Making a Language – ESP Workshop Notes
- How to start? Know or study a second language
- Studying a second language provides ideas on structure and illustrates the oddities of your native tongue.
- Use Duolingo for free to learn the major differences between another language and your own.
- You do not need to speak the second language at a conversational level.
- Determine your goal
- Are you creating the second language for the joy of creating a language or for use in a work of literature?
- If for use in a work of literature, remember this is world building. Acknowledge the world building/writing trade off you are willing to make.
- Just like writing, language construction can be pantsed or planned.
- Pantsing languages can lead to inconsistencies.
- There are different approaches to planning languages.
- Planning for a story
- Create framework rules for the language.
- Revert to the framework as a guide to create the language snippets needed at a point in time.
- Some information on planning can be found be listening to Writing Excuses 12.51: Constructed Languages, with Dirk Elzinga
- Also read the extended liner notes.
Learning Arabic with the primary goal of transcribing it influenced the order I created my framework. The basics below provided enough structure to create the words and sentences I needed.
- The basic structure
- The alphabet
- Phonetics
- Script
- The script can be tackled closer to publication.
- Verbs
- Some guides address verbs after nouns and pronouns
- root verbs
- verb tenses
- verb moods
- verb forms
- Noun derivation
- Possessive
- Adjective derivation
- Pronouns
- Numbering system
- Sentence structure
- The alphabet
Additional comments from the round table
- Consider the influence of the world the language exists in
- I.e., a desert planet could have a lot of words for sand
- Consider relations with others
- “Second” sister
- birth order
- Use your language structure for names, titles and places
- How are people named?
- After something
- Number of names
- Secret names
- Add words borrowed from other languages of your world.
- Think about how languages mix as people do.
- Who conquered who?
- Who was a trading nation?
- Change some words to account for the passage of time.
- How to embed the language
- Have a character who translates
- Follow a block of the language by its translation
- Slip in word or short phrase in text where the context is obvious
- Phonetic guide as bonus on website (not in the book/story)
- Current robust constructed languages
- Elvish – Tolkien
- Klingon – Star Trek
- Dothraki – Game of Thrones
- Lapine – Watership Down
- Na’vi – Avatar
- Alienese – Futurama
Resources
- Ancient Scripts – writing systems
- Duolingo – Learn a language
- International Phonetic Alphabet
- Omniglot – the online encyclopedia of writing systems and languages
- Writing Excuses 12.51: Constructed Languages, with Dirk Elzinga
Sloane Talest 