Worldbuilding Guide Part 1 - Creating Original Languages

Worldbuilding Gude Part 2 - Original Settings

Original Languages - Basics

My friend Robin is in the process of creating his own language - Korasian. He’s worked out his basic grammar structure and a few key phrases.

“Jaemaiga vai,” he says before we part ways. It means “I love you” in the romantic and committed sense.

“Jaemohta vai,” he says when a friend of ours is feeling down (or when he’s particularly friendly). It means “I love you” in a platonic sense.

When we watch an Iron Man movie and all the girls are gushing over Robert Downey Jr., he might say, “Ashohta gahvoi bahda ezai.” Or, “I want to be like him.” And, let’s face it, who doesn’t?

We’ve both been influenced by Attic Greek and Latin, and it comes through in this language.

The phrase “ashohta gahvoi bahda ezai” if translated word-by-word says, “I want like him, who is not present, to be.” 

The word order doesn’t matter because Korasian is a declined language. All of the cases and tenses are built directly into the words with prefixes.

The diphthongs and monophthongs that appear in these phrases are pronounced as follows:

‘Ae’ - ‘a’, as in “the letter 'a'”, or how a Canadian ends a sentence. "Good day, eh?"

‘Ai’ - ‘I’, as in “I got your damn Pringles.”

‘Oi’ - ‘oy’, as in “oy vey!”

An ‘h’ after a vowel signifies that the vowel is long. The rest should be natural for an English speaker.

Korasian does not use the Roman Alphabet, nor can a direct transliteration be applied. The diphthongs and monophthongs are built into one letter each, and so are consonant sounds like ‘th’.

Robin's Vocabulary Page (nouns)

I’ve created my own “dialect” of Korasian, as Robin calls it, that IS a direct transliteration. I did this so I could take “notes” in class without anyone knowing what I was really writing down. That required some new letters that I created.

My In-class "Notes"

Having an original language in your writing makes your world very rich indeed. It’s a great way to show off your investment and explore the cultures of fictional societies. I’ve been involved in a couple of attempts to create an amateur language, and here are some things I’ve learned.

First. There are some things you need to do.

Option 1: Be a linguist. 

Option 2: Learn a couple of languages, then follow Option 3.

Option 3: Just try your best.

Descending order with 1 being the best strategy and 3 being the worst.

I understand everybody can’t be a linguist and not everybody has access to language classes. Yet, everybody should know English. It’s the least helpful language for figuring out grammatical constructions and cognates, but it’s a start.

For Linguists:

Don’t even bother reading this article, you should know what to do. Also, give me corrections on whatever I got terribly wrong (if you bothered to read this article).

For Language Students: 

As someone who has studied five languages (including English) and dabbled in a few others, this is where I’ll be the most helpful.

I’ve studied English, Middle English, French, Latin, and Attic Greek.

#1: 

Decide how old your language is. The older a language, the more the culture, history, and texts have shaped it over the years. A translation might not make much sense to English-speaking people. 

“Why does the word for chicken also mean bucket?” 

“I dunno, this language is weird.” 

Don’t worry about this sort of confusion. It’ll make your language much richer - as long as you can explain it.

For instance, there may have been a classical writer who once made a pun that compared a chicken to bucket. If it stuck, those words may have become synonyms. Or, maybe there was an influential man that made a mistake, and it stuck. 

Why do you think we have butterflies and not flutterbys? Let me tell you, that one was just some jackass that really liked spoonerisms. 

Newer languages are fresh and straightforward. Very few people have had time to change it, bastardize it, and help it evolve.

I don’t know if there’s anyone here who has learned Esperanto. If you have, you’ll know that there are constant attempts to reform the language. It’s also so young (born in 1887) that it’s easy to see its evolution (slight evolution). The way it’s structured allows people to create words as they go along in order to express their thoughts as clearly as possible. It’s complete enough to teach as a real language, but is still incomplete.

#2

Figure out who’s speaking it. Is it a vulgar language? Does no one speak it because it’s a dead language? Do only the highest members of society have enough education to speak this language?

The more vulgar a language is, the looser you can be with your grammar. A lot of things will be colloquial and folksy. That means, the more sophisticated a language is, the more tight-assed and formal the language is going to be. While the latter is the easiest for a beginner, it’s also a lot less fun. 

Dead languages have the opportunity to combine the vulgar and sophisticated, especially if there’s dialogue. In prose and poetry, a lot of colloquialisms will be cut out, and grammar suddenly becomes the most important aspect.

#3

Now, a lot of languages are more structured than English. Many, many, many, many, many languages are more structured than English. Conjugations, genders, and sometimes even declensions exist in other languages (this includes Middle English [a bit], funnily enough). Your language will be much easier to create if you impose these structures.

#4

In fact, just take your language textbook and make a very, very condensed version (of your language) to start. All of the grammar chapters will guide you through what’s in a language. It’ll get you far. Also, having the influence of an “actual” language will make yours seem much more realistic.

You can, of course, just create the parts of the language that you’ll need. Maybe you only need some nouns. That’s fine. It’s not necessary to go all-out.

((Hey, you should read the next section as well.))

For Those Who Have to Wing It:

There are many things in English that can help you. Track the Etymology of words (if your school gives you access to the online O.E.D, start there). Otherwise, etymonline.com is a perfectly respectable source. English is a jumble of foreign languages and grammatical structures, so you’ll be able to find some linguistic variety if you put your mind to it. Linguistic variety is important if you want a selection of styles for your own language.

Study the words that have Germanic roots, then words with French roots (which is where our Latin roots come from), etc. This way you can get a feel for how many ways your own made-up roots can fit together and take on different, yet similar meanings. Maybe use those roots to create your own alternate-English (which is what I’m doing, but with Middle English).

Keep in mind how you want your language to sound. Try to give it a continuous flow, which means use common sounds and inflections. Both of those should come naturally. Make a list of key vocabulary and their etymology. From there, you can sew together words like a linguist Frankenstein. Your language will not be top-notch and will have a lot of holes, but it will be much better than others in the same situation as you.

No language has a one-to-one translation into English. There will always be many different translations for a foreign word. 

For instance, envie (fr.) does not just mean “envy”. It also means “wish”, and can be used to demonstrate jealousy. It’s like synonyms in English, but more contextual. The specific meaning comes from what word(s) it’s combined with, what adjectives are used with it, and the form of the word itself.

A more complicated example is, kaputt (ger.). Kaputt means “bust” and “broken”. But when talking about automobiles, it means something more like “smashed up”. It can also indicate a ruined marriage, or laughing one’s head off. 

When designing your language, you have to think about the subtle meanings of your words. The context that can change “broken” to “laughing one’s head off” generally stems from the culture (folklore, social customs, etc.). In Latin, there’s a word that means “gift” or “funeral games”. That’s because in Roman culture, gifts were given at funeral games as prizes.

Closing words: create a language that is beautiful to you, even if you just make up a few words.