made-up languages

How do you say "slippery slope" in your made up language?


Only twins do that stuff.

Klingon

I'm writing a fantasy novel that involves a made-up language. My question is, how much of it to use? Will it be enough to include a translation of everything that's said?== Do some research on Klingon. From the Star Trek series. They actually followed rules as to the development of language.

Unless you're something of a linguist, be cautious about using a made-up language in your book. It can look/sound so corny, and the rules of English are not an across-the-board set of rules for all languages. If you're just using a few words/phrases here and there, you can probably get away with it, though.

Seconded. If your POV character understands Elvish, then the character can provide a translation to the reader:

"Yo, dog," said the elf. He gave the traditional raise-the-roof greeting and switched to Elvish. "Ready to rock the house?"

If your POV character *doesn't* understand Elvish, then your reader shouldn't either:

"Yo, dog," said the elf. He pumped his hands up-and-down, open-palm, and added a stream of incomprehensible syllables. It sounded like a question.

If you're enamored of creating your own language, however, then give it a shot. I think moderation is the key, though: first because of the cornines factor, and second because hardly anyone is actually going to *read* a dozen lines of gibberish.

How could it be other than boring if it isn't understood?

DamaNegra said:

Creating the language is not a problem, at least for me. In fact, english isn't even my language, I'm spanish speaking and I can also speak french plus I know the basics for italian and japanese, so yeah, I know about the structure of different languages.

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This does not, however, give you the kind of linguistic experience you'd need to create your own language. For one thing, three of those languages are Romance languages, and have the same basic structure. I am not a linguist, but I know some linguists and they all wince when someone says, "Oh, I can create a language, no problem."

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.

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Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Simlanoggle ahle hfoolsmeig g'smoora,?
hoosn...aoslsmeimnng-soolawi ague Wlsiixk,woosks xos]aOoosl! ?Ilvssok goells? .maKlsoof 8emm.

DamaNegra said:

I was just wondering if it would be boring for a reader to see loads of a language they don't understand in the middle of a story.

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Yes. Yes, it would.

It depends on your fantasy. But as far as preference, I prefer thoughts to flow, which means sparse use of things that need to be defined.

Some people like to throw in extra jargon for reality sake, but none of what we do is real. So, if they call a cup "a cup" on Zorg, no one is going to get upset. "He poured a cup of grog" is not going to destroy a novel,

In my opinion, the more, "He vrued a stenit of grog" the more readers you'd lose. "Huh, this is just too complex." Runs to appendix- stenit...where is stenit...he didn't leave a translation of stenit! Bah!"

It's like art, the more abstract, perhaps a certain audience will like it, but the smaller the audience.

When people go to foriegn places, they like a blend of familiar with their exotic.

Go ahead. Write yourself out of a market. Marketability is the word I keep hearing out of New York. Will it sell? Money money money.

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

Elijah Phoenix said:

Go ahead. Write yourself out of a market. Marketability is the word I keep hearing out of New York. Will it sell? Money money money.

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

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Art can be recognized and some people put art above everything else, but the question of what will make it in the marketplace is publisher's primary consideration. Tolkien made up entire languages and succeeded because there was a great story in between that was told in the common tongue. And for those who dig deeper, they can look up the meaning of various names in the story, because in general, most have a meaning.

Tolkin wrote the hobbit trilogy when people were half *** literate.

Harry Potter is a strange phenom tho. i think the media had more to do with the surge of Potter. Kind of like the cabbage patch doll phenom. Of course, I personally have never met or talked to someone who read Harry Potter. I think the success of Harry is powered by British sales. Europe sales.

Case in point. Watch this new Usher movie. It will be number one at the box office and make a hundred million. Why? because he is a rapper and it's about a deejay turned bodyguard and inter racial relationships. I can quarantee you that it will do ten times what , say, "The Notebook" did in theatres.

And furthermore, America has been in a rapid state of moral and intellectual decline for the past 15 years. Amazing, considering the information age and all.

I watch "Jaywalking" and shows like "Street smarts" and get physically sick when I see teachers and college students with the IQ of a chimp.

I personally don't like to see many made up words, simply because they take me out of the story. Where they can be an asset is if they are used to describe items or concepts unique to your world. So I don't think it makes sense to use a made up word for a cup, for example, but it would be appropriate to use new words for a unique weapon or the concept of "honor before family" or anything else we don't have a word for in English.

The Harry Potter books are a good example of using foreign words: "muggle" and "quidditch" are unique to Rowling's universe.

(Elijah, I'm surprised that you have never met anyone who has read a Harry Potter book. Most people I know have read at least one of the books, and kids (and their parents) were lined up out the door of my local Barnes and Noble when the last volume was released.)

Elijah - you'll be sorry to hear that not only do I manage a slushpile for a publishing company, I also greatly enjoy people 'talking trash into microphones.' Amazingly, the slushpile I manage is completely devoid of 'great stories'. Perhaps I'm just unlucky, or perhaps I have abysmal judgement. Who can say.

Ah well - time to put on my Mos Def CDs and plot more vile betrayals of the reading public...

LOL

Funny how every generation says the next is sliding into a terrible decline.

My 2c is throw in the few words, names etc but please translate the real content.

I'd fight but I'm stressed out right now. Lucky you.

I don't think that everybody is stupid because there is a market comprised of cerebral readers. Like 1 or 2% of the population. Some people do enjoy a clever movie.
This is the video game generation. They want cheap thrills.
Let's see, what movies are big money makers.
"Good girls gone wild" thats the one where young girls expose their breasts.
"College girls gone wild" thats the one where girls expose their breasts.

What books are hot?
Well, there's "I should be dead by now" by Dennis Rodman. He's the guy that also wrote "Bad as i wanna be". I think there was a movie by same name.

Theres "Get rich or die tryin" by some dude named .50 cents. He makes records but doesn't sing or play an instrument.

Your going a wonderful job with that slush pile girl. I wonder why you can't find a great story?

I'm gonna put in my temptations tape and pop in "To kill a mockingbird" in my vcr. Enjoy Mos Def ???? and The Paris Hilton sex tape. Ah, the shortcut to fame.

Of course, Elijah dear, I understand if you're stressed. You get better and stick it to those punk kids! With their hula hoops and their rock'n'roll and their horseless dragsters! Why, in my day we used to step out of the cave at five sharp every morning to kill us a stegosaur for breakfast. Of course, in those days, it wasn't called five o' clock, because we didn't have clocks - didn't need them! We got up when we had to, because we had gumption, not like these kids today, with their tuneless music and their smart mouths and Brylcreem. Then we'd swing down to the Parthenon and listen to Orpheus play intellectual music on his lyre, and perhaps take in a bit of Plautus at the theatre. If you ask me it all went wrong when those scruffy Beetles started all that heathen Mersey music, or maybe it was that awful Elvish Parsley and his suggestive hip movements.
Slush piles are worse now, you know, because what with this Interweb and the Hollywood Liberal Conspiracy and the IQ-destroying fluoride in Cheerios, nobody can write worth a damn. Back in my day unsolicited manuscripts came in chipped on slivers of marble - Homer, Voltaire and the Beowulf poet all at once some days, and we'd have to turn down Dumas because he was too commercial, you know, all dumb thrills and padding. And don't get me started on that big lunk Gilgamesh. Literature! Don't talk to me about literature!

Elijah Phoenix said:

Publishers had to merge because they were all going broke because they were misreading the market. They learned from that.

Nowadays they don't look for a good story or clever writing. Will it sell?

The market is illiterate and tone deaf. Singers can't sell a record because people talking trash into microphones is what sells.
People that can actually play a musical instrument can't find work because people use electronic beats- they just push a button. In concert they play music tracks instead of bands playing instruments. Performers are so untalented they lip sync.
Book publishers have slush piles of great stories because they can't sell em.
Movie producers put out great flicks that bomb because the market is stupid.

TALENT IS NO LONGER SOUGHT OR APPRECIATED. WHO KNOWS, A BOOK WITH MADE UP LANGUAGE MAY WORK BECAUSE THE MARKET CAN'T READ ANYWAY. Listen to a rap record and tell me if you can hear or understand what they say while they're speed rappin. The electronic beat may sound good and the sounds of talking may blend, but you can't hardly hear a word. It's nuts anymore. crazy i tell ya.

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Well, no on every count. Publishers didn't merge because they were going broke, they merged because they were making money and someone with a lot more money thought they were a good investment and literally bought as many publishers as possible. Publishers didn't say to each other, "Do you want to merge." In each case, one man, or one group, with billions of dollars, moved in and bought them up precisely because they were making money. The publishers had no say in the matter. Anything is for sale, if you have enough money to buy it.

And talent is sought after just as much as it ever was. Maybe more so. But talent can really only be defined by whether or not large numbers of people think something is worth reading, listening to, or viewing. If no one wants to read it, listen to it, or watch it, it isn't talent, it's just bad.

And it's easy to tell you've never actually seen a slush pile, let alone read thorugh one. I've read slush piles, or tried to, and believe me, what's in them is as far from great stories as it's possible to get. There are almost no good stories in them, let alone great ones. About 70% of what's in slush piles would make a saint start drinking, and another 20%, while not horrible, is still pretty bad. Bad enough it stands zero chance of ever selling. It simply isn't any good. If you're really, truly lucky, about 1% of what lands in slush piles even approaches good, and finding something that's actually great in a slush pile is as rare as finding chocolate pudding in a, uh, crap factory. And about as easy.

Thinking slush piles are full of great stories really is like thinking your commode is full of oversize Hershey Kisses.

And great flicks don't bomb because the audience is stupid, they bomb because the flick wasn't so great after all.

Elijah Phoenix said:

And furthermore, America has been in a rapid state of moral and intellectual decline for the past 15 years.

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Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.
- Gustave Flaubert

Decline

Euan H. said:

Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times.
- Gustave Flaubert

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Well, my wife says I''ve been in a state of intellectual decline since the day we were married, and as often as she has to correct me on things I used to know, she's probably right. I don't have the energy it takes for rapid moral decline, so I'm safe there.

Puh-leeeeze!!! Nowadays a singer can't sell a record because the only thing selling is spit into a mic.

"Artists" make a word rhyme to earn the title artist.

Musicans who train for years to "learn" music, can't make a buck because everything is electronic.

Performers LIP SYNC because they are packaged and their voice is electronically fixed.

MTV is a instrument of lunacy. Video's are the attraction, rather than the music. Who has the most nudity or who has the most HO'S shaking their fat *** gets the award for best video.

Girls gone wild sells millions of copies. these are young girls baring their breasts and participating in lewd PUBLIC behavior.

I could go on and on but if you're in a state of denial, well............

Writers can't make sales because the population is dumb as a rock. they don't vote, don't read books, go to movies for the sex,violence and special FX, a good story goes right over their heads.

Who's going to buy the ticket to a historically signifigant movie, a cerebral story, buy a book with a clever plot? THE GOOD GIRLS GONE WILD! THE RAPPERS WITH THE GOLD CHAINS AND MILLION DOLLAR MANSIONS WITH FIVE SUV'S IN THE DRIVEWAY , BUT NOT A BOOK IN THE HOUSE. THE ONLY MOVIE THEY LIKE IS SCARFACE=SEX,DRUGS,VIOLENCE,NUDITY.

Everybody wants to be one of those "artists" so they can get gold chains to show everybody they have money. A big house to hold their stripper pole and video games, suv's to go out lookin for ho's with.

I was at my friends house the other day. We were sitting there watching a nice movie called "Second hand lions". Her son came in and watched about five minutes of it because his mom said it was a good flick. He got up and put on his headphones and played with the gameboy. enuf said.