Fictional Non-earthen Languages

I used a different language in my novel and I made it with a conlang program on a website. It's gone now, but thankfully the language is done.

Anyway, I took a class through writersdigest.com and they had a whole section on how to use and create fantasy languages. One thing they said is you'll need some sort of translation after the language. Like someone who doesn't speak the language and needs a translation:

"De oper mactou dona," the man said, motioning to Ola.

"What did he say?" Ola asked, turning to Nola.

"He said you are a fat woman," Nola said, laughing.

Or

"De oper mactou dona," the man said, motioning to Ola.

Nola swallowed her giggles. Yes, Ola was a fat woman. "He says you're pretty," Nola said, biting her lip.

Or

The man motioned to Ola and said something in his native language. Nola laughed and nodded her head. Ola let out an exasperated breath. Obviously they spoke about her. Hopefully it was something nice.

Or

He held a dead rabbit by its ears. "We eat Jado today." (Obviously we're eating a rabbit today.)

I've used all of these and it works nice. I've even seen:

"Lata veta, Nola," the man said, holding up his palm.

Nola smiled and raised her hand and repeated the blessing. Hopefully, God's hand would also rest on him.

I didn't use contractions when my fantasy other world MC talked. I won't go, I didn't do it, etc b/c IMO these prases pretty much morphed in our language and I wanted to have a distintion. So instead I used: I will not go. Plus I tried to put in an 'accent' in the dialogue. "I will not give my hand to him in a pact. How do I know his face will not turn from me?" Or something like that. But you'll need to make sure the reader knows what the MC is saying. Brandon Sanderson does this and IMO gives a deeper world building.

But it's up to you as to how you create your language. Or you can just say, He said in his tongue, language, whatever . . .

Shirokirie said:

I've been contemplating the idea of portraying bits and pieces of a fictional language for my fictional species in my WIP. I am inclined to avoid this all together, but this species does speak not-english, too. In fact they have two separate dialects depending on what sub-division the individual is born into. Then there's 'the common tongue,' which everyone speaks: English. Kos I speak it.

Thing is I'm not sure how to execute any such fictional language in a way that doesn't blatantly irritate the reader. In them old roleplays where I used to do something like this it was easy to just spout off a random set of characters and leave it at that; no one asked a thing. How some ever, I think that's a bad idea in novelwork. I mean like:

"Jakyl U aobai mamaju'quy ey derp." He said.
"Totally." Replied his Mary-sue companion.

So if there's anyone out there with some suggestions on how to do this kind of thing, I'd greatly appreciate it.

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Liosse de Velishaf said:

Queer or poof were common derogatory slang around that time, if I recall. Also fairy, maybe. I don't know that there was any particular self-referent term used among LGBT people during that time period.

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See, I need self-referencing terms that make sense within the culture in question, which is where I'm stumped. Guessing this is an acceptable reason to invent slang, but well. Want to err on the side of comprehensibility.

I think it should be pointed out that if you're doing a historical period, then terms like Stockholm Syndrome don't need equivalents, because it's a modern concept. Even if you're doing a story that deals with it, if we're being true to the period, then the syndrome wasn't a thing to be referred to.

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That was, sort of, my badly-made point.

I'm watching Avatar for the first time and it's interesting b/c the writer does use English, but the 'race's' version of English. So you can still use it, but use it the way that 'race' would use it. I.e. They say, "I see you.' That doesn't mean I see you standing in front of me, but I see all of you, your soul, mind, everything. Every person is born twice, Which means when the person becomes part of the tribe. The words are stones in my heart, which means this is hard for me to say.

So go ahead and use English, but when you create your world think about how those people would use English. THink about their culture, what is sacred to them, their history, their body language, their homelife, social life, religion. etc. How do they see the world? Bring all of this into the language and you'll have something pretty special.

My world people say, He has you in a net. That means, he's won the argument. 'You dance with swords." means, you look like a woman who dances with a sword. it's an insult. women in my culture rarely know how swordsmanship. Only a few do. You are a Mee, means, you are a dog, an insult. I will not give my hand to another. I refuse to trust him.

So use English, but use it the way THEY would use it, not you or us uses it. If you do that, then you'll have an even deeper world.

Dancre said:

I'm watching Avatar for the first time and it's interesting b/c the writer does use English, but the 'race's' version of English. So you can still use it, but use it the way that 'race' would use it. I.e. They say, "I see you.' That doesn't mean I see you standing in front of me, but I see all of you, your soul, mind, everything. Every person is born twice, Which means when the person becomes part of the tribe. The words are stones in my heart, which means this is hard for me to say.

So go ahead and use English, but when you create your world think about how those people would use English. THink about their culture, what is sacred to them, their history, their body language, their homelife, social life, religion. etc. How do they see the world? Bring all of this into the language and you'll have something pretty special.

My world people say, He has you in a net. That means, he's won the argument. 'You dance with swords." means, you look like a woman who dances with a sword. it's an insult. women in my culture rarely know how swordsmanship. Only a few do. You are a Mee, means, you are a dog, an insult. I will not give my hand to another. I refuse to trust him.

So use English, but use it the way THEY would use it, not you or us uses it. If you do that, then you'll have an even deeper world.

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You have to be very careful to avoid stereotypes with that, however.



This reminds me of my fresh Intro to Linguistics class, where our semester project was to build a conlang. At the end, we had to do a skit in our constructed language, and one of the most interesting parts was how people managed to have a decent conversation using their limited vocabularies.

My group decided our skit was going to be having a picnic, but we had no word for picnic and a vocabulary of only a few hundred words. We ended up with a decent way of phrasing it, based on our constructed culture, but the best we could translate it into English was "an eating with the sky". We did ook at it culturally, but we were constrained by our conlang's morphology. We had no way to say "meal" or "lunch" or a similar English noun, but we had the verb "to eat" and a gerund marker (usually rendered in English with an "-ing" suffix on the verb) which turns verbs into nouns, thus "an eating". We didn't have a word for "outside" in the same sense as it is used in English, so we used an adverbial phrase, using "sky" as our semantic hint that we were eating outside. Culturally, our society had some elemental/animist elements, so we used "with" instead of "under/beneath" to express the fact taht our culture considers the sky to be an animate noun instead of an inanimate one.

Now, being a freshman intro course, this is not intended to be taken as an elegant example of conlanging or dealing with the translation convention of English literature. I'm just suggesting that along with metaphor which is the most common method as exemplified by the quoted post, if you have some semblance of an actual conlang as opposed to isolated, ad hoc examples, you can use the morphology or syntax of your conlang to flavor an English "translation". EVen if you don't necessarily have a full conlang, you can create a few simple patterns and apply them to your "translations" to create a feeling of being a real translation of another language.

WriterDude said:

Just one readers point of view here, but I hate other languages in books, real or imagined.

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Dito. I would just say they spoke. The readers eyes are just going to slide over it anyway, since its basically nonsense.