World Languages

[Sefra]

At present, this is is just an idea that I'm not sure will be received with exceptional enthusiasm, but I'd like to pose it to the community anyway.

I was quite excited to find last week, when I found Mizahar, that each race has its own language. It is my belief that language is one of the things that most defines a fantasy world since language, culture, and history are so closely intertwined. So I looked a little more closely at the languages that are in existence to see what information is available and I found only names and speakers.

Well, for a fully-fleshed fantasy world, this simply will not do.

Therefore, I propose to begin a project that would result, eventually, in documentation of the languages of Mizahar.

Creating languages has been a part time hobby for me since my days on Gaia Online some four years ago when I created my first non-human character and decided she needed some words that weren't English to throw at her human companions. It grew from there and I have learned quite a lot.

Language as a subject of study in itself has held my interest for even longer. I began studying Spanish in high school and in college moved to Japanese.

I am, however, far from being an expert (if Mizahar stats applied to the real world, I would likely have about seventeen points in Languages). Therefore, I will need lots of help. If anyone here on Mizahar has any interest in Conlanging (that's what they call building a fantasy language) and has knowledge either of conlanging itself or extensive knowledge on linguistics in general, I urge you to begin this project with me.

There are many languages to do, and even ten people working together would require many months to make even basic documentation--but I promise it'll be fun, if you're into it at all.

Last paragraph, I promise:

I don't propose to build a complete grammar with a full lexicon--even Tolkien couldn't pull that off in his lifetime, and he is widely acknowledged as a master. All that is needed is a basic outline of grammar, a phonology, some notes on cultural aspects (for instance: a good text on Japanese will explain the spirit of some of the more odd expressions like "Sit on a rock for three years") and history, perhaps even a linguistic genealogy. And of course, they will need scripts (that's a big wink to all the calligraphers and artists out there). Maybe a few words or phrases as well--nothing that would take ten people ten years to get half done.

Does anyone else find this interesting? Or have I shown myself the biggest geek on the interwebz?

[Tarot]

I am probably less of an expert than you are - my language savvy comes from reading Wikipedia pages, so go figure. This is going to be a huge task. I have done initial work on the Ancient tongue, which is the original human language. Most human languages would derive from this, though with 8000 years in between the variations would be huge, just like a lot of different RL languages with otherwise little in common can be traced back to the ancient Indo-European language. Post-Valterrian languages are a separate case: 500 years are enough to form new languages, though they would probably share as many similarities as, say, French and Spanish.

So, we may be better off fleshing out the ancient tongue first and then moving forward to progressively newer languages that are more and more different from the old one. What do you think?

[Caelum]

It's interesting that you brought this up. The other day it came up in chat that the common language swear word list ought to be lengthier. I volunteered to assist with that primarily because who doesn't want to come up with new and interesting swear words?

However, upon further consideration, I've come up against a minor, technical problem. Mizahar "common" is, for the obvious reasons, English. Whether it in imagination something different and for purposes of play we utilize English while suspending our disbelief is something I don't know.

Regardless, this poses a problem regarding the development of common language swear words due to the fact that the vast majority of our real world swear words are essentially the bastard great grandchildren of earlier versions of vernacular (ie, blimey < gorblimey < God blind me) or, on the flip side, the use of unassuming actual vocabulary as an invective (such as "damn" or "bitch").

I do imagine, though, that especially with liberal abuse of various Mizahar religions and a few especially dirty minds we can certainly expand this list.

Also, I'd be happy to help with language development.

[Pua]

~jumps up and down with his hand in the air~

I totally volunteer for language creation assistance duty. I was actually wondering on this subject a short time ago. I just lacked the creative juices to preform the necessary tasked all by my lonesome. I like the group idea much better.

[Sefra]

Great! A better response than I was hoping for, actually .

Tarot: I was unaware that work was being done on the Ancient Language already, and you are absolutely right: it would be helpful to flesh out Ancient before moving on so that all the human languages are all a posteriori as they should be (as they are IRL).

Caelum: as a matter of fact, my first conlang evolved out of four swear words, three questions, and a greeting and farewell.

Pua: I hope we can get lots of people working on this together, so I'm elated that you're interested ^.^

[Jilitse]

Hmmm I have thought Mizahar common was a bit on the medieval english side, what with the knights and fantasy setting. Only thou doth not speaketh in this manner.

I'd love to help volunteer, but the months up ahead will be quite busy for me, so if the language development project is still in need of volunteers by say, June. I'd love to help.

I like the way the ancient tongue has a couple of words with many meanings, it allows us for greater personalization. I myself have created personal ancient tongue "magic words" for magical goodness.

And yes, it would be great if we could start making swear words or sentences, because I have wondered what would somebody cuss out in Mizahar, and there isn't exactly heaven or hell. Language is, after all, part of the culture, and it would also flesh out the nature of literature, life, beliefs in general.

I pledge my support for this. (Once I make it pass through my trial-by-fire IRL, I promise!)

[Miharu Mindi]

Yay for swear words!

Also, I love that Ancient has no "H" and therefore no CH "chain" or SH "shame" sound. It's such a fall-back in fantasy languages, which I realized when I started working on the swear words list. I'd really like this to stay consistent in any language development, because I'm a geek.

[Sefra]

So, with enough volunteers and enthusiasm to get started, how should we go about collaborating?

[Nyahna Sasin]

I could help too. And to collaborate, we could just use this thread.

[Pua]

Ok, I'll throw in my two cents. I agree that swear words are a great place to start. Not because they're fun to say, or because they tend to be the most common out of common words used by multi-lingual characters. (though the latter is a valid point!) Swear words and phrases tend to be a culture's most influential insults/invocations/etc and thus are a true window into the culture's "soul". For instance "Son/daughter of a Snake" would be nothing but a statement of fact for a Dhani but would probably cause bloodshed just a little ways over in Taloba.