Or, My Doomed Excursions Into the Wondrous World of Conlang.
For my sweet innocent uncorrupted readers who know not what "conlang" signifies, I shall explain: conlang is a portmanteau of "constructed" and "language." In other words, it's that making-up-private-languages thing that only really dyed in the wool geeks can get into.
I'm footling around in it right now because it's about as much guilty pleasure as watching Jersey Shore while eating Chubby Hubby from the carton, and also to see if I can. There are different varieties of conlanging -- there's "auxlang," for instance, which is the development of a sort of lingua franca (usually Romance-based)that can be used for international communication, to further human knowledge and enlightened cultural exchange. Esperanto is the most well-known of these. Then there's "artlang," which has no higher purpose than "it's fun and I can make it do what I want, vwahaha." As usual, Wikipedia has more answers on this subject, should you seek them.
I've been working on this for a while now, following in the footsteps of my spiritual bff the great Dr. JRR, but recently I've had some time to get serious, and some assistance from the Language Construction Kit (which I ordered in book form as an early Christmas present to myself; highly recommended.) Bulleted below are my reflections on this process.
First, the b!^(#ing: For the many people who do artlang right, there are so so many (published) people who do it in a way that saddens me. I do not wish to be an unmitigated sourpuss... okay, yes I do. Christopher Paolini, here's looking at you, kid. I'm looking through the appendices to Eldest right now, and though I'm getting some threads of linguistic continuity, I'm also made a bit nervous by the fact that so many of his nouns seem to be verbs too (ex. skolir is glossed as shield [the noun? the verb?] and directly under that is used as an imperative, Skolir nosu..., Shield us....). Additionally, there seems to be a fairly one-to-one correspondance between the English words and their Ancient Language correspondents...which seems a bit unlikely... and even in the fairly limited vocabulary given there's at least one unexplained redundancy that my rather cursory look-over can find: malthinae is glossed as "to bind or hold in place; confine," but elsewhere the phrase "Brakka du vanyali sem huildar Saphira un eka," "Reduce the magic that holds Saphira and me," shows no sign of malthinae for "hold." Indeed, hold is probably "huildar," since the one-to-one correspondence with the translation would seem to indicate so, and because it sounds like the word "hold" rolled around on the tongue until it sounds just different enough to be unrecognizable and then stitched into the language.
Related note: eka, presumably "me," is also used as "I" later on. Presumably the Ancient Language has no respect for grammatical case (even less respect than that shown in English). Of course, that's perfectly okay. It's just a little...well... boring, don't you think? Especially considering that the Dwarvish (Dwarfish?) language seems to have a similar problem and a not-terribly-distinct phonology.
Less-related-but-still-pertinent note: All fantasy dwarves are the same. They're gruff, cunning, conniving, gold-hungry, honor-silly buggers who fight with axes and speak Nordically with lots of x's and z's and v's. Now, granted, folklore provides us with reason for the one, and Tolkien's Khuzdul (with its Barazinbar, Kibil-Nala and felak-gundu) with reason for the other. But wouldn't it be nifty if for once the Dwarves were more poetical and spoke a fluid, flowing language, soft as the flow of magma, swift as the wind that shapes the living earth, graceful as the spires of rock that grow in the cavernous gardens of the deep? I'm just saying. If you're gonna have dwarves, and you don't want to be called out as a stereotypical High Fantasy knockoff, well, why not? (And make the Elves nasty, why don't you?)
Still-tangential-but-perhaps-slightly-more-relevant note: The Dwarvish Mythology includes a "Morgothal," god of fire and brother of the god of air. It also includes a god who secretly creates the first Dwarves, which are then supplanted by the Elves, children of the Skyfather Zeus equivalent. Someone didn't just finish reading the Silmarillion (in which Morgoth, the fiery wad of Evil Incarnate, is a "brother in the thought of Eru" to Manwe, god of winds, and Aule gets in trouble for making Durin &Co before Eru creates the Elves), did he? Oh, no....
Plagiarizing bastard.
Sorry. I really really don't like Chris Paolini. Painful lack of skill I could empathize with. Mediocrity hailed by the slavering masses as genius I cannot.
Now we've got that out of the way, let's talk about me and my problems!
~ The Language Construction Kit (LCK) advises that like all things, one gets better at doing languages as one progresses, and advises starting with perhaps an "offstage" language so you don't end up several years down the line stuck with a well-developed and frequently-used language that has at its core some newbie mistakes, while your sophisticated and fascinating later languages are doomed to languish in relative obscurity as the mother-tongues of the Long-Dead or Foreign. Fair enough; instead of jumping right in and starting work on the lingua of linguas, I 've been chipping away at a language theoretically prescribed to an culture I don't much care for, with a horrifically complex and cosmopolitan history that will hopefully disguise or excuse any errors. Problem is, my motivation at times wanes apace. I don't want to work on the language I'm specifically designing to be a little naive or ugly. I want to fill it full of liquid consonants and baroque case systems! (But that's for later, I keep telling myself. Later....)
~Cases: oh my good golly gosh. I didn't know about the ergative/absolutive alternative to nominative/accusative! Whee!
~Verbs: verbs suck. You have to make so many decisions. I'm going with a simpler model and I keep telling myself that this is okay, that English verbs are even less complex. But the siren wail of Latin with its four conjugations and its Moods and Persons and Numbers and Voices and Principle Parts cries out to me. Trouble is, I know Latin well enough to know that its motivation is to shatter me against the linguistic Jetty of Despair.
~Even though I've got a rough system worked out for the verbing, and it ought to work -- indeed, I have not (yet) seen indications that it does not work -- it looks -- icky. It looks, frankly, like something I made up, which, okay, it is. But that's not the point!
~Phonology: this sucks as well. I fear I may have too many sounds. But I don't want to just eliminate them randomly. I want it to make sense, darnit!
In sum, I fear I am attempting once again to force order onto something fundamentally chaotic, and it's going to be...fun.
Enough of that. Time for the Adorable Large Dog Breed of the Week/Month/Year!
The Neapolitan Mastiff. IT'S SO WRINKLY I'M GONNA DIE.
Thank you, once again, ladies and gentlemen, for enduring this episode of I Air My Opinions, Totally Un-asked-for.
