#fantasylangugaes

[elaz-ivero]

The Worldbuilding Diaries- Chapter Five; Fantasy Languages Part One

Languages are an integral and crucial part of how we as a species connect, communicate and is susceptible to cultural evolution, it develops with the people who carry it and can be built on an already established language or be sprung out of a desire to teach beyond simple mimicking. 

It’s important to understand that implementing a fantasy language into your work isn’t as easy as mixing up the English alphabet and trying to find a word that sounds nice, your readers will be able to gauge whether your language includes things like unique phrasing, conjunctions and vowels. What you should aim to create is a conlang, a constructed language, elvish is an example of a conlang, a real language created through artificial means. 

First here are some important definitions; 

Language; the words, their pronunciation and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. 

Accent; an effort in speech to stress one syllable over adjacent syllables 

Dialect; a regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language.

Jargon; The technical terminology or characteristic idiom of a special activity or group. 

Language is a large topic hence why this diary entry has been split into two parts, here we’ll discuss how languages originate and how you can evolve your culture and language simultaneously through understanding the process, sound theory and how to charecterize a group of individuals using their language and how biology can affect how language is spoken. 

Language originates when people, or intelligent life forms need to pass on information or discuss concepts beyond simple sounds, imitation and hand gestures, it’s important to understand that there must be an observable and instant benefit to your group if they use language for modern humans it allowed us to perfect tool making and make plans before executing hunts, leading to more food and an increased rate of survival. If your fantastical group is nomadic and isolated, hardly coming across another of their species they may not have ever needed proper or intricate communication and hand gestures and simple phrases might have worked just fine. 

Langauge is also diverse and I encourage you to listen to music and audio of the hundreds of spoken languages around the world, you’ll hear distinct differences in tone and pronunciation, for example, you might notice that a lot of northern languages use more rushed breaths, the mouth opens wider when speaking some African languages use clicking sounds as a substitute for words and these differences could help inspire some raw and new originality in your work.

For example, in one of my own fantasy languages, Nyefis , every word is spoken in two parts, Nye...Fis because the cultural group it originates from had to because of the protective gear in their mouths protecting them from the harsh arctic winds could only keep their mouths open for so long, words had to be spoken in two breaths and the words tend to be quite short until cultural evolution occurs and the group’s ancestors travel down the mountain to a warmer climate and explore literature and art more, later words associated with these things are longer and more romantic. 

By understanding how language originates you can also explore how your society originated and understanding how language dies will help you establish how fragile/well preserved the language in your story is. Has a language been outlawed due to war, is slang allowed or frowned upon, is everyone allowed to learn the language or can only a select few speak it? What birthed your language and what could possibly kill it?

Now you have your origin, what exactly is the language, if you choose to make your own alphabet (good luck making up over 20 new sounds) or use a pre-established one understanding how sound can indicate a culture or personality is interesting. I split my languages into three main types, light, harsh and medium. Light languages are built on soft sounds, H’s and S’s, whispered through pursed lips and delicately spoken, a lot of romantic languages play with lighter sounds, using o’s and frequently a persons’ pitch gets higher as they near the end of a word. By formulating a language using softer, sweeter, song-like tones and sounds the reader might already associate it with, civility, education, history, royalty.

Harsh languages are formulated with harsher sounds, k’s, t’s and q’s, it snaps on the tongue and you might notice a lot of ‘villainous species’ languages are either very huffy and low or sharp and loud this is because these sounds immediately convey anger, hostility and harshness. 

Medium Languages are a middle ground with both harsh and soft tones, it can be kind sounding or cruel and is open to interpretation. I like to choose the primary sounds of my language based on its origin, if the language originated from a hot climate it’ll likely be softer and shorter whereas if it originates from a harsher, survival against mother nature type climate it’ll be colder with stronger tones and sounds and include longer words. 

Treat your language like an art piece, chose the tones and shades carefully, did your people have the time to sit and chat and have long conversations or did planning have to be quick and concise and long words that mean several sentences had to be created. 

Biology is...important, human mouths are structured in a way that allows us to create a variety of sounds and yet some people struggle to roll their r’s or pronounce languages outside of their own, is their mouth structured differently? Nope, when we speak our mother tongue we cycle through muscle movements and tongue placements natural to us, pronouncing something differently forces us to figure out how to replicate the sound this is what leads to original accents poking through. If your society involves unique species that aren’t human clones with horns or longer ears think about their biological makeup, if they have fangs does that affect how they can open their mouths, can they whistle through one side of their mouth and that is a stand-alone letter in their language? For example, in my story I have a fantasy race that have black teeth which are shaped in a way that they have diastemas (gaps in their teeth) they can whistle through, a long whistle is a calling the equivalent of ‘come here’ or ‘follow me’, a short whistle is the equivalent of saying, ‘uhhhhhhhh’ its a thinking sound, a, please give me a moment I’m thinking. This is because they talk so much and so quickly they use this as a quick easy way to communicate to others without having to fully open their mouths. 

Think about other ways your species could communicate and how they could integrate that into your language, is a breath through the noise a way to breathe out after speaking for a long-winded period of time, is your language a mix of verbal and physical ques like signing or facial expressions. In order to avoid menial ‘small talk’ do the people wear necklaces with their name, parents and occupation on it so that they and a stranger can talk about what’s more important? 

Part 2 coming soon; 

Enjoy creating, there are so many amazing resources out there including the official conlang website https://conlang.org/resources/ 

Bye for now, -E