Simple Construction: Spoken, Written, & PunctuationA Lesson by Donna M. Burr Wrapping up the simple construction of your language and making it an actual language! Goes over the difference with spoken and written, as well as punctuation and compiling the language into sentences! Simple Language Construction Spoken, Written, & Punctuation  Choosing a Base Language What do I mean by a base language? Well, Tolkein used Finnish and another language for his language, and it is what I call a base language. So, it is now time for you to choose yours. I would recommend finding an English to (Language) Dictionary to help in creating the words, or you can use a language you are fluent in (whether that be English or a secondary language). Here is a good place and has a list of languages which it translates. However, I recommend the ones which don't have to use symbols (such as Chinese, Japanese, etc). Those are harder to incorporate into the language translation system which I utilize. You can also use their Universal Dictionary. Note: If you are unable to find a language you like here, and find one which they do not list, just send me a message and I can try to locate a dictionary for you. However, if you type in google search "English to (your language) Dictionary", you should come up with some varied results which suit your needs. Also, if you do not find a word in the language you have chosen, use a thesaurus! Most languages do not use the same words as English and not as diverse and it might take some time finding a word which means the same to get the sentence right. I would recommend making a Dictionary document for you language due to this to better help in creating sentences and such in the future. For my Part A Language I am going to choose Latvian, and for my Part B Language I am going to choose Basque (Languages chosen at random). Using the Alphabet & Pronunciation Chart Let's revisit our Part A chart for the language with less than 20 letters. Pronunciations are going to be very important, so I recommend to make sure you have those done before proceeding. ✖m and n = using m = mi Now that we have that, we are going to choose a few random words. ✖Mother We find what they mean in our translator: ✖Mother = Māte Now we combine the alphabet and pronunciation. I am going to break it down one word at a time so you get the idea.Please know, you can keep any letter which has an accent above the letter if you wish, however, the following still applies: ā is still considered an a, and so on. Rules: ✖Vowel pronunciations are void and vowels stay the same. ✖Mother ✖M = Mi ✖Red ✖S = Se ✖Dance ✖D = Thy ✖Home ✖M = Mi Now lets go to the Part B alphabet with more than 20 letters: ✖m = using m = mn Using the same words: ✖Mother With different translations: ✖Mother = Ama But the same rules: ✖Vowel pronunciations are void and vowels stay the same. And we get: ✖Mother ✖A = A ✖Red ✖G = Gu ✖Dance ✖D = Te ✖Home ✖E = E Note: If you want to use English as the base language you are more than welcome to do so. Simple use the same method as before. For this sake we are going to use both Part A and B languages. ✖Part A ✖Mother = Miothyhuela ✖Part B ✖Mother = Mnotehaxeura As you can tell, there is a common pattern, and soon you will have your pronunciation chart memorized. While this method doesn't involve having to differentiate between nouns, adjective, and other word forms, it doesn't make for plurals, punctuation, etc. So, we go to the next section. Simple Grammar Now that we have a basis for our words, there isn't alot we have to do for grammar. Depending on how in depth you want to be can be up to you, but I am going to show all possibilities of what you can do with Grammar. Pluralization: This can be any part of your alphabet. For Part A I am going to designate "a" as the pluralization. So Mothers would be Miathyea (Miathye + a). In Part B, I want k to be the pluralization, so Mothers would be Amnaku (Amna + ku). Possession: Thus can be as simple as choosing another letter or placing a bit of punctuation. For Part B we are going to choose another letter, however, I am going to be a little more complicated with it. I am going to use "r" for possessiong, but I want soft r to be feminine and hard r to be masculine. So Mother's is going to be Amnari (Amna + ari with tweaking). Also you can do other grammatical stuff, that I am not really going to go into with my language. You can have any of the following tweaked to your specification for your language and make it unique: ✖sentence Structure Written Language & Punctuation This does not mean when you are actually having a character in the book speak the language, this is if you, personally, are writing a letter in the language, or if there are writing on the wall etc. Pronunciation can be just about anything. As mentioned before, Possessives could have a certain kind of punctuation. Well, designating the kind of punctuation to use is going to be hard and can look weird to readers if you aren't careful. Honestly, I prefer to stay simple, and sometimes don't even include other-language punctuation in my story. I simple write it as I would having someone saying it. But if I wanted to write a note to my friend in the language, or whatever, I would use my specified punctuation. These are the punctuations I chose for my languages: ✖Part A Language ✖End of Sentence: - ✖Part B Language ✖End of Sentence: < So examples of punctuation for each language: ✖Part A Language ✖Simple Sentence: I love my mother's blanket. ✖Part B Language ✖Simple Sentence: I love my mother's blanket. New Rule: ✖If a word has a base word, I would use that when getting a translation. Such as keeping. I looked up "keep" instead to be able to get an result and added my own ending for "ing." However, you could also just use the base word and not worry about endings when translating from english. Spoken Language Spoken language is quite simple. It is the language with common, English punctuation as is used in your story. If the character is speaking this method is better to utilize. ✖Part A Language ✖Yo milaethy miamise miathye'a sejha. ✖Part B Language ✖Ih mnaitesaoon nehiarie Amnari teaviasei. End Result Well, you should have yourself a wonderful language by now! However, if you have constructed a sentence and it doesn't sound like something you like, you might have to do some tweaking to the pronunciation to get your desired result. It could be the best language on the first time, or it could be the fifth, but either way, it is much simpler than having to go through a complex series of grammatical rules. However, if you prefer to keep to the more complex way, just wait for the second half portion of my lesson "Complex Language Construction." Happy Creating! Lamijhse lathyi! Alitekuo saouriteu!   Comments
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Donna M. BurrBanks, ALAboutThank you everyone who has reviewed my works, and I am sorry I am unable to thank you each individually due to my chaotic schedule. I just want you all to know I appreciate the constructive criticism,.. |
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