Creating a Language

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 8, 2006

I didn't know if I should post this here or in Fantasy. I'm posting it here.

Say, hypothetically, you have this novel and it involves magic and demons and a language never seen before or remembered from say a culture that died out long before any of our present cultures.

OK? So you have this language nobody can read. Yet one word from this language keeps appearing. It appears in this magic circle. It appears on a map. And no one knows what this one word means, yet.

Now, how do you present that one word in your manuscript? Do you just keep refering to it as "the word" or do you attempt to somehow put it into the Word doc?

I'm thinking it's not an alphabetic word or anything that can be recreated by our fonts. I'd probably have to hand-draw this word then scan it and insert the picture into the Word doc. Is this an acceptable method?

How does one get pictures, maps, runes, icons, etc. into a manuscript?

James D. Macdonald · Feb 8, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
How does one get pictures, maps, runes, icons, etc. into a manuscript?

Transliterate the word into the Roman alphabet.

For the other stuff: after the book's sold the editor gets you together with the art department and you hash it out.

katee · Feb 8, 2006

James D. Macdonald said:
Transliterate the word into the Roman alphabet.

Absolutely. You've got to give your readers a way to pronounce it, after all.

reph · Feb 8, 2006

I agree. You can't realistically expect readers to subvocalize a squiggle as "the artist formerly known as Prince."

Albedo of Zero · Feb 8, 2006

reph said:
I agree. You can't realistically expect readers to subvocalize a squiggle as "the artist formerly known as Prince."

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 8, 2006

The problem is, I don't even know how to pronounce it.

So, I just describe the word as being of a language unknown, maybe that it resembles ancient Sumarian or ancient Egyptian or something and then just say,

He pointed at the scroll. It showed a map of Atlantis in relation to the Pillars of Heracles.

"Great. Atlantis isn’t lost any more," I said, my voice dripped with sarcasm. His point, if there was one, was lost on me.

His stabbed his finger at what looked like a drawing of a throne. There was an Atlantean word there. It was either the name of the capital city of Atlantis or the name of its king. With his other finger he pointed at the center of my photocopy of the kidskin, the very center of the magic circle where a word was printed.

It was the same word.

"Bill."

OK, I just threw Bill in because I myself don't know what the word is at this point, but you get the idea.

reph · Feb 8, 2006

Shadow F., I have an idea. End your quoted passage like this:

...With his other finger he pointed at the center of my photocopy of the kidskin, the very center of the magic circle where a word was printed.

It was the same word.

SeanDSchaffer · Feb 8, 2006

There are some fonts, Shadow Ferret, that many word processors have, that would have a realistic look to them.

You mentioned the Pillars of Herakles, so perhaps the font should be Greek?

If so, your word processor might very well have a Greek font on it. It might come in useful.

Maybe once you find out what font to write the original version of the word down in, you could have one of your characters read it out loud in the language the book is written in.

It's a thought, anyway. I hope it helps.

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 9, 2006

reph said:
Shadow F., I have an idea. End your quoted passage like this:

...With his other finger he pointed at the center of my photocopy of the kidskin, the very center of the magic circle where a word was printed.

It was the same word.

That is how it ends now. I threw in "Bill." to see if that's what people meant by transliterating it. I only asked the question because I've referenced "the word" several times since this passage now and I find saying "there was that damned word again" somewhat lacking in the oomph I want for some reason. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me.

(grasshopper) · Feb 9, 2006

Remember Mr. Mxyzptlk?
He was the little imp from the 5th demension who tormented Superman until he was tricked into saying his name backwards.

Now THAT'S a tough name!

Whenever I read his name I mentally pronounced it "Mixi-zip-tilk", but I had a friend who called him "Multi-pul-zik".

MarkN · Feb 10, 2006

There's a Retief story in which the main character and his group of fellow diplomats are greeted by their alien hosts at the spaceport and are led to a waiting "limousine"--a large, smelly truck on the side of which is a crudely-stencilled word that (in the author's words) "looks like 'eggnog'". Later on, after arriving at the embassy, Retief passes by the kitchen and notices a busboy scraping off a dirty plate into a large bin on the side of which is a label that "looks like 'eggnog'."

It's not exactly transliteration, since Laumer makes no attempt to suggest how the word is to be pronounced, he just uses the similarity to Roman letters to convey the approximate shape of the alien glyphs. Maybe you could do something similar.

roach · Feb 10, 2006

Similar to some of the above suggestions, why not have your character give it the pronunciation. Perhaps the character gets tired of calling it "the word" as well?

reph · Feb 10, 2006

Or you could do something similar to saying the word looks like "eggnog": describe its shape. "There it was again, that row of inverted js and us with two tails at the right end."

Mike Martyn · Feb 10, 2006

Would it neccesarily be a word? If you were to walk through the temple of Karnak in Egypt, which single symbol or block of symbols would constitute a word? How can your character pronounce it if its in a completely different alphabeth, like Urdu or Sandscript or what if it's a pictographic language like Egytian or Chinese? Why don't you call it a glyph and describe how it looks, ie two dragons fighting so thereafter your characters call it the Dragon Glyph.

Mind you if it looks like baby puke, you could call it the Baby Puke Glyph but only if you're going for comic effect or are currently suffering the unhappy attentions of a colicy baby.

As an aside, although I loved the Retief books, I defy you to find anything in Urdu, Egytian or Chinese that looks remotely like Eggnog!

MarkN · Feb 11, 2006

Ah, well, I suppose that would depend on how long the eggnog had been sitting around, wouldn't it?

AnneMarble · Feb 11, 2006

MarkN said:
There's a Retief story in which the main character and his group of fellow diplomats are greeted by their alien hosts at the spaceport and are led to a waiting "limousine"--a large, smelly truck on the side of which is a crudely-stencilled word that (in the author's words) "looks like 'eggnog'". Later on, after arriving at the embassy, Retief passes by the kitchen and notices a busboy scraping off a dirty plate into a large bin on the side of which is a label that "looks like 'eggnog'."

That's a great example.

It reminds me of something I read in a horror novel years ago -- I think it was The Tribe by Bari Wood. (Or Somethingie by Bari Wood and Somebody Else?) One character was standing outside a kosher store. The Hebrew letters on the store (I think the letters that identified it as a kosher store) reminded him of 7 and 11, so he always thought of them as "7-11s."

Shadow_Ferret · Feb 11, 2006

Glyph. Thank you. Perfect.

Creating a Language

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle

katee

reph

Fig of authority

Albedo of Zero

That didn't hurt

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

reph

Fig of authority

SeanDSchaffer

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester

(grasshopper)

MarkN

Altogether Ookie

roach

annoyed and annoying

reph

Fig of authority

Mike Martyn

MarkN

Altogether Ookie

AnneMarble

Nefarious Ghost Fan

Shadow_Ferret

Court Jester