Creating words and languages

Jason

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Once I started on my quest to read and write more and better respectively, I’ve approached both with kind of an academic perspective (rather than just for pleasure), forcing myself to more thoughtfully note nuances and details. In my slog through about the last 50-100 books, I have noticed that fantasy stories often make up words, with some authors more inclined than others. For instance, in my reading of GoT, it seems that GRRM spends a lot of time explaining new words and languages in his writings. I think this is partly why his books are such lengthy reads. As recently as Dance With Dragons, he spent two paragraphs introducing the word hathay

Finally, I got it, and was able to continue on with the story and it occurred to me that creating worlds, new languages and words can be both appealing but also can bite you in the arse. With that in mind, thought I’d start a discussion about the whole concept of creating new words in your readings and writings. What has been your experience? Have they been good or bad?
 

frimble3

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Yeah, he had the luxury of the space to spend two paragraphs describing what could be summed up as 'cart pulled by a small elephant'. It's not like it's playing a major part in the story, merely a bit of business to indicate the exoticness of the setting.
It's things like that that made his series so long that people have been waiting years for the end of the story.
If this sounds like I'm not a fan of made-up languages, you'd be right.
Only if and when there's absolutely no way to describe it in the many, many words already available, or it's something that's going to be used a lot, so you need a word to sum it up, make up a word.
And, there should be no apostrophes, or excessive amounts of letters from the remote reaches of the alphabet in that word. 'X'zzz'w' is not a word for anything I wish to read about.
 
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lpetrich

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Finally, I got it, and was able to continue on with the story and it occurred to me that creating worlds, new languages and words can be both appealing but also can bite you in the arse. With that in mind, thought I’d start a discussion about the whole concept of creating new words in your readings and writings. What has been your experience? Have they been good or bad?
I've done a little bit of it. I've worked from George Adamski's purportedly nonfictional book "Inside the Spaceships" and looked for phonological patterns. Of his human-ET friends, only six have names, and from how they encounter GA, they fall into two groups, with these places of origin:
  • Orthon (male, Venus), Kalna (female, Venus), Firkon (male, Mars), Ilmuth (female, Mars), Ramu (male, Saturn)
  • Zuhl (male, Saturn)
Phonology:
  • Vowels: a, i, o, u (e absent, an oddity), long u
  • Initial consonants: (), n, m, r, k, th, f, z
  • Final consonants: (), n, l, r, th
I thought of some names that fit that pattern, with plausible extensions of it: Khessini, Nerith, Maathak, Reznan, Kurati, Saanalokam, Yazna Golu, Narmowangi, Durnakhemi

The "kh" is a cross between k and h, like German "ch" or Spanish "j". I didn't want lots of apostrophes, but I decided to have a sound that does not exist in English -- that one.
 

lpetrich

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What I was doing is creating a constructed language or conlang. The Language Construction Kit (Mark Rosenfelder) is a good guide to how to do it.

You might first want to start with a naming language, one for giving names to people and places and the like. You won't need much vocabulary or grammar, but you will need phonology - the sounds in a language. Wikipedia is full of descriptions of (natural) languages, and those descriptions include what vowels and consonants are present. You also need to consider syllable structure (phonotactics). What consonant clusters are allowed? What final consonants? Some languages have very simple syllable structure, like Hawaiian: optional single initial consonant, no final consonants. English is much more complicated, with any consonant being able to be initial or final, though it does have some restrictions on consonant clusters.

Once we have a phonology, we must turn to the structure of the names. Many names are compounds, and these compounds can be formed in several ways:

North America - Wikipedia - mouse over the entries in other languages. One can easily guess the syntax that some of them use. Here are some literal translations:
  • North (noun) America
  • Northamerica or North-America (compound)
  • Northern (adj) America
  • America of the North
  • America Northern (noun-adjective order)

Names of cities, towns, villages, etc. often have words like "city", "town", "ville", etc. in them. Place names often have "north", "east", "south", "west", "upper", "lower", "mountain", "hill", "valley", etc. in them.

Classical Greek personal names often had hippos, "horse", in them, and Germanic personal names often have "wolf" in them.
 

lpetrich

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Now for more detail on personal names.

Many people go by nicknames as well as their full names, and nicknames are often abbreviations of their full names. They are sometimes not very recognizable, however. A man named Alexander or a woman named Alexandr(i)a may be known as Alex or Sandy. The Meaning and History of First Names - Behind the Name has oodles of them.

In many societies, including ours, people have multiple names. There are a variety of customs for assigning them, and a common one is to have a personal name and a family name. For most of Europe and its colonies, they are ordered (personal name) (family name), while in eastern Asia and Hungary, they are ordered (family name) (personal name).

Family names have a variety of origins: someone's child, personal features, places, occupations. In most cases, they are passed down the generations, but Iceland uses someone's-child names as appropriate for each person. Thus, I'd be Loren Marioson instead of Loren Petrich (more-or-less Peterson). The -ich is a derivational suffix, sometimes used in someone's-child names.

One may have additional names, like middle names: extra personal names or family names. Latin Americans often use (personal name) (father's family name) (mother's family name), often hyphenating the latter two for English speakers. Russians use (personal name) (someone's child) (family name). So Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev has personal name Mikhail, someone's-child (patronymic) name Sergeyevich = son of Sergei with a derivational suffix, and family name Gorbachev.

Some notable US politicians are often known by acronyms of their names: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
 

lpetrich

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Many of these names are two-word compounds, with some of the source words being very common.
Germanic name - Wikipedia - Wolfram means "wolf-raven"
Ancient Greek personal names - Wikipedia - Philippos means "lover of horses"

In the US, a common source of personal names is family names. Thus, names like Shirley and Chelsea. Addison Mitchell McConnell has two of those names.

A common source of personal names in France is compound personal names, like Jean-Michel. Many French female names are feminine versions of male ones, like Danielle, Louise, Justine, ...

Some ancient Roman names were numbers in sequence, giving us Quintus, Sextus, Septimus, Octavius, ...(5th, 6th, 7th, 8th). That last one I've seen in feminine form: Octavia.


An additional category of last names is ornamental. When Eastern European Jews were made to use last names, they often picked such names. Thus, we have names like Gold, Silver, Diamond (Yiddish: Finkelstein, "sparkle stone"), Amber (Yid: Bernstein, "burn stone"), Ruby (Yid: Rubin), Flower (Yid: Blum, English cognate "bloom")

Also names like Roosevelt and Rosenfeld (Dutch and German for "rose field"). Rosenthal is German for "rose valley".

Here are some earily-recognizable English ones:
  • Patronymics (some man's child): Johnson, Nixon, ...
  • Occupations: Smith, Baker, Brewer, Barber, Farmer, Cooper, Thatcher, ...
  • Personal characteristics: White, Brown, Black, Little, ...
  • Locations: Hill, Lake, ...

Note that in a society with a long history, names often become fossilized. Thus, "Smith" is a common English last name, despite industrial metalworking having put hand metalworking out of business. Some people do it as a hobby, however.

I'll now look at names of US Presidents and First Ladies (Chronological List of Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents of the United States). Most of them are fossilized:
  • Hebrew: Abraham, Aaron, Sarah
  • Hebrew through Greek: James, John
  • Greek: George, Theodore
  • Roman: Lucretia
  • Germanic: Richard, Edith
  • Old French: Eleanor
  • Arabic: Barack
  • Quality: Grace
  • Family names: Franklin, Grover, Calvin, Dwight, Lyndon
 

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Most of the time, I wish people wouldn't try to construct names. They do it by picking roots from extant languages, for instance.

But if you actually know something about linguistics and more particularly about philology, it can throw you right out of the story.

David Weber's attempts to show English in isolation modified by time in his Fortress books just plain pissed me off. We know how English changes. It's actually pretty predictable at this point, and it wasn't what he was doing (cute spelling, mostly). More importantly, we also know that a written and standardized language drastically slows down change, particularly when there are technological reproducible medthods of writing.

And I've posted before about the medieval fantasy with a Welsh setting that has a female character named, essentially, "sanitary napkin." Not good.
 

BPhillipYork

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I think constructing a language can be really powerful and useful tool. I think it's kind of overdone, especially in speculative fiction, because Tolkein looms over the genre like a specter haunting it. A lot of people just seem to think they have to do it because Tolkein did it, but, they don't. And you can get a lot of flavor and stuff for a culture or a world just by having a pattern for names and things without needing to invent a whole language. I found Martin's language world-building pretty dissapointing. Dothraki have no word for thank you? What does that even mean? It makes no sense, especially given a lot of other stuff that the Dothraki do, i.e. see the whole exchange of Daenarys for an army as an exchange of gifts. Clearly they have the concept of gift giving so...

I think Leguin does this really well, on the other hand. If you read the dispossessed she talks about language a couple of times, how the people on Anarres don't use possessives in the same way that we do. It's very short, to the point, and effective, because it makes you think about the normative power of language and how it affects how we think about the world. But she doesn't bother with paragraphs explaining this, its just "they use the mother. IMO this is the best kind of worldbuilding.

However if you're a linguist or a philologist or you are willing to put in the work it can add a really interesting dimension to a work.
 

lpetrich

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A lot of people just seem to think they have to do it because Tolkein did it, but, they don't. And you can get a lot of flavor and stuff for a culture or a world just by having a pattern for names and things without needing to invent a whole language.
Yes, by having a naming language instead of a fullscale conlang.

I found Martin's language world-building pretty dissapointing. Dothraki have no word for thank you? What does that even mean? It makes no sense, especially given a lot of other stuff that the Dothraki do, i.e. see the whole exchange of Daenarys for an army as an exchange of gifts. Clearly they have the concept of gift giving so...
On that sort of subject, one can simulate a different language's vocabulary by using different vocabulary than what one would normally expect. In my "Contact across the Solar System", I have:

A bit later, "Some Earthers themselves noted what a mess that they had gotten themselves into. One of them coined the phrase 'Mutual Assured Destruction' for it," said Kalna.
"Do you know what its English acronym means?" asked Ilmuth.
"Yes, something like 'crazy' or 'insane'."
"Pretty much says it. It's such a horrible thing to think about."

(looking back, I think "Shared Guaranteed Destruction" might have been better)

"Our best guess at this point is that the Shuttle was kept going by its supporters supporting some national councilmembers. In return, the councilmembers deliver the necessary resources. They even have their own name for this practice: 'pork barrel'. A barrel full of pig meat for giving out to farm workers."

Also, a character praises a US Congresswoman as "a fine councilmember".
 

BPhillipYork

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Strange Planet, a webcomic by Nathan W Pyle does a really good job of showing how bizarre some things are just by using different words for them. It's a treat, but also a lesson. I am not sure I would've ever thought to call teeth "mouthstones".
 

lpetrich

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Some more of my technique. As in my previous post, note what gets called a "council".

(US Congresswoman) Cristina's changing sides was also news in the Solar System Community. Venusians and Martians often got a good picture of it, but people farther out often had very naive ideas about it. Like describing Cristina as a member of Earth's ruling council. "Actually, Cristina Martinez-Ortega is in one of the two coequal ruling councils of a political subdivision of the Earth called 'United States'. They are called the Council of Representatives and the 'Senate', and she is in the first one of these."

In another story, I mention "the Americans' leader".
 

neandermagnon

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Some more of my technique. As in my previous post, note what gets called a "council".

(US Congresswoman) Cristina's changing sides was also news in the Solar System Community. Venusians and Martians often got a good picture of it, but people farther out often had very naive ideas about it. Like describing Cristina as a member of Earth's ruling council. "Actually, Cristina Martinez-Ortega is in one of the two coequal ruling councils of a political subdivision of the Earth called 'United States'. They are called the Council of Representatives and the 'Senate', and she is in the first one of these."

In another story, I mention "the Americans' leader".

I could have fun with this and the British government.

"She's a member of one of two ruling councils in a place called "The United Kingdom" found in a small archipelago in the Northern hemisphere of Earth. The two ruling councils are the "House of Lords" for the descendants of feudal overlords who invaded and occupied the archipelago a thousand years ago and the "House of Commons" for the descendants of the occupied peasants."
 

lpetrich

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Cute. I'll try my hand at that in terms of my story world.

The "United Kingdom" is a political subdivision of the Earth, and it is ruled by a leader and a pair of councils.

The leader's position is inherited, and the current leader, Elizabeth #2, inherited it from her father and predecessor leader, George #6. Her son Charles is expected to inherit her position. The leaders had been active leaders in past centuries, but over the last century or so, the leaders have been almost entirely ceremonial ones.

Of the two councils, the most active one is the Council of Common People. Each member is elected from one subdivision of the nation, and whichever faction of members or combination of such factions is a majority of members then chooses which among them will become heads of the major government agencies. Along with them will be an overall head, the "Prime Minister", who does the work of a leader.

The other one is the Council of Lords. Its members are various dignitaries, either inheriting their positions or being appointed. It does only a very limited bit of official business.
 

lpetrich

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I now thought of going further and using "committee" instead of "council", trying to be super generic.

A good place to look for doing this would be a dictionary of synonyms: Thesaurus.com | Synonyms and Antonyms of Words at Thesaurus.com ROGET's Hyperlinked Thesaurus

Using Wikipedia, I checked on translations of the US House of Representatives's name, and I found that Romance languages use "Chamber of Representatives". Wiktionary is another good place to look for translations.
 

benbenberi

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I now thought of going further and using "committee" instead of "council", trying to be super generic.

I think "council" a more generic term. "Committee" suggests there is a higher body it answers to (even if it is a "committee of the whole") -- the word itself indicates a committee gets its authority by delegation, not in its own right.