippahl (The muscular guy in the FARP-logo) and  Thomas F Abrahamsson (The text and general graphic design). Those sections written by volunteers are copyrighted to Thomas Abrahamsson and the respective writer. Elfwood is a project created by Thomas Abrahamsson. All rights reserved. Unauthorized Reproduction of the graphics, writings, and materials on these pages is absolutely prohibited! You may consider all material on these pages protected and copyrighted, unless otherwise noted. You may NOT use the images found at the FARP or Elfwood pages on your home pages! All of these images are copyright protected! Everything you see here represent the collaborative effort of the Elfwood community and Thomas Abrahamsson. Please read the Legal Disclaimer for more info on warranties/etc for these pages!
|
|
