Using created languages

[Kiercoria99]

Hi Everyone,

I was hoping to garner some advice on the use of fictional or created languages within novels.

In my WIP, the protagonist travels to another world, and while gaining the abiity to speak and understand the native language, she still tends to relay distances and swear in her own language. That, is not so bad. There are a few pages before she gains the native language, where she speaks sentences and I was thinking of footnoting the translations.

The more difficult area are the flashbacks to her own planet. I'm trying to find the balance between invented words - mostly for animals and plants, distances and measurements - and english.

Any thoughts? I've researched how other authors have done it (not extensively) and as I realize there is no rule of thumb, would love some concrete ideas. Thanks!

 

[slack]

Introduce a few new words and support them with some sort of concrete visual, or a clear explanation. Little by little.

Not much different from the usual process of learning a new language. Of course, there is a fine line between what you, as an author, might think is a fascinating part of your world, and what the reader thinks is tedious and distracting.

I think a new language would only become a problem if you didn't allow time for the reader to understand and visualize. So perhaps having no guideline for these things is to be expected, as it comes down to how well you can explain and help the reader understand a new concept.

 

[MstrTal]

As a military brat I can tell you from experience in the real world that the very first thing I ever picked up while in a foreign place where local curse words, bathroom, right, left, general directions and a few other useful phrases. Of course I was a kid and teen at the time so some of the stuff I found useful I won't relate on a family friendly board and is really not germane outside of clubs and redlight districts.

 

[Malloriel]

This is actually a popular topic here, which is why I think those who have given their opinions on the matter might not end up going as in depth here as they have in previous threads. It gets tiresome when you feel like you're giving the same advice on the same topic over and over. To help you none-the-less, though, maybe you'll find the help you need by cruising through these older threads, the first of which is actually nine pages long. If what you need isn't covered there, I'm not sure what more you could be looking for.

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/45095-do-people-read-glossaries.html

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/530676-i-overdid-the-made-up-words.html

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/4129-invented-languages-this-way-lies-madness.html - Page two is where you'll find things probably more relative to your query.

 

[Kiercoria99]

Thank you, all. I'll take a look at those links.

 

[Lemmy]

I'm a bit fan of Farscape and think they solved it quite nicely by using words that sounds a lot like english. For instance:

- We have hour. They have arn. It looks different in writing, but try to pronounce them?
- We have inch. They have dench.
- We have rad (cool), they have drad.

And so on. They don't have the word 'year', but use cycle instead. But when you think about it, one year on earth is the time it takes the planet to go around the sun once, or in other words, the time it takes earth to do one cycle around the sun. Likewise they don't have normal days we like we do, but they refer to it as a solar day. It's cheesy, but it works much better than to artificially create words just to try to be more realistic. We're talking space travel here. I think realism went out the window a long time ago.

 

[Robsia]

THe only book I read which used a different language extensively throughout and assumed the reader learned it as the character did was James Clavell's Shogun. OK, that was Japanese and not an invented language but, as I didn't know Japanese, it is the same for the purposes of the question.

I found it invaluable to create a little dictionary for myself of words and phrases as I cam across them in the book so if I couldn't remember I could refer to it.

Rather than footnote the translations which could become cumbersome and presumes that the reader is incapable of learning the language, perhaps you could simply put a glossary of all the words and phrases you used at the end of the book, so the reader has the option of referring to it if necessary.

 

[Mouse]

I'm a bit fan of Farscape and think they solved it quite nicely by using words that sounds a lot like english. For instance:

- We have hour. They have arn. It looks different in writing, but try to pronounce them?
- We have inch. They have dench.
- We have rad (cool), they have drad.

And microt for minute, frell for hell/f*ck... etc. etc. Loved Farscape!

 

[Robsia]

Of course, 'smeg' was the best ever created swear word - yay for Red Dwarf!