The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Six; Fantasy Langauges Part two
In Part One I went over how languages are formed and how their structure and style can impact how its speakers are perceived and the languages survivability, in this post I’ll discuss how you can make your fantasy language feel both believable and impactful existing and affecting communication between cultural groups. Communication can be the only way to resolve conflict and if combating groups cannot speak to each other due to a language barrier that might affect how problems and issues around ideas are resolved.
Recording and teaching languages can be a long and painstaking process, many people have tried to create universal languages and teach as many people as possible their new conlang to no avail. In the region, your story is based is there one national language or multiple, representing different groups and their different dialects and languages. Are representatives and members of higher classes taught multiple languages so they can better communicate on their travels and if they don’t how does this affect their interactions with international parties and members of other groups. One criticism of the fantasy genre is how characters originating from different parts of the world unanimously understand each other and speak only English, this doesn’t have to be the case, language barriers can allow you to explore different forms of communication and allow characters to slowly get to know each other and understand each others’ cultures and tongue.
Recording and translating information from one language to another isn’t always easy, double-meanings and poor translations can result in a piece of literature or message being interpreted different from people from different regions, your protagonist might struggle to reason with an antagonist that doesn’t understand him or find allies in foreign countries or allied nations that don’t understand their language or have different values.
Explore these struggles, find ways for language and mistranslations to be interesting and impact your story. I tend to begin my stories with two main dialects and in the second draft blend these languages together and create sub-cultures with different translations and create a master list on the words I’ve used and what they mean.
Happy writing and conversing,
-E