 Fantasy: February 05, 2014 Issue [#6142] |
  Fantasy
This week: Created Languages Edited by: Storm Machine  
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"All knowledge is worth having." ~Jacqueline Carey
“Its very variety, subtlety, and utterly irrational, idiomatic complexity makes it possible to say things in English which simply cannot be said in any other language.” ~Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land |
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There are only four letters in the word grok. This seemingly simple word made it into the English language after the book Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein.
Not many words can be traced to fiction books. The meanings do not always translate exactly. Tolkien is considered the master of created languages (conlang).
Do you create languages for your alien cultures? For your fantasy species? Do you simply pepper in long words, or do you want to create an entire subculture? Does everyone speak the same language?
Speculative Fiction often treats these things on a simpler level. Creating a language is daunting. Even one word like grok must be weighed and measured against many different things in order to work. If Heinlein had chosen a word like niphlerwnatez instead, would it have had a chance in regular spoken English?
Earth is the only planet we know with intelligent life and civilization. We have seven continents, several billion people, and over 100 living languages, defined as those with native speakers. Yet do you ever consider when we see people from another world who all speak the same language and all understand each other?
Different places who speak the same language - United States, England, Australia - evolve different idioms and different words to convey similar concepts. These are the marks of a living language. Each one started with a base, and each one adapted to the people and the place where it grew. If you look back farther, many living languages have roots in a parent language. Do you ever think that since English has so many words, there must be a word for everything? Wrong.
One of the first Swedish words I learned was fika. It doesn't translate to coffee. It doesn't translate to going to coffee. It translates to taking a social break for a beverage and treat. So at work, they will all take a few minutes and have a break together. It isn't about what they choose to partake, but the act of taking that socialization time together. They do it at work, at home, out with friends. Do you imagine workaholic Americans choosing to take a break - even during the workday - to do something like socialize with coworkers? There is a reason it doesn't exist in my English; that concept is completely foreign to our culture.
So when I turn to write different people in different cultures, I try to think about what is important to the specific person and the place and culture that produced that person. Mike from Stranger in a Strange Land tried to grok English and Americans and everything on Earth, but he had been brought up on Mars among Martians. Grok was the only word he could use.
And for Tolkien, he created working languages for each of his species. These languages took into account how some races move faster or live longer. The words and symbols to write them had justification within the rules Tolkien created. Entire books have been created to explain how to create languages as Tolkien did and give ideas on how to create your own.
I don't believe it is necessary to create 400 languages for a single planet to make it feel real. I think you can create a feeling of foreignness for either a fantasy or science fiction culture by adding in concepts that might be part of their worlds that we don't observe or even understand, whether you choose to name them or not.
Perhaps at dawn everyone must stop what they're doing, even if it might mean flying into a star, to pray to their goddess and eat something native to their planet. Or instead, your alien culture refuses to acknowledge the presence of anyone else with intelligence in the universe because they can prove they are the most intelligent by their civilization's accomplishments. Allow yourself to change anything or everything from economic to religious to everyday matters. This is your world, and your control is absolute. As long as you retain internal consistency, your readers will be able to travel within the world with your characters.
If you do feel ready to take on your own languages, here are a few places to start:
http://www.zompist.com/resources/
http://conlang.org/resources/
http://deconstructedconstruction.tumblr.com/conlangresources
http://www.omniglot.com/links/conlangs.htm |
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brom21 
So what you’re saying is that it’s the journey not the destination that counts. This is hard for me. The occurrences that I try to fill in along the way, I find myself really reaching for anything and it ends up being not very cohesive and fluent. I have to learn to put in relevant, story driving details that don’t take away or divert from the plot. Thanks for your comments that are very relevant to my situation.
The destination counts, too. But often a character isn't ready to face the destination until the journey is at its end. That's why the fantasy stories don't give you a spell to take the young kid from the farm straight in front of the villain. The kid needs to have the challenge of facing the first beast and losing, learning from a mentor, then taking on a larger beast and maybe not losing so bad, before having the gall to take on the villain and win.
BIG BAD WOLF is Merry 
Sometimes the map is large.
It is not always only as large as it needs to be.
Joshiahis
One of the first "how to write" books I read was David Eddings' The Rivan Codex where he said the first thing every good fantasy needed was... a map. Great newsletter! See you next time.
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