Designing a dialect without changing spelling

I'm sure most of you have read books where the author changed the spelling of words in order to express the pronunciation of a particular dialect. It used to be done all the time (Huckleberry Finn, A Little Princess etc.). Even now it can be done well, and even brilliantly (I think immediately of the dialects invented by Mike Flynn for The January Dancer and Up Jim River). However, if it isn't done right, it can be embarrassing, inconsistent or even incomprehensible.

This is why I don't do it. I still do dialects, though, so this article is about how to make dialects sound different without actually changing spelling to reflect pronunciation.

Fortunately, there is a lot more to dialect variation than pronunciation alone. There are also variations in pronoun usage, variations in syntax, variations in prosody (intonation and meter), variations in the use of the verb "be," and variations in vocabulary. Because I'm talking about writing in English, I'm going to stick to these - but it's good to be aware that in other languages, you can also have variation in other parameters (in Japanese, verb endings also vary by dialect!).

So let's do these one at a time, with some concrete examples. Pronouns (I/you/he/she/they/etc.) are a wonderful tool. Any change you make in the way you use them will be highly visible, because they resist change rather wonderfully (it's extremely difficult to get a reader's mind to accept a new made-up pronoun unless it resembles an existing pronoun very closely).

A great science fictional example of pronoun change comes from the work of Aliette de Bodard, who works with the Xuya Empire, a wonderful far-future version of the Chinese empire. In this universe, the Emperor is always referred to as "The Emperor ytself." I'm not sure about you, but the moment I see this I know that I'm looking at a genderless pronoun. There are two things working for me when I interpret this. One is that the pronoun would be pronounced just like the pronoun "itself." The second is that it has a very simple spelling change that tells my brain "look out!" This spelling change also leads me not to expect the default interpretation of "itself," i.e. that there is some kind of genderless object running the empire. There's a lot of mystery surrounding the person of the emperor here, but I don't immediately guess that the place is being run by some sort of machine.

I decided to change pronouns when I was designing the undercaste dialect of Varin, but in a more extensive way. These people start using plural pronouns for each other as soon as they reach adulthood. Now, surely most of you are familiar with the pronoun "y'all" from the American south. When I first learned it I thought it was used as a plural form of "you." Interestingly, though, at least in some regions it is a singular.

y'all = you (singular)
all y'all = all of you (plural)

This was a good thing, because I knew that the idea of pluralizing a pronoun wouldn't push people too far outside their comfort zones. However, I pluralized more than just the second person.

I => we
we => all-we
you => ye
you => all-ye
he/she => they
they => all-they

The result is extreme, but comprehensible once you get the hang of it. I was trying to make sure I introduced it in a very comprehensible context, so the first line that contains one of these pronouns is this:

"Give it to us, then."

Perhaps you notice the similarity to existing English dialects from the UK? This was fortuitous, but I'm ready to use it to the hilt, and you should be too, so remember this: the dialect you create may well evoke existing Earth dialects, and if it resembles one that bears some social similarities (casualness, lower-class) to the group you are working with in your world, this will really help your readers to get the picture.

Variations in syntax are cases when you change the order of words. For most of you, I'm guessing Yoda will leap to mind. He's weird (and possibly annoying) but he is comprehensible. One of his main strategies is to take the object of the sentence and promote it up to the front of the sentence, so that instead of Subject-verb-object, you get Object-subject-verb:

Your father he is.

Now, if you go in and start doing an analysis of everything Yoda says, you'll find he's not particularly systematic. However, when you're altering syntax for your dialect, I encourage you to be so. If you can stick to a particular pattern, then the learning and comprehension burden is reduced for your readers.

I did my own syntactic alterations when I was designing the alien voice for "Cold Words" (Analog, Oct. 2009), and I've analyzed it here on the blog, so I'll direct you to that article if you want lots of details about how it was done. That was a case of rendering an alien language in English, so it had a lot of different feature changes! [An Introduction to Aurrel]

Variations in prosody can be huge. This is intonation and stress, and all you have to do is choose words carefully and put them in a particular order to get it done. You don't have to change spellings, and you don't have to use special words. I have at least a couple of characters whose dialects are distinguished only by word and rhythmic patterning. Here is one example:

Pelismara (standard) dialect:
"You're all right now. How do you feel?"

Safe Harbor sea level dialect:
"Oh, young Master, sir, please tell us now you've not gone deaf or blind, and ease us all our worry?"

I shouldn't forget to mention "be." This is a verb that does a lot of helping but isn't very heavy on content, so perhaps that's why it ends up changing so much. Some dialects of English don't conjugate it at all. "I be going..." "They be good people..." etc. Change your default language on Facebook to "Pirate" and see what happens! This means that not only are people accustomed to seeing the word "be" used in variable ways (and thus will tolerate your alterations more easily) but that using the unconjugated "be" gives a very particular flavor to the dialect you're creating. This can definitely work to your advantage.

The next one to look at is changing vocabulary. In fact, if you're writing in another world, you're probably doing this already. Science fictional neologisms like viewport, commlink, etc. all would fall into this category, and so would created words for objects in fantasy worlds like "laran" psychic power in the Darkover world of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross. The thing to watch out for here is not to create so much new vocabulary that you're interfering with comprehension. SF neologisms have the advantage that very often they're pieces of existing words, like "mods" for modifications. However, if the context is not clear, they can also become confusing. One great thing you can do with vocabulary is create a sense of judgment and perspective. I've mentioned before that any object in a world will tend to be called different things by different people. A weapon used specifically by one group of people will tend to have the name of that group associated with it (in Varin, Arissen weapon or Imbati shot) - but only when being referred to by an outsider group. Arissen would never refer to their energy weapons as "Arissen weapons," because that wouldn't make any sense. They would have intimate knowledge of the variations in these weapons, and so would categorize them based on their function, as bolt shooters vs. arc zappers. Their familiarity with the types would show in the casualness of the terminology. We see similar things in our own world when we're looking at how laypeople versus clergy refer to objects having to do with the church, or how laypeople vs. medical practitioners refer to health issues.

As you can see, changes in vocabulary can hint about attitudes and culture within the group that uses those words. The terms we choose will have flavor, so as you make these alterations, think through which flavor it is you want to impart to the dialogue. If you want to go even further, you can think about how the usage of a particular dialect reflects historical developments, or cultural developments, in the community you're working with (the undercaste plural pronouns have a cultural and historical motivator, for example).

All this is just to say that if you restrict yourself from using spelling as a major tool in creating a dialect, you're really not "restricting" yourself much at all.

Now, go forth and have fun creating dialects!

TTYU Retro: Sneak Peek at Khachee

This post originally appeared last November at Ann Wilkes' Science Fiction and other ODDysseys. Thanks again to Ann for hosting me.

Sneak Peek at Khachee

Khachee is the language featured in my latest Analog Science Fiction and Fact story, "At Cross Purposes". Let me start by saying that I never design an alien language to require a lesson before reading - so if you don't read this, you should be just fine enjoying the story! However, you can expect a bit of insider knowledge to come from this introduction.

Because the aliens in "At Cross Purposes" have a playful side and are easily excited, I designed them on the basis of river otters. This meant I could use all kinds of river-otter-like similes and metaphors in the story, having them compare things to water, to fish, to boats, etc. I also looked for inspiration about river otters' social structure and the sounds they made. These provided major influences for the aliens' language and behavior.



First were the sounds of their language. 

I found recordings of river otter sounds - this one among others - and tried to see if I could imagine extracting consonant-vowel patterns out of it. What I got from all the whistling and clucking was that vowels would be long, that consonants would have a striking quality, and that there would be a tendency to duplicate things. Based on this, the first word I created was the name of the species: Cochee-coco. It has a meaning, which I'll discuss further below.



To make the consonants of Khachee stand out, I decided the language would have a more extensive system of voiceless affricates than English does. Affricates are sounds like "ch." These sounds begin as stops (p/t/k), and then release into fricatives (f/s) at the same location:



• t->sh = ch

• t->s= ts



Thus, in addition to "ch," I decided that Khachee would use "ts," "pf," and "kh." To make the contrast with English clear, I decided Khachee wouldn't use plain fricatives at all. A Khachee mispronunciation of the name "Doris" would therefore be "Dorits."



The other thing I picked out from otter life is that they have a small number of young in a litter - usually one to three.



I had independently come up with the idea of a society where people were always born as twins, and therefore this fit well with what I had in mind to do. Cochee-coco are always born in pairs, and while each has a name, they go by the name of the pair. The main characters of "At Cross Purposes" are a brother Chkaa, and a sister Tsee, who go by "ChkaaTsee."

This brings me to the two organizing principles of Cochee-coco social life: Purpose, and Apfaa. Purpose is something that every individual has, and it's one of their reasons for being. It's even incorporated into their names (ChkaaTsee's second name is "Great Tree Purpose"). For this reason, when I named the species, I decided not to have them call themselves "the people" (a common strategy I have used before). The direct translation of Cochee-coco is "Pursue Purpose, pursue-pursue." The name of their language, Khachee, translates as "speak Purpose." Morphologically, it breaks down as follows:

• chee=purpose
• co=pursue
• kha=speak

Obviously, Purpose is something they get very excited about! However, because Purpose involves the individual's pursuit of that which is beautiful, perfect and inspiring, it is a chaotic force in their society which tends to drive individuals apart. A society based on Purpose wouldn't work without something else to temper it. I therefore set up the opposing force, "apfaa," to rein Purpose in. I actually spent a long time trying to find just the right English word for this, but finally gave up and decided to create one. It's the expression of the twin relationship, established at birth and continued throughout life, and it includes both attraction and repulsion between pair members: "the duality that holds agreement in one hand and conflict in the other."



The presence of these two forces is really important to the language, because Tsee, the alien point-of-view character, constantly judges situations and events around her in terms of either Purpose or apfaa. Apfaa is in fact the basis of the most distinctive feature of Khachee: turn-taking rules. 



English is spoken by individuals. When we speak in conversation, we say what we want to say; then, as we listen to what the other person is saying, we keep our ears alert for natural breaking points. These breaking points are opportunities for us to seize our own turn again. If you've ever felt someone has interrupted you, usually it's because a person began speaking in a place that you didn't recognize as a natural turn-taking break. There's wide variation in what counts as a proper breaking point for turn-taking, even within the usage of English.



Khachee is not spoken by individuals; it's spoken by pairs. Any member of a pair can initiate a statement, question, etc., but the turn is not complete until it has been "chimed" by the other member of the pair. The person "chiming" is responsible for commenting on the quality of the information provided by the initiator. The chimer will indicate whether what has been said is true, or an opinion, or something they overheard, something they want, something they think is horrible, etc. Starting to speak before the second member of the pair has had a chance to chime counts as an interruption. When a Khachee speaker listens to a human speaking, she will tend to assume that the speaker is not finished. This can - and does - lead to awkwardness!



The effect of the Khachee turn-taking strategy for the story's purposes - when it's rendered in English - is a distinctive intonational pattern. This pattern resembles call-and-response, something like what you might have heard in church contexts. I deliberately had to stop myself from including the phrase, "Testify, sister!" because it would have evoked the church context too directly. The turn-taking strategy also influences the way that Khachee speakers organize their own thoughts. They'll tend to express judgments of their own thoughts, acting internally as a pair-member for themselves.

Here are some examples.



A pair turn


Tsee: We won't leave you to speak alone, but will return you to your people.


Chkaa: Truth!



An individual's thought


Pointed at us are weapons, deduced - these aliens are as wary as the Rodhrrrdkhi, suspected.



The last thing I'll mention here is the question of pronouns. When I first imagined the Cochee-coco and their focus on pairs, I toyed with the idea of not using the pronoun "I" at all, but having members of the pair think of themselves as "this half" and "that half." When I tried it, I discovered it was disastrous from a story perspective: it became difficult to track who the alien protagonist was. Pronouns are extremely resistant to change, so watch out for them! In the end, I decided to use a different, more subtle strategy - a strategy of avoidance. Tsee will typically talk about "we," the pair, and won't refer to herself as "I" unless she has to draw a deliberate comparison between her own actions and those of her brother.

You're creating a world. How much language will you teach?

I read a novel once which had been handed to me with the highest recommendation as a book which created a "truly alien world." And guess what? It was really well done, really alien, very deeply thought through.

I had one problem: there wasn't enough language.

Now, I don't mean to say that there was no alien language used. There was. But for example I noticed that there was a lack of biodiversity: extensive areas of the world growing with the same two or three plant species, and we kept seeing the same animal species. The same pattern was found in a few other places, too (like artifacts), where I sensed the available vocabulary was just too small.

Surely we don't want this. On the other hand, we don't want our readers floundering in piles and piles of alien vocabulary that they don't understand - they will stop reading. I've remarked before on this blog that if you want to create a sense of intimacy and internal perspective, you should avoid using alien vocabulary as much as possible, and make sure to back every instance of it up with a lot of contextual support - conversely, if you want a sense of alienness, more alien vocabulary is all right. It still has to be comprehensible.

One way to avoid overwhelming readers is to use a translation approach. Whatever concept it is that you want readers to understand, find a way of rendering it in English. In fact, I use this approach all the time, because I want my readers to feel like they are insiders (insiders=minimize alien vocabulary).

In "At Cross Purposes" (Analog Jan/Feb 2011) I had two alien concepts that I needed readers to understand. The first one was "Purpose." Our English word "purpose" was a subset, or a partial meaning, for what the aliens meant when they used it. Because of this, I could start having them use it in context in a place where the two meanings overlapped, and then slowly have them extend their use of the world with a lot of contextual support. Notice here: I was teaching my readers deliberately. I start readers in a place they can easily grasp, the area where English "purpose" overlaps with Khachee-translated "purpose." Then I make sure to extend that usage so that the reader will question the places where the meanings don't overlap, and start creating a new definition for it. I did the same thing with the word "cold" in "Cold Words" (Analog Oct. 2009). The second concept I needed readers to understand was much harder. I tried and tried to encapsulate it in a single word, but everything I found was either too corny, too awkward-sounding or too context-specific to our world. Only when I'd exhausted all the possibilities for English translation did I decide to use an alien word, "apfaa." That single term was able to cover all the multiple meanings of the social relationship of twinhood in their society - matching, symmetry, mutual social support, but also conflict, criticism and mutually beneficial argument. I had to make sure the aliens had a good reason to consider the concept consciously (they were wondering whether humans had it). Then I gave a basic definition for it: "the duality that holds agreement in one hand and conflict in the other." After that I tried to make sure all of its uses were supported by context suggesting the different ways it might be used.

I guess what I'm saying is that when you have alien language and concepts (whether those are sf "alien" aliens or just fantasy concepts that are unfamiliar), you need to decide how much language teaching you actually want to do. I'm less interested, in my stories, in teaching vocabulary than I am in teaching different ways to think - but I am very interested in teaching that.

The other thing I'm trying to say is that if you have invented a language with lots of words and all those words have history, and connotations, etc. etc. it doesn't mean that any of that information and insight is making it onto the page. If you want to show that words are related to one another, and make it meaningful to readers, you have to put in a lot of contextual support to make sure those implications are clear. If you have a really cool compound word that you love and you want to teach to readers, make sure that it's highly relevant to the events of the story, and put it in in such a way as to maximize easy understanding of it. If it's pivotal to the story's success, you might even want to break it into parts and show the meaning of the parts before you put it together. Just don't assume that because you have the grand language concept that everyone else shares it too. Remember that there is teaching going on, whether you are teaching actual new words, or just concepts and local metaphors.

In fact, there is teaching in all kinds of stories, even ones without aliens. Real world stories with local dialects? Yes, there's teaching. How about real world stories with hugely extended metaphors like "Snow Falling on Cedars," where the author spends lots of time comparing the snow and its effect on the countryside with the mental states of his main character? There's teaching going on there too. Every place you need to teach, you'll be looking for reader engagement to reward the effort of learning. So don't make people work for things that are trivial.

It's something to think about.

Creating the next great alien language... why?

A couple of days ago I read and linked to an interesting article over on io9, called How to write the next great alien language. The article compares the Elvish languages (Sindarin and Quenya) and the Klingon language, and opens as follows:

Constructing an entire alien language is the most challenging task in all of speculative fiction, and there are two examples that tower above the rest: J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish and Marc Okrand's Klingon. We'll show you how to outdo even them.

When it comes to world-building, there's no finer way to capture an alien culture than to give it a language that seems utterly strange to human ears. It's obviously a challenging task, and one that requires a decent working knowledge of linguistics. So while we have to leave the nitty-gritty of language construction to a textbook, what we can do is examine the very different overarching approaches used in constructing the two most iconic alien languages - Elvish and Klingon - and then explain how you could create a language that combines the best of both.

When they talk about overarching approaches, they are effectively referring to the fact that Tolkien based his Elvish tongues in part on a pair of human languages (Finnish and Welsh) and extensively developed the history of changes these languages, while Marc Okrand used existing names and a couple of lines of dialogue as a basis for creating a Klingon language system with an extensive vocabulary that could cover all kinds of topics (Klingon Hamlet, anyone?) but didn't delve into history of Klingon at all.

Let me start by saying that I'm terribly impressed with both Tolkien and Okrand for their achievements. The io9 article didn't mention Paul Frommer or Na'vi, but as I've understood it from independent research, Frommer designed the Na'vi language of Avatar in a somewhat similar way to Klingon (i.e. by approach from a contemporary linguistic perspective, though without the snippets of previous language use as a basis).

I wondered about a couple of things in this article. First, there's a general idea that one should give an alien culture a language that sounds "utterly strange" to human ears. How do you define "utterly strange?" I suppose I'd say that an alien language must have two major features: it must be unintelligible by speakers of any existing human language, and it must have no etymological connection with any existing human language. If it did have such connections, it wouldn't be "alien" by definition. Beyond that it's a matter of personal taste.

Marc Okrand had to work with an existing description of Klingon as "guttural," which affected his choice of the language's sounds. He also tried to have patterns of sounds in the sound system that didn't occur in existing world languages - his example was having a sound for V without having one for F. In the area of grammar he chose to use object-verb-subject word order, which is the most unusual in world languages. Overall, I would summarize by concluding that he was trying to defeat the human language "universals" in order to make the language very alien.

Paul Frommer was freer in his choice of sounds because he got to start from scratch, and in articles about his creation of Na'vi he has said he deliberately chose language sounds for his sound system that came from rare Earth languages and thus would be hard for most humans to recognize. Na'vi is in some sense the opposite of Klingon, in that it has no V - instead it has P and an ejective, written "px". Verb conjugation is by infixes rather than prefixes or suffixes - another deliberate choice to make the language unusual. You can read more about it at Wikipedia or at Learn Na'vi.

One of the key features of both Klingon and Na'vi, though, was that they had to be pronounceable by humans so that they could be used in a movie - and as it turns out, Sindarin Elvish is also pronounceable by humans; its vocabulary has been developed for use in the Lord of the Rings films.

That brings me to the question of how one might "outdo" Tolkien and Okrand - one of the proposals of the io9 article. They imply that the next great alien language should involve both an extensive contemporary vocabulary and a sense of historical development. Seems logical, at least inasmuch as that would "fill in the blanks" of what the developers of these existing languages didn't cover.

But my commenter Megs had a different point of view: "I think one of the most fundamental things about creating an ALIEN language isn't so much to use things that are rare in human languages, but to not BASE them on human languages. Just use logic to create a system that communicates. But maybe that's just me."

Okay, so Megs would want to create a system of communication that's not based on human languages, just on logic. One could argue that the logic required has some human basis too, but I see her point. What about extremely different alien physiology? What about scent language, or visual language? Alien is alien, right?

In order to understand the parameters here, I think we have to ask one critical question:

Why am I creating this language?

The answer to that question will determine everything about the language you create. Tolkien set out to create a history of mythology, and thus spent a lot of time on the history of his languages; that was a natural consequence. Okrand and Frommer set out to create languages that could be used by human actors on film, which required extensive vocabulary and contemporary usage, but did not require that they trace the history of the languages - and heavens forbid they should create something that was unpronounceable!

So let's get back to basics. The purpose of most science fiction and fantasy languages is to function in a story. The nature of that story is what determines the features and qualities of the language.

Here are some examples of languages that I've created, what parts of them I've created, and why:

Gariniya
Gariniya was based on the idea of a canon-based language - a language that consisted primarily of oblique references to a set of stories that all speakers of the language knew. To my knowledge, this language concept originated with Star Trek: The Next Generation's episode Darmok. My own contribution was to the culture surrounding it, in particular to finding ways for the language to have evolved and ways that the language would be learned and passed on (which I had felt were missing in the Star Trek episode; see my entry Darmok and Me). I also needed culture surrounding it, dictating the conditions of its use. For the purposes of the story I did NOT need it to have either an extensive vocabulary or a fully realized grammar. I designed phonology pretty thoroughly, constructed a few words to use in the story, and that was sufficient for my purposes.

Aurrel & Khachee
Both Aurrel, from "Cold Words," and Khachee, from my forthcoming story "At Cross Purposes," are entirely original in concept and execution. Similarly to Gariniya, though, they have well-developed phonology but don't have a big vocabulary because I only needed to use a few names and concepts in the stories. As I've said before, the more of an alien language you use, the more you alienate the reader, so if you're working from an insider perspective, it's good to use as little of the alien language as possible. Both of these languages differ from Gariniya in that I did much more design of their grammar. I started with one single key feature that was going to cause the most trouble in the story - status dialects in Aurrel and discourse/turn-taking structure in Khachee - and then developed from there. Another reason that grammar knowledge was important was because I tried to alter my use of English so I could sound like a native-speaker-of-alien-language-speaking-English when in the alien point of view. Aurrel also had a language evolutionary angle, and a historical angle, because these were directly relevant to the plot.

Varinn
The Varinn language (from Varin, as you've probably guessed) is the most extensive language I've created. I did intend it to be pronounceable - and relatively easily pronounceable - by humans, since the Varini (people of Varin) themselves are humans. It has phonology and syntax and morphology, and I've delved far into cultural issues surrounding its use by various social groups. It also has a rudimentary history as a language, including sound changes and changes in verb conjugations. This is because I have other stories that I've designed in which this history becomes important. I've also developed more vocabulary for this one because I wanted to have a Varinn translation of certain songs and oaths that appear in the story. However, I hardly ever use it in the stories themselves. All of the stories are told from an insider perspective, and thus need to be effectively "in translation" whenever possible so the language won't distract from the story.

So when it comes right down to it, what makes a really great invented language?

The io9 article, and some comments that have followed it, seem to suggest that it would be better to include both concurrent vocabulary and language history - an additive sort of solution based on their analysis of Elvish and Klingon. Even if you had both, though, the language wouldn't have all the richness, irregularity, cultural grounding, manners, etc. of a natural language.

I'm going to argue, though, that the next "great alien language" is not going to be much like a natural language, for one single reason: without a great story to rest upon and guide its form, a language would have no reason to exist. It might be quite comprehensive and possibly quite alien (if that's what its creators were after), but nobody would care about it. A language needs a world, and characters, and a story, to make it compelling and worthwhile. Once it's in the hands of dedicated fans and learners, anything is possible. After all, creole languages are natural languages, vibrant, with functional grammar, and these languages develop naturally in locations where adults have been using awkward pidgin. Once you've put the accepted usage into the hands of learners, especially child learners, language tends to take on a life of its own.

So if you're creating a language, be careful of losing yourself in the conlang process, and make sure to keep an eye out for the needs of the story you want to tell. I encourage linguistic research, exacting standards, and lots of hard work - if that's what you're into. But for those of you who don't have tons of time to devote to language development, keep in mind that an effective and functional alien tongue doesn't need to be extensive to work. It just needs to be systematic and serve the needs of the story you want to tell.

Wow! Great article on invented languages

My friend Dave Malinowski put me onto this terrific article, where two experts on invented languages answer questions about the topic. The experts are Paul Frommer, inventor of Avatar's Na'vi language, and Arika Okrent, author of "In the Land of Invented Languages." Check it out!

Language Pride/Language Control

If you're creating a nation - for fantasy or science fiction - I'll begin by encouraging you to give it a language. But even if you have already, don't stop there. One of the things you find all over the world is that people who speak a particular language have strong attitudes about it, both internally or relative to other languages of their world.

Today my husband and I were discussing France and the French reputation for being prickly toward Americans - something which I have never in my life experienced. Interesting, isn't it? Because I speak French well, I always get lots of credit for it. My theory is that Americans and French are very similar. The people of each of these two countries are very proud of their language, and because it is spoken in many countries of the world, they feel that others coming to visit should have the courtesy to learn some of it. This may or may not jive with the experience of some of you, but nevertheless, it's an example of manners which are closely linked to language pride.

In Japan, they have a different kind of language pride. Both my husband and I have encountered situations where we were told we spoke Japanese "too well." There's a strong cultural view of Japanese as a unique language that can't truly be captured by a foreign speaker.

Speakers of different languages can also have varying attitudes toward the use of dialect by people from different regions - some laugh at them, some think they're precious, and others disparage them. Some countries have a national institution whose job it is to maintain the "standard" language against the intrusion of dialectal usages or foreign borrowings (especially foreign borrowings).

I encountered a funny article recently about German train stations replacing signs written in English with ones written in German. The part that was surprising was that the English they were replacing wasn't the kind Americans would necessarily find easy to understand - it was very idiomatically appropriate to a German context. The article is here.

If your world has nations and languages, then considering language attitude on some level will help it feel a lot more real. Even if you've got one language that is the strongest across a whole world, consider that language use diversifies very quickly. English is very strong as an international language, but there are lots of different kinds of English. What is Standard English? How does it compare to the Queen's English? Is one more often learned, or more highly valued in a particular location? If you meet someone from Hong Kong, their English will probably sound British, but someone from the Philippines will probably sound American. If you want to teach English in Japan, it will be easier to get a job if you sound American or British than if you sound Australian.

War is another context in which language control can play a huge role. Take the example of World War II, when Japan occupied Korea and outlawed the use of Korean in public. Korean didn't disappear, but a whole generation of people learned Japanese as a conqueror's language. Imagine how that influenced attitudes about Korean and Japanese!

Think also of the language Hebrew, which was primarily used as a literary language and was then revived for active use starting in the end of the 19th century (source: Wikipedia entry on History of Hebrew). Now it's the native language of millions in Israel.

I hope all of these real world examples can help you extrapolate for situations in your fantasy and science fictional worlds. Language isn't just a tool for conveying messages, but also for conveying information about culture and identity. It can serve conquerors, or rally the oppressed. It can be a measure of refinement or lack thereof. It can be a symbol of national unity, or a symbol of national diversity, or yet again a symbol of deep national history.

It's something to think about.

Two Non-English Languages

This post is in answer to Meg's question about using two non-English languages in a story - thanks for the question, Meg!

First, some general orientation. We're not talking in this case about using world languages, or speakers of existing world languages, in a story full of English speakers. That would be an entirely different issue. This is a case of two fantasy populations, each of which has its own language.

When fantasy populations have their own languages, this means that no readers have any hope of finding a dictionary to allow them to understand the languages the author has created. I have done this before, and I generally referred to the difficulty with using such languages as "the translation problem."

Question 1. How much do you render in the language, and how much in English?

I've addressed this question before, but the basic metric is this: the more of your created language you use, the more alienated your reader will feel. So if you're working with an Earth traveler among aliens, and you want to emphasize that person's sense of alienation and confusion, use more of the alien language. But if you're working with a point of view inside a population of speakers of the created language, then use more English translations of the words in question, and only a minimum of the created language's vocabulary.

Think about it this way. You are teaching your reader every vocabulary word you choose to use. This requires reader effort, and you don't want to overload them so much that they can't follow the story.

So here we are. In Meg's case, she's working with the point of view of a speaker of a fantasy language.

Question 2. How do you deal with the internal pov of a person who is not an English speaker?

I'll call this the one-language problem. Assume that everything that occurred in her native environment happened in her native language, and its cultural context. She's multilingual, but for the sake of simplicity I'll assume that her thought patterns were primarily influenced by her native language. The way you write the English for her will not sound like the English you would write for a native speaker of modern English (obviously). It should use the metaphors, concepts, manners, and cultural sensitivities of a native speaker of the language she speaks. I call it the translation problem because you want it to look something like a translation of her native language into English, rather than just English.

Now, when I work with alien languages in my short stories, I take the "translation" further, and try to make alterations in the structure of the English I use, to reflect the use of the alien language. This requires a sense of what the structure of the created language is, and how that structure might influence the speaker's use of English - but I don't necessarily recommend it in this case. You're working on the inside, in a fantasy context where the main character should probably be considered "home base" for the reader. So I think that any significant grammatical alterations would probably be too distracting.

So in Meg's case, the first step I'd probably take is working out how her main character's speech would come across based on her native language. Forget for a minute about the second language issue, because if you can figure out how her native language will influence her English, that's going to be roughly what you need to discover how her native language influences her use of the other language. Especially since both will be written in English anyway.

Now, if you're working with a second language that the protagonist doesn't understand, you can simply have them not understand it, or partially understand it. That is, if you're using a close point of view (either first person or close third person).

But Meg has a protagonist who understands and speaks the second language. So that leads us to....

Question 3. What do you do when you have a second non-English language?

Once you've established your "base" for Language 1, start looking at the other language. Pick an antagonist (because in Meg's case, the second language is the antagonist's language) and go through the one-language process again, for the other language. What concepts, metaphors and other features of Chirrith are going to show up when a Chirrith speaker speaks in English? Establish your "base" for Language 2 the same way you did for Language 1. (This can actually work for more than two languages also.)

Great. Now...

Question 4. How do you work with the two?

The good news is, you may already be done. Once you have the "Language X in English" pattern, then the Vas'her pattern in Chirrith is going to look a lot like the Vas'her pattern in English - because after all, you are writing this all in English. All you need are cues here and there, when they become relevant. When they become relevant will be the moment when the protagonist becomes aware of which language she's speaking in contrast with the other. If the protagonist has lost her memory, this may take a while!

It is important, however, to make the different languages as immediately distinguishable as possible. For this purpose, you might want to consider one more tool: intonation and meter. The distinction between the language concepts and metaphors is going to show, but may not be immediately evident in every line. If you want to push the difference further, consider picking an intonational pattern to associate with one or the other - possibly, in this case, a Vas'her intonational pattern that would mark her speech as different from that of the people around her.

The only thing I don't think you should do - at all! - is try to translate between Chirrith and Vas'her. I've tried translating directly between French and Japanese, and it was confusing and difficult. Especially since both of the languages are products of your own creation, I'd encourage you to move away from thinking of them as languages to be spoken, and start thinking about them as templates to influence your use of English. Relating one variety of English to another is something native speakers do almost on a daily basis. It will probably be much easier.

I encourage responses and questions!

A funny article!

This is a wonderfully funny one. Many thanks to my lovely friend K for directing me to it - an article about a constructed language called Na'vi which is used in the upcoming series, "Avatar." Apparently the language has been developed in some depth, and certainly the article treats its subject respectfully. This also includes references to Klingon, for those interested - and an intriguing reference to an artist who renders Eminem rap songs in Klingon!

The article itself is here.

Turn-taking

Probably a whole lot of you have seen the film, "When Harry Met Sally." There are a lot of memorable moments in that film, and I find when I think back on it that I remember mostly the incidents that occur between the main characters. Harry and Sally - it's their movie, so it makes sense.

But one of the most marvelously insightful elements of that film was the series of tiny vignettes with married couples talking about how they met, and about how they live. I remember the Chinese couple's story where the man sneaked into the next village to see if his intended bride would be beautiful. I remember the way the movie wrapped up with Harry and Sally appearing in such a vignette, which tied the whole thing together in a neat bow. The other one that stands out for me though, is the East Coast couple who kept talking over each other. I remember thinking "Wow, that's crazy," and also, "If these are actors, it must be really hard for them to pull that off."

If you haven't seen the vignette in question, here's what it involves. The couple collectively tells a story. For each new element, the man begins the narrative. Then, maybe a little over halfway through his sentence, the wife starts in with her own infusion of narrative that contributes to the same "plot point." He finishes his sentence, but she keeps going and finishes again a few seconds later.

I have never met anyone who speaks that way, and at the time I watched the film my sense of East Coast accents was even more vague than it currently is. So if any of you can pinpoint precisely where their dialect - or their turn-taking style - comes from, please do let me know in the comments.

The point of this whole discussion is this: turn-taking is a big deal, and you should give it some attention.

We learn turn-taking before we learn to speak. Long before. A lot of research has been done on this; here's a sample link to a psychology article on the topic. Mothers will interpret their children's gurgles, burps, etc. as legitimate turns, and respond to them. I know I talk to my cats, and let them take their "turns at conversation."

My husband's turn-taking sense is slightly different than mine. You can imagine that this caused some frictions early in our relationship. I couldn't say if this is due to Australian vs. American culture, or whether it's just our families - after all, he was the last of five kids in his family, which made for much more active dynamics.

Here's one place where turn-taking becomes relevant for a writer. We want to make our characters' voices distinct, maybe even show dialect, but we don't always want to alter the spelling of words to indicate difference in pronunciation. Well, one place to make differences noticeable is in turn-taking. In fantasy or science fiction, you can have a community of people who recognize different kinds of moments as opportunities to break into a conversation. Or you can portray frictions between two different groups who take turns differently.

Its something worth thinking about.

Designing an Alphabet or Writing System

I love alphabets. When I say this, I include writing systems generally (it just rings better if I say "alphabets," though). I started creating them when I was a kid, and have always loved looking at foreign writing. In high school I created at least two code alphabets that I used with various friends, and I used a Greek-alphabet transliteration of English to trade notes with one of my boyfriends. In college I asked a friend to teach me about Arabic, and I had yet another personal alphabet that I used in my journal to make sure no one could peek and read. I also discovered some alphabets I'd never seen before, such as the loopy script of Malayalam. Great stuff.

I've also encountered a goodly number of fantasy alphabets, including the elvish and dwarvish scripts of Tolkien, the Kzinti script of Paul Chafe, and numerous others.

After all of this, I thought I'd try to distill a few thoughts here that might be useful to would-be creators of alphabets and other character systems.

Thought #1: Before you start creating arcane symbols, decide exactly what it is you're representing.

Any alphabet that simply replaces the English alphabet is not really an alphabet in its own right, but a code. It's cool - and goodness knows I've made a lot of these - but it probably won't be the best match for a really original alien or fantasy language.

It's good to ask yourself whether your symbols will be representing sounds, syllables, or meanings. English roughly represents sounds, while the Japanese hiragana and katakana systems represent syllables, and the Japanese Kanji, like the original Chinese characters, represent meanings. Any one of these can work, but a system that represents meanings is going to require a lot more complexity than one that only represents sounds, because the sounds of a language are a finite list, while the meanings just go on and on.

Thought #2: Don't just ask what you're representing, ask also how this writing system will be used.

I bring this up because I think its important for language designers to consider how often, and how quickly, the symbols they create must be written. Japanese Kanji are brutally hard to dash off a quick note in, although people do it regularly. I've seen fantasy character systems so complex that I can't imagine how people would be able to write them in any practical fashion. Contrast that situation, though, with the writing system used by Ursula LeGuin in her novel, The Telling. That system was intricately related to a whole belief system and sacred meanings were part of it; a lot of time and effort can be invested in writing when the final product is believed to have greater than everyday significance. For dashing off quick notes, though, simpler is probably better.

Thought #3: Think through the basic visual elements of your script, including stroke types and points or axes of orientation.

The English alphabet uses a finite number of stroke types: vertical and horizontal lines; two types of diagonal lines; curves; and dots. It orients to a primary axis located at the bottom of all of the characters - "writing on the line," so to speak. The characters then vary based on which strokes occur in which orientations to one another, to the axis, and to three different distance points measured in the vertical dimension off that axis (the horizontal bars of "e," "t"/"f," and "I."

Why is it worth thinking this stuff through? Because for ease of writing, you probably want to minimize the number of stroke types, keeping maximal simplicity while at the same time maintaining maximal difference between the different characters. Put it this way:

If the characters are too complex, you get screaming - but if all the characters look the same? More screaming.

Okay, great. Now let's assume you've got the basic characters sketched out. Do you want to add additional complexity, like capitalization, or cursive forms?

Answer: maybe. Additional complexity has its uses. Cursive (I was always told) was designed for the sake of speed, and it certainly has a sense of style to it. Capitalization helps a lot because it provides visual orientation for a reader, effectively saying, "Look here! It's the beginning of the sentence!" or "Look here! It's a name!" In German, it says something different: "Here's a noun!" Similar to this, if greatly more complicating, is the use of Kanji in Japanese. Kanji say "Here's a piece of meaning!" And given that Japanese is written without spaces between words, that piece of meaning generally also allows a reader to separate the beginning of a new word from the function words around it, and from any suffixes appended to previous words. Arabic has a different kind of complexity in its script: the "letters" take different forms depending on whether they occur at the start, in the middle, or at the end of a word. Again, this provides orientation on a larger level - and it reminds me to point out that empty spaces between words are another highly useful feature of script, used for general orientation to the language being represented.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention punctuation, but I don't want to go into much detail there, except to say that it is another type of orientation device. It works on the sentence level, but also within the sentence, to help clarify syntactic structures. For more fun with punctuation I'll direct you to Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss, as she handles the discussion in much more depth - and far more amusingly - than I can.

At this point that I must bemoan the fact that it's so difficult to render a created alphabet into computerized blog form, because I would love to give examples. Suffice it to say that a character system with a deliberate balance between simplicity and complexity (differentiation), and one that uses appropriate cues to the beginnings and ends of words, will strike a viewer's eye as more "real" than one that doesn't. And just so I'm not completely without examples, I've written a sentence in Japanese for you:

日本語では一番簡単な字がひらがなとカタカナで、一番複雑のは漢字です。

I invite anyone who is able to speak a language using a different character system (and enter it into their computer) to volunteer examples in my comments area. I - and my readers - would love to see them.

Swearing (New elements added!)

I got thinking about swearing after seeing this great article online from Scientific American (which you can check out too): Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief

So you can have an idea what it says without having to read the whole thing, here's a quote:

"The study, published today in the journal NeuroReport, measured how long college students could keep their hands immersed in cold water. During the chilly exercise, they could repeat an expletive of their choice or chant a neutral word. When swearing, the 67 student volunteers reported less pain and on average endured about 40 seconds longer."

When I stopped laughing, I decided that was pretty fascinating. I mean, swearing obviously taps into something inside our brains that's pretty fundamental. Humans have been doing it for hundreds, probably thousands of years, and I even have a textbook (a rather dry one, unfortunately) about its history.

I would personally observe that you have to learn how to swear. I didn't really learn to do it myself until high school, when it became useful to know how from the point of view of general social acceptance. And the way you do it can vary, as can the types of words you use - words related to religion, to scatology, or to intimacy are common examples.

One is generally discouraged from swearing around children. This was easy for me, as I wasn't a big swearer in the first place - more difficult, however, for my husband. Children, as they learn language, will repeat the words they hear that they can at least partially understand, to test them out. When they hear swear words, the results can be surprising.

I've known plenty of parents to get very upset hearing swear words, but I think my anthropology and linguistics encourages me to take the long view and to say to my kids, "well, before you use that word again, you have to know about how it makes people feel, and why adults tend to use it." When I explain that some people can become very angry at the mere sound of certain words, my kids are very impressed - and to their credit, I've never heard them use the words a second time. I get told off by them for using the word "stupid" for things, because my kids know the intent behind its use is derogatory. I think they understand what lies behind the words better than some adults.

The meanings of swear words are almost beside the point. I used to giggle my head off in high school, thinking about the literal interpretations of some of the streams of expletives I heard. It's their evocation of a passionate, often aggressive or violent emotional state that does the trick in many cases. Or in the case of pain relief, maybe it's just a kind of catharsis. It makes me wonder if there's any relation between the pain relief/catharsis aspect of swearing, and the tendency of people with certain kinds of brain disorders to swear (I think immediately of Tourette's syndrome, but I'm sure there are more).

I've been asked on forums several times to help with the creation of sets of convincing expletives for fantasy and science fiction contexts. There are a couple of parameters that are valuable to consider: content, and realization (which I'll discuss below).

My commenter Byron Bailey was kind enough to research this topic independently and come up with a great list of content types for profanity, from linguist Steven Pinker:

1. The supernatural: fear and awe.
2. Body effluvia and organs: disgust.
3. Disease, death, and infirmity: dread.
4. Sexuality: revulsion at depravity.
5. Disfavored peoples and groups: hatred, contempt.

Okay, so now what is realization? Realization is what form the swearing takes, in terms of its sound and recognizability by English speakers - and in my experience, this is often what trips people up. There are three directions you can go:

1. create words that have no English meaning, but are linguistically suited to the language of the social group you're featuring (example "rispot!")
2. alter English or use an existing world language, creating variations on existing swear words, using swear words that don't mean anything to English speakers, or creating swear versions of words that don't currently have expletive connotations (example "frak", or the Chinese expletives in Firefly/Serenity)
3. use English or alien words that are related to the content type you've chosen, and which are appropriate to your world (example "by the Consortium!" etc.)

You can even mix 1 with 3, or 2 with 3, in different contexts. I don't encourage mixing 1 with 2, though, because mixing language sounds will make the words sound inconsistent.

Now get out there and have fun with this - and maybe alleviate some pain while you're at it.

Westercon report

It was a whirlwind day yesterday. I got up at 4 am and took a 6:20 flight to Phoenix, whence I found my way to Westercon by around 8:30. If you know how people party on Saturday nights at conventions, you might already have guessed that things were pretty quiet around the place.

I always like to hang around the social rooms, like the green room, to meet people. I've met a lot of very cool authors that way, and I had some great conversations today also. I used some of my extra energy, on behalf of those who had less, to help organize the food in the Con Suite.
Before the panel started, I got to meet Alastair and Marian from the Analog forum who were in the audience. That was fun!

The alien language panel was super-awesome. I think the greatest thing about it was that all three of us - Stan Schmidt, Sheila Finch, and I - were both qualified and excited about the topic of designing alien languages. We talked about them from all kinds of angles. Evolution of language, physiology and its relationship to language form, phonology, morphology, and many other things including how to render alien languages so they're comprehensible in English (always important so people will keep reading your story!).

One of the things that Stan Schmidt brought was a pair of recordings which really added to the depth of the discussion. The first was of animal sounds from Earth - birds, insects, and others. My favorite - and clearly his also - was the willow ptarmigan, a tundra bird that sounds as if it is really speaking a language. That was a striking thing to listen to! He also had a recording of messages in a language he'd created that used vowels, pitch and length to distinguish meanings. What a great example for the group to consider!

I think there were about 20 people in the audience. They were great, too - very engaged, listening well, awake (and on Sunday at a Con, this is no small feat), and asking great questions.

After that I got to eat lunch with my fellow panelists, which was also very enjoyable. We talked a bit about language at that point, and also about stories and about Dr. Schmidt's editing experiences. Fascinating stuff. I promised I would do my best to get a new story out to Analog by October - so I have my work cut out for me now.

It was a great, exhausting day. You're welcome to ask questions if you're curious about anything else.

Endangered Languages

UNESCO has an amazing site with a list of some 3000 endangered languages of the world, here:

link

Not only do I think this is a very interesting possible source for language design ideas, it's also inherently fascinating to me.

What are the cultural conditions under which people stop speaking the native language of their parents? Obviously there are lots of options. Here are two examples:
* There are tons of Japanese-Americans out there who were born during WWII or shortly thereafter, who were never taught Japanese by their parents because their parents didn't want those children to be associated with the enemy.
* There are also children whose parents have been told it would hurt them academically if the parents spoke to them in anything other than English (this is wrong). Consider what that does to a child - it doesn't help them to comprehend English, since usually the English of the parents is rudimentary anyway. In effect, it renders them unable to communicate effectively with their parents, and disrupts all the normal kinds of guidance communication that children need growing up.

Some kids who have a start in one language and then are forced to switch entirely to another never feel like they have "native" proficiency in any language - they're lost in between. The UNESCO database classifies languages based on the way that they are used, whether they're used in the home but not outside, whether they're not used in the home except between older individuals, or whether they're known by an individual but not really used at all.

It's sad for me to think of languages dying - of the richness of cultural heritage and the unique forms of meaning that are no longer expressed when a language disappears. Whether you look at the database out of curiosity, or while looking for language design ideas, it's interesting to contemplate not just how many languages of the Earth are endangered, but how awfully many there are to begin with.

Fascinating stuff.

A complex model of writing development

This entry is a response to Colin's comment on the last post, and anyone who would like to see the details of his question can look in the comments. He began by asking about naming, and then went on to tell me a little about a project he's doing. These two are actually separate issues.

First, naming. Establishing naming conventions isn't hard - really, it's fun! I've discussed this in a number of places, and my first suggestion is to take a close look at what you know about your planet and people. Physiology can give you some hints as to the sounds they might use. You can also look for inspiration in animal sounds or in existing world languages. Just try to keep the names consistent in sound. There are some sounds that evoke emotions in a hearer, and many of these associations are culturally based, though the principles of onomatopoeia are more universal. Posts to look at in my archives might include:
Does your world/universe include names?
Nicknames
Bow-wow, boom, smash: onomatopoeia
The Feel of a Language
Ideas for Languages: animal sounds
How articulatory phonetics can help you
How morphology can help you

Now, onto the next issue, which is really a question of writing systems. Colin describes a situation in which "runes," which express whole word meanings, resemble letters and can be mistaken for them. It took me some thinking to reconcile these two ideas, in part because historically, rune systems did represent sounds, and because meaning-based writing systems (ideographic systems) and sound-based writing systems (alphabetic or syllabic systems) are so different. But if the Japanese can take the ideographic Chinese system and adapt it into a syllabic system that is then used concurrently with the ideographs (and they do!), anything is possible, right? :-)

My idea was to think of this as a process of language history. Maybe the people originally used an ideographic writing system to express their ideas. Symbols for the names of virtues would have been part of this system. (I do suggest these not be called runes, however, because the automatic associations with the word "rune" could confuse readers.) Then, something happened. Maybe there was an invasion, or perhaps an opening of trade with another country which used similar implements for writing (thus the visual similarity) but instead functioned using an alphabetic system. Or perhaps the opening of trade led to the idea of an alphabetic system and some person of note decided to adapt a set of core ideographs into an alphabet. The ideograph-users as a society would probably see the attractiveness of a system that reduced the education burden for literacy, and while there might be some initial objections, let's say they adopt the new alphabetic method of writing. Generations go by, and the knowledge of the ideographs became more and more esoteric. At a certain point one would see a situation in which ideographs would not be recognized as bearing their original meanings, and might instead be construed as resembling similar symbols from the newer alphabetic system. I'd also suggest that both the systems should have their own names, and the symbols should have identities that are not borrowed from Latin symbols if there is no real connection between them and Latin. Use descriptions of the symbols, and words for the symbols that you create, that you can fit into the same sound system as the names of people and things as mentioned above.

Thanks again for the question!

You might also want to check out Tom Waters' interesting discussion of language building:
link

Workshop: More thoughts

I'd like to open this post with a thank you to those who have replied to my rather vague and cryptic questions of the last post. I'm happy to hear that this workshop has helped in some respects - but while I'm a staunch supporter of consciousness-raising, I am hoping I can offer a few concrete suggestions on the projects you all have described to me. Since this is the first workshop I've offered on the topic of language design, I've been feeling my way a little, and I'm grateful for your patience.

Here is where I have arrived in my thoughts on the various projects, and my suggestions for what you might submit to me:

pyraxis: I'm happy to see you thinking through the phonology of rsakki and systematizing the names. I appreciate you posting the excerpt, also. I wonder if you could show me a short (up to 250 words) excerpt which demonstrates the rsakki interacting with non-rsakki, perhaps showing some of the ways you indicate language contrasts.

wordjinn: I'm happy to see you thinking through how to express the various nuances of the djinni speech. Since I was most intrigued by the idea of sung vs. spoken and spoken vs. telepathically communicated, I'd like to see a short (up to 250 words) sample conversation which involves some of these distinctions - hopefully also one that hints at the main conflicts of your story.

K: I'm happy to see you thinking about the relation of language and culture to your story on so many different levels. I was very intrigued by the idea of the contrast between languages that Kei has to bridge, so if you could I'd like you to try making a list of phrases that might be used for social purposes among the Eyans - trying of course to let the content of these phrases indicate people's attitudes toward various types (psychic and non-psychic) of communication. Here's an idea that might start you off: see if you can construct a compliment or two, something you'd say in admiration of someone else's restraint, for example. Or perhaps an insult that deals with insincerity of emotional projection.

David: I'm happy to see you attempting a project so thoroughly permeated by language. There are so many things I could ask about that I find it a bit daunting, but I think I'd most appreciate it if you could give me a rough timeline of language development among the arcati. Points that I'd really like to see you address would be:
1. Why language use evolved among the arcati before the inundation (why did they need to speak? Why was it adaptively successful to communicate using the auditory or visual channel that they do?
2. What form written language took before the inundation
3. From the point of view of a genetic engineer, how they planned to deal with the problem of living and communicating underwater
4. From the point of view of a genetic engineer, how they justified a complete abandonment of air-breathing capability (or not).
5. What kind of attempts were made to preserve written information through the inundation (waterproof floating libraries :-) ?)

Catreona: I'm really happy that you've found the workshop to be illuminating. I feel for you in the story dilemma that you're facing - but I feel strongly that it's important to face such issues and work through them. While your story may emerge different, you may find that it becomes stronger and more compelling for you as well as others. I don't want to put you under pressure for a final product here, because after all this is all about making the story better. If you feel you would be better served by explaining the premise problem you're facing, then feel free to do so. I'll leave it up to you - but you should know this: none of the effort spent on a story is ever wasted. I have enormous quantities of text that I've created that no one will ever see, but all those words have served to deepen my understanding of created worlds and writing, and sometimes I'll find phrases or concepts I hated to discard showing up in unexpected places in my newer work.


Thanks, everyone. I'd like to see replies from all of you by the end of Wednesday if that's not too much of an imposition. In the meantime I'll try to compose some posts that have been inspired by our discussions in this workshop.

More soon...

Workshop: Where to go next

I've really been enjoying the discussions about all of your stories and languages. I also really appreciate all the effort you've put in to quick replies and extensive explanations; these have helped me to understand what's going on, and I hope they've enabled me to be of some use to your projects.

My last workshop (worldbuilding) began and ended with a writing sample. Because this workshop began with a description rather than an excerpt, I've been wondering how best to bring it to a meaningful close. What I'd like to do is this: first, ask you if there are any areas of your project that need desperately to be addressed but which I either haven't touched on or haven't understood; second, ask you to give me something that you feel uses and demonstrates something you've benefited from in our discussion.

So, first off, consider yourselves asked. I'd appreciate it if you could comment on this blog post with any last-round questions you might have.

Once I've had a chance to address those concerns, I'm going to ask you to push yourself and do a little experiment. What this is will depend on where you think the workshop has been of most benefit, and we can discuss what you would like it to be. It could be to create a timeline of language development. Or it could be to describe a section of your plot showing how language will take on a new influence. Or it could be to describe culture and world details and how you think they will be relevant to either plot or character. Or if you're working on dialogue and voice, it could be to write an experimental conversation (250 words or so) between two characters where you can dig into the questions you've addressed.

I'll then comment on (and invite comments on) those experimental results and we'll bring the workshop to a close.

I look forward to hearing from you...

Workshop: Rendering a Created Language in English

I thought I'd pay attention today to an issue I sometimes call "the translation problem," which effectively is the issue of rendering a created language in English. After all, no matter how much work you put into creating a language, a culture, etc. the language that carries the story will be English. So in some manner, you have to find a way to give the flavor of your created language to your English.

This issue covers two of the items from my last post: dialogue, and voice. This is because both of them have directly to do with the content of the language you put down on the paper.

Let me start with a couple of examples from my own work.

The alien dialogue in "Let the Word Take Me" (Analog July/August 2008) was based on the principle that the Gariniki would speak only in oblique references to a set of canonical sacred stories. Some of you may be familiar with this language concept, which I first encountered in Star Trek: The Next Generation's fascinating episode entitled "Darmok."

What I did for the dialogue was design references without actually writing the underlying stories themselves. Examples include "Kridia's head-scales shone," "Rosbas drew strength from the sedi," "In the desert Herremi could not see her face." These were deliberately intended to be opaque. The linguist's son, David Linden, could understand most of them because he'd worked out correspondences between context and utterance along with his father for several years. So I could use his understanding to help the reader's understanding - of the dialogue.

The voice of Allayo's point of view was a different matter. Because culturally she knew of contexts in which the language was used productively (normally), she could think to herself in the language without using the oblique style - a good thing, or I wouldn't have been able to use her point of view at all. But if I tried to make her voice like the English I speak, that would not have worked either. So I looked for ways that her attitude toward language and the world could show up in the way that her voice came across. Since she considered all language sacred, I aimed for a tone that would suggest reverence - using words and meter (stress patterns) that would hint at Biblical verse or incantation. This also meant avoiding slang and contracted forms like "don't" "I'm" etc.

The language of the Aurrel in my forthcoming story, "Cold Words," depends on a distinction between high-status and low-status talk. The high-status talk I designed as the dialect spoken by a tundra-dwelling species of Aurrel, who used talk for coordination of their pack hunts. Thus I decided that they would begin by getting one another's attention on the run with an initial word that both announced the intent to speak and indicated the functional content of what would follow. The low-status dialect didn't use these same initial words, but had some of the same functional things - like submitting, or dominating, or asking for attention - simply mixed into the general talk.

This may all sound pretty complicated. Well in fact, seeing it done is much easier than trying to explain it. However, I did have a tought time at first making it readable in English. I had to make two attempts! Thank goodness for my critique group who basically said "Are you nuts?" and made me try again. However, the end result was both readable and distinctive once I introduced it properly early in the story. An example of the contrast between dialects might be as follows (where the word "belly" refers to a canine apology):

Low status:
"I belly to you, but I don't think so."

High status:
"Bel-belly: I don't think so."

Again, this is the dialogue. I could NOT do this comprehensibly in the character voice. The character voice was made distinctive in part by using first person present tense, in part by completely avoiding the present progressive tense "am __ing," and in part by keeping intense focus on the kinds of world metaphors that my character used. These metaphors were related to dominant and submissive relationships, hunting, animal behavior, etc. When possible I also tried to use a loping meter suggestive of running on the hunt.

These are my own examples, so they are extreme - but I'm hoping you can get some ideas from them. One of the things I tend not to do is use altered spelling to suggest pronunciation. However, this can be done well. Mike Flynn, author of The January Dancer, does it beautifully in his work. He not only alters spellings systematically, but backs them up with surrounding description that connects the spelling changes to the local dialects he is creating.

Before I finish this entry, I'll take a brief look at two of the language models in this workshop that might benefit most from a deliberate language-to-English representation strategy. One is wordjinn's partial psychic dialogue, and the other is David's underwater dialogue (pyraxis may also find this useful, but I don't know enough about rsakki at the moment).

In order to have two people speak to each other, you need to have linguistic content. That linguistic content is going to be most easily expressed in English words. So take the meaning of what one entity says to another, put it in words, and use that for the verbal dialogue. To give it a unique flavor, concentrate on giving unique color to the meanings expressed. So far you will be working free of obligation as to the precise sounds involved in the exchange.

Things like slang and contractions are responses to social and speaking conditions, and as such, they draw attention to the social and speaking conditions surrounding the dialogue in question. If your social context does not match that of a particular slang term, avoid it. Contractions are less distracting, but still, watch out for them if you're trying to create a formal impression with the communication.

Any created word that you insert into your interaction will instantly imply sounds in the pronunciation of the alien language. If that language is never ever pronounced in an air medium, the type of sounds that can be transmitted goes way down (indeed, most or all of our consonants would have no hope of being transmitted under those circumstances; this might be worth researching in more detail). If it is sometimes pronounced in an air medium, you can get away with saying that the word is not fully pronounced in that context, but implied, and the full word would be evoked in the speaker or hearer's mind.

If you have crucial components of communication that are not delivered verbally, then you need to decide what they are and how exactly they are transmitted. While color and scent languages could evolve to a level of sophistication, I have a hard time believing that they could be easily developed for the conversion of verbal material, which is why I'm advocating sign language for David. Sign languages already exist, and the primary time burden would be in learning the amount of material that these people wanted to preserve. It would be far easier to write with indelible ink on stone or another water-durable material to preserve records than to marshall a large population into memorizing cultural content in a newly learned language. Color or scent might be more effective for conveying mood, which I think would fit well with the discussion to this point. Wordjinn: with telepathy, you can presumably send words if you want, and thus those would have a soundlike representation. The harder trick is interweaving it with dialogue without ending up with something that reads like a script, because people will generally find this more difficult to follow. Also you'll probably want to have it represent the content, instead of having it look like an explanation of the content. So you might want to give some thought to how the djinn talk about their own telepathy. What do they call it? How do they refer to the keys, and what is the content of the keys? Etc. In our language, we have words that we use for opening communication, identifying ourselves, and asking permission for various things; I think these could be relatively easily adapted in a unique way to give the impression of the psychic content you're looking for. These are complex messages, and thus I think words are the best communicators for such content, but I think you can use words to gesture toward what is being expressed. Think of it almost as an English translation, and you'll find the content will become much easier to handle.

I hope this helps...

Workshop: The role of language and culture in stories

I'm noticing as I look at the material here that I'm making a lot of comments about potential ways that language can influence the stories. In some cases I'm getting a reaction of "wow," and in others I'm getting "well, that doesn't work because my story has to do this."

Let me be clear: I don't expect you all to change your stories to make them about language and culture. On the other hand, language and culture can give some unexpected benefits to just about any story, and that's what I'm looking for here. Possibilities. Since language and culture are such broad areas, in many cases I'm having to feel around your descriptions of your stories, to get a better idea of where I can be of most help. So I appreciate all of your cooperation in answering questions on the workshop. Thank you.

Now I'd like to discuss some different kinds of places where language and culture can serve to enhance stories. If you read this and any element resonates with you - particularly if it's something I haven't detected or mentioned in your comments to this point - do let me know.

1. Premise
I think of premise as the basic set of assumptions that a reader needs to accept in order for a story to work. For any story (like mine, for example) that has aliens in it, the existence of some kind of alien language forms a critical part of the premise. The story itself may or may not depend on the nature of this language, but if the language sticks out as unrealistic or somehow physically or culturally impossible, that will make it difficult for readers to accept any kind of story placed in that context. The questions I've asked about channel (auditory versus visual) and about linguistic history in David's arcati world are premise-level questions.

2. Plot
This is "what happens" in the story. Language and culture influence the plot of a story if the story is specifically about language difficulty, or if language difficulty or cultural misunderstanding cause a distinct change in events at any point in the story. My own stories involve this stuff all the time. I know David has plans in this area, and I think this may also apply to K's story at certain points, with misunderstandings of the Terran versus Eyan cultures.

3. Setting
In this case I'm not talking about the physical setting, but the cultural and linguistic setting. This is something that I believe is applicable to every story. Quite often it's done well on gut feel alone, without any kind of analysis. Look for any way in which the people in your story are divided into types, and there you'll find a great opportunity to explore language and culture. This doesn't just mean how the different groups speak. It also means how they are described by others, and how they describe others; what expectations are held for them and how those expectations are explained; how their role and values are judged. This is something I've definitely seen in pyraxis' rsakk story, in K's story of Dalkans and Eyans and Terrans and how these groups perceive appropriate behavior, in Catreona's story of Plague Children and the respect with which they expect to be treated, and in wordjinn's families of djinn with their different values. I'm not sure how deeply David's gone into the divisions between the arcati, but I know the groups are there, with the guilds etc. So in this area everyone can dig in; one of the things that can help you to do that is character.

4. Character
A character is a wonderful tool for language and culture building in part because of point of view. If you want to learn about how some group of people regards the others around it, experiment with writing the answers to a set of questions from the point of view of one of the members of that group. Trying to take a point of view often makes it easier to explore the answers to language and culture questions, and value judgment questions. How does your character talk about people he or she respects? Hates? Every character has a personal history, and a personal culture (even aliens or fantasy characters without a known group from our world); these things influence character behavior and judgment in every circumstance.

5. Dialogue
By dialogue I mean how your characters talk. Do you want them to speak in British dialect? Should they speak with an accent that is indicated by alternate spellings of known words? Do they use a lot of slang? If you consider that they are speaking a foreign (usually their own) language, do you want to have that reflected at all in the way their English dialogue is written? If they're communicating on a channel that isn't auditory, such as empathic or telepathic or pheremonal signals, what information are they conveying by that means and how do you want to express that in English?

6. Voice
This one means narrator voice - the language of the voice telling the story. Whether you've got a story told in first or third person, the narrator has an identity, and that identity is indicated by the words you use to tell the story. The narrator can be an epic storyteller, or one of the characters considering his or life retrospectively, or one of the characters experiencing the story in the moment; as a character (invisible or no), the narrator has his or her own culture that is reflected in language. This element can be tricky to step back from and work with, but if you ever really want to go whole hog with an alien point of view, for example, it can be invaluable.

So for my workshop participants, please look through this list and give me your thoughts on which areas you find most promising for your own stories. Play around with the possibilities in your head, or even create an alternate story experiment file and see what kind of impact on the storyline may result from language and culture changes. You might decide you don't want to change the existing details - but you might gain a different kind of insight into the story events, and discover a change that can enhance the story's impact without detracting from your overall intent.

More soon...

A note for wordjinn: I have some comments for you after reading your blog posting (thanks for that!), but I haven't managed to put them together quite yet. I'll try to post them for you in the next day or so. Thank you for your patience.