How many people wanted to make their own language as a kid?
Either because they wanted to say things secretly to each other without adults hearing, or because they were nerds and liked Lord of the Rings.
I was the second option.
There are tons of fictional languages. LOTR has Elvish (multiple varieties!). Game of Thrones has High Valyrian and Astapori Valyrian. Star Trek has Klingon. What use are they? Not a lot in the real world, but I suppose they help world-building and reader immersion into a story. Mostly, though, I'm pretty sure it's the creators just getting off to sweet linguistics :V
I do not blame them.
It's fun, okay? Like, even looking at other real languages, the different ways sentences are constructed is fascinating. My favourites are French and Japanese - just about as different as you can get. I learned French at secondary, and Japanese at college. I also learned Ancient Greek electively at school, but wasn't much good at it. I did, however, love seeing where some of our English words come from. English is basically one massive bastardisation of multiple other languages, and I love it to bits. Even when it isn't particularly sense-making.
In my novel, there isn't a particular need for a constructed language, or conlang. I might not even include it, but it was a lot of fun to make and saying it was involved in my novel gave me an excuse to procrastinate. As of now, the language is unnamed. The working backstory is that it was created pre-cataclysm by a group of linguists in the original city state that survives to the story, and while it enjoyed usage among various intellectuals it remained somewhat of a curio. I guess it was kind of like a divide in the class system already, and though it doesn't survive as a spoken language post-cataclysm is still around in the histories. It's designed to be fairly logical and simple to understand, and its words stem from various European languages as well as being invented.
It's an excuse, okay?
So, first, I guess I can talk about some of what I've got so far for it. I've worked out most of the rules behind the language, so it's really just creating words now. Pronouns seem like a good place to start. These don't really stem from Euro languages, these were among the words I invented. (Note, x is pronounced as sh. So xau is pronounced shau, xue is pronouned shue.) The pronouns are gender neutral, but have their own twist.
I : llui You : xau He/she/they : xue It : sia It (abstract) : siu We : lluitou You (plural) : xautou They (plural) : xuetou It (plural) : siatou It (abstract) (plural) : siutou Let me explain the significance of 'it'. Yes, I know 'it' has no plural in the English language.
'It' pronouns, that is sia and siatou, are used to refer to things that are not alive. That includes inanimate objects, as well as things that were once alive and now are not - including dead people. It's basically 'they' for non-alive things. Someone who refused to believe or didn't want to admit someone had died would use xau and xue to address/talk about them, instead of the correct sia. On the other hand, if someone were to refer to an animal or plant as sia, it would seem very ignorant - as if the worth of being a living thing that evolved over millions of years was not being taken seriously.
It's a fatalistic kind of language in this sense, I think - not necessarily atheist, but it accepts that people die and that's the end. However, I still wanted it to value life - possibly more highly than otherwise, since it accepts that there is only one and it's finite.
This is all fairly significant to later plot points - especially, the question of whether anyone or anything should last forever.
Siu and siutou are the abstract version of sia - they're used for concepts, generally, things that don't actually exist tangibly in the world. There is no xue equivalent, since an abstract concept cannot ever have lived. Siu might be used as a pronoun for situation in general, for an ideology or a theory - that kind of thing.
Next, nouns in general. Now, nouns are slightly different to pronouns in that the unmodified 'stem' is always taken to be a plural but in the abstract. For this example, I'll use the word houmou, meaning person. This stems from homo sapiens, the Latin name for human.
ó houmou : a person, a single specific person. For example, ó houmou li-vitka literally means a person is looking/staring, one specific person that is being directly referred to. All singular nouns (an apple, a bird) must be preceeded by ó. í houmou : some people. A specific group of more than one person. í houmou li-vitka literally means people are looking - a particular group of people are looking or staring. houmou on its own, houmou li-vitka, means that people are looking, but a wider group of people than the immediate or specific group - people in general are looking or staring.So, with this example, if you were with your friend in public and they started to argue with you (and people began to stare...)
"li-shiok, lua ó houmou li-vitka." - Stop, that person is staring.
"li-shiok, lua í houmou li-vitka." - Stop, those people are staring (that particular group over there.)
"li-shiok, lua houmou li-vitka." - Stop, people (in general) are staring.
Lua in this case means that, or those, depending on how the noun is modified. Without it, "Li-shiok, ó houmou li-vitka." translates to stop, a person is staring.
Also, the phrase does not have to be written in that exact order - I write it that way because my native language is English. As long as the general meaning of the phrase is clear:
"lua ó houmou li-vitka." - that person is looking.
"li-vitka lua ó houmou." - is looking that person.
It can be written or spoken either way.
ó houmou is treated as the noun as a whole, so you have to move that part as a whole chunk. The verb is li-vitka, to look/stare, with vitka being the raw verb and li (the sole irregular verb, 'to be', essentially meaning is) defining the tense (in this case, present.) Without the li prefix, vitka is treated as a noun (ó vitka - a look/a stare, ie he gave me a funny look.) Therefore, li-vitka has to remain together as a whole chunk. Lua, meaning that, can go before or after the noun it indicates. You can just as easily write "ó houmou lua li-vitka" as any of the others, but "ó houmou li-vitka lua" is a bit awkward. The modifier should remain attached to what it is referring to in some way.
It is able to go either side of the noun without confused meaning because in English, that has two meanings. For example, "That person that is looking at me." You will notice the first that is concrete (that particular thing there) while the second that is abstract. This sentence in my language would be:
"lua ó houmou chae li-vitka sa llui."
But it could just as easily be written:
"ó houmou lua chae li-vitka sa llui" or other variations thereupon.
However, lua should be joined onto the noun it modifies, and chae should be joined onto the verb it modifies. It would make less sense to write "ó houmou chae lua li-vitka sa llui", even though the direct translation in English would not be much different.
It's complicated, I guess, but simple once you get your head round it!
I'll explain other things such as verbs and tenses in some other post.
But if you want to create your own language, the first thing you have to think about is the rules. I've tried to create mine so that it's easy to understand and learn for people who may speak different languages than English as well as English speakers, and while it's stripped-down in some ways is more complicated in others. Verbs and nouns are based around concepts - for example, vitka as a word covers looking and staring. However, the act of seeing is different to looking - to see rather than stare, you have to register and comprehend what you are staring at. It implies knowing something, and so the concept of actually seeing something is merged with the concept of comprehending or understanding - thus, you have the verb scioa. It comes from the Latin scio - to understand.
On the other hand, there are two words for light - lux and lliume. Lux would be used to describe a harsh light, or a glare - the light from the desert sun would be lux. Lliume is a softer, gentler light, or a glow - the morning light through spring leaves or the light of the aurora borealis would be lliume. Stick a verb prefix before them and they become the verbs to shine (harshly), or to glow.
So, it's quite different to English! But making it is a lot of fun.
If you want to make your own language, I do have some software I can recommend for you. WeSay! It's basically a way of creating your own dictionary (you make an entry for each word, and there's space to write the meaning/origin of the word as well as sample sentences) and you can then search through it either for the English meaning or for the word itself. It's not originally intended for conlanging, but it works very well for it.
Download WeSay Here!
With this entry, I have cemented my place as a huge geek. And I love every second of it.
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