Last week we took a look at what a language is for, how it develops, and why it is essential to an immersive, fictional world. Now that you’ve had a think over the questions I left you with – let’s get on to actually developing the language. Today I want to delve into phonetics and character styles for your language.

Starting with phonetics – the sound of the language. Perhaps you’ve had some sounds going round your brain since last week that you want to start basing the language around. For the last week or so I have had the word ‘Baruga‘ going round and round my brain and I’m desperate to develop it as part of my world. To me this has Slavic and Eastern European connotations so my language may want to include phonetics similar to languages such as Russian, Polish, and Czech.

I find this the most effective way to develop a language, comparing the sounds to other languages and identifying common features. Slavic languages tend to have a lot of consonants strung together to form complex sounds, and a variety of vowel sounds. My former language was limited only to variations on the vowels ‘A’, ‘O’, and ‘I’, using a lot of flat ‘J’ sounds to compensate. This language I wish to have more variety in sounds as it is to be that of an empire.

Once I have come up with a variety of sounds and potential words within these paradigms, I write out our phonetic alphabet, our actual alphabet, and a column for the fictional script. A language does not necessary need its own script and it is potentially far easier to avoid this step, but it definitely does add a new layer of depth to the world.

This script could be contrived from our own, it could be a variation on Cyrillic, or use symbols, or an entirely new set of fantasy characters like Tolkien. My former language attempted this but I found it too complex for a beginner and this time I have chosen to use an adaptation of English script.

Gradually fill in or omit the different sounds you want for your language – bearing in mind the shape of the sounds and how this may affect the characters. Perhaps this is a particularly western way of thinking, but like how an ‘O’ mimics the shape you make with your mouth. Another important thing to remember, is that languages often have different symbols for phonetic sounds we may use a combination for.

For instance ‘Sh’ could become one character in your new language and is not necessarily the product of two letters combined; it is its own letter. Likewise with vowel sounds. I as a westerner – speaking only English and a little German – have a tendency to view vowels as fairly fluid; ‘I’ can function in both ‘him’ and in ‘behind’. In another language these could be two completely different characters as they sound very different.

Lastly, bare in mind that the phonetics in English are not the only sounds possible with the human mouth. African languages use a variety tongue clicks, Asian dialogue uses inflections to give words new meanings, don’t be limited by what you consider to be a language.

On that note, why not think further? A language is demonstrated by animals all over the world to be an equally visual tool. Why not incorporate this? That speaking a phrase with a hand raised on with your teeth in a grin gives entire new definitions to the speech. Interesting concepts to be explored.

Next time, I’m the final part of this 3 part series, I hope to explore applying language to your blank world and giving names to things and creating words. I hope this week has been insightful as to the creation of a language and it’s script.

Happy adventuring!