In the world of Fantasy and Science Fiction, one will often have a variety of alien races and cultures. Naturally, not all of such races know how to speak English (or any other Earthly language for that matter), which raises the question, should the author create a language of his own for some of these critters to use.
The answer depends on how much it will add to your world versus the effort involved. For instance, if some alien is only going to utter something in his native tongue for about two lines throughout an entire 300 page book, then you could either just describe it as a generic line like “then he uttered something in his own tongue I couldn’t catch”, or maybe just make up a few words simply for those lines (“Klatu Varata Nikto”). But if this alien language is a major component of the story, pieces of it used from time to time as insults, side comments, or the occasional greeting, then something a little more extensive may be required.
So, how extensive? Well, if you’re going to invent your own language, do it right, or at least enough to make it look real in the story. Like for anything, always work out a bit more than you’ll need in the story. Start with some basic grammatical rules; is it a phonetic language, does the adjective come before or after the noun, must every second sentence end in a whistle, etc.. No need to become a literary professor, just enough detail to work for the sentences you plan on constructing.
Next is any stylizations that need to be incorporated. One race might use sounds that sound more like growls, another like whistles, one language have a preponderous of vowels, which another nearly lacks them completely, or some culture might see the need for three silent letters at the end of every word. Whatever you decide, just keep it consistent. You’re trying to create a distinctive sound for your language; in much the same way that someone can recognize someone speaking Spanish without knowing the language, you should be able to know how your own language sounds.
And now the fun part, creating the dictionary. This pretty much amounts to putting random letters together, at least at first, but just make sure to keep within the guidelines you’ve set up fr yourself. After a while, you may find a pattern forming, or you can build larger words with the smaller ones you’d previously formed, or slightly alter one word if you need something with a similar but different meaning as the first. For instance: In Maldene “daln” is the word for “land”, while “Te” means “tall”. Put them together, and “Tedaln” means “tall land”, or “mountain”. Another Maldene example, are the words for “Thank-you”; there are four different words for thanks, each with the same base first syllable, just the second half of the word is changed depending on the type of thanks desired to give..
Whatever pattern or style you decide upon, stick with it, keep it consistent. You can use some elements from more earthly languages and tweak them from there, or just let your imagination fly. Above all, though, the word has to be something that people can speak, or that at least some sort of living creature can pronounce. Say it out loud if you’re in doubt, or if it’s a language that a non-human with alien vocal chords would say then try to imagine what the sound would be like if you heard it before putting it into letters.
Once you have enough alien words in your dictionary, the next question is how often should you use them. With one notable exception, I keep it to things such as cuss words, local phrases (the equivalents of “I love you” or “go jump in the lake”), references that have no direct English equivalent, time periods (a “rel” is a Maldene year, equal to 3.6 Earth years), and such. Just occasional use; you don’t want large swaths of your book in something the reader has to look up in an appendix to decypher. It also helps to use words whose rough meaning can be seen through context (“Wait a tid” in Maldenese is about the equivalent to saying “wait a sec”).
But that one notable exception I mentioned? A certain scene in one of the books where the point of view switched to that of an alien who just dropped in; said character heard everything the main characters said in all Maldene words for a couple of pages until the situation was rectified. I wrote the entire scene in English first, then translated the lines said by the main characters (as heard by the alien) into Maldenese.
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Writing Tips: Creating Your Own Language
February 27, 2012
February 27, 2012
In the world of Fantasy and Science Fiction, one will often have a variety of alien races and cultures. Naturally, not all of such races know how to speak English (or any other Earthly language for that matter), which raises the question, should the author create a language of his own for some of these critters to use.
The answer depends on how much it will add to your world versus the effort involved. For instance, if some alien is only going to utter something in his native tongue for about two lines throughout an entire 300 page book, then you could either just describe it as a generic line like “then he uttered something in his own tongue I couldn’t catch”, or maybe just make up a few words simply for those lines (“Klatu Varata Nikto”). But if this alien language is a major component of the story, pieces of it used from time to time as insults, side comments, or the occasional greeting, then something a little more extensive may be required.
So, how extensive? Well, if you’re going to invent your own language, do it right, or at least enough to make it look real in the story. Like for anything, always work out a bit more than you’ll need in the story. Start with some basic grammatical rules; is it a phonetic language, does the adjective come before or after the noun, must every second sentence end in a whistle, etc.. No need to become a literary professor, just enough detail to work for the sentences you plan on constructing.
Next is any stylizations that need to be incorporated. One race might use sounds that sound more like growls, another like whistles, one language have a preponderous of vowels, which another nearly lacks them completely, or some culture might see the need for three silent letters at the end of every word. Whatever you decide, just keep it consistent. You’re trying to create a distinctive sound for your language; in much the same way that someone can recognize someone speaking Spanish without knowing the language, you should be able to know how your own language sounds.
And now the fun part, creating the dictionary. This pretty much amounts to putting random letters together, at least at first, but just make sure to keep within the guidelines you’ve set up fr yourself. After a while, you may find a pattern forming, or you can build larger words with the smaller ones you’d previously formed, or slightly alter one word if you need something with a similar but different meaning as the first. For instance: In Maldene “daln” is the word for “land”, while “Te” means “tall”. Put them together, and “Tedaln” means “tall land”, or “mountain”. Another Maldene example, are the words for “Thank-you”; there are four different words for thanks, each with the same base first syllable, just the second half of the word is changed depending on the type of thanks desired to give..
Whatever pattern or style you decide upon, stick with it, keep it consistent. You can use some elements from more earthly languages and tweak them from there, or just let your imagination fly. Above all, though, the word has to be something that people can speak, or that at least some sort of living creature can pronounce. Say it out loud if you’re in doubt, or if it’s a language that a non-human with alien vocal chords would say then try to imagine what the sound would be like if you heard it before putting it into letters.
Once you have enough alien words in your dictionary, the next question is how often should you use them. With one notable exception, I keep it to things such as cuss words, local phrases (the equivalents of “I love you” or “go jump in the lake”), references that have no direct English equivalent, time periods (a “rel” is a Maldene year, equal to 3.6 Earth years), and such. Just occasional use; you don’t want large swaths of your book in something the reader has to look up in an appendix to decypher. It also helps to use words whose rough meaning can be seen through context (“Wait a tid” in Maldenese is about the equivalent to saying “wait a sec”).
But that one notable exception I mentioned? A certain scene in one of the books where the point of view switched to that of an alien who just dropped in; said character heard everything the main characters said in all Maldene words for a couple of pages until the situation was rectified. I wrote the entire scene in English first, then translated the lines said by the main characters (as heard by the alien) into Maldenese.
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