Advice/Help Creating a Fantasy Language. Help?

[TheEnchantedQuill]

Hello all! I am currently working on developing a fantasy language for a world that I have created and was wondering if any one knew of some tips or..where I even start when it comes to creating a language. I have been working on this world and its races/cultures/religions for a few years now and I've only recently started exploring the idea of the world having its own fleshed out language. Any advice or tips?

 

[SilverSuzi]

Look up guides and info on "conlangs" (stands for constructed languages). You should be able to find lots of info to get you started.

There's also a language generator I like to play around with, and intend to use for made-up languages for my own world eventually. It's at vulgarlang.com and it generates lots of words (200 in the trial version, 4000 in the pro version), and even a grammar structure, and you can add your own words to the list or customize which sounds it uses. It's pretty neat.

 

[Idea]

Well, while other than servicing from a regular language is just the simplest way to go, there are a few things you can do that i think could really help expand your world building and expand the language and it's impact.

First, consider who is speaking it. I imagine you are likely to be going with some humanoid race, if you are like the standard then most likely not gonna need to consider this much, but if your fantasy language is spoken by say, dragons, then the fundamental sounds of it could be different. Maybe a draconic language would have more "rrr" sounds due to the dragon's being mroe used to growling, maybe it would have less "ah" or "I" sounds because, they would have to make the effort not to breathe fire everytime they used a sound that forced their mouths wider open.

Little things like that can help guide the creation of the language, but they aren't the only things. For instance, culture has a deep influence on language. Words used more commonly or by higher classes tend to spread more, thus if you make up a word for something particular important it is justifiable that sounds in that word would be common in your overall fantasy language.

Lastly, you may want to word things for concepts humans don't have. It helps flavor a fantasy race when they themselves take for granted things that are pretty alien to us.


Hope this helps, good luck!