“Sense” when discussing language is almost always synonymous with sound or phonology. This thinking would be true in many writeups about language (especially as humans think of language). In this article, I explore sense as a part of language creation.
As you’re creating your fantasized culture, you might consider what is permissible for the alien species, culture, and biology. For example, if your created people have no vocal cords, chances are they wouldn’t have the range of words that humans have, but would they use sounds?
Maybe. This strays a bit from sense as a part of language creation, but it impacts what will make your constructed language logical in the eyes of the reader. Possibly, this species has another biological mechanism that allows for vibration and creation of sounds. Maybe it’s a clicking noise, a scratching, or something that sounds vaguely like a low hum to human ears.
What other senses could be used?
Alternatively, the people of your new race maybe use another sense, such as touch or sight. Sign language or braille come to mind here, but the possibilities are limitless. Consider an alien people who could concentrate enough energy to create an electric field. Also, assume that the race had a mechanism to sense changes within that field. Then, by the use of subtle changes to that energy field, the creatures would be able to communicate everything necessary. This would make for quite the interesting species! Writing this may prove difficult because dialog abilities are limited, but it would be interesting nonetheless.
If, after exploring the thoughts around senses as they relate to language and communication, you’ve decided that your new culture will speak something akin to a known language, you should spend more time on zompist.com. There, you’ll find a plethora of information in the space of constructing your own language.
Language Creation Prompt
Just for fun, think about the sounds that grasshoppers or cicadas make. Might there be a way to turn those into a fully constructed language made by rubbing together of some body part?
A linguist’s take on phonology
Scientifically, a linguist will reference how sounds are made by human anatomy. Some of this is important for a novelist, but I do recommend (and remind) that you should consider how extensively you need to explore these topics. Again, the goal is to make your work feel complete to the reader.
- Place of articulation. Articulation is made by obstructing the air flow and therefore the vibrations that produce the sounds by movements of different parts of the mouth.
- Degree of closure. Some sounds may be made with the mouth more closed than other sounds. Consider a K sound in comparison to an H sound. Go ahead…make the sounds. No one is watching. The K sound (a plosive) fully closes off the mouth while the H sound (an approximate) is made with minimal closure.
- Voicing. Whether the vocal cords are vibrating
- Palatization. Raising the tongue toward the back of the mouth
- Rhotics. R-like sounds in various forms
- Laterals. L-like sounds in various forms
- Height. For vowels, how far the tongue is raised inside the mouth
- Frontness. Also for vowels, where in the mouth the sound is generated: front, back, or central
- Stress. Which syllable within a word is emphasized. English words have randomly stressed syllables, while Polish and Quechua (spoken in South America) always stress the second to the last syllable.
- Tone. The largest example of this is Mandarin, in which high level, rising, falling-rising, and high falling tones indicate the meaning of the words.
- Pitch-accent. A case when the stress put on the word has a high or low pitch that can very well change the meaning of the word itself. A key example of pitch-accent usage is Japanese.
Source: http://www.zompist.com/kitlong.html#models.
What makes a language constructed for literary purposes complete?
This may not seem like a question related to sense as a part of language creation. However, in my research, I came across a scholarly article entitled Created Languages in Science Fiction by Ria Cheyne. Though published in 2008, this article has great relevance to this post. According to Ms. Cheyne, a language becomes real when one or more of the following are true.
- There are utterances in the created language within the work
- Translations of utterances appear either in text or in the supplemental materials
- The work contains information about how the utterance may be translated
- Information exists about how the utterance sounds
- There is phonemic information
- It is clear that a grammar structure exists
- There exists a glossary of terms
- There are descriptions or discussions regarding other properties of the language.
So, according to this article, Ms. Cheyne is proposing that you may go light on the technical detail of your created language. Simply try to ensure you have enough information available about it to make it appear real. The goal of language in literature isn’t daily communication. Therefore, how well the language serves the purpose of the story determines the completeness.
Resources
For aspects of sound, here are a few resources that might help you in the exploration:
For further reading:
- Cheyne, Ria. “Created Languages in Science Fiction.” Science Fiction Studies 35, no. 3 (2008): 386-403. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475175.
- http://r-spec.org/files/R-SPEC_Notes_on_Conlangs_May_2018.pdf – Focuses on top fantasy & science fiction languages: Klingon, Mando’a, Tengwar, Cirth, Dothraki, Valyrian. Alphabets included.
- Star Wars’ Mando’a: http://www.mandoa.org/
Did you miss the prior posts about this topic? Check them out here:
- Worldbuilding & Language – Series introduction.
- Sense, Structure, and Style: Worldbuilding & Language – An overview of three major areas of language creation
Upcoming in the Worldbuilding & Language Series
- Structure: Sense, Structure, and Style Part 3 (Thursday, April 25 with free worksheet!)
- Style: Sense, Structure, and Style Part 4
- Language & Politics of Worldbuilding – This is an addition after completing the research for this installment.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic. Join the discussion below!