How can I make up a language while keeping it believable??

BeautifulNightmare · Oct 3, 2009

For my story, two of the characters are meant to have a totally unique different language but I cannot think how to make one up without it looking like gibberish?? I would love for it to be as believable as the Elf language in Lord of The Rings. (Especially where Arwen is 'enchanting' the river to drown the black riders for those of you who have watched it!)

Any help or advice?

Wayne K · Oct 3, 2009

Personal opinion: don't use a lot of it. I get antsy when I'm reading a real language I don't understand. Ignore this if it's done well.

Lady Ice · Oct 3, 2009

I get bored. Sprinkle a few terms a la Harry Potter.

BeautifulNightmare · Oct 3, 2009

It's not going to be much, just a little when it is relevant!

dpaterso · Oct 3, 2009

Eeek! Sounds like a complex task!

I'd maybe start with something simple like assigning verbs and nouns a different number of syllables. So that even if you're writing gibberish (technically) there's a hint of the function of made-up words.

Random examples off the top of my head:

Ey ooman la kadala. Give me that hat.

Nepu la hofura. Put down that spear.

Shasa la magari! Throw the horse away!

Re nuso la kadala ey homara. He brought the hat to my house. Ey shasa la kadala. I threw the hat away.

Total crap, but you catch my drift... maybe.

2-syllable verbs, 3-syllable nouns, joined by 1-syllable pronouns. Nonsense sounds begin to take on the feeling of language.

-Derek

Laura-Mae · Oct 3, 2009

Maybe you could make up a language similar to your mother tongue [which I take is English] and only use it when absolutely necessary, or to lend to the plot. For example, as your story [sounds] like a fantasy, maybe you could use this language in a spell/chant/poem or something of the sort, but keep it short, and try to keep characters speaking to each other in this language to a minimum. While the reader doesn't need to know the translation of every single word, make sure they get the gist of it, maybe by one character just mentioning it to another character, like the basic meaning of whatever was written/said.

Maybe you could use substitution of letters or even just mix two together, for example Latin + something else, but make sure you can speak it quite well, online translators are rubbish!

Laura-Mae

Deleted member 42 · Oct 3, 2009

Don't do it. It will look made up. Just because Tolkien did it, doesn't mean you have to.

If there are concepts or objects that are unique to your world, make up a handful of words for those unique concepts and objects, and use them sparingly. You might Google the phrase "constructed languages."

This question comes up a lot here.

MGraybosch · Oct 3, 2009

BeautifulNightmare said:
For my story, two of the characters are meant to have a totally unique different language but I cannot think how to make one up without it looking like gibberish?? I would love for it to be as believable as the Elf language in Lord of The Rings. (Especially where Arwen is 'enchanting' the river to drown the black riders for those of you who have watched it!)

Any help or advice?

If you're not a linguist, don't even bother trying.

Tolkien got away with it because he was a professor of philology.

Shakesbear · Oct 3, 2009

Shakespeare sort of made up a language in All's Well That Ends Well. It is only in two scenes and is used as part of a trick being played. The participants in the trick are given the following guidance:

First Lord:
He must think us some band of strangers i' the
adversary's entertainment. Now he hath a smack of
all neighbouring languages; therefore we must every
one be a man of his own fancy, not to know what we
speak one to another; so we seem to know, is to
know straight our purpose: choughs' language,
gabble enough, and good enough. As for you,
interpreter, you must seem very politic.

Act IV sc i:

Second Lord: Throca movousus, cargo, cargo, cargo.

All: Cargo, cargo, cargo, villiando par corbo, cargo.

PAROLLES: O, ransom, ransom! do not hide mine eyes.

They seize and blindfold him

First Soldier: Boskos thromuldo boskos.

PAROLLES: I know you are the Muskos' regiment:
And I shall lose my life for want of language;
If there be here German, or Dane, low Dutch,
Italian, or French, let him speak to me; I'll
Discover that which shall undo the Florentine.

First Soldier: Boskos vauvado: I understand thee, and can speak
thy tongue. Kerely bonto, sir, betake thee to thy
faith, for seventeen poniards are at thy bosom.

PAROLLES: O!

First Soldier: O, pray, pray, pray! Manka revania dulche.

Second Lord: Oscorbidulchos volivorco.

First Soldier: The general is content to spare thee yet;
And, hoodwink'd as thou art, will lead thee on
To gather from thee: haply thou mayst inform
Something to save thy life.

PAROLLES: O, let me live!
And all the secrets of our camp I'll show,
Their force, their purposes; nay, I'll speak that
Which you will wonder at.

First Soldier: But wilt thou faithfully?

PAROLLES: If I do not, damn me.

First Soldier: Acordo linta.
Come on; thou art granted space.

Exit, with PAROLLES guarded.

And again in in Act IV sc ii:

First Lord: Hoodman comes! Portotartarosa

First Soldier: He calls for the tortures: what will you say
without 'em?

PAROLLES: I will confess what I know without constraint: if
ye pinch me like a pasty, I can say no more.

First Soldier: Bosko chimurcho.

First Lord: Boblibindo chicurmurco.

Sevvy · Oct 3, 2009

Yes, but Shakespeare was a genius.

You might try to look at current languages to get a feel of how other languages than your own sound and how they work grammatically. But a way to use a foreign langauge without actually having it typed out is using something like this:

He greeted me in the typical Alurusian manner, though I noted he had a strange accent which made it hard for me to understand.
"I'm sorry, I'm not fluent, could you repeat that?"

Now we know it's a different langauge, so the reply can be written in english (or whatever language is your own) and the reader will be aware they aren't speaking english. This is a bad example, though, I imagine it could be done with a little more subtlety.

Deleted member 42 · Oct 3, 2009

Shakesbear said:
Shakespeare sort of made up a language in All's Well That Ends Well. It is only in two scenes and is used as part of a trick being played. The participants in the trick are given the following guidance:

That's called gibberish, not making up a language. All of those words have cognates that are derived from Latin, Italian, and French. That's the point; that it sounds "familiar," but has no meaning.

Kurtz · Oct 3, 2009

Creating an entirely new language ois impossible. Even created languages like Klingon are comparable to already existing languages (more or less because Klingon does the exact opposite of any other language in terms of grammar).

Tolkein's languages have great similarities to Old English, and (it may just be me here) the Elvish script looks really similar to either Begali or Arabic. They are works of genius, but his sources of inspiration are clear.

Note that creating a language is going to take a long, long time. Even if it'll only be used for a few phrases, all the laws of the language are going to have to be worked out. It is going to take years of work if you want it to not look artificial.

Probably easier is to take one exotic sexy language, and just change it around a little. In this case native American languages are best because they mostly evolved without influence from the outside and still seem really alien to our ears.

The Grump · Oct 3, 2009

Basically, creating a new language would be a waste of time ... unless you had a professional interest or it was a hobby. For many readers, it's a turn off.

Making up a believable "alternative" world is hard enough. Even then, if you throw in too many details at once, you slow the reader down. If you don't give them enough details, you confuse them.

Personally, I don't have much time to read. If a book bogs down in too many questions, it goes on the trade pile without my finishing it.

Deleted member 42 · Oct 3, 2009

Kurtz said:
Tolkein's languages have great similarities to Old English, and (it may just be me here) the Elvish script looks really similar to either Begali or Arabic.

Actually, no they don't. The only one of Tolkien's languages that's similar to Old English is the language of the Rohirrim; because it IS OLD ENGLISH. It's the West Mercian dialect of Old English, most of it reconstructed from the extant fragments. Tolkien was, and still is, the expert on this particualr dialect.

The runes he uses are derived loosely from Futhark; they are not, however a language.

The primary languages he created are influenced by Welsh, in terms of the phonology, and Finnish.

I should note that there are a number of constructed languages that work quite well, by the way. Particularly the gestural languages created for and by the deaf. There are several that are entirely new languages.

Bufty · Oct 3, 2009

They only have to have a totally unique different language because you as the writer think they do. Might I ask why it is necessary to go to these lengths? I prefer to read English even though I understand a character may be speaking in his own tongue.

Watching a strange language spoken in a film is not the same as reading it in a book.

It's not a trilogy by any chance?

BeautifulNightm are said:
For my story, two of the characters are meant to have a totally unique different language but I cannot think how to make one up without it looking like gibberish?? I would love for it to be as believable as the Elf language in Lord of The Rings. (Especially where Arwen is 'enchanting' the river to drown the black riders for those of you who have watched it!)

Any help or advice?

Kurtz · Oct 3, 2009

Medievalist said:
Actually, no they don't. The only one of Tolkien's languages that's similar to Old English is the language of the Rohirrim; because it IS OLD ENGLISH. It's the West Mercian dialect of Old English, most of it reconstructed from the extant fragments. Tolkien was, and still is, the expert on this particualr dialect.

I should note that there are a number of constructed languages that work quite well, by the way. Particularly the gestural languages created for and by the deaf. There are several that are entirely new languages.

I'll bow to your superior knowledge of Tolkein. Tolkeins academic legacy in the field of linguistics is as important, or probably more than his legacy in literature. Either way he used other languages as inspiration rather than trying to make something totally novel.

I'm not denying that sign language isn't awesome, however, a lot of people worked very, very hard for a very long time to build it. They had to, because languages usually take centuries to develop.

bonitakale · Oct 3, 2009

One way is to get a book from the library about some language that's different from your own, and look at the sounds and spelling in it. Then steal them. If you're careful, that can give you a 'sound' that's both foreign and consistent.

If you use a sound we don't have in English (like 'ts' at the beginning of a word), using it a couple of times will make it seem more real than only using it once.

You don't have to make up the whole language. I remember writing a short love poem in my own version of 'Vulcan' once. I envisioned Vulcan as having a different word order than English, and there was a pun in the poem, if I recall, that didn't translate. It was a lot of fun.

Deleted member 42 · Oct 3, 2009

Kurtz said:
I'll bow to your superior knowledge of Tolkein. Tolkeins academic legacy in the field of linguistics is as important, or probably more than his legacy in literature.

Well, no, that's not accurate either.

Tolkien was not a linguist. He's spinning in his grave even now that you've implied that he was.

He was a philologist; a student of dead languages. He fought, bitterly, fiercely, at every university he taught at, to preserve philology from the the attacks of linguists who thought studying dead languages and literatures in those languages was a waste of time.

Tolkien's chief contributions as a scholar are to literature, that is, as an editor of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Orfeo, and the Fight at Finnsburgh. He would have been famous for his edition of Beowulf but alas it is still unpublished.

I'm not meaning to attack you, but over and over, I see people not really understanding what Tolkien did, beyond his fiction and poetry.

Darzian · Oct 3, 2009

My opinion: The investment in creating a new and believable language doesn't pay off.

Ruv Draba · Oct 3, 2009

Medievalist said:
The primary languages he created are influenced by Welsh, in terms of the phonology, and Finnish.

And even though he's done some of the best fictional language in fantasy he's still guilty of the cheesy practice of applying diacriticals for aesthetics rather than pronunciation or meaning. :tongue

I won't say 'don't do it', but I will say 'if you're going to do it, spend a year doing it well and add that to the time it takes to write your book'.

I should note that there are a number of constructed languages that work quite well, by the way. Particularly the gestural languages created for and by the deaf. There are several that are entirely new languages.

There are several tolerably good geeky conlangs too, but as with Tolkien you'd need to be the sort of person who'd do it anyway, then happen to be writing fiction too.

Deleted member 42 · Oct 3, 2009

Ruv Draba said:
And even though he's done some of the best fictional language in fantasy he's still guilty of the cheesy practice of applying diacriticals for aesthetics rather than pronunciation or meaning. )

No, actually, he didn't. He has an exceedingly well-thought out explanation--complete with a schema for the evolution of the syncope he's marking.

It was in fact inspired by two things:

Pokorney's theory about the o-stem neuter phonological changes, a theory that was, about twenty years ago, pretty much tossed out but which when Tolkien was alive was hot stuff.

And by the proposed phonological changes in early Finnish poetry, based on the single extant person who was still reciting the Kalevala from memory and who was alive long enough for phonetic transcription.

Ruv Draba · Oct 3, 2009

Medievalist said:
No, actually, he didn't. He has an exceedingly well-thought out explanation--complete with a schema for the evolution of the syncope he's marking.

I'm not talking about the 'therefore' marks in the Elven, but I'm fairly sure that I have a quote from him somewhere saying how the circumflexes in transliterations of Dwarven were just to make it look cool. Which is every bit as cheesy to me as SF writers inserting single quotes between syllables to enshmexify their lexiporn.

(And now I find myself plumbing the depths of my own geekocity and nerditude. The ignominy!

)

[And I thought 'syncope' was a 'sudden and temporary loss of consciousness'. Which, while it made your comment baffling to me, got me giggling. If a philologist faints in the woods, does anyone come looking for him? And does it make him syncopated, or a syncopatient?]

bonitakale · Oct 4, 2009

Ruv Draba said:
every bit as cheesy to me as SF writers inserting single quotes between syllables

Okay, that may be cheesy now, but when it was new, and used to indicate a contraction, it wasn't.

And even now, how else do you indicate a glottal stop? I grew up saying "bot'l," not "bottle." (And where I am now, we say "boddle.")

(Ruv, I actually googled "enshmexify," in case it was a real word -- and found myself back at your post.)

Ruv Draba · Oct 4, 2009

bonitakale said:
Okay, that may be cheesy now, but when it was new, and used to indicate a contraction, it wasn't.

I dunno. I blame McCaffrey for popularising it.

And even now, how else do you indicate a glottal stop?

To indicate pronunciation is fine, but when Fylar becomes F'lar pronounced Flar then it's contrived. And K'lkr'kknt'thn is just stoopid. Authors who write crap like that should be forced to read their own works aloud in libraries until they swear off it forever.

(Ruv, I actually googled "enshmexify," in case it was a real word -- and found myself back at your post.)

So I'm finally famous for something. I suppose it'd be cooler (if a bit drunker-sounding) if I wrote it 'nshm'x'f'.

Kitty27 · Oct 4, 2009

I use languages already known. For instance,Swahili is a beautiful language and I use some of the words in my WIP.

But it's too much time and effort for me to create an entire language! I bow to you.

How can I make up a language while keeping it believable??

BeautifulNightmare

Look out, there's a student about!!

Wayne K

Lady Ice

Makes useful distinctions

BeautifulNightmare

Look out, there's a student about!!

dpaterso

Also in our Discord and IRC chat channels

Laura-Mae

Inability to write now commences.

Deleted member 42

MGraybosch

Lunch Break Novelist

Shakesbear

knows a hawk from a handsaw

Sevvy

Spec Fic Writer

Deleted member 42

Kurtz

Fix up, look sharp.

The Grump

Hates Marketing. Loves Writing.

Deleted member 42

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

Kurtz

Fix up, look sharp.

bonitakale

Deleted member 42

Darzian

To-to-to-ron-to

Ruv Draba

Deleted member 42

Ruv Draba

bonitakale

Ruv Draba

Kitty27

So Goth That I Was Born Black