If you’re writing fantasy, you probably face this problem a lot. When making up a culture, you need to make up a language doing that can be both extremely easy and extremely hard. Want tips?
Even if you just need one word, it’s important to go through all the steps of setting up the language. You never know when you’ll need to use the language again, and consistency of style and syllable use is important.
- Decide on level of intelligence. Barbarian cave-people language would probably only need a word for food, water, cave and hair. These words will probably be “Uga”, “Ugabuga”, “ugaguga”, and “RAWR!” If, like Eskimos, your elves had 20 words for arrow, 50 words for helmet, 100 words for sword, 40 words for hair, etc. then you should make it much more complex and can expect to invent quite a bit of grammar.
- What language did your language descend from? Latin? Swahili? Hebrew? Gibberish? Morse code?
- Decide on style. Would your words usually begin in “De” and “Go”, prefixes for “I” and “you,” or maybe they end in “coo,” “jow,” and “Jao,” the singular feminine, plural masculine and plural feminine forms? What alphabet do they use? How many letters? Does the language have äccêñts? Whát kìnd?
- Create a basis. Does the adjective come before or after the noun? Does the subject eat the direct object, or does the direct object eat the subject?
- Start with personal pronouns. Are these separate words? Prefixes? Are they swirls and accents in the word that only slightly change it’s pronunciation? Clicks? Whirrs? Choking noises? Burps? Add any additional pronouns.
- Time for verbs. Do these come after the subject, hyphenated and underlined? Are they conjugated?
- Nouns. Do they vary from nominative case to objective case? How? Are they totally different words, or do they have slightly different endings. Are these conjugated to fit their verb?
- Adjectives. How are they added? Dashes? prefixes? Before or after? Do people say “magical cheese,” “cheese of magic,” “cheese that is magic,” or “cheese of the magical component?”
- Punctuation. Do they use the standard “!?.,-()”, or do they have different signs? Where are they placed? Does the “sentence” exist, or are words randomly thrown into webs that somehow follow each other?
Writing these down, you now have a basis for a language. You can use this language and assign it to different races and include it in your book, or use it with your friends when you’re bored. People will have no idea what you’re saying, and it’ll be fun, so it’s worth it.
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