Creating imaginary languages and words in fantasy for children and young people
By Sophie Masson | July 15, 2009 |
Creating languages and words is one of the most fun parts of writing fantasy. Careful, though! Incomprehensible gobbledygook can really put off readers, especially younger readers, but properly used, exotic names and fragments of other languages can really add to the rich and convincing texture of your book’s world. Here’s some tips based on my own experience.
1. Don’t just pluck names and languages out of the air.
Is you world, say, based on Norse, English, Celtic, Ancient Greek, Indian, Arabic, Japanese myth and folklore? Don’t do violence to the story’s origins. Language is more than communication: it expresses a people’s soul. This also goes for Otherworlders: for instance, when I was creating names and bits of language for the korrigans, fairy-like beings found in Breton folklore, for my novel, ‘In Hollow Lands’, I used Breton itself for them, but a chopped-up, strangely inverted Breton, which expresses the Otherworlders’ strange nature, whereas the human characters used real Breton.
2. Invest in a wide range of dictionaries and grammar books.
Even if you don’t know a language, you can get to know it at least partly through such reference books, enough certainly for such fragments as you might find in a novel. (Of course if you literally want to do a Tolkien and completely invent a new language, get thee hence to a university and enrol in a full course of whatever language you’re interested in cannibalising!)
3. Invest in a good ‘meaning of names’ book and/or bookmark good baby-name Internet sites.
In traditional societies, people thought carefully about the symbolic meanings of a baby’s name; in modern societies, names can become totally detached from their meanings, sometimes to absurd lengths: there are people who call their children names like Drakkar (after an aftershave!) or Lexus(after a car!)The ‘individualistic’ approach too has led to some truly bizarre spellings of names, some of which could go straight into a fantasy novel of the comic kind. You don’t have to be totally symbolic about names; you can be subtle in your approach. But do try to choose names that fit in with your setting, or you can really jar your reader into disbelief.
4. There are easy tricks you can use to create a feeling of richness and strangeness.
When I was creating the language used in Jayangan, the Java-like setting of my novel, ‘Snow, Fire, Sword’, I used tricks like using phonetics rather than actual spelling. For example, ‘becak’ , a rickshaw, became ‘betchar’ which is how you actually pronounce it. I also looked at the different languages that had had an influence in Java—not only Bahasa Indonesian, but Javanese, Malay, Arabic, and Indian languages—to create other things, such as for instance, the names of the different religious groups in Jayangan. ‘Mujisal’, the majority religion, based on the Muslim faith, was created out of bits of the Arabic words for ‘man’, ‘war’, and ‘peace’. ‘Nashranee’ , based on the Christian faith, was created from the fact that many Indonesians call Christians ‘Nazarenes’; while ‘Dharbudsu’, which combines the Hindu and Buddhist faiths, was created from Indian and Javanese bases, combining ‘dharma’ (good, or the right path), ‘Buddha’ and ‘susilo’(wisdom).
5. Don’t be afraid to use English, too!
Sometimes, it can be more effective to use English terms—for instance, instead of exotic names for the holy books of the various Jayangan religions, I created English titles: so, the Mujisals have the Book of Light, the Nashranees the Book of Love, the Dharbudsus the Book of Life. And in my Thomas Trew series for younger readers, I used words and concepts from British folklore to give a sense of the Hidden World. But that’s not all–I even used unusual sources, such as British road signs and place names. The sky’s the limit, really!
Image by Dryad.
Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of over 70 books for children, young adults and adults. Her latest books include Sydney under Attack (children’s historical novel, Scholastic Australia, 2022) A Hundred Words for Butterfly (adult novella, ES-Press, 2022) and Cock-a-doodle-doo (children’s picture book, (illustrated by Kathy Creamer, little Pink Dog Books, 2022). In 2019, Sophie received an AM (Member, General Division) award in the Order of Australia honours list.
Orson Scott Card has some things to say about that subject in “How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy”. For one thing — make sure it’s a word human tongues can pronounce :-) I just reviewed it for my blog, and it’s got some pretty good advice on world building in general.
I have the hardest time naming my mythical characters . . . and, well, the normal ones, too!
I’ll spend days trying to find the ‘perfect’ name for a secondary character, usually when I’m writing, the name is XXXX or YYYY until I learn more about the character’s personality and job.
There is nothing worse than reading a story and being stopped numerous times with unpronounceable names. I won’t buy those author’s books again because it seems like they are making it difficult for the reader ‘just because’.
This is an awesome post. As a prior linguist myself, I find it intriguing when authors use language in the way you describe here. Nicely done.
I can’t stand obviously made-up names and languages in SFF. Stuff with weird punctuation marks drive me nuts, like Ktt”wya~ or something like that. Pulls me right out of the story.
Excellent post, Sophie! Unfortunately all too many fantasy writers do just pluck names at random from here and there, not understanding the relationship between language and culture. It would be great if aspiring writers could study one or more languages other than their own, to get a proper feeling for this.
Nice job.. I really like betchar name, I come from Indonesia, when I think about becak what came to my imagination is red, dirty, with an unrecognized color of towel rest comfortably on the shoulder of sweating ped-chauffeur
So.
_
I enjoy reading fantasy, but find it hard to take a book seriously once the “oakas” (cows) and “cutolus” (horses) start appearing. And I won’t get started on some of the made-up character names I’ve come across. :)
I love your advice on language and culture as a base for creating your own words. Great post!
Hi,
the subject of developing childs fantasy or more correct of not loosing and exploring child’s fantasy is endless but for all of you who want to learn something more I reccomend:
Gianni Rodari, The Grammar of Fantasy
which presents countless ways of making and developing not only new words but whole new fairy-tales.
Try adding foreign suffixes to parts of english words. You’ll be surprised at how well some results will resonate.
The problem with all those foreign language books is they’re too interesting and it’s easy to get into the procrastination/research trap! ;-)
This is such a timely post because I was just discussing the idea of linguistic relativity at my blog. It seems that especially in fantasy where you’re creating a new world, the quirky parts won’t have a good translation, and using some of the tips above might help to really bring a culture to life.
But it’s also a matter of doing a balancing act – if your point-of-view character is defined by his native tongue and only speaks in the made-up language you’re going to lose some readers.
Thanks for the great post!
-Nate
Sophie, thanks for a great post. I think every writer needs to have a baby-name + origin dictionary at hand. Mine is one of the most used books in my collection.
Kath, your Ktt’’wya~ example made me laugh. I don’t like those inventions either.
I have put more fantasy books back on the shelves than you can imagine, simply because of unrealistic language issues. The English language, ancient and modern provides a wonderful and mammoth resource and if characters or places are derived from a known culture, I love the idea of kidnapping words from that language and using them.
Ultimately for me, the storyline must stand on its own without the confusion of made-up words . . . although as has already been mentioned, Tolkein is immune from this, his is a skill that remains unique.
This makes some excellent points. Language and names – in particular, their consistency – go a long way toward making or breaking the feel of a fantasy world. For names, I recommend people check out Behind the Name. It’s a good resource for listings of name by culture, and also has name etymologies and meanings. It even has a feature that lets you search for names by meaning type, as in names that mean something like “winter.”
Glad you all like the post, and thanks for your excellent comments.
I think fantasy, more even than any other literary genre, needs to be anchored firmly in reality whilst allowing the imagination to transform it as well: it’s a real discipline. But fun too!