Conlanging for Beginners: Building a Naming Language for Your Fantasy Novel

[Follow this up with an addendum: Conlanging for Beginners, Some Things to Avoid]       

As a member of the Language Creation Society and of the Yahoo conculture forum, I've been discussing world-building and conlang-building lately.  I've also joined the forum at the excellent website Mythic Scribes, which is subtitled "The Art of Fantasy Storytelling."  They have many resources available, including a thread on building conlangs for your book.  Since I've composed two conlangs and several naming languages for my writings, I thought a post drawing upon my own experiences as a beginner might help out other beginners.

       First, let me stress that you don't need to be a professor of linguistics to write a conlang.  A lot of the members of the LCS are just that; they know every subtlety of language and they know  the lingo.  They're so learned that they can be a little intimidating, I'll confess.  I'm not a professional linguist, but I have studied Spanish, French, and German (French is the one I pursued the most deeply) and when I was cataloging books as a librarian, I dabbled in several other languages, including Russian, other Slavic languages, and Swedish (catalog librarians have to be able to handle any language -- there are manuals to help you do this).  I also investigated Hebrew a little bit at one point.  I've always been fascinated by languages and syntax.  If you find these subjects tedious and you never took a beginning language in high school and you barely squeaked through high school English and can't remember a thing about its structure, you may not be very successful at writing conlangs.  It's possible to get somebody else to write one for you if you're serious.
 

       However, if all you need is a naming language (a minimal conlang that consists simply of sounds thrown together, without contructing any syntax), you can still manage to do that convincingly.  Let's assume you're setting out to write a fantasy laid in an imaginary world where nobody ever heard of English.  You may have several different countries and several different peoples.  These peoples probably speak different languages, but you can have them all speak a common language -- a language of diplomacy, say -- in which case you can just render everything in English and be done with it. 
       But even then, you will have many names that remain in the languages of those countries.  You need names for the countries themselves and their citizens, for some of their cities, and for other places like rivers or mountain ranges.  You might also find yourself needing names of foods and flowers and minerals and gods and philosophical concepts. You can just unsystematically make up nonsense words for these, or you can try to systematically diffentiate the several languages of your countries.
       One way to do this is to make up a system of phonology for each language.  Just some notes will serve (I'm avoiding the International Phonetic Alphabet here):  Let's say the country of Talasu speaks Talasian.  So you decide that what makes the language different is that it has no voiced fricatives. 
       What is a voiced fricative, you say?  In a voiced consonant the vocal cords vibrate, in an unvoiced consonant, the vocal cords do not vibrate.  Here is a list of voiced fricatives in English (with examples): v (as in van), th (as in then), z (as in zip), zh (as in pleasure).  The corresponding unvoiced fricatives are f (as in fan), th (as in thin), s (as in sip), and sh (as in pressure).   Say them out loud and you'll hear and feel the difference.
       Thus you would be able to milk a little comedy by making a name (e.g., Zazavi) in a language that uses voiced fricatives.  A native of Talasu would pronounce the word "Sasafi" and might get teased about it, or he might be discriminated against because his speech patterns reveal where he comes from, thus becoming a shibboleth.
       From the rules, you know that the word "Talasian" will not be pronounced "Talazhian" but "Talassian."  But this introduces another point.  If you make the language "Talasian," you are making use of an English suffix -ian, which we use frequently in words like Italian, Indian, Canadian, Australian, etc.  Suffixes and prefixes like -ian  or -ed or un- are called morphemes (an indivisible basic particle, a building block for a word).
       Your imaginary people would never build their words using English morphemes, so you might want to call your language Talasunta (where the suffix -nta means "speech" or "language.")  Or you could call it Nis-Talashu (where "nis" means "language" and "Talashu" is a genitive case, thus making the word mean "Language of Talasu."  In your other countries' languages, if you needed a genitive case, you would construct it differently. 
       For my purposes here, I'll call the language "Talasunta."
       I find I can't write even about a naming language without getting into some minor linguistic terminology. But I hope you get my point -- set a few phonetic rules, make them vary among your languages, and don't use any morphemes (basic word particles) that are found in English.

       Now, I'll confess -- I have usually violated the rule of devising the phonology first!  I've always just thrown a bunch of sounds together to start with.  And I've gotten in trouble, too.  When I started writing "The Termite Queen," I had to name my dying termite right off (see sample chapters 1 and 2 on my other blog, Ruminations of a Remembrancer.) because the first line in the book is "My name is ... "  So I blithely thought, "What would be a good name?  I know!  Ti'shra!"  And I wrote "My name is Ti'shra." Then when I got to working out the details of the language, I thought, "So what does 'Ti'shra' mean?  I know!  Sweet Flowers!  Lovely!  Perfect name for this harmless little creature who gets abducted by aliens!" 
       But then I thought, "So 'flowers' is plural.  What element of the name makes it plural?  I know!  In the Shshi language, prefixing sh- makes a plural, just like with the word 'Shshi.'  You have one Shi, two Shshi."  And I stuck myself with that system.  Unfortunately, in English the combination of sh plus certain consonants doesn't occur and so leads to difficulties of pronunciation.  When we get the Shshi word "shza'zei|" for example, which means "little ones," you're likely to spit all over your computer trying to pronounce it!   Other tough combinations are sh+f, sh+d, sh+h, sh+j ... you get my point. 
       So another rule is, try to think about the consequences of a rule before you set it in stone!

       Names often mean something, like my "Ti'shra," and all words derive from older roots, so you have to decide -- do my names of people, provinces, cities, mountains, rivers, etc., have meanings apart from themselves?  If so, you need to decide how the component parts fit together.  Maybe the country of Talasu has a range of mountains called the Black Jaws (obviously you're going to make something sinister happen there!)  "Jaw" becomes "frago," "black" is "nat."  You decide that in Talasunta, the adjectives follow the modified word, as in French or Spanish, so your mountain range becomes the "Fragonat." 
       At that point you should begin making a vocabulary list -- extremely important, because there is no way you can remember every word you've used, and as your book gets longer and you create more words, you'll never be able to find them again.
      You should also write out every decision you make regarding syntax, like the rules for placement of adjectives, for how to construct plurals and genitive case, etc. 

       What if you want the people in your world to sometimes speak privately, not using the common language?  You want someone to overhear a few phrases in Talasunta.  You can construct just a few rules and usually you can come up with something that will work.  That's what I did in the beginning with !Ka<tá, the Bird language spoken by my Prf. A'a'ma, the avian alien that plays such an important role in "The Termite Queen."  Mostly what I constructed were expletives (birds apparently curse a lot!) but there are some full sentences, too.   In Chapter 2, he says, "Prf. Jerardo ali ♫hi ♫ko’ó∙wa gi !i po∙atré]” and Kaitrin humorously upbraids him, "Tió’otu!  That’s not nice!  But what’s going on?  You surely didn’t go to all the trouble to contact me just to make fun of one of our colleagues.”
        I don't tell the reader of the book what Prf. A'a'ma's insult meant, but I'll reveal it here: "Prf. Jerardo has dung beetles in his head."  When I first wrote the book, I decided on the English of what I wanted him to say and then I just cooked up some words that sounded like birds might twitter them -- I had done nothing on the phonology yet.  I did come up with some non-English sounds and some characters to represent them, like ∙, which is a cough, and ♫, which is a warble and, as a prefix, makes words plural.  
       But this remark did require devising a third person singular present tense form of the verb "to have."  In English, "to have" is an irregular verb.  Most languages have some irregular verbs, but I decided that in !Ka<tá, "to have, to possess" is regular.  I don't remember whether at that point I decided on a form for the infinitive, which would be "khe'ali."  I think I just  said, "OK, 'ali' sounds good for 'he has'" and went from there. 
       But again, I kept careful notes on what I'd done -- I made a little table of verb forms and started by filling in the 3rd person singular masculine present tense.  At first I had just two or three entries, but later it grew to include all possible forms and tenses and aspects and moods ...  So I stress again, keep records on all grammatical decisions! 

       Now I'll construct an example of Talasunta: The hero hides behind the curtain and he overhears two men talking in that language, which he doesn't understand.  You could just write, "so the Prince rushed off to find the Ambassador, who spoke Talasunta, and repeated the words as near as he was able.  The Ambassador was horrified at what he heard ... "
        But it would be much better this way: "The Prince overheard two men speaking in Talasunta, but all he could catch was "Asolya dimerumu chinsa."  A few moments later, he was consulting the Ambassador, who spoke the native tongue.  And the diplomat was horrified.  "He said, 'We plan to kill her at dawn'!"  That enhances the realism of the story.
       In this language, the subject pronoun is suffixed to the root of the verb, so "asolu" means "to plan" and "asolya" means "we plan."  Infinitives end in -u, so "dimeru"  is "to kill" and "mu" is the objective case of the third person feminine pronoun, which is suffixed to the full infinitive.  "Chin" means "dawn" and the suffix "-sa" is a postposition (the language doesn't have prepositions) meaning "at the time of."
       As you can see, if a conlang, even just a naming language, is done right, there are multifold complications!  But you know what?  Writing a conlang is the most fun of anything in the world, for anybody to whom language is fascinating and not a tedious bore!  Actually, I got quite interested in Talasunta while I was writing this, but conlangs can be very time-consuming, and so I don't think you'll ever learn any more about that language!

 

Summation of How to Write a Naming Language

• Set up a system of speech sounds (phonology) for each of your languages in order to differentiate them.
• Never use any morphemes (basic word particles) that are taken directly from in English, or for that matter from any other Earth language. That is, you could use the syllable, but it can't have the same meaning as it does in Earth languages.
• Try to think about the consequences of a decision before you make it (and that's harder than it sounds!) But this is important, because going back and changing a whole language structure is almost impossible.
• As you construct words, make a vocabulary list, preferably in two directions, Talasunta to English and English to Talasunta.
• Keep careful records of rules of syntax, so you won't put adjectives after nouns on p.6 and before nouns on p.300.  (And parenthetically, don't use the same grammatical structure for all your languages.)
• And if you can work it out, use syntax that resembles English or other Earth languages as little as possible (that's one of the tougher rules to follow, unless you're more familiar than I am with all the languages of the Earth). 

       When I started this, I had intended to talk about the naming language in "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," but I got sidetracked.  Maybe I'll write about that in a later post!


 

The Problem of Good and Evil in the Culture of the Shshi

      The Yahoo group on conculture exists to discuss the imaginary cultures devised mostly by those who also write constructed languages.  In a recent exchange, the administrator of the group asked the following questions:  "How do our various cultures -- especially the non-human ones, and also especially the non-terran ones -- view this Problem of Evil? Or do they even recognise it as a principle? Or do they see Good as the Problem...?  Also, is Evil a "real thing" or a by-product of cultural evolution in a people?"  I thought this question was interesting enough for me to write a blog post on how my Shshi (intelligent lifeforms evolved from termites) view these problems.

 

       There are among the Shshi many different species with much in common but also with different histories and cultural backgrounds.  The plains Shshi, comprising the Shum'za (or Little Heads) and the Da'no'no Shshi (or Very Large Shshi), view evil as the absence or negation of good.  This is reflected in the language.  In the Shshi language (the language of all the plains peoples) the word for "good" is thel| (noun) while "evil" is wei'thel| (noun, signifying "not good.")  wei'thel| is a strong word; there is a word of weaker implication, a'thel| (adj.), which can be translated as "bad, improperly or poorly done," etc., as in "He made a bad mistake" or "He build a bad wall."
       The point is, the plains Shshi, who are a later evolutionary product and who live in an expansive, open-skyed land with treeless vistas, maintained an optimistic, perhaps somewhat naive view of evil.  Good is the thing that is real and evil is the absence of good, the failure to project that quality.  Good is innate and to fail to be good is considered unnatural.  Thus the patently evil villain Mo'gri'ta'tu becomes known in lore as the Unnatural Alate and the traitorous Commander Hi'ta'fu becomes the Unnatural Warrior. (These are characters in "The Termite Queen.")
       In later volumes of "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head" series, we get a different view of evil.  There is a character named Krai'zei, an older Worker-Helper to a Warrior who joins the quest (both these characters first appear in "The Storm-Wing"). 
       Krai'zei is a member of an ancient race, the same race as the Warrior Ju'mu whom we meet in "The War of the Stolen Mother."  They are called the Yo'sho'zei -- the Old Ones -- and in fact play the role of the Centaurs in Greek myth.  (Ju'mu embodies one of the functions of Cheiron, that of teacher of Warriors.)  The Yo'sho'zei are a dwindling race and have been forced into a small area of the southern coast, a land of dense vegetation and rugged, rocky outcroppings and caves.  Time has taught them to be pessimists.  For them evil is innate, something that lives deep within the soul of everyone.  They call it the "Old Absolute."  Good is the conquest of this evil within ourselves.
       Linguistically speaking, the Yo'sho'zei language is much closer to the original archaic Shshi speech than the speech of the Shum'za or the Da'no'no Shshi is.  Thus, ses'de| is the base word, meaning both "evil" and also "cursed" and "fated."  It derives from the archaic root *sesk, which yields both ses'de| (evil) and ei'ses| which means "to destine or put a fate upon." The root is still seen in the Shum'za language in sasko|, sask'zei|, and tha'sask| (to curse or damn; a cursed person; the imprecation "far-curse!")
       In Yo'sho'zei "good" is ses’wa’de|, i.e. evil + not + the noun affix.  So this reflects the exact opposite of the Plains Shshi's view.
       There is considerable discussion of these concepts in the later volumes of the "Labors" series.  I wanted to quote some examples here, but I decided they would act as a spoiler for a very important part of the plot, so I guess you'll just have to wait and read the books after they're published!
       Then I did find one passage that I could quote without giving away too much.  It occurs in Volume Five, where Di'fa'kro'mi and Ki'shto'ba are talkng with the venerable and learned Yo'sho'zei Alate Vai'zei'a'parn (who embodies the half of Cheiron that is a scholarly healer).  They even discuss some of the points I made above:

       Ki’shto’ba frequently conversed with Vai’zei’a’parn, either alone or in the company of other Yo’sho’zei or some of us Companions.  At times when I was present, we often discussed topics that are not usually of interest to Warriors, like the nature of evil, considered by the Yo’sho’zei to be an all-pervasive reality – the Old Absolute, who wove itself out of a web of darkness before Creation started, behind the back of ta’ta’wa’tze| [Yo'sho'zei word for The-Highest-Mother-who-Has-No-Name] where she could not see it.  It grew until she felt the pain of it pressing against her ovipositor; by then it was so strong that she could not uncreate it or remove it from the fabric of her new-made world.  So she gave her children the power to overcome it in their souls if they had the will, but the struggle was fated to be both arduous and unending, and not always successful. 

And Ki’shto’ba said, “Our people’s beliefs are different – is this not correct, Di’fa’kro’mi?  Evil was never a force separate from the Highest-Mother-Who-Is-Nameless.  She made the world and the First Created to be good, but because she did not make them permanent or complete, they were flawed, and so, while the soul is essentially good, it is also flawed.  Therefore, evil occurs simply because we are not as good as we have the power to be.  It has no existence in itself.”

I agreed that this was an accurate description.  “It is even reflected in our language,” I said.  “In my speech, we have thel| and wei’thel|, which mean in At’ein’zei ‘good’ and ‘not-good,’ whereas the Tramontane words – ses’de| and  ses’wa’de| – mean ‘evil’ and ‘evil-not.’”

Then Ki’shto’ba said, “That is why I failed.  I do not believe I was arrogant, but I never thought of myself as other than good and I did not realize I had to work at staying that way.  I did not recognize the presence of evil in myself.”

“You have concluded then,” said Vai’zei’a’parn, “that the Yo’sho’zei way of regarding the world is the right one?”

“I cannot say,” said Ki’shto’ba.  “I only know what I have discovered to be true for myself.  ... "

 

Now would be a good time to go out and buy a copy of "The War of the Stolen Mother" and get a jump on the series before more volumes appear!   

How to Convert Greek Names into the Shshi Language

       First a word on my progress toward publishing The War of the Stolen Mother. Yesterday I finished the final pass-through of the text and now it's ready to insert into the CreateSpace template.  I've also been working on the cover art.  I think I have the front cover completed, although I'm vacillating between two different pictures, so I'll have to ponder some more.  I'm also considering several options for the back cover, and I'm doing a new line drawing to put on the title page.  And then I have to do the map!  So publishing is still a little way off.

       Today I want to talk about all those complex names that you're going to encounter in the book.  The original Greek names in the Iliad are every bit as complicated as those in my tale, but they are familiar in our culture -- Agamemnon, Menelaus, Achilles, Hector, Priam, Deiphobus, Laocoon, Cassandra, Odysseus  ... the list goes on and on.  It happens that in the index to Robert Graves' Greek Myths, a translation into English is given for all the names mentioned in the text.  I used that as a springboard for working out equivalent names for my characters.

       I'll remind everybody that Workers' names always have two syllables; Warriors, three; Alates, Four, and progenitors, five.  At least, that is true among the Shshi, whether Shum'za (Little Heads) or Da'no'no (Very Big).  It's not true among the Nasutes.

        Thus Menelaus, which is translated by Graves as "might of the people," becomes Shi'lo'na'sha'ma, Strength of the People, plus the designation for King (na'sha'ma|).  Agamemnon (called in the Iliad King of Men), translated as "very resolute" by Graves, becomes Pai’zeg’weil surnamed Tas Ut’zei (Warrior Who Never Loses, surnamed Rules All). 

       The name Achilles turned out to be hopeless.  Graves says it means "lipless" and was a common designation for "oracular heroes," but since termites have no lips, it would be difficult to make that work!  I suppose I could have used A'zid'wei or Zid'wei'a, which would have meant Palpless, or even A'wei'to or To'wei'a (Lacking a Mandible), but what kind of names are those for a heroic Warrior?  Therefore, I had to make up a name of my own for Achilles and he ended up being Nei'ga'bao (Fated to Conquer).  But I was able to do the surname; in the Iliad Achilles is continually referred to "swift-footed," hence Nei'ga'bao was given the surname Gli Mu'zi (Swift-Foot).

       Graves translates Hector as "prop, or stay."  Therefore we have Viz'ka'cha, which means Mainstay of the Fortress.  In the Iliad, Hector is continually described with the epithet "of the bright helmet," so Viz'ka'cha gets the surname Gri Um'zi (Bright Head).

       And then there is Paris, which means "wallet" in Greek.  Paris was one of those frequent cases in Greek tales where an infant is exposed in the wilderness to die because of some portent of evil connected to his birth.  They are subsequently nurtured by an animal and then discovered and rescued by some commoner.  When Paris was exposed in that way, he was suckled by a she-bear, then adopted by a herdsman, who brought him home in a wallet, from which he was named.  In my version, the egg which held "Paris" was doomed to be destroyed and was sent to the Charnel Hall, but when the Worker inserted the knife, it discovered a live nymph inside.  Panicking, he hid the egg in a dung bucket.  An Alate who happened to look in the bucket was astonished to see this little face waggling its antennae at him; hence the Namers called the nymph Roi'za'chu (Bucket Face).  Also not the most dignified name for a great Warrior, but suitable for the character who becomes the major villain of my version!

       In order to make the plot work, I take a lot of license with one particular character.  Deiphobus in the Greek version was one of the many siblings of Hector and Paris and plays only a small role in the tale.  But he does happen to be the one who helps betray Achilles to Paris on the battlefield and I built off that to create a significant and essential character.  Deiphobus means "scaring the spoiler," and the name of my character, Dai'wak'zei, means exactly the same thing -- One Who Scares the Despoiler.

       Graves gives the translation of Cassandra as "she who entangles men," so we have Ta'hat'a'pai (She Confuses a Warrior).

       The name of the Healer Ra'fa'kat'wei worked out beautifully; in the Greek camp was a physician named Podaleirius, which means according to Graves "without lilies where he treads, i.e., discouraging death."  Ra'fa'kat'wei means She Treads Not on a Flower, which quite captures the spirit of this expert and compassionate healer.

       Calchas was the name of the Trojan Seer who defected to the Greeks.  The name means "brazen."  In my rendition he becomes Ma'tei'ban'shli, meaning He Sees Bold Ends.

       And finally we have one "centaur."  Actually, Cheiron was such a ubiquitous figure in Greek myth that I was forced to divide it into two people.  In the Troy portion we see Cheiron as the one who trained all the famous Greek heroes.  Ju'mu is an old Warrior from a southern people called the Yo'sho'zei (Ancient Ones) who blends the characteristics of the Shi and the Nasute in quite a horrific way, having great downward-hooking mandibles and a cone-shaped gland on its head that sprays sticky, frothy acid.  There actually are termite species who possess those characteristics; I must draw a picture of Ju'mu sometime.  This Cheiron figure's name means Hard Claw.  In Greek Cheiron means simply "hand."  In fact, however, "Ju'mu" is not the character's "real" name (note that it lacks the requisite three syllables).  In the language of the Shshi a more accurate translation would be Ju'a'a'mu'a, which is as close as the Shshi can come to uttering Chu’te’e’nu’a, as it would be known among the Northern Nasutes.  However, in the language native to the Yo'sho'zei, Ju'mu carries the brain-twisting epithet of Chuh’de’myukh’ze’uh’tzi.  The names consistently mean Hard Claw.

       And for the first time you've become aware that the Termite Peoples have more than one language!

       One last thing:  Some of you may be aware that Achilles was the leader of a people called the Myrmidons.  That word means simply "ant" in Greek and here is what Graves has to say about the origins of that strange name: "Some say that Achilles's allies, the Myrmidons, were so named in honour of King Myrmidon, whose daughter Eurymedusa was seduced by Zeus in the form of an ant -- which is why ants are sacred in Thessaly." [Graves, Greek Myths (Penguin Books, c1955) v.1, p. 213]  I couldn't believe how well that fit in with Shshi culture, which cultivates formicidiforms (called shza'zei|, or Little Ones) for the honeydew they produce!  It played perfectly into the little myth that Za'dut tells to explain why Nei'ga'bao's people call themselves shein’zei| ki| shlo’lo’za’zei|, or Offspring of Little Ones.

       And in case your head is spinning, I'm making a list of characters to place at the beginning of the book.  They won't have translations, but they will have identifications!

I'm Moving My Conlangs to a New Website!

A standard blog format doesn't really cut it for describing a conlang.  With Blogger the posts disappear into the limbo of the Archives.  I needed something where I can make two sections, one for the termite language Shshi and one for the Bird language !Ka<tá, and I need to be able to structure it more like a treatise or a textbook, with preliminary information that sits first and remains visible.  So I've taken a website with the Language Creation Society: http://remembrancer.conlang.org.  If you go looking, you'll find there is nothing there yet.  It's a WordPress site, because I'm too uninitiated in the ways of cyberspace to construct my own site, but it should provide better options than this site.  I will gradually be moving the information from here to that site and I will be able to work up !Ka<tá, which I find much more interesting than Shshi, actually.  I've also done some work on the two other Bird languages, Towewa and Gro’at.  Furthermore, later you will learn that there are several other temite language besides Shshi, which I plan to discuss at some point.