Making a Language: Pt. 2

I haven’t gotten a whole lot more done in regards to language for the novel, but here’s what I can tell you. A lot of soul speak is based off Gaelic, with the general sound at least. The rest, in regards to sound, is based off Elvish. Well, it is and it isn’t. I like Tolkien’s concept I’m making Elvish role off the tongue, in essence making a very human language. But I’m going in a slightly different direction. I don’t want you to have to worry about breathing while speaking this language.

No, don’t worry, you are going to be breathing while speaking. What I mean by that is that I incorporate the breath into the language. For instance, one of the letters is literally just a heavy “H”. It sounds like you’re sighing. So, when you say a word like “Hhalverron”, you get to breath out while speaking. Now, as you may remember with the other blog about this, I don’t actually use English letters for this language. The letter “HHA” is merely a spiral. That’s all. I’m also working on the letters based on breathing in, but I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to do that. That all comes with making the language, I suppose.

So why did I choose to make the language based on breathing? Simply because it’s easier that way. If you can skip the breaths between words, you can get messages across faster. Plus, it sounds cool. Who doesn’t want a really cool sounding language?

I’m beginning to realize just how much is involved making this language. For the next couple weeks, I’ll probably be getting some form of a language major to help me with making this language. I’m still working on connector words, like “And”, “Or”, “Nor”, etc. I’m not sure I mentioned this in the last post, but as of now it’s based on dashes, literally connecting the words or phrases.

That’s it for today’s post, let me know what you think in the comments section. All of the stuff is up for grabs; you guys are more than welcome to try to help me out with this. I’m really not a multiple languages major or anything like that, so I don’t know a whole lot about making languages. But there might be somebody on WordPress that does! So don’t delay to give me ideas!

Making a Language: Part 1

So, as the comments section requested language, I’m going to do it until somebody either complains or they ask for another thing. This is one the greatest things I’ve done in a very long time. I don’t want to disgrace his name by putting myself on his level… but I feel kind of like Tolkien. Admittedly, his language is probably going to stay forever cooler than mine, but it’s still fun, and throughout this series I may make drastic changes to the way it’s written.

I was inspired by Chinese pictographs for this particular language. I saw one particular picture that meant something, and then if you drew it multiple times, it meant something else. Well, my language is not going to be quite that complicated. No worries there. The connection works well in my mind.

You’ve already seen one word written in this language. I will show it below, although this is a slightly old diagram. It’s close enough to current that I’ll show it. There are some differences for how I recently approached this. In the original style, as in this style, it’s split up into three sections: a tail, a body and a center. I haven’t fully decided what to do with the centers.

This is how it works for now: The more complicated a concept is, the more complicated it is to draw it. For example, this word does not mean “air”. This word means “wind”. If this were the word for air, it would not have the tail portion, which means “moving”. It would just have the body. The body represents the main idea of the word, rather than the main sound. (Most letters do have a sound that reminds the reader of the idea, however.) Tails are something like adverbs and adjectives in English. Is give support to the body. Therefore, with the tail, it translates to “moving air”. Basically, wind.

For now, because of the added meaning to the tails, the centers do not have the same use. I will likely use them just to differentiate verbs and nouns. For instance, reversing the inner curve may change this word’s meaning from “wind” to “blew”. And this is where the hard decisions comes in.

It seems wrong to me to have the nouns and the verbs look so nearly the same. I’m worried this’ll make the language too boring to look at. Sadly, for language, it seems to be function over form. As an artist, this bothers me, but I have to work with it.

The greatest problem of the hieroglyphics language is simply having to create so many words. In the end, I may have to simply reduce it to representing the sounds. It’s pretty sad, but I’ll live. Oh well.

And as most of this has been implied before, here’s a new thing for you. As I said, the descriptors sometimes sound like what they’re representing. In this case, the letter for moving/rushing has a hard “h” sound. That’s right, the first letter for wind sounds like a sigh. I thought it worked.

That’s it for today, tune in… I don’t know when. I’ll probably make this a weekly thing. So, let me know what you thought of this, and if I should keep doing it. Thanks for reading such a long one today!

Making Words: An Announcement

I’m doing it. I’m making a language.

At eighteen, it is probably one of the greatest undertakings of my life. It may take some time, and the language may not even be complete by the time the series is over. But I will do my best, and I will try.

Why am I making a language, you might ask? I am a writer, so really, I do whatever I want. But if you really must know the reason, it will be one of the official languages in the book. It is known only as the “Original” for now. During the era of Dark Soldier, Book 1, it is a dead language. But a few of the characters, and me, being the writer, are going to be bringing it back.

And this is where you, the fans, come in. This is going to be the first of a few collaborative projects between me and my future and growing fanbase – we are going to make the language together! You get to help construct one of the most epic languages since elvish, and it will be awesome!

Ok, so maybe it’s not quite that awesome, but it is interesting. It is a mix of a European letter-based alphabet and a Egyptian-style hieroglypic system. Basically, certain sounds are represented by different style lines and shapes, and together they create a symbol. Ideas, like movement, can also be represented. In the case of movement, it is represented by a wavy line, like in the very first letter of this system, shown below (apologies, I am no photo-manipulation master):

Showing all the pieces of a letter for the current setup. Word shown represents wind/air/sky, depending on how it is written.

This is only the beginning of the “Original” system, but with your guys help, I think we can make a complex, understandable, and beautiful language. This language will feature both uvular and rolling sounds, so it’s also quite varied in its sounds that can be made.

Can’t wait to begin working with you guys on this, and seeing your ideas for how to better the language!