Creating Fictional Languages
Creating a fictional language is one of my personal favorite ways to introduce worldbuilding and add some depth into the story. Languages have their own history, abbreviations, and other things that make each language completely unique. From Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, a fictional language is the hall-mark of lots of fantasy stories. But, they can be really hard and confusing to come up. Especially coming from someone who has decided to revamp their entire fictional language system and found it to be way harder than she originally remembered. So, let’s get into some tips that have helped me out so much when I’m creating a fictional language.
Á La Game of Thrones?
Think big picture. Are you thinking more jargon and slang for a futuristic dystopian society or are you thinking a fully comprehensive all new fictional language á la Game of Thrones? Deciding that will have a big impact on how you create the language, and how the language is used will also have a huge impact on how you create it. If the language in your story is only a dead language spoken in religious services á la Latin, you don’t need to spend as much time developing it as you would a language that your characters speak in their everyday lives. But, my advice is to start small because you can always add more words later. I always start with a list of basic phrases, things like hello, goodbye, good morning, good evening, a list of about ten verbs, pronouns and words like brother, sister, mother, and father. Those are the kind of words I’ll probably use the most in my wip, so it makes the most sense to start off with those words. And, having those words and phrases provides me with a solid base for everything that I need to create.
Do I really need fifty different words for bookshelf?
I’m thinking no, but maybe yes. In my opinion, you don’t need to think of every single word that exists in your language. You can of course, but I never do. After I have my base of basic phrases, I then think of more phrases that my characters would probably talk about wether that be words relating to war, magic, or just plain small talk. My wip deals a lot with political intrigue, assassination plots, and things like that, so a lot of the words that I’ve actually cerated for my language relate to that because those words are words my characters will use a lot. Dialogue that revolves around political debates will require a much different vocabulary than the conversation between two lovers. If you’re in the early days of your story and unsure of which words you’ll need, google the 100 most common words in the English language or whatever respective language is your first language. Those words will almost certainly be some of the words that your characters will use no matter what subject they end up talking about.
THERE ARE NO SPELLING BEES IN CUBA
Phonology, my friends. What is the phonology of your fictional language? Phonology is the way a language sounds or is pronounced. In order to build up your fictional language, you probably need to come up with a consistent phonology. Unless you’re coming up with English. And, here comes Elle’s warning and momentary digression. English is not a phonetic language. I think most people know that. It is not phonologically consistent, and that bothers me a whole lot. Not only is the language not phonologically consistent, people from different countries who all speak English normally have different accents and pronounce the words wildly different. It’s just, not fun. Spanish, on the other hand, is a pretty phonetic language. If you can pronounce a word, you can probably spell it pretty easily. As the title says, there are no spelling bees in Cuba or any Spanish speaking countries to my knowledge because Spanish has a very, very predictable spelling system and it would be kind of pointless. Anyways, momentary digression over. The point is the best way to think of a sound for your fictional language is to listen to the sounds that the natural languages of the world have and English just lacks. Vietnamese, Thai, and Mandarin are tonal languages. French has a lot of nasal sounds. There are lots of options to choose from. Except for English. We don’t choose English.
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And here is where the rollercoaster takes a detour to crazy complicated town. Remember tip one: you can always add as you go. Don’t get overwhelmed by everything. Grammar is the hardest part of any language. What are the nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Is the language gendered like Spanish and French? The first thing you’ll probably want to figure out is the order that words appear in sentences. In some languages, the word order changes from sentence to sentence, but in others it can’t changes. However, having a fixed word order will probably make things easier for you. The most common orders are subject-verb-object (Elle read a book) and subject-object-verb (Elle a book read). Some languages also use the object-subject-verb order (A book Elle read). After you figure that out, you’ll also probably need to figure out:
• How are plurals formed? • How do possessives work? (“Elle’s book” or “the book of Elle”) • Will you use articles? (“the” and “a”) • Will you have compound words? • Will your language have gender? (el argumento/la historia or the plot/the story) • Where do adjectives and adverbs fit within your word order?
Down-South Dialect
I am a Texas girl. I say y’all and use all kind of weird southern phrases. (My favorite being ‘you know I love you more than my luggage’ from Steel Magnolias). Every language has different kinds of slang and dialect. Maybe your society has a different version of the language for men and women. Chances are young children, teenagers, and adults all don’t speak the same way. And, slang and idioms normally change depending on a person’s social class and possibly their job. What are the insults and rude sayings? What do people use as honorifics, like sir and ma’am in English? Are there a lot of funny sayings or quirky clichés passed down through the generations? Is the language only spoken by the most prestigious and important members of society? Or is it the unrefined and vulgar tongue of the peasant class. There are so many different quirks and unique little niches that you can add to your fictional language. If you’re feeling stuck, look throughout history for ideas. French was the language of the educated upper class in Russia prior to the revolution After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was considered the language of the peasants. Adding those different kind of elements to your story makes your language feel more unique and more real.
