Lesson 6-Language and Names

Lesson 6

Language and Names

 

Creating a fantasy language can be easy or take a bit of thinking whatever you decide to do however you should think about pronunciation and add something somewhere that tells people how to pronounce it. It’s not needed but some people hate reading something they don’t know how to pronounce. I tend to put the pronunciation in Brackets after the word for example using a language I made I can write Crusaders as Tywlpgeyl after I do so I write (Ty �" Whelp �" gay �" LLL) you can do this or you might decide to say

Ty as in Tyson, Whelp as in the young of a dog, Gay as in happy, LLL as in Like.

 

So that’s how you pronounce it but what about actually making up a language. Well if you speak English and don’t know another language then you have 26 characters to choose from the easiest way to create a language is substitution. Simply take the letter A and choose a different letter to swap it with this is what I did here is my substitutions

 

A=P       B=S       C=T       D=G       E=E        F=H       G=N       H=R       I-I          J=B       K=V       L=M      M=A        N=X       O=O            P=F       Q=Q       R=Y       S=L        T=K       U=W      V=C       W=Z      X=U         Y=J      Z=D

 

You may notice some letters stayed the same that is ok too this is your language something else you could do is Create sounds I have only done one sound which is the TH sound in my language it is TH=KRI Using these notes I can write my Name, Matthew as Apkkriez (app �" Kree ((sounds like Creed)) �" ez) or I could Write Amy as Paj (Pa as in Grandfather, J as in Jump).

 

This brings me to Names. If you have your own language names can be easy or complicated you could create a Fantasy country and call it Pwlkypmvp this translates to the name of my actual home country Australia you could do this or you can throw a few letters together however if you’re trying to be serious make sure when you throw your letters together they don’t translate into anything for example I can’t use Lroykl as I would end up with an animal or country called “Shorts” not very exciting or scary. Sometimes you may like to have a Race that talks in a language you create and they may have a different name for themselves it is easiest to in this case simply translate the name you use in the story to the other language for example a Dragon might call itself in my language a Gypnox.

 

These are some basics to help but there are many different ways you can do both of these. As you get better you can make them more and more complex or perhaps even create Symbols for each letter.