Hello! Seeing Sevensworn on my dash as a physical book made me so excited! While looking at the cover I also realized that under the title of 7s, you have included what i assumed is 7s written again, but in a foreign language/symbols. Based off some of some of your excerpts, I can tell you use this language/symbols throughout 7s and it made me curious: how thoroughly did you go about creating a new language/symbols (if it is in fact new)? Is it based on a pre-existing one?
oh!!! the language is called hjelohk, which is the in-universe language of the gods! while i’m sure it’s not as thorough as a language created by someone with an actual understanding of linguistics, it’s certainly more thorough than i was planning to make it.
it has a pretty simple system, all things considering—each character corresponds to a character in the english alphabet. there is a separate technique for writing double letters, but all in all the written form of the language is pretty straightforward.
in terms of using it in writing, that’s when things got difficult. i figured out tenses and pronouns, and how words interact with one another. some words have a noted root in others, which give them a deeper meaning than they wouldn’t have otherwise. when editing sevensworn, i had to go through and make a list of every word i had written in hjelohk to be sure that all repeats were consistent, and that all of the words matched the tense they were meant to be in, all while being fully aware that no one would be paying much attention to that :’)
there are also different dialects—hjelohk and old adacian are the common root languages to all languages spoken in the archipelago, and at certain points throughout the novel ronan is noted to be able to decipher words and phrases cross-dialect because they’re similar enough to translate. regardless, the language spoken in adacia is slightly different from the language spoken in kadena, and much different from the one spoken in rhydel. as adacia is the largest island, many know the language out of trade necessity, while more isolated islands like shiqatar have a slightly more difficult time communicating cross-culture.
but to answer your last question, it’s not based on anything! it honestly wasn’t meant to be that important to the story, but at some point i figured that it was used enough that i should sort out actual conventions for the language, and from there it actually became a very important aspect of sevensworn’s storytelling. i admit i didn’t do much research while creating it so i’d be absolutely horrified if anyone with knowledge of linguistics so much as breathed in its direction, but considering that i could have just left it all as it was, i’m pretty proud of all the work i put into it.
this tag has some more info from a while back!! please feel free to ask me any other questions you have (and thank you SO much for the interest!!!)
