Constucted Languages And Going Down The Rabbit Hole

Yorth

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I recently went back to working on my conlangs after putting them off for the better part of a year. My plan was to use these languages to add more depth to the story and the world it is set in. I was going to make one for each major race, so five in total. But then as I start digging a bit deeper in the lore making process, one problem stood out to me immediately. How am I going to ever introduce the human language? You see, humanity is a major race in my world and as such should have its own constructed language according to the earlier plan, so am I supposed to write out all the dialogues in conlang? Well, that would be no good, now would it. So, what should I do? Just introduce specific words sparingly? That wouldn't work either as the characters in the story should be all talking in the constructed language while the reader is just reading a translated version of it. Thus, trying to point out any specific word will only break the suspension of disbelief.

In the end, I decided to drop the idea of having a constructed language for humans. In fact, all the races will default to English and only have a glimpse of their ancient language left in their dialect. The reason for this sudden shift is the conquest of humanity and their thousand-year rule over the world.

Moral of the story, don't go too crazy with conlangs.
 

Yorth

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I love conlangs... :blob_hide:

One fun idea might be to drop in words that are "untranslatable" -- sort of like how the English language has embraced the word "Schadenfreude" or the phrase "je nais se quoi", things that exist in concept in English, but didn't have a specific verbalisation.

Honestly I have the same problem of going way too HAM on conlangs but I always end up getting absorbed in the technical aspects like sentence arrangement, like, "Oooh, what if this language placed verbs before nouns because culturally they prioritise action-" and then I have to make flow charts.
I think for the most part I'll keep the conlangs to artifacts, magic spells, city/region names, titles and things of the sort. Those can easily tie to the plot and the name would serve both as a good tool to make the world more expansive and deep, and also push the plot forward.
 

DemeanCosmos

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Hey got idea what about still have an ancient language for each but mostly royalty and very old ones still use to hide there secrets in maybe even secret organasions use them to for same reason and prefer it over the human or know as common language
 

Mejiro

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yup, humans are the baseline and generally travel and have lots of communities everywhere, while the elves have their elven cities over _here_, the dwarves are up in the mountains over _there_, and so on, so everyone else is a single bloc, while humans are diverse (this is obviously very stereotypical).

For conlangs, unless you really, really enjoy it and want to do it, it's probably easier to focus on some specific phrases and terms, rather than a full language, that will need introducing to the reader somehow, and for the reader to pay attention to follow along. So many terms have specific histories in English ('sandwich' and 'marathon' are both specific places, for example) that trying to make up new terms for them is irritating and for little gain.
 

Llamadragon

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Language doesn't work like that, though. Look at the real world. There are several hundred, possibly thousands, of languages. English might be the closest thing to 'common language' Earth has in the western hemisphere, but Mandarin is another 'common', and Spanish is another one. Large parts of the world also use French, and I have no idea what the language status is over at the Indian continent but there's probably an equivalent. If you want to make humans 'diverse', them having just one language is an unnecessary limit to stay within if you don't want to.

Tolkien had like, what? Five different elven languages and three human ones? If you think it's fun to construct a language and want to make one for humans, go nuts.
 
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Silvareiel

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I have constructed a semi-language. I use it for titles, names, cities, provinces and some sacred terms (since it's a sacred / heavenly language). And I'm always afraid there might be too many strange terms for readers to assimilate. Here at scribblehub we have the footnotes that really help with that, but the same cannot be said from other writing platforms or even classic book formats. You can always develop a dictionary / glossary of terms but risk readers getting annoyed at always having to check the meaning of a certain term, much less an entire sentence or dialog. On the other hand, like you said, it gives depth and makes the world more believable and, in my opinion, interesting. But I think that us, as creators, must also be careful with our degree of enthusiasm regarding the development of our worlds. Unfortunately, lots of people out there will just lose patience if a world gets too complex and there are too many explanations on a certain matter. Everyone wants everything to happen quickly and fast, it's a 21st century generation thing. If you're writing just because you like what you're doing, go ahead and go crazy with languages and other stuff. But if you're aiming to also attract as many readers as possible this is a matter to ponder on. I know I do 😓
 
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