One element of worldbuilding I love is conlangs, or constructed languages. I really admire those who create full-fledged languages for their worlds, and I try to at the very minimum come up with sound-sets for my names, if not a little more than that.

I’m no linguist, and I mostly just go on gut (or is that ear?) instinct, trying to make sure things really sound like they’re from the same language. I’ve read stories where you get something like Bob and Drzzel supposedly from the same language. And while I won’t rail against a logical apostrophe, there’s too many times where I wonder what exactly the author wanted from that apostrophe. Was it supposed to be a glottal stop? A contraction of two words? A missing letter due to some sort of mutation (er, not the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kind, but this sort of thing)? Or did they just think it looked cool?

Knowledge-wise, I tend to be crow-like, just picking up little tidbits here and there. I’m like this with languages, too. I learned a smattering of Sindarin from JRR Tolkien, a tiny bit of Finnish from a childhood friend, a little Welsh from another friend, know some French and Chinese due to my background, and a little Turkish and Russian just because I thought they sounded pretty. I don’t think I know even enough to be dangerous, but it’s fun to incorporate the little things I have learned to make my languages not just randomized English. That said, I sometimes worry that people won’t know how to pronounce something. They’ll run into a strange combination of letters and maybe they’ll even think I just did that to look cool.

I’ve really had to wrestle a lot with conlang issues in my new novel. In Empire there’s not one but four proto-conlangs behind the scenes. The main character’s primary language is just done as English, but the initial setting is a huge trade and travel hub, so there are many, many languages that can be spoken there. In addition the action references three other countries with three different languages. So I’m faced with a few problems:

– When characters speak in a tongue that is not the main one–how best to provide a translation.
– When characters speak for an extended time in another language–how best to handle that.
– How to indicate pronunciation, or if it’s better to just abandon that entirely
– How to avoid confusion with many different sounding placenames and character names, to avoid what one of my writing group described eloquently as “blah blah went to the spring of blah with his blah blah mc BLAHBLABLAH” (This is tricky because different kinds of readers have different tolerances)

For now, I’ve dealt with the first point by having the translation soon after; the main character speaks several languages, and though he’s not effortlessly fluent, he can translate them in his head. Eg.

Anli gripped the dagger at her hip. “Sū àb kĕlé?” she demanded–what’s wrong with him?— forgetting silence in her suspicion.

or

With no space to draw his weapons, Taiver seized on words. “Wait! We’re friends. Er– Cu duris ert felis suinla Kosmir. … No? Nerudhan, then? Kedh dann er faihrût èsoinlat Kosmir.” He executed the closest thing to a bow he could manage in the space, ducking his head, and hoped that he had said something to the effect of “Kosmir sends his greetings.”

But then I came to a situation where three characters have a conversation in the main character’s mother tongue (about four exchanges), which he understands but with a little effort, and it seemed like a LOT to translate over and over. I wasn’t sure how it ought to be handled. Would it be better to show the first line in that language and translate the rest? Or translate everything and just say it’s in that other language? Or render it all in that language and have the character translate by his thoughts and reactions? When does it go from enriching the world to just plain being obscure?

For now I’ve abandoned indicating the pronunciation. I find it disruptive when there’s an exchange like, “NEE-man?” he said, frowning. “NAY-man,” she corrected him. Once is okay, I suppose, but it just feels like the author telling us how to read the word.

And on the last problem, I think I’ll just have to deal with on revisions, after some beta readers have had a stab at it.

How about you? Do you conlang? How little or much do you do? What challenges have you faced, and how do you tackle them? If you do have your own conlangs, share a little with me! I adore them, and would love to hear yours!

(Oh, and PS, happy year of the Dragon!)