#linguistic worldbuilding

[cd-covington]

I just got Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh from the library, and I KNOW the author has to be on here.

The book opens with a guidebook to understanding humans as written by an alien species that sees us as space orcs.

It's an "are we the baddies?" humans-as-space-orcs book.

Also it does some things with linguistic worldbuilding that I need to talk about, so there'll be an essay on that eventually. (Exclusive for the kickstarter essay collection.)

[avemakuta]

Thinking about minecraft languages again I fear.

We know of at least two diagetic writing systems used in the world of minecraft— enchanting table language and some form of the Roman alphabet. We know that some form of the Roman alphabet is diagetic, because it exists in the world already before the Player arrives. Whoever built the desert temples assigned significance to the letters "TNT" enough to put it on their explosives. Pictographic writing also seems to exist, based on naturally-generating chiseled blocks, but that's harder to definitively state isn't purely decorative.

Villagers also presumably use some form of writing, given that they have librarians, but whatever that writing is, it doesn't seem to be legible to the Player, since we can't read books until we write in them ourselves.

The villager/illager species definitely creates symbolic art, given the use of banners by the illagers and of creeper face symbols on clerical robes. Piglins also use symbolic art, given the snouts carved into bastions, and it seems reasonable to conclude that they have some form of language.

This gives at least three languages in the world of minecraft— Piglin, Villager, and Desert Temple. Possibly a fourth, with Enchanting, but that could just be the writing system used by villagers, given that the Player doesn't seem to be able to read it.

What would those languages be like? What kinds of poetry are written in the Hnnngs and Hrrs of the villagers, or the grunts and snorts of the piglins? Could a piglin and a villager learn each other's languages, or are they too different not just in terms of vocabulary but in terms of the physical features required to communicate? Do piglins carry information in the flapping of their ears? Do villagers produce complex tones by resonance in their large noses?

And what about etymologies? For villagers, wool comes from sheep, but to a piglin, if wool exists at all, it's woven from strider hair. If the inhabitants of the desert temples had a word for gunpowder, was it related to their word for creeper? If piglins do, is it related to their word for ghast?

[prokopetz]

Quibbling about etmology in fantastical settings is usually of limited interest because, well, every word has some origin, and – unless we're given some reason to believe that the setting's inhabitants are truly speaking modern English – we must assume that some notional localisation is taking place; the text's use of an English word which has, for example, a French origin does not inherently imply that the actual, literal country of of France exists in this setting, and so forth.

No, the interesting part is when the text decides to throw in a whole other real-world language. If everybody speaks English, clearly we're localising for the benefit of the Anglophone reader; and if everybody speaks either English or some invented language, we may conclude that English is standing in for a specific language which exists within the setting, with other languages being left unlocalised; but if most speech is in English, except some characters speak Russian, now we have a question on our hands.

A fantastical setting which represents its inhabitants as speaking the language of the work's target audience suggests nothing other than that the author wanted it to easily be read, but the presence of additional real-world languages represents a more significant choice. Why are we localising some but not all of the setting's languages as one spoken by the work's target audience? How was it decided which fictional languages should be represented by which real ones? Why Russian in particular? What exactly are we implying here?

[elbiotipo]

I'm not a linguist and I find the whole excercise of conlanging, while I love it and respect it, beyond my abilities, but I do have one thing or two to say about linguistic diversity and how boring is to have a "common" or "basic" language in fantasy or science fiction without exploring the implications.

Being a bilingual speaker of Spanish and English, and someone that because of work reasons and entertaiment tastes interacts a lot with English, I tend to see English as the equivalent of those "common" or "basic" languages of speculative fantasy. As a useful tool for communication, science technology and commerce. In real life, however, as you are aware, the expansion of English tends to undermine local languages, it's considered more valuable to know English that to know the language of your grandparents, or learn any other language you just feel curious about.

The experiences of every multilingual person are different, but in mine I know English, I write and read and listen to English a lot. But I don't consider myself an English *speaker*, I speak Spanish and more to the point Argentine Spanish, that's the culture I identify with, and it's the language I use to express my feelings and inner thoughts. I can't imagine saying "I love you" to anyone in English, to me it's just a tool I use to access to knowledge or communicate through language barriers ("basic", "common"). But interestingly, by both writing and participating in the wider English-speaker internet culture, isn't it part of my own culture, as an individual, too?

The fact is that English also has a culture(s) and a history and a corpus of literature. So when we write about "Common" or "Basic" languages in fiction we need to ask ourselves: where did they come from? How did they become the standard? Is there a literature, a canon, a culture of "Common" in your fantasy world? What about other languages, other cultures that aren't raised learning it and see it just as a tool? Because no matter the strenght of Anglophone cultural imperialism and the social value of learning English, I don't see Argentines, or for that matter Chinese, Italians or Russians abandoning their first language. And yet even in English and in all other languages (ESPECIALLY other languages, English is remarkably uniform) there is a variety of dialects. And we need to remember, once Latin was spoken only in a village in central Italy, and English in a rather remote rainy island. They weren't destined to have their future roles, history drives language.

So, when an author goes for the "universal language" explanation to avoid linguistic misunderstandings, for me, it raises more questions that I believe are worth exploring.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Reference: Topographical Elements

Ideas for Naming your Fictional Places

Buildings and stones brough, burton, caster, church, cross, kirk, mill, minster, stain, stone, wark ⚜ Examples: Crossthwaite, Felixkirk, Newminster, Staines, Whitchurch

Coastline features ey, holme, hulme, hythe, naze, ness, port, sea ⚜ Examples: Bardsey, Greenhithe, Sheerness, Southport, Southsea

Dwellings and farms barton, berwick, biggin, bold, by, cote, ham, hampstead, hamton, house, scale, sett, stall, thorpe, toft, ton, wick ⚜ Examples: Fishwick, Newham, Potterton, Westby, Woodthorpe

Fields and clearings combe, croft, den, ergh, field, ham, haugh, hay, ing, land, lease, lock, meadow, rick, ridding, rode, shot, side, thwaite, wardine, worth, worthy ⚜ Examples: Applethwaite, Cowden, Smallworthy, Southworth, Wethersfield

General locations and routes bridge, ford, gate, ing, mark, path, stead, stoke, stow, street, sty, way ⚜ Examples: Epping, Horsepath, Longford, Ridgeway, Stonebridge, Streetly

Hills and slopes bank, barrow, borough, breck, cam, cliff, crook, down, edge, head, hill, how, hurst, ley, ling, lith, mond, over, pen, ridge, side, tor ⚜ Examples: Barrow, Blackdown, Longridge, Redcliff, Thornborough, Windhill

Rivers and streams batch, beck, brook, burn, ey, fleet, font, ford, keld, lade, lake, latch, marsh, mere, mouth, ore, pool, rith, wade, water, well ⚜ Examples: Broadwater, Fishlake, Mersey, Rushbrooke, Saltburn

Woods and groves bear, carr, derry, fen, frith, greave, grove, heath, holt, lea, moor, oak, rise, scough, shaw, tree, well, with, wold, wood ⚜ Examples: Blackheath, Hazlewood, Oakley, Southwold, Staplegrove

Valleys and hollows bottom, clough, combe, dale, den, ditch, glen, grave, hole, hope, slade ⚜ Examples: Cowdale, Denton, Greenslade, Hoole, Longbottom, Thorncombe

NOTE

These elements are all found in many different spellings. Old English beorg ‘hill, mound’, for example, turns up as bar-, berg-, -ber, -berry, -borough, and -burgh. Only one form is given above (Thornborough).

Several items have the same form, but differ in meaning because they come from different words in Old English. For example, -ey has developed in different ways from the two words ea ‘river’ and eg ‘island’. It is not always easy deciding which is the relevant meaning in a given place name.

This resource does not distinguish between forms which appear in different parts of a place name. Old English leah ‘forest, glade’, for example, sometimes appears at the beginning of a name (Lee- or Leigh-), sometimes at the end (-leigh, -ley), and sometimes alone (Leigh) (K. Cameron, 1961).

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Worldbuilding

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[specialagentartemis]

I like digging into the worldbuilding implications of settings where some people have surnames and some people don’t (or at least don’t seem to). And Piltover and Zaun (as portrayed in Arcane at least) present one of the classic applications of it.

We see only a limited number of people who are given surnames—Caitlyn Kiramman, Jayce Talis, Mel Medarda. Cecil Heimerdinger. Probably Sheriff Grayson and several of the councilmembers. And then the characters that don’t—Vi, Powder, Ekko, Viktor, Silco, Vander, Sevika. A pattern emerges.

Especially as early on it’s made clear that Jayce belongs to House Talis, a family of skilled toolmakers and craftspeople, it seems like surnames mean you belong to a House, a lineage, an established and recognized family organization of hereditary power, position, or trades. You have something worth inheriting, something worth keeping in the family, something recognized. Belonging to a House may not necessarily mean you’re somebody important, but it means you’re somebody.

And it seems to be mostly a Piltovan thing. (Though not all residents of Piltover seem to belong to a House—Sherriff Marcus is never given a surname—but all the characters with surnames do seem to be from Piltover.) in Zaun, Vi and Jinx hardly have anything respectable to inherit. Viktor has no family members with social clout to call on, Ekko has no recognized lineage to trace. They don’t have surnames. They don’t need them.

In situations with a city like Zaun with lots of people with no surnames, though, you tend to need to clarify who you are and who you’re talking about anyway, and you frequently see matro/patronymic names become established—X son of Y, A daughter of Z. It’s not really a last name and doesn’t function like one, it’s more like a clarifier. Or a claim to who you are. (The image of Vi introducing herself as Violet Vandersdaughter gave me an attack of emotions. Okay, continue.) In the boiling-over tension between Zaun and Piltover, I can especially imagine it being a point of spiteful pride for Zaunites. Who your parents are, where you came from. Yeah, I’m Ekko Innasson, and you can’t make me be anything else.

(Jinx is no longer Powder Vandersdaughter, though. She’s just Jinx. Everyone knows who she is. She doesn’t need anything else.)

Which makes the apparent surname Grayson, for a woman who is Piltover’s Sheriff, interesting this context. It suggests to me that Sheriff Grayson is from a new House, that House Grayson was elevated and established only a generation or two ago. A matro/patronym became an inherited surname. And Sheriff Marcus is desperately trying to handle this shit to try to prove himself and to get his family established and elevated into a House as well for his daughter to be part of this class.

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

More Rohirrim Idioms and Adages

People seemed to like some of my Rohan idioms and adages from a few days ago, and I found some more among old posts and drafts. Just throwing them here now for general interest, to the extent that there is any!

“To keep the bees busy” means to drink heavily/get drunk because the Rohirrim’s drink of choice is mead, which is made from honey.

“There’s a worm at [person’s] elbow” means that they’re getting bad advice, coming obviously from the experience of Gríma sitting by Théoden’s throne. (Fourth Age only)

“To get the tusks” means to do something that backfires. It refers to the old king Folca, who wanted the glory of slaying the great boar of Everholt. He did but was also killed in the process, and so instead of any of his glorious deeds, he’s mostly remembered as the king who got gored to death by a wild pig.

“To show the mercy of Helm” means to be absolutely merciless. Re-read the Helm Hammerhand section of Appendix A — that guy was wild!

“[Person] is putting up the rowan preserves” is a euphemism for being on your period. Rowan trees have berries that can be used to make jams, sauces and preserves. They’re bright red, self explanatory. (Typically only said between women. It is not a good idea for a Rohirrim man to ever make this suggestion about someone else.)

“To get water in your hayloft” means to have disastrously bad luck. The hay you store in your stable’s loft must be kept absolutely dry because any moisture up there will cause decomposition and rot the hay, potentially ruining a whole stockpile.

“A sharp mind needs no book.” Folks in Rohan do not enjoy being told that they should adopt the practice of using written records to preserve and pass on their histories, etc. Anyone who suggests as much hears this old adage, which is a more polite way of saying “only a dummy has to rely on a book to remember important things.”

“No man defeats the Wold; at best, he can hope to survive it.” The Wold is some of Rohan’s roughest, most unforgiving terrain. This adage started in recognition of how hardy its relatively few residents had to be to hack it out there, though the éoreds of the northeast also came to appropriate it as their battle motto given how often the Wold was (unsuccessfully) raided by outsiders. 

“There’s more than one way for a dragon to bite.” References their Northman ancestor Fram, who slew a dragon and then refused to share the dragon’s hoard with the dwarves who claimed it was theirs. He sent them only the dragon’s teeth, an insult that led the dwarves to find and kill Fram. It’s used as a general caution against overconfidence or unnecessarily antagonistic behavior.

[minecraftbookshelf]

(via @couchycraft )

There is Mangrovia, the Viewer Kingdom that Pixlriffs and a couple other server members built on stream as part of a charity event. Conceptually, it is the home kingdom for the viewers.

I haven’t entirely decided exactly how I want Mangrovia to function in the greater worldbuilding, but this idea of a place settled by people who have left all the other empires and built their own home and culture is one I’ve been poking at. A pidgin language would suit them very well.

Other than that, the closest would be the Crystal Cliffs, which welcomes students from all kingdoms, though most of its inhabitants are human, or at least human-variety-mortal. They do employ and host mages from the Ocean, the Overgrown, and even Rivendell as well. (The witches from the Swamp have standing invitations but refuse to leave the Swamp) There have definitely been some inter-linguistic conversations happening there, though most people involved in academic magical debates tend to be able to find at least one language in common, but sometimes they end up with loan words, when they can’t find a direct translation for a magical concept from one language into another.

Language Barriers

So I’m a massive linguistics nerd (it was the Tolkien exposure at a young age lbr) and so I’ve spent a lot of thought on the Ocean language.

It’s a language designed primarily for underwater communication and is mixed manual, clicks, and what sound (to the Drylands ear) like squeaks but have a great deal of variation, some dialects for larger ocean species (like Lizzie) can sound a bit like whale song.

The Swamp dialect is adapted for its more amphibious residents, with more vocal variations and focus since it is more often spoken above water.

Joel, having lived among the Sea Folk for a good century and a bit and been closely tied with them for several more, understands the language very well, the parts he is physically capable of hearing (some of the underwater vocal nuances are beyond him) he is limited in what he can speak of it though, as he has different vocal chords, capabilities, and fewer limbs than most Sea and Swamp Folk.

He does like to pretend not to understand it at all. When outsiders ask him to translate what Sea Folk are saying he gives them a blank stare.

[writingwithcolor]

Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity. 

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms. 

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together: 

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea 

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-” and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

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Edited for terminology errors

[reijnders]

we STAY making tablets

i made the tablet after writing out the translation, so the signature stuff at the end isnt included in the main gloss, but instead right here ↓

[cd-covington]

Linguistics worldbuilding question for you!

I'm planning a webcomic set in an embassy where various magical races meet up to do business. The races I've planned so far are humans, fae, dwarves, goblins, sea-people, dragon-people, and gryphons.

Do you have any thoughts on ways to distinguish the speech patterns of the different races so they don't all end up sounding alike, especially the non-humanoid ones like the gryphons? I think some of them have nonverbal elements to their languages as well, which the visual webcomic format will help with.

By the way, there's going to be a translation spell either on the building itself or on some sort of amulet that everyone carries with them, so they can communicate with reasonable ease (and yes, I know about some of the problems with the universal translator trope).

Hello enchantress-emily!

This sounds like a fun idea for a webcomic 🙂 Speech patterns can be interesting to play with, and I think you can utilize the magic universal translator to help you with that.

The first thing you can do is figure out what types of metaphors and proverbs and idioms each of these species would have. What’s important in their culture? What would common touch-points be for the sea-people – what would their equivalent proverb be for, say, “we have bigger fish to fry” (there are bigger problems)? (Because frying doesn’t work well under water, right??)

Another thing you can think about is sentence structure. For example, German sentence structure is different from English, and nearly half of German sentences don’t start with the verb. German also allows you to construct massively long nested sentences that REALLY don’t work in English unless you separate them into 2 or more sentences. So maybe one of the species will have more complex sentence structure (even translated) because that’s how their language works, and maybe one of them will be more like English. (Not all languages in the world allow you to have dependent clauses (your which or who ones)! You can’t say I saw the man who lives next door at the supermarket; you have to break it down into I saw the man at the supermarket. He lives next door to me. (Or just I saw my neighbor, of course.))

There’s also formality. Maybe the fae have Court Language that’s more formal, and this formality gets carried over in translation. (But how? You decide if you want them all to sound like Jane Austen characters or like Aragorn son of Arathorn or whatever 😉)

Since you’re using magical translation, you can have the sea-people’s idiom for “we have bigger problems” come out as a literal translation of whatever they actually say. Think about The Little Mermaid a second – Sebastian sings to Ariel, “The seaweed is always greener in somebody else’s lake.” This is obviously a nod to “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” but grass doesn’t exist under the sea, and lawns and fences don’t either. So they use seaweed (like grass but in the sea) and lake.

You could do fun things like have the translation spell get hung up on a nested sentence (maybe the fae like to go on like the Germans), then everything comes screeching to a halt and the speaker has to start over but speak straightforwardly.

Speaking of straightforwardly… how does the spell handle lies, falsehoods, half-truths, white lies, and other forms of obfuscation? Is it impossible to lie because of some part of the magic that detects speaker’s intent? Are some species better at lying than others because they can say (for example) “I didn’t hate it” (a true statement, but omits “but I didn’t like it either”)? This would be a TON of fun to play around with, especially for people who like writing twisty political stories.

You mentioned body language and other nonverbal communication, so I want to touch on that briefly. Nonverbal communication varies around the real world, and you can have different species with different NVC (and maybe it gets mis-read! Maybe a normal gesture in one culture is offensive in another! Maybe the magic doesn’t cover NVC!) There are so many things you can play with here. Good luck with your project! It sounds fun.

If you think this is interesting, consider backing my Kickstarter, where I’ll be writing a book about how to use linguistics in your worldbuilding process. Or if tumblr ever sorts out tipping for my account, leave me a tip.

[chocodile]

Would it be safe to assume hyden doesn't enjoy being called a "bunny" then?

He might not mind it as much as one might assume. Like, he knows he's a Rabbit, he just figures he's a different kind of Rabbit. You know, the kind that, in a just world, would possess razor sharp teeth and claws. A superior kind of Rabbit.

So "Rabbit" is fine… "Bunny", on the other hand, reads as sort of twee and infantalizing, culturally. It would be a bit like being called a "boy" or "girl" as an adult… situationally okay from family/close friends or in playful contexts, but something that would usually imply condescension coming from a stranger.

Of course, he's far too much of a sigma male to be fazed by mere mouth sounds made by lesser minds. No, the worst thing about it is that "Bunny" was Milana's pet name for him. Hearing it brings up some bad memories about their break up.

[alpaca-clouds]

There is a part of me, that really just wants to write a fantasy book set in a world that seems completely strange to us in terms of culture. Mostly because I am annoyed with how many people do not get that certain things we consider as "normal" are completely cultural.

I would love to explore societies in that fantasy, where romantic love is just not a thing that exists as a concept in their culture. Where what we would call polyamorous living is the standard for everyone, and people who refuse to participate are considered weird.

I would also love to explore how language shapes thought. You know how we associate certain things - due to frequently used metaphors - with completely unrelated things.

But a) I have no plot for this, and b) the amount of worldbuilding I would need to do is gonna be hard. Especially as I would want to make it anthropologically and linguistically sound.

Also I am quite aware that outside certain nerds people would not want to read it, because people hate reading stuff that challenges their believes about "normal" things.

[probablygoodrpgideas]

Common

There's a bunch of posts about how to fix the issues with the assumption of a "common" language already and I'm here to add my own, based on what I have in my setting.

Ever since sailing became common, the high elves of the Chont-Okery region and the orcs of Ri'Erman have traded with each other but those trades were often difficult.

Elvish was an incredibly difficult language to learn with its polysynthetic words, incredibly large phonemic inventory, tone, and logographic script with thousands of different characters. Orcish, too, was far from easy to learn for the elves who struggled with its rigid sentence structure and inflections. Over the centuries, a trading pidgin emerged, sometimes called the common orcish-elven trading pidgin.

Then, in the 10th century BT, a large group of human refugees arrived in the area. Their home continent had been ravaged by a divine disaster and many of them settled with the orcs or elves, but most of them formed a new nation in the land behind the mountainranges that seperated Chont-Okery and Ri'Erman on land. Previously thought to just be more mountains, the land was still unsettled.

The humans brought their own language with them. This human language was significantly more similar to orcish than elvish was, and the elves also found it to be simpler than orcish and so many of its features made their way into the common orcish-elven trading pidgin.

But it was no longer a simple trading pidgin. It also became the language of choice to communicate with the human refugees living in Chont-Okery and Ri'Erman and human traders started using it at home in their own communities where it slowly fused with their original language. The trading pidgin had become the common orcish-elven-human creole, or Common for short.

Over the following millenia, the three regions became very influential globally and spread Common all over the plane. Even trading ships that were exclusively orcish or elvish often chose to teach their trading partners Common as doing trading in Common came to them more naturally than in their own native language.

Nowadays, Common is by no means a universal language, but it has become widespread enough that it has become a lingua franca. Not everyone everywhere speaks it, but if you want to be understood in as many parts of the world as possible, Common is your language of choice.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Words for Calm & Stormy Weather

People love talking about the weather, so we might expect a wide vocabulary. In fact, the range is not so great, presumably because there are only so many ways in which we can talk about something that we routinely experience every waking moment.

CALM

smolt (Old English) ⚜ lithe (c.1275) ⚜ still (1390)

smooth (c.1402) ⚜ peaceable (c.1425) ⚜ calm; serenous (c.1440)

lown (c.1450) ⚜ stormless (c.1500) ⚜ calm-winded (1577)

unwindy (1580) ⚜ calmy (1587) ⚜ sleek (1603) ⚜ pacific (1633)

settled (1717) ⚜ unstormy (1823) ⚜ untempested (1846)

placable (1858) ⚜ untempestuous (1864)

STORMY

reigh (early Old English) ⚜ stormy (c.1200) ⚜ wild (c.1250)

trouble (c.1374) ⚜ rough (c.1400) ⚜ rude (c.1439) ⚜ boistous (1470)

wair (c.1480) ⚜ tempestuous (1509) ⚜ blusterous (1548)

rugged (1549) ⚜ turbulent (1573) ⚜ rufflered (1582)

oragious (1590) ⚜ broily (1593) ⚜ unruly (1594)

procellous (c.1629) ⚜ coarse (1774) ⚜ ugly (1844)

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists ⚜ Notes & References ⚜ Historical Thesaurus