Have you ever created a fictional language for your comic/novel?

[Birbmagadon]

@kiweevil Wait did you create a whole pictographic kind of alphabet? How did that go? Isn't it a massive enterprise?

And lol, love the dynamics around language and how it's played with by your OCs Nice use of it within the plot/OC dev.

@cavechan I like how you focused on the aspect of written language. First one in this thread to put the highlight on that. Are they a symbolic transcription of english or you made up the whole language structure too?

Also, how did you pick your languages' names?

@TAMAnnoying Lol the joys of reverse writing and different languages xD I feel you. I like that you implemented sounds from other parts of the body to make it more "exclusive" to this type of creature, etc. The possibilities are infinite if you're not dealing with human mouths and organs
Perhaps the humans could make up some instrument to help them speak. Like, a flute that makes the gator sound, or something. That's pretty cool tho!

[Birbmagadon]

@Tanako Logistics? What got you into trouble/too much work?

@carltonIsaac yo I can't unsee now... >.> Tsk.

@yansusu dialects? Dayyyymn... That's some next level development here.

How did you come up with a syntax? Or tenses, or stuff? Struggling with that myself, atm.
Oh yes, etymology is nice. Did you go into the "genesis" of each word, and explained why help and oath had the same root, how they evolve to become different, etc? Was this part of your novels?

And heck... How come they whine so much? I'm sorry but this sounds badass, not annoying? Did your readerbase consist of narrow-minded 12 yos? With a translation at the end of the book, possibilities for fandoms and stuff were infinite. Idk why they disliked it. Damn.
Also dude... é and è aren't too bad. You're not writing in Arabic or Japanese script lel wtf.

Man, how can you become the next Tolkien if you gotta keep everything simple and understandable to the average 5 yo? Gotta think about that too. Pfff I swear. It's a shame you won't be trying again because of all that stupid/not constructive feedback.

@racheldenucci Yes, it can be a good solution to create some more immersive works without having to spend 51 years making a language. I guess on the long long run a full language system may be interesting, but if it's not the main focus of the story, then a word here and there works well. Any example of words?

@butterflyempress "More of a setting thing"? How so? And I love language-driven plots. They're nice to create some confrontation and cultural exchange Good going there.

[gempompadour]

My story has angels and demons that speak a language regular humans don't understand. It's just english (because I'm no Tolkien) but the alphabet is heavily based on the ramblings of a 16th century occultist John Dee.

[Birbmagadon]

but the alphabet is heavily based on the ramblings of a 16th century occultist John Dee.

Excuse me what? It sounds badass as heck. Tell me more please?

[ButterflyEmpress]

It's there to show that it takes place in another world.

[gempompadour]

Lol, the alphabet I'm using is called the "Enochian script/language" and was made up by John Dee and his friend. They were spirit mediums or seers who believed they could speak to angels and it was these angels that revealed this language to them. I took the existing alphabet and tweaked it a little, but it's basically the same Here's a wikipedia article on the language:

Enochian

I have so much fun reading about these sorts of things because my comic's lore is based on old angelology and demonology. So much weird shit happened in the middle ages and onward.

[cleo_san]

@cleo_san Oh yes, so you're getting into the "how does languages' structure work with handling reality" bit, from what you say regarding genders and all. Do you think your conlang makes for a completely different outlook, compared to English?

Yep, although I blame my linguistic studies for that XD After you get to the bottom line each language is all about recurring patterns.
As for "my" artificial language, I'm trying to keep is simple enough that it doesn't make my own head explode, while still making sense. =)
The language is supposed to bear some similarities to English due to that reason, but only regarding parts of the sentence structure. Different vocabulary will probably be the main indicator for "new language" though, since I don't want to bother my readers with too unnecessary details in the comic (of course there will be more details for those interested XD) Some other aspects would be things like: Adjectives after nouns (as opposed to English or German, where it's vice versa) and things like adjectives inflect according to gender, as they do in French.

It's still a Work in progress though and I really wanted to create an original language since I first learned that Tolkien created such a thing for his works. I was SO in awe when I found out and... we'll see how it ends If I can create something that makes sense in the universe of my story, I'm fine with it =)

Regarding the font: It depends XD As a kid I really was into secret fonts. Later I went from existing codes and secret fonts to fictional, like Tolkiens Sindarin etc. Heck, I even sat there over the Hunter x Hunter mangas, deciphering the font there! (Basically one hiragana had a symbol, that was the easy part. The hard part was when I had to stop because I didn't know how to translate Japanese, lol XD)
I even created some fonts to write letters with my friends at school, it was basically the ABC in symbols following a 5-symbol system used in the computer game Riven and developed from there to something completely different.
So basically it's like... uhm... creating your own wingdings font but with a system not some randomized symbol dropping XD

I's really recommend to somehow match the fictional font to your own. If you don't want anyone to read what foreign character just said, just write "I like cats" in a different font.
If you're going in like a boss, then create a language, where "I like cats" would be sth like... dunno... "Sanza Mirrup" (Sanza = like [I], mirr- = cat, -up = plural marker [yes, I made that up on the spot]) and THEN wingding it XD

[cleo_san]

Lol, the alphabet I'm using is called the "Enochian script/language"

Heck, I spent like half an hour on the Enochian font whe I was reading Terry Pratchett's "Making Money" recently, because the golems there speak that language and I wanted to know what they were saying! XDDD

I need to check out your comic then, now I'm curious what I can remember about that language XD

[gempompadour]

Lmao! Nooooo I'm just writing english using the enochian letters. There are actual rules and grammar to the authentic enochian language that I couldn't be bothered to learn. Unfortunately I'm no Pratchett when it comes to languages

[cleo_san]

Well if it cheers you up: He did it the same way you did English letters in Enochian equivalent

[yansusu]

dialects? Dayyyymn... That's some next level development here.

How did you come up with a syntax? Or tenses, or stuff? Struggling with that myself, atm.Oh yes, etymology is nice. Did you go into the "genesis" of each word, and explained why help and oath had the same root, how they evolve to become different, etc? Was this part of your novels?

And heck... How come they whine so much? I'm sorry but this sounds badass, not annoying? Did your readerbase consist of narrow-minded 12 yos? With a translation at the end of the book, possibilities for fandoms and stuff were infinite. Idk why they disliked it. Damn.Also dude... é and è aren't too bad. You're not writing in Arabic or Japanese script lel wtf.

Man, how can you become the next Tolkien if you gotta keep everything simple and understandable to the average 5 yo? Gotta think about that too. Pfff I swear. It's a shame you won't be trying again because of all that stupid/not constructive feedback.

Haha, I should probably mention at this point that I studied linguistics. I started creating the language before that but spent lots of time on it again in the first semesters of university. It was the perfect mix of creating the language and learning for my exams as well so I was probably double motivated and put in extra effort as a result
Because of that, a lot of my approaches were basically reviewing stuff I had in lectures like, for example, different types of morphology and syntax existing languages have, how they interact (as in you often have more elaborate case morphology when the syntax is less rigid and stuff) and then choosing what I liked or felt that it fit the world.
Most of that stuff never came up in the novels and was just a step toward creating the final parts where they would be used in conversation. So explanations never really came up but I had some for myself. I also remember going through etymology dictionaries of my native language and stuff and seeing how the words there were related as an inspiration, then trying to find some things that made sense as common roots and stuff. It can get pretty tedious though the longer the dictionary becomes.

Tbh, the novels were intended for a slightly younger audience but mostly young adults though so I wasn't expecting it as well. Considering some other feedback I got, I think it was because they were there more for the romance than the actual fantasy. Maybe that was, in part, also my fault. Maybe I should have done the marketing differently or something so they would have had other expectations.

Ah, well, it's been a few years since then. I have been thinking about maybe picking it up again and doing a reboot in English since I feel the international audience is more keen on that type of stuff or maybe it's just that there are more people around so you can find the ones who like that type of thing more easily Unfortunately, I'm already buried in new works so I guess it's a pipe dream

[indagold]

Language in the comic is just a mood piece, so if its spoken it's something very mundane or its just there to make up for background text the reader doesn't need to read. I did this cause my older work from a decade ago was wayyy too language heavy and just bogged down the piece.

[Kiweevil]

I haven't written down every single character, though I used to have a journal with an expansive vocabulary in both the native symbols and the roman alphabet. But it is lost forever ;w; now I gotta redo it

[Cavechan]

I like how you focused on the aspect of written language. First one in this thread to put the highlight on that. Are they a symbolic transcription of english or you made up the whole language structure too?

Also, how did you pick your languages' names?

Erkon and Banjotion are random, though I generally try to keep the length of a sentence about what it would be in English. Somewhat... Erkon is short for Erkonia. I just made this up off the top of my head. Banjotion (formerly called Byation) comes from the country's love for banjos.

Orcusian language is more structured but also random. The name Orcus (the name of the planet) is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcus and goes along with the general naming scheme for planets. However, at the time of creation I didn't know there is already a dwarf planet with the name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/90482_Orcus They have no relation.

[vothnthorvaldson]

The script is the hard bit. >.> How did you create the grammar? And did you pick Phoenician because it was the root of many languages' structure, or for another reason?

For now, because I did not try to create whole sentences, I only tackled super basic grammar. Like adjectives go after nouns, genitive case is represented by a diacritic (a circle like on Å, but it goes on whatever letter is the last of the root of the word), plural (the word + the word for 'many' as a prefix, grammatical gender (also with prefix), this kind of things.

Yes, I choose Phoenician because I'm fascinated by how the script evolved into many scripts I̶'̶m̶ ̶o̶b̶s̶e̶s̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ I know (Ok, small storytime : when I was in primary school (30+ years ago), we went to a kid museum exhibition that had a wall painted with the Phoenician alphabet and the main alphabets that evolved from, with the paths every letter took (a bit like that https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Ph%C3%B6nizisch-5Sprachen.svg but it was less compact and almost like a mindmap. I was fascinated. Still one of my favorite childhood memory - yep, I was a weird kid ) As soon as I was able too, I studied Greek academically, Arabic... way less academically, but although I love knowing other languages I don't get the rush I get from just SCRIPTS! Scripts are my drug So I went another way with my studies. But yeah, I'm still fascinated by scripts and how they evolve (I also love Sanskrit derived scripts).

[racheldenucci]

Well, two examples that have actually shown up are "fausu’lizu" and "Ercos Aghors"
Ercos Aghors, in simplest terms, are a magical race that can't be perceived by most low magic level species like humans. They are the source of most magic in the world.
Fausu’lizu is a tad bit more complicated to explain... It's a type of fairy jewelry. This is the note I made for myself on it:

A specialized magic jeweler with prophetic abilities creates them to react to the owner's future spouse. When in close proximity to said future spouse, the item absorbs a small amount of their magic and stores it. The owner does not need to currently have feelings towards the person for the collection of magic to happen. If the owner ever finds themselves in great danger, the stored magic will be used in an automatic protection charm built into the fausu’lizu. It is also impossible for the owner to lose the item as it always returns to them. It is rare for someone to own more than one, as that usually means their first spouse will die and they marry multiple times or, in more rare cases, that they are prone to being unfaithful. Either way, it is seen as bad luck to marry someone who has multiple fausu’lizu.

[Random_Guy]

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[TAMAnnoying]

Perhaps the humans could make up some instrument to help them speak. Like, a flute that makes the gator sound, or something.

Oh wow! That's actually a really fun idea ^^ I'm currently hashing up a DnD based campaign using my Comic for the setting. That could be an interesting way to deal with the language barriers~

[ISNEKO]

I honestly can’t remember. I don’t recall the finer details of a lot of the things I write, lol. And I’m too lazy to search for it.

[Tanako]

@Birbmagadon: I meant to keep it simple and somehow i was overthinking the whole thing. I first started with alphabets and after that, I decided to write English words then translate them to the language I had created. I started to create tribes and the way they lived, the way they behaved among each other and cultural differences, clothing and way of life. long story short, I think it became too overwhelming. I was doing this at a very young age like "16", and at that age, who wants to think hard? lol, it took the fun away so I dropped the whole thing. even now. part of the reason why I won't venture into fictional characters and language is still the same. "laziness", and the last time i tried it, i had like two chapters done then dropped it. i don't want to complicate things for myself. i stick with simple love story/drama. haha!

if you are up for it, I'd say go ahead. it's fun. but remember, there is a lot of detail that goes into creating a fictional world and language. just research before you jump right into it. that can help as well.